Headline

Mum Of 3 Hospitalised With Bullet-like Holes After Agonising BBL

Published

1 year ago

September 10, 2024

A mum-of-three has been left with “bullet wound’ holes in her bum after an agonising Brazilian Butt Lift she bought on Facebook.

Melissa Crawford, 30, had always been self-conscious of her “flat” backside and when childbirth left her looking like an “ironing board”, she began searching for ways to feel more confident in her body.

While scrolling through Facebook, she came across a salon in her local city of Belfast that was offering customers a “Liquid Brazilian Butt Lift” (BBL) for £1700, which involves plumping out the buttock tissue with injections of dermal filler.

Ms Crawford underwent the non-surgical procedure in May this year, alongside facial filler, but she suffered extreme complications.

Ms Crawford had a litre of filler injected into her backside with a giant needle usually used for liposuction procedures. She claims she was never told to sign any documents or shown details of the products being put into her.

Just 24 hours after the procedure, which she says was more painful than childbirth, abscesses began growing on her bottom.

A liquid BBL is different from a traditional procedure, which involves transferring fat from other areas of the body, such as the hips or stomach.

“I have always been really self conscious about my bum because it’s quite flat,” Ms Crawford said.

“Growing up I was more of a boob girl than a bum girl and then I had kids and my boobs went. I just look like an ironing board.”

Although she had never heard of the salon before and only saw a few Facebook posts from the beautician, not many places offered the procedure so she decided to go with it.

The beautician reassured her, explaining she had done the procedure on herself.

“She did the bum filler first. She just asked if I was allergic to anything but I didn’t have to sign anything,” Ms Crawford said.

“I remember panicking here as I didn’t think this was a good sign but I wanted the treatment done so badly.

“She didn’t show me what she was going to use and didn’t show me any of the expiry dates on the products.

“She just got a big see-through bag with pre-filled syringes. It was so heavy and massive.

“She injected me with lidocaine [for numbing] in a few spots on my bum.

“It looked like a lipo needle. I could feel it and didn’t think I’d be able to do it.

“She started crunching. It sounded like rocks being crunched together and she told me it was just her breaking away fat from the skin. It was excruciating and sweat was lashing off me.

“She filled one cheek and then filled the other side. She had suggested a litre of filler in my bum.

“I was stuck to the bed in sweat. My clothes were soaked and I was biting my hand.

“It was excruciating. When she was done, I was so relieved. I felt like I was going to pass out.”

After the procedure the beautician told Ms Crawford she could sit down, but she was in too much pain.

“She said it was just swelling and I would need to lay on my stomach for the first night but then I would be okay,” Ms Crawford added.

Ms Crawford claims she reached out to the aesthetician about the pain swelling she was experiencing but her concerns were ignored, she said.

After being prescribed antibiotics by her GP to bring down a fever, she reached out to another aesthetician who told her to go straight to hospital in case of life-threatening sepsis.

“I felt constantly lightheaded and I couldn’t eat. Even with the medicine given by the doctor, I was waking up in the middle of the night and sweat was lashing off me.

“I was in agony. It was like this horrible throb and I felt like somebody had just pushed a brick in my bum that was scolding.”

On May 21, Ms Crawford underwent surgery to have the filler drained from her body and abscesses removed.

She says she was left with two “gaping” holes in her backside and “hip dips” all the way around her bottom.

She recalled: “The surgeon came down and told me he needed to remove this [the filler] now as it was in my bloodstream.

“I was rushed in for emergency surgery and I came out with two holes in my bum.

“They were massive and this is where they had removed the abscesses from.

“I had to have my holes packed every day. It looked like I had two massive stab or bullet wounds [in my bum].

“One of the holes was two inches deep and the other one was slightly smaller.

“I was devastated. At the time, I was just relieved to get it [the filler] out and recover from this.

“But as time went on, I had big massive dents in it.

“Where your bum naturally fills out, I have two gaping holes and dents in it so it looks like I have hip dips all the way around my bum now and it looks horrendous.”

As well as her liquid BBL, Ms Crawford claims the facial filler carried out by the beautician left her looking like “Quasimodo”.

She said: “My eye was droopy. ‘It was causing my eyelash extensions to point downwards and I couldn’t see and it felt so heavy. I felt like Quasimodo.

“I couldn’t function. I couldn’t drive or speak to people because I felt a mess.”

Ms Crawford says the whole experience has put her off getting filler for life and is now warning others about her own physical and mental repercussions following her treatment.

“I can’t wear jeans or dresses. I just wear baggy clothes now. I can’t go in for any kind of surgery now to fix it so I’m stuck with this for life,” she said.

“It was my biggest insecurity and now I feel stupid. It breaks my heart. It has put me off filler for life. It’s given me the scare I needed.

“They [the holes] are healing well. But they are massive and take up most of the side of my bum and they are hideous and I will be permanently scarred from it.”

Headline

Kimmel’s Suspension: Obama Slams Trump For ‘Dangerous’ Attack On Free Speech

Published

12 hours ago

September 19, 2025

Editor

Former United States President Barack Obama has condemned the suspension of the late-night show hosted by Jimmy Kimmel following remarks he made about slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

In a post on X on Thursday, Obama described the suspension of the show as a dangerous attack on free speech led by President Donald Trump.

He wrote, “After years of complaining about cancel culture, the current administration has taken it to a new and dangerous level by routinely threatening regulatory action against media companies unless they muzzle or fire reporters and commentators it doesn’t like.

“This is precisely the kind of government coercion that the First Amendment was designed to prevent — and media companies need to start standing up rather than capitulating to it.”

Obama’s comments came after ABC, owned by Walt Disney, announced on Wednesday that Jimmy Kimmel Live had been suspended indefinitely.

The decision followed threats of a federal investigation into Kimmel’s remarks about conservative activist Charlie Kirk, a close Trump ally who was shot and killed on September 10 while debating students at a Utah university.

During Monday’s broadcast, Kimmel accused Kirk’s supporters of using his assassination to “score political points.” At least one local ABC affiliate had already announced plans to stop airing the program before the network’s decision.

The suspension has sparked backlash from free speech advocates, who argue that the administration’s actions amount to political censorship.

Headline

Ghana To Take More West African Deportees From US

Published

12 hours ago

September 19, 2025

Editor

Ghana will receive another 40 West Africans deported from the United States in the coming days, Foreign Minister Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa said, after the government revealed last week a deal had been struck with Washington.

Deporting people to third countries instead of their home nations has been a hallmark of US President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants, notably by sending hundreds to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Ghana President John Mahama announced last week that 14 deportees from the region had been sent to the country, sparking questions over their current whereabouts and pushback from the political opposition.

“On humanitarian grounds, pan-African solidarity, let us accept our fellow West Africans. And let’s make the point that Ghana is your home,” Ablakwa told Ghanaian broadcaster Channel1 TV late Wednesday.

He said the deportees, who are vetted before arrival, will be allowed to remain in Ghana temporarily, per regional visa-free travel rules, or return to their home countries.

The Ghanaian government previously said that many of the deported west Africans had already returned to their home countries — though lawyers in the United States say at least some of them are being held in military detention in Ghana in “cruel conditions”.

Five Nigerians and Gambians deported to Ghana were granted protection from deportation by immigration authorities in the United States, their lawyers said in a Tuesday statement.

If they continue on to their countries of origin, they risk “torture, persecution or death”, said Lee Gelernt, of the American Civil Liberties Union.

In an unprecedented move, Trump has overseen the deportation of hundreds of people to Panama, including some who were sent away before they could have their asylum applications processed.

Hundreds have also been sent to El Salvador, with the US administration invoking an 18th-century law to remove people it has accused of being Venezuelan gang members.

Some were sent despite US judges ordering the planes carrying them to turn around.

The deportation agreement with Ghana comes as Washington has hiked tariffs on Ghanaian goods and restricted visas issued to its nationals.

Headline

Putin Has ‘Let Me Down’, Trump Laments As UK State Visit Ends

Published

13 hours ago

September 19, 2025

Editor

Donald Trump warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “really let me down” as he met Prime Minister Keir Starmer for wide-ranging talks on Thursday, the final day of the US president’s historic UK state visit.

A day after King Charles III treated Trump to royal pageantry at Windsor Castle, the Republican flew to Starmer’s Chequers country residence for talks on thorny issues, including the wars in Ukraine and Gaza.

Starmer has positioned himself as a bridge between Trump and European allies, particularly on the war in Ukraine, in a bid to secure more commitments for Kyiv from the US leader.

And his calls, repeated again on Thursday, for more international pressure on Putin appear to be gaining more traction with Trump, who slammed the Russian leader for continuing the war despite his efforts to stop the fighting.

Trump told a post-talks press conference that he had thought the Ukraine conflict would be the “easiest” to end “because of my relationship with President Putin, but he’s let me down. He’s really let me down.”

He urged European nations to stop buying Russian oil, saying that “if the price of oil comes down, Putin’s going to drop out of that war.”

– ‘Unbreakable bond’ –

Starmer’s warm tone with the 79-year-old Trump has won some leniency in the president’s tariff war, with the British leader saying Thursday the trade deal the two countries signed in May was the first by the US and also “the best”.

But Trump said that the pair had “one of our few disagreements” about the UK’s plan to recognise a Palestinian state.

The US leader also offered strong thoughts on illegal migration in the UK, revealing that “I told the Prime Minister I would stop it”, even if it meant calling in the military.

Earlier in the day, Trump hailed America’s “unbreakable bond” with Britain as he and Starmer signed a huge tech deal, boosting ties in artificial intelligence, quantum computing and nuclear energy.

At the signing ceremony attended by a host of US tech CEOs, Labour leader Starmer said he and Republican Trump were “leaders who genuinely like each other.”

The deal comes on the back of pledges of £150 billion ($205 billion) of investment into the UK from US giants including Microsoft, Google and Blackstone.

Trump had earlier said goodbye to King Charles at Windsor, calling him a “great gentleman and a great king” as he left the castle heading to Chequers.

Appealing to Trump’s admiration for British wartime leader Winston Churchill, Starmer led the US president on a tour of Churchill artifacts at Chequers.

Starmer is facing political troubles at home after sacking his ambassador to Washington, Peter Mandelson, over his connections to disgraced late financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Sex offender Epstein has also haunted Trump over recent weeks, with further revelations about the pair’s relationship in the 1990s and early 2000s.

– ‘Highest honours’ –

Having negotiated the potentially perilous press conference relatively unscathed, Starmer can claim some justification for granting Trump an unprecedented second state visit, with investment deals and deepening alignment on Ukraine to show for the diplomatic effort.

Trump was Wednesday lavished with the full pomp and circumstance of the British state — the second time it has done so, after his first visit in 2019.

“This is truly one of the highest honours of my life,” Trump said at the state banquet.

The king meanwhile hailed Trump’s peace efforts and support of Ukraine, after a day featuring gun salutes, soldiers on horseback, and bagpipes, all designed to appeal to the US president’s fascination with royalty.

But he also stressed to Trump the need to protect the environment for “our children, grandchildren, and those who come after them”.

Melania Trump remained in Windsor on Thursday morning, where she met scouts with Princess Catherine, and viewed Queen Mary’s Doll’s House with Queen Camilla.

The US first lady’s husband was kept far from the British public, with an estimated 5,000 people marching through central London Wednesday to protest against his visit.

Trump was due to return to Washington later Thursday.