On December 18, 2008, in Zhu Ma Dian City, China, Yu Lan Zhou’s pregnant daughter-in-law, who was only 7 months pregnant, gave birth to a preterm baby boy in a local clinic.
Born way too early, he weighed only 1.4lbs at delivery and could not breathe properly on his own. The newborn boy’s heartbeat was very weak and his arms and legs were the size of an adult’s fingers.
The clinic suggested that the family take the baby to a hospital for immediate medical attention.
Zhou took her grandson to a local military hospital, but they refused to admit the baby when she could not come up with the required advance payment of 10,000 yuan, about $1,500.
At home, with no incubator, no oxygen tubes, and no medication, Zhou holds her grandson against her chest to keep him warm against the cold, which sometimes gets below freezing in her house. To help the boy breath, she gently blows air near his face and struggles to feed him.
Edit:Reports indicate that because of the publicity the story had, many people from all over the world offered to send money to cover the medical costs.
The local hospital also agreed to admit the baby on the evening of the 28th, but the weather was too cold to move the fragile baby.
Unfortunately the boy was not strong enough to make it to the hospital and passed away at 4:00 am on the 29th. Reports indicate the boy passed due to lack of oxygen. from WeirdAsiaNews
With redundancies rising and job vacancies shrinking, unemployment is back in the headlines. But for millions it never went away. As part of a series on Britain’s jobless, one family explains how and why lack of work has touched their lives.
Elizabeth Malcolm, 43, has never had a job. She lives in a two-bedroom council flat in Glasgow with her three children, one grandchild, two cats and a hamster.
Neither of her two working-age children has a job.
The family is what the statistics gatherers call a "workless household" - one of three million in the country. In reality it’s not quite so easy to put every jobless person into a neat little box. This is their story.
Elizabeth, known as "Biff" to family and friends, wishes now that she had got into work or college back in 1980, when she left school at 15.
It was hardly a great time to be a jobseeker, especially living in Easterhouse, a part of Glasgow long synonymous with deprivation and unemployment. But she concedes that she doesn’t really know why she didn’t get a job, and that there was an element of just "not getting round" to it.
She doesn’t think school wanted her to stay on because she "wasn’t too bright" and used to bunk off a lot.
Without any qualifications she assumed she wasn’t able to follow her chosen path and join the Army. She never actually made it to the recruitment office to ask. Via BBCNews.
Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) — General Motors Corp., criticized by U.S. lawmakers for its use of corporate jets, asked aviation regulators to block the public’s ability to track a plane it uses.
“We availed ourselves of the option as others do to have the aircraft removed” from a Federal Aviation Administration tracking service, a GM spokesman, Greg Martin, said yesterday in an interview. He declined to discuss why GM made the request.
Flight data show that the leased Gulfstream Aerospace G-IV jet flew Nov. 18 from Detroit to Washington, where Chief Executive Officer Richard Wagoner Jr. spoke to a Senate committee that day and a House panel the next day on behalf of a $25 billion auto-industry rescue plan. More at Bloomberg.com
Impact Your World: The global food market’s shelves are getting bare and hunger activists say it will get worse. As the nation marks World Hunger Relief Week, more people are asking: Why are so many people starving and what, if anything, can be done to eradicate hunger? Learn how you can help.
The young man, wearing a shirt and a tie, turned up just as the pantry operated by an Iowa food bank was closing for the night.
He knew it was after-hours. That’s why he was there.
He kept his gaze downward as he told the woman from the food bank that he had lost his job, had a wife and kids and was too embarrassed and ashamed to stand in line to receive a bag of groceries that hopefully would feed his family for a week. Continued at CNN…
This is journalism at its best, I feel we should give her a medal and use her as an example to 24 hour news networks.
Is the US already at war with Iran? In "America’s Secret War", Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to the Iraq-Iran border to investigate claims that the United States is supporting militant groups that are attacking Iran. In the rugged Qandil mountains, she meets with up with anti-Iranian guerillas who have been launching deadly raids against the Islamic Republic. A good percentage of the fighters are women, and Mariana accompanies a small group of them through what many believe has become the frontline of the US’s secret war with Iran.
The story continues. Another proxy war led by the American government. This happened so many times before under Reagan’s administration and we had George H.W. Bush and his war in Nicaragua against the Sandanistas. Remember the Contras and Ollie North? Remember the illegal funding of the Contras and the selling of weapons to Iran for money to finance the Contras? But no one remember the thousands that died under this war. Things haven’t changed. Bush Sr. = Bush Jr.? You Betcha, this should have been predictable.
And btw, who can say they knew this much about IRAN, Kurds, PKK, PJAK and Hezbollah before?
“I would say that the likelihood of military action against Iran is 100 percent.” - Neoconservative Frank Gaffney.
There have been between50,000 and 500,000 war-related deaths in Iraq since we invaded. The cost of the Iraq war will soon reach a trillion dollars.
“Could we have managed [the threat of Saddam Hussein]by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have.” Neoconservative Richard Perle.
“If we don’t stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, then we’re going to have a serious problem.” — George W. Bush, Jan. 2001.
\/— These are images of Tehran, IRAN you don’t see every day. -–\/
Syndicate
On December 18, 2008, in Zhu Ma Dian City, China, Yu Lan Zhou’s pregnant daughter-in-law, who was only 7 months pregnant, gave birth to a preterm baby boy in a local clinic.
Nov. 27 (Bloomberg) — 
