- As women in Egypt deal with increasing violence as part of
protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, the superficial, surgically enhanced women
of beauty-conscious Venezuela have been handed a major victory by their Supreme
Court. Venezuela's
Supreme Court has ruled in favor of women who have defective French-made breast
implants, issuing a preliminary injunction stating that the cost of removing
and replacing the implants should be paid by surgeons, hospitals and a company
that imported them. A lawsuit brought by the country's public ombudswoman will
now be heard by the court and in the interim, the preliminary injunction will
stand. That means during the legal process, Galaxia Medica as well as surgeons
and private hospitals are under court order to remove and replace leaking
implants for free. This may not seem like a large-scale issue, but implants are
disturbingly common in the beauty-obsessed culture of the South American
nation. Thousands of women in Venezuela have the breast implants, which contain
industrial-grade silicone by the now-defunct French company Poly Implant
Prothese, or PIP. Gilberto Andrea, a lawyer representing more than 2,000 women
who received the implants, hailed the ruling by the court and vowed to press on
with a pending lawsuit seeking additional damages. Andrea estimated that 33,000
women have the implants in Venezuela and called the court's initial decision
" a measure for all of those affected." The jaw-dropping cost of
replace each PIP implant with one made by other brands ranges from about $5,000
to about $9,000. Sandy Contreras, who heads an association of women who have
received the implants, said both she and her 24-year-old daughter have the
implants but have yet to experience complications from them. Suggesting that
women simply be happy with what they have and attempt to improve other aspects
of their appearance they can control without surgery obviously isn’t an option
for those like Contreras and her daughter………..
- Adding more stars does not make up for a bad movie
sequel idea. The makers of the recycled “RoboCop” film can throw as many big
names into the mix as they want; it doesn’t change reality. Remaking movies
that are less than three decades old is still ridiculous, even if Samuel
L. Jackson signs on to be a part of Jose Padilha's remake of the 1980s action
classic as Pat Novak, a "charismatic media mogul and powerful force in the
RoboCop world.” Jackson becomes the latest big name to join the project, as Gary
Oldman recently joined the cast as RoboCop's scientist creator and Joel
Kinnaman will play the film’s star role as Alex Murphy, the police officer who
gets cybernetically converted after being wounded on duty. Worse still, Padilha
has admitted that his plan is to diverge significantly from the concept of the
original movie. "RoboCop the first movie was fantastic. But even if there
was no movie, the concept of RoboCop is brilliant, first because it lends itself to a lot of social criticism,
but also because it poses a question, 'When do you lose your humanity?’” he once mused. "I have my take on it.
And I can tell you this: In the first RoboCop when Alex Murphy is shot, gunned
down, then you see some hospitals and stuff and then you cut to him as RoboCop.
My movie is between those two cuts. How do you make RoboCop? How do you slowly
bring a guy to be a robot? How do you actually take humanity out of someone and
how do you program a brain, so to speak, and how does that affect an individual?"
Here’s a better question: Why can’t you leave a classic movie alone and come up
with your own damn concept that doesn’t piggyback of something that has already
been made? This disaster is set for release in the summer of 2013………..
- Guns, and lots of them. Either that or the testicle-biting
dogs and sonic canons inducing involuntary urination being used to control
hooligans at the ongoing Euro 2012 soccer championship. Both are credible
solutions for city officials in Stockton, Calif. as they try to answer the
question of how they get delinquent parking violators to pay up the collective
$7 million they owe. No one likes receiving a parking ticket because they
arrived back at their car 50 seconds after the meter expires and the sad
reality for towns and municipalities is that unhappy drivers typically don’t
pay their citations unless and until they accrue enough fines to have their car
towed or get one of those big metal boots placed on the rear driver’s side
wheel. Because so many people refuse to pay their parking citations, the
city of Stockton has $7 million worth of unpaid tickets they have never been
able to collect. That financial gem was dropped at Tuesday night’s city council
meeting and the $7 million figure has sent ripples throughout the community.
Even Vice Mayor Kathy Miller seemed shocked by the total and more than a little
disturbed, given that Stockton is facing a $26 million deficit. Mix in another
$13 million in other assets the city never collected and the source of
Stockton’s woes – laziness or simply lack of tenacity – isn't difficult to
pinpoint. “We could certainly use that $7 million dollars,” Miller whined. Then
man up, start towing cars or applying boots to wheels and don’t allow people to
have their ride back until they pay what they owe. Merely issuing fines and not
following up when a person doesn’t pay isn't going to get the job done. “The
more important issue for this council is figuring out where was the breakdown
in the process,” said Miller. “Why was a fine levied by parking or the police
department and then there was no follow-up on it?” Why? Because you’re a
small city staffed by inefficient government workers that doesn’t have any
muscle behind its threats, that’s why. But assessing blame for past mistakes
won't fix anything, so let’s shift the focus forward to how Stockton can
collect the money it’s owed. “My guess is that a collection agency will be
involved,” said Miller. “But a collection agency will take a percentage of
whatever they collect.” In other words, your city is on the verge of
bankruptcy, but don’t expect those overdue parking fines to make as much of a
dent in the debt as expected……….
- The National Football League is a business. Fans may not
want to hear that, but with billions of dollars made in television revenues,
ticket and merchandise sales and other income each year and hundreds of
millions paid out to players, it’s reality. Teams have salary cap constraints
and even when they win a championship, keeping their title-winning roster
together is all but impossible. Seeing a favorite player leave via free agency
or because the team waived him is especially difficult for young fans, who have
no clue what a salary cap or guaranteed contract is. San Francisco 49ers running back Brandon Jacobs was a member of the
New York Giants team that won the Super Bowl in February but the Giants released
him March 9 after both sides failed to work out a restructured contract. Jacobs
spent seven seasons with New York, winning two Super Bowls and helping the
Giants beat the his new team 20-17 in overtime of the NFC championship game at
Candlestick Park on Jan. 22. His role diminished as Ahmad Bradshaw emerged and
Jacobs managed just r 571 yards and seven touchdowns last season. When he left,
at least one young Giants fan had great difficulty digesting the news. Jacobs
received a letter from 6-year-old Joe Armento, who sent $3.36 to Jacobs when
his mother explained to him that the Giants couldn't keep Jacobs because of
money. "He asked me about it and said, 'How come?' They had just won the
Super Bowl so he couldn't understand it," said Julie Armento, Joe's mother.
"He said, 'I want to write him a letter and ask him to come back.'"
Not only did Jacobs respond to the letter, he was so moved that he tweeted a
picture of it and the money and said he would take Joe and his own son to Chuck
E. Cheese when he returns to New Jersey. "I almost cried; I am still
trying to hold it in," Jacobs tweeted. "I may have to pay him a
surprise visit. I want to do good and go out there and do the best I can for
little Joe. After thinking about it since it happened, I'm going to remember
this for the rest of my life. " Julie Armento explained in the letter than
her son is just learning to read and write, so she added a sort of translation
of why he was saying: "'Dear Brandon Jacobs, So you could go to the
Giants, here is my money. "Love, Joe.'” It’s a touching moment in a
sport/business all too often devoid of them……….
- Any social networking app or site that isn't growing,
expanding and refining its operation is dying. Foursquare knows this well and in
response to the growing popularity of certain features on other social
networking sites, it launched a major redesign of its app for the iPhone and
Android devices on Thursday. The changes incorporate features from social discovery
and local search applications, as well as the "like" feature made
famous by Facebook. Foursquare has clearly seen better days, namely the days
following its launch in 2009 when was at least competitive with other similar
applications. The service still has 20 million users and is predicated on the
idea of allowing users "check in" to shops and other locations to
share their whereabouts with social contacts. In an attempt to regain momentum,
Foursquare officials described the redesign as "a whole new app." The
new "explore" function will now allow users to browse locations by
category or conduct a specific search like “free wi-fi” or “Chinese food,”
according to a company blog post announcing the launch. According to
Foursquare, the function is an upgrade for conducting local searches when
compared to Google or Yelp. The reason Foursquare “explore” is better, the post
explains, is that users will receive “a very personalized set of search
results," based on prior check-ins, friends' check-ins and a given
location's popularity across Foursquare, instead of the identical results users
of those other services get. Holger Luedorf, Foursquare's vice president of
business development, introduced the revised app at a conference in San
Francisco and zoned in on the individuality component. "It's not the
one-size-fits-all approach to local discovery you're used to,” he explained. Another
new feature introduced at the conference was the Top Picks feature, a set of
recommendations that appear without requiring a query. Users looking for the existing
feature that allows them to find friends who may be nearby will find it on the
"explore" tab, not far from the "friends" tab featuring tips,
lists, and places friends have saved. The app will soon be available for
BlackBerry and Foursquare is working with Microsoft to create an app for the
Windows Phone, according to Luedorf. He will probably check in with an update
on that later………
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