Scared Sderotis to camp in Tel Aviv

The Qassam rockets' red glare and bloody consequences menace the residents of Sderot, and despite nearly 180 homemade rockets fired in the past week, the spate of militant attacks shows no sign of stopping. That's why a thousand not-so-happy campers from Sderot will trickle into a tent city erected for them in a Tel Aviv park tonight. This is not a government refugee camp, but the brainstorm of the brash Israeli tycoon, Arkady Gaydamak.
The Russian immigrant with deep pockets built a similar camp under canvas last summer, during the war against Hezbollah, when some Sderot residents shifted to his tent city in Nitzanim. Most of the people who live within easy rocket range of the Gaza Strip are Russian or Ethiopian immigrants. One woman was killed by shrapnel on Monday as she walked home to fetch a sweater for her elderly mother.
Israeli officials refused to give Gaydamak a permit when he proposed Jerusalem's Saker Garden to house the refugees, but he has pushed ahead and found a green site on the edge of Tel Aviv. Giving free entry to local water parks might entertain these jumpy children. Their screams of delight will be a change from screams of fear, and a little distraction is welcome. Surely the government aims to tackle the Qassam problem before Oprah Winfrey, the American chat show queen, arrives to dispense hugs and solidarity under the world's spotlight. Olmert better get cracking.

Russian roulette - ageing breast implants

Heard about how the perky new false breasts of a starlet suddenly imploded when her jet started its descent into LAX ? Or the new insurance required for Californian crematoriums that risk explosions when the silicone implants of the departed hit the flames? It gets worse.

Consider the plight of two Russian immigrants in northern Israel whose breast injections have gone bad a decade after their Ukrainian doctors completed their boob jobs. Apparently, a yellowish goo called Bio-gel was shot straight into their delicate breast tissues, and now has passed its sell-by date. After two women in their 30s showed up at Sieff Hospital complaining of sharp pains in the chest and grotesque swelling, plastic surgeons launched an investigation into the undocumented mystery substance pumped inside their breasts. Now Israeli doctors are urging any Russian woman who had breast enhancement during the 1980s or 1990s to come forward and have them surgically removed.

This is no small order. For the past decade, massive waves of immigrants from the former Soviet republics boosted Israel's non-Arab population by 3% per year, adding over one million new citizens. Dr Eyal Winkler, a plastic surgeon, told Haaretz that, because of a shortage of silicone in Russia, women frequently sought cheaper alternatives. One marginal "natural" treatment was harvesting fat from corpses and injecting it into living breasts. Eeew. And, imagine, this they did voluntarily.
Over the past ten years, Winkler personally has treated five cases of infected breasts which had been plumped up with cadaver-fat. But the commercial Russian Bio-gel is even more difficult to treat, because no one has deciphered its precise compenents. "There is no reason to panic," he said soothingly.

I can't help recalling that old advertising campaign for Jaffa oranges which was popular about the same time these breasts were being 'enhanced'. Beautiful Sabra women handed out Jaffa oranges while wearing t-shirts lettered with a most sensible slogan:

"Small ones are more juicy."