Headline
Mum Of 3 Hospitalised With Bullet-like Holes After Agonising BBL
Published
11 months agoon
By
Editor
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.
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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.
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“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.
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“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.
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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
21 Die As Bus Carrying Mourners Crashes In Kenya
Published
9 hours agoon
August 9, 2025By
Editor
A bus carrying mourners from a funeral crashed in western Kenya on Friday, leaving at least 21 dead, an official said, a day after deadly plane and train accidents killed 14.
The latest deadly accident follows an aircraft crash near the capital, Nairobi, on Thursday, when an air ambulance came down in a residential area, killing six people.
The same day, local media reported that a collision between a train and a bus killed eight.
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Friday’s incident happened at around 5:00 pm local (1400 GMT) in Kisumu County after a bus — believed to be returning from a funeral earlier that day, according to local media — crashed, Regional Traffic Commander Kisumu, Peter Maina, said.
“The vehicle lost control, veered, rolled onto the other side of the road,” he told reporters at the scene.
“We lost 21 persons, and amongst the 21 who lost their lives were 10 women, a girl aged 10, and 10 men,” he said.
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Five people were seriously hurt in the incident, he said, among them an eight-month-old baby who was currently receiving care at a nearby hospital.
The cause of the crash was not clear, Maina said, adding that investigations were ongoing.
Local media reported the incident took place on a notorious section of road where accidents are frequent. The East African country has a poor road safety record, with fatal crashes reported daily.
Headline
How False Claims Led To $500m mRNA Vaccine Contracts Cancellation
Published
9 hours agoon
August 9, 2025By
Editor
US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cited false claims to justify terminating 22 federal contracts for mRNA-based vaccines, researchers said Friday, a day after the World Health Organisation called the decision a major blow.
Kennedy on Tuesday announced the cancellation of contracts worth around $500 million, marking his latest attempt to infuse vaccine skepticism into the core of US health policy.
Citing medical experts, disinformation watchdog NewsGuard identified a series of false claims about the vaccines –- credited with saving millions of lives during the Covid-19 pandemic — that Kennedy promoted to explain the termination.
Kennedy claimed that mRNA vaccines were responsible for “new mutations” of the virus, thus creating new variants that can prolong pandemics.
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“Kennedy is mistaken in statements made when ceasing funding for mRNA vaccine development,” Stephen Evans, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told the London-based Science Media Centre.
“No vaccine, including mRNA encourages new mutations.”
Kennedy also made two previously debunked claims about the effectiveness of the vaccines.
He stated that mRNA vaccines “fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like Covid” and added that mRNA technology “poses more risks than benefits.”
Evans said the vaccines were “extremely effective against Covid, preventing deaths, hospitalisations and clinical or sub-clinical infection.”
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“No vaccine has a zero incidence of side-effects, some of which can be serious, but the benefits of both mRNA vaccines and other types of vaccine –- lives saved and illness reduced — hugely outweigh the risks,” Charles Bangham, a professor of immunology at the Imperial College London, told the Science Media Centre.
On Thursday, WHO immunisation figurehead Joachim Hombach called the US decision to terminate the contracts a “significant blow.”
“mRNA vaccines are a very important technology and platform which has served us extremely well for Covid. We also know there is very promising work going on in relation to influenza vaccines,” he said.
Echoing those comments, US experts have warned that the funding cuts threaten critical research and public health around the world.
“This sets back vaccine science by a decade,” Andrew Pekosz, a professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, wrote on X.
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“Of course they didn’t read the science or listen to the experts… if they did, they wouldn’t have made this decision.”
Kennedy, who spent two decades sowing misinformation around immunization, has overseen a major overhaul of US health policy since taking office.
He has fired, for example, a panel of vaccine experts that advise the government and replacing them with his own appointees.
In its first meeting, the new panel promptly voted to ban a longstanding vaccine preservative targeted by the anti-vaccine movement, despite its strong safety record.
He has also ordered a sweeping new study on the long-debunked link between vaccines and autism.
AFP
Headline
UK Man Opens Up On How Wife Took Her Own Life Seven Months After Marriage
Published
9 hours agoon
August 9, 2025By
Editor
The day before New Year’s Eve, Joseph Dewey hung up the phone, unaware it was the last time he would ever hear his wife Cate’s voice.
Shortly after Christmas, Joseph had left the flat he shared with Cate to spend the day with friends. She was preparing a three-course dinner for their upcoming New Year’s Eve party and had asked him to pick up some fresh pasta.
While out, he missed a call from her. The reception was poor, and he couldn’t quite make out what she was saying on the voicemail. Still, he had no idea it would be her final message.
Their love story unfolded like something from a romantic movie. Bored and out of work during the Covid-19 lockdown, actor and director Joseph joined Hinge, where Cate was one of the first people he matched with.
He asked her about her favourite film—Legends of the Fall, which he hadn’t seen—so they watched it together but separately, chatting over WhatsApp about the music, the scenery, and her favourite scenes from their respective homes.
They didn’t know it then, but cinema would become a central thread in their relationship.
Their first date was the next day—over Zoom. Joseph sprayed on cologne unnecessarily, and as soon as they logged on, they realised they had just been watching the same show: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.
“We were on the same wavelength from the start,” says Joseph, 37, speaking from Cate’s flat in Ware, Hertfordshire, with their wedding photos behind him.
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“Cate was the most beautiful person in the world. She lit up every room. She was really fun, such a foodie, an amazing cook and just an absolutely loving person. She was the most extroverted introvert. She loved going out and being around people, but then she loved hiding in her room playing Sims.”
Five months after meeting, Cate moved from Ware into Joseph’s London flat. With restrictions still in place, they spent Christmas alone—Joseph cooked turkey while Cate played on her new PlayStation game. The next day, snow began to fall.
“I suggested we went for a walk and we found ourselves standing outside the London Eye in the middle of the day in the snow, with no one around. It was just magical,” Joseph recalls. “I knew then that Cate was the woman I wanted to marry.”
But as Covid restrictions eased, Cate’s lifelong struggle with mental illness began to resurface.
“She always said she had a brain funk, but didn’t really delve into it,” Joseph explains. He started noticing her panic attacks and realised something deeper was wrong.
“The respite of the pandemic enabled her to almost feel as if she could breathe again through that time. And when the world started to open up again, you could just see that it was a struggle for her. She’d find everything very overwhelming.”
In 2023, Joseph arranged a fairytale proposal—inside the King’s Gallery, after asking a friend at Kensington Palace to close it for the occasion. Cate said yes immediately, and the couple started planning a cinema-themed wedding.
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By May 2024, when they married at Screen on the Green in Islington, Cate had already spent nearly a year on an NHS waiting list for therapy. The panic attacks persisted, but their wedding day brought peace.
“She was the calmest I’ve ever seen her on that day. I was an absolute wreck. And she was like, ‘I’ve got you.’ I will always thank her for the happiest day of my life. We had such a good day,” Joseph says.
After the wedding, they went to other friends’ ceremonies and enjoyed a honeymoon in Turkey. But when they returned, Cate’s mental health deteriorated.
“She had tremendous anxiety and was having panic attacks,” Joseph says. “First of all, I would think: ‘Oh my god. What do you need, what can I do?’ But that is completely the wrong thing to do. You learn it is about being with them, distraction techniques, breathing next to them heavily so they can hear your breath and get into a rhythm themselves and having no questions, no shame, no blame about what was happening.”
Joseph began researching everything he could to help her. He suspects Cate may have had undiagnosed ADHD—she would oscillate between intense energy and total exhaustion.
In 2024, she was prescribed antidepressants. Still waiting for NHS therapy, her family eventually paid for private support.
“She was flying high in her career, working as an administrator at the Food and Drink Federation and they absolutely adored her. She was so good at the job, but sometimes she’d work from home, because going into the office would give her anxiety.”
“If we went out and if it was too busy, she would have panic attacks where she would literally be on the floor struggling to breathe, which would then trigger depression. Cate just looked so sad and tired and would spend a lot more time inside.”
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Despite this, Christmas was a joyful time. They spent it with loved ones and made big plans for the future.
“We were going to move back to Ware to get out of central London. We were thinking about buying in Tunbridge Wells. We wanted to own a little cabaret space and Cate wanted to get a bridal shop called Catherine’s. We were going to get a dog, and start a family.”
Joseph hoped that once therapy and an ADHD assessment were underway, things would improve. Cate had mentioned suicidal thoughts—he feared they were a side effect of her medication—so they returned to the GP for support.
But then, on December 30, after a day spent apart, Joseph got a call from Cate’s mum asking where her daughter was.
They soon discovered Cate had checked herself into a B&B and ended her life.
The days that followed were a blur. Joseph was in shock. “Cate’s mum called and said, ‘Cate’s gone.’ And I went: ‘Where’s she gone?’ And she was like, ‘No, honey, Cate’s gone.’”
Cate had left a letter each for her mum and sister, and a voicemail for Joseph: an apology, saying she couldn’t do it anymore.
“She’d just had enough,” Joseph says. “Cate never wanted suicide. No one does – they just want the pain to stop.”
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Amid his grief, Joseph was left to organise a funeral he never imagined for someone so young. “Funerals are geared for older people,” he says. Designing her service and montage was surreal. Official letters that followed were “full of cold language” about her death.
In one year, Joseph attended four weddings and a funeral. “If our story were a film, there would be a resolution. A happy ending. But this is real life,” he says.
Determined to turn pain into purpose, Joseph held a cabaret concert in May. Friends composed scores from Cate’s voice notes. On August 10—Cate’s 32nd birthday—loved ones will run a 10km race. In September, Joseph will walk 70 miles through London in Cate’s memory for Suicide Prevention Day.
He expects they’ll raise £25,000 for suicide prevention charity PAPYRUS by year’s end.
“It’s so important to speak about suicide, and if I can shine Cate’s light through talking about it, then that’s exactly what I want to do,” Joseph says. “Suicide is such a big killer, especially for the under-35s. Men’s mental health is being spoken about, but I don’t know if enough people speak up about young women dying from suicide, and unfortunately, that rate is going up.”
Joseph hopes openness can save lives. “Cate, my wife, dying – I want no one to experience that at such a young age. I miss her incredibly. Speaking about suicide doesn’t make the suicide rate go up. It actually does the opposite. So I want to use Cate’s voice to get people talking – and listening. People are suffering and if we don’t check in with each other, you don’t know what people are up to behind closed doors.”
“And if you are struggling, go and speak to your GP. Go and call the Hope Line. Tell your friends and family. You don’t have to go through this alone.”
(METRO)
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