New Yorkers to the rescue

Wesley Autrey receiving a bronze medallion,
New York's top award for civic achievement.
Photograph: Bebeto Matthews/APSo who needs superheroes, anyway? Not the people of New York, it would seem.

This is "the week of heroes" in the city, its police commissioner has said, after a series of selfless events which have thrilled even New York's most jaded residents.

It all began on Tuesday, when 50-year-old construction worker Wesley Autrey leaped onto a Manhattan subway track as a train approached to save the life of a man who had fallen after suffering a seizure.

Unable to pull him up in time, Mr Autrey placed his own body over that of the other man, holding him down in the low trench between the tracks as the train carriages passed millimetres above his head.