CARACAS, Venezuela—A Venezuelan politician is holding an unusual raffle to raise campaign cash. The grand prize: breast implants. For a little under $6 a ticket, donors get the chance to win the pricey operation free of charge.
Breast enlargement is widely popular in image-conscious Venezuela. In recent years as many as 30,000 women have had the operation annually, according to the nation’s Plastic Surgery Society.
Gustavo Rojas, who is running as an alternate for the National Assembly in Sept. 26 elections, said there is a great demand for the surgery.
The prize for his fund-raising effort may be a little unusual, Rojas conceded Friday, but he said it’s like raffling off a TV set or a telephone.
ATLANTA — “I don’t even know how to put it into words,” Petra Gooding said while sitting on the couch outside the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Her daughter is inside, in total isolation, fighting life-threatening complications from her treatment.
Petra does not know how she will explain to her child that she may have to leave her. Seven-year-old Niamh is battling Stage 4 Neuroblastoma.
The mother and daughter came to Children’s from Barbados last November, their private insurance paying for Niamh’s treatment. They applied to extend their visas because Niamh is so ill and, having just recently received a bone marrow transplant, unable to be moved.
“They gave my daughter the six-month extension but did not give it to me,” Petra said.
Hospital staff thought it was a clerical error, that the little girl would be approved and her mother denied. So Gooding appealed and was denied again. She must leave the country by Sept. 2, next Thursday.
“I feel like I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place,” Petra said. “I would have to leave her and go and come back again.
And there would be no guarantee that she could get back into the country.
Petra says Niamh was an active happy child until the day she woke up with a terrible stomache ache. It was only a matter of days until the diagnosis. Petra’s husband and her other daughter, who’s two, remain in Barbados. She says the year has been devastating, but that she is focused on saving Niamh’s life.
Social workers at the hospital say it’s critically important that parents remain with their children, especially during brutal treatment such as a bone marrow transplant. Petra says her daughter has great faith in God.
“Everytime she goes through a difficult stage in her treatment she would tell me ‘Mommy is this closer to getting back home to our family, is this closer?’” Petra said.
She is pleading with whomever decided a seven-year-old girl could stay, alone.
“I would ask them, please, someone in there have a heart to help in some way, somehow,” she said. “I understand there are laws and I never wanted to break them. I just want to be able to have my daughter treated so we can go back home. That’s it.”
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Let’s recap: Lying thieving parasitic illegal aliens get to stay in the U.S. just so they can finish school courtesy U.S. tax dollars, but a woman who came legally and…is paying for her daughter’s treatment via private insurance is about to be booted out because we won’t extend her VISA.
VINEYARD HAVEN, Mass. (AP) — Michelle Obama will join former first lady Laura Bush in ceremonies marking the ninth anniversary of the United Flight 93 crash in Pennsylvania during the Sept. 11 attacks.
Mrs. Bush had previously confirmed her participation, saying we “must never forget the brave sacrifice of these extraordinary men and women.”
Passengers aboard the flight are believed to have struggled with its hijackers before the jet crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pa., killing all aboard.
Mrs. Obama’s press office confirmed her role as the first lady vacationed with her family on Martha’s Vineyard.
“Their show of support honors the lives and memories of these 40 heroes and everyone we lost on September 11th,” said Neil Mulholland, head of the National Park Foundation. The group is helping build a memorial at the Shanksville site.
President Barack Obama continues to be criticized by families of those killed at ground zero on Sept. 11 for saying Muslims have a right to exercise their religious freedom, including at a planned mosque two blocks from the site.
United Flight 93 was traveling from Newark, N.J., to San Francisco when hijackers seized control. Forty passengers and crew were killed in the crash.
Construction on a permanent memorial to the victims is under way. Its first phase is expected to be dedicated in time for next year’s 10th anniversary of the crash.
MoveOn has assembled a rap video to support an obscure potential nominee to head an obscure agency buried within a voluminous Wall Street regulation bill which almost nobody understands and which deals with an issue (Wall Street/Banks) that roughly 2 percent of Americans believe to be the most pressing economic issue facing the country today.
Click through to the email, and you can send this message to the White House:
If they appoint anyone other than Elizabeth Warren to lead the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, they will be letting down the millions of Americans who joined them in fighting for real Wall Street reform.
Fell the populist rage! Look out, President Obama: Appoint anyone else, and the very stones will cry out.
I’ve never watched America’s Got Talent because I think no-talent people judging others (unless of course I’m the one doing the judging) is shit, but this girl is amazing.
New Nissan cars will pump Vitamin C into the vehicle to moisturise the driver’s skin, the firm has announced.
The Japanese manufacturer also plans to install anti-collision technology to its vehicles which will automatically detect if there is a risk a pedestrian might be hit.
The system involves a camera display and an alarm that buzzes when a pedestrian is too close to the car when the driver is parking, starting his car or cruising at low speeds.
A monitor in the dashboard warns of a moving object during a demonstration of its new technology at the company’s test course in Yokosuka, Japan
If it detects a pedestrian it will automatically raise the accelerator pedal and begin to break while beeping.
Nissan claims that it will be able to prevent collision when at speeds up to 40 miles per hour.
The new cars will be equipped with highly concentrated Plasmacluster Ions – developed by Sharp – that will help keep the skin naturally moisturised.
Plasmacluster Ions help reduce airborne bacteria and mold levels, help to deactivate ticks and microbe allergens in the air, and control odours, the firm claims.
The system will also be able to detect various other bad smells – such as from animals and factories – and will automatically switch the ventilation on if required.
The group is also looking to install ‘friendly’ speedometers that will remind you of wedding anniversary dates or birthdays.
The interior of the Nissan ‘Leaf’ electric car which is due to be go on sale later this year
Nissan’s hybrid FUGA car is already using the ‘Forest AC’ air conditioning system which is designed to recreate ‘the refreshing breezes, temperature, humidity and aroma of natural forests’.
‘We want drivers to feel that they are healthier staying in the car instead of on the outside,’ a Nissan engineer said.
Nissan cars will also come with heated seats that incorporate NASA research to enable better blood circulation and reduce the chances of back pain during long drives.
The seats will heat the legs and buttocks first as they are the places which make the biggest difference to how warm you feel and will holds the driver’s backbone in a ‘near zero gravity position’.
A Nissan engineer told AFP that the ‘emotional aspect of a car has become increasingly important’.
Is it appropriate to use children yelling profanity to push a scheme that gives $5 to “unspecified charities” from every $13 t-shirt they sell? Leftist fucks think so.
WASHINGTON — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder arrived in Kabul Wednesday to discuss rooting out corruption and other law enforcement matters with senior Afghanistan and U.S. officials, the Justice Department said.
“Fighting corruption and supporting the rule of law in Afghanistan are top priorities for this administration, and we will continue to assist the Afghan government in creating and sustaining the effective criminal justice system to which the Afghan people are entitled,” Holder said in a statement.
The Justice Department has teams of lawyers and law enforcement agents in the country providing training and support to Afghan government officials as they grapple with terrorism, corruption, organized crime and drug cases.
The trip to Kabul by Holder, the first by an American attorney general, comes at a tough time for the Obama administration, which has been dealing with the change in command of the U.S.-led forces there fighting the Taliban and other militant insurgents.
