A 31-year-old flight attendant who was born in Brazil and lives in London reportedly went under the knife on Monday in Colombia for a six-in-one operation, including an eye augmentation and a procedure to cut his mouth to make his smile bigger.
After spending more than $250,000 on plastic surgery procedures, Rodrigo Alves has been dubbed the new “Human Ken Doll.”
Secular Talk
Brazil’s left-wing president, Dilma Rousseff, was re-elected on October 26th to a second four-year term. It is the fourth election in a row won by her Workers’ Party (PT).
Perhaps Ms. Rousseff’s victory was inevitable. Only three Latin American presidents have lost re-election bids in the past three decades. Odds are stacked in favor of incumbents, with all the machinery of power and patronage at their disposal.
Ms Rousseff can point to record-low unemployment, rising wages and falling inequality under the PT’s watch. Mr. Aécio Neves, the center-right opposition, put up a valiant fight and argued that progress has stalled since Ms Rousseff was first elected in 2010.
The bad side is that the president will lead a divided country. Most of the richer south, south-east and center-west went convincingly for her market-friendly rival.
In her victory address, Ms. Rousseff did speak of “unity”, “consensus” and “dialogue”. But healing campaign wounds got off to a poor start when she failed even to mention Mr Neves (who had earlier called to congratulate her and wish her success) or his center-right Party of Brazilian Social Democracy (PSDB).
There may some bad feelings between the two. In the past, Ms Rousseff’s predecessor and patron, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, went so far as to liken the PSDB to the Nazis for their supposed disregard for the poor.
The PSDB, for its part, has repeatedly accused the PT of being irreparably mired in sleaze, citing a probe into a kickback scheme at Petrobras, the state-controlled oil giant, that allegedly benefited Ms Rousseff’s party and some coalition allies. Sources claim they are certain to push for a congressional inquiry into the Petrobras scandal.
This and other impending fights are hardly conducive to the sort of broad consensus that will be necessary if Ms Rousseff is to carry out her first priority outlined in the victory speech: political reform to make the country more governable.
For the moment, dysfunction is only likely to increase. Starting in January Congress will host 28 parties, up from an already unwieldy 22 at present.
According to The Economist: “Ms. Rousseff’s weak mandate—the weakest of any government since democracy was restored in 1985—will make it hard to bang heads together to push through meaningful change.”
Her vow to hold a referendum on political reform deserves credit. But a previous attempt, prompted by huge nationwide protests in June 2013 that demanded it (among other things), was stymied by congressmen content with the current set-up.
More pressingly, Brazil needs to exit the funk of no growth and high inflation, running at 6.7% a year.
However, Ms. Rousseff roundly dismissed the opposition’s economic ideas on the campaign trail as responsible for high unemployment, prohibitive interest rates and stagnant wages during the PSDB’s tenure in 1995-2002.
According to the BBC, a security guard in Brazil is said to have confessed to 39 killings but had no particular motive and knew none of his victims, as Wyre Davies reports. The Brazilian police have arrested him and say that the murders occurred over a three-year period.
He was arrested in the central Brazilian city of Goiania by a special police team investigating the murders.
The IB Times states:
“Police said that Gomes da Rocha approached his alleged victims on a motorbike with his face hidden, and that he often demanded valuables from his victims before shooting them and leaving without their possessions. He was arrested Tuesday, after being stopped by police for having a fake number plate on his motorcycle. This led to a search of the home he shared with his mother, where police discovered a .38 revolver, which is thought to be the weapon used in the murders. Gomes da Rocha reportedly confessed to the killings while in custody.”
The BBC: “(Police) said Thiago Henrique Gomes da Rocha – who approached his alleged victims on a motorbike with his face hidden – was cold but driven by rage. Police said he often demanded valuables from his victims before shooting them with a .38 handgun and leaving without their possessions. Police said the 26-year-old man targeted homeless people, women and homosexuals.”
A police official who had been present at the interrogations told a Brazilian TV channel the killer called his victims by the numbers 1 to 39. “We have been shocked by his coldness,” the official said.
He never knew those he targeted, police said, and acted out of an inner “fury” that he felt “against everything”, which only subsided when he committed murder. Police said he would feel remorse after killings, which fueled his anger more.
According to Mail Online, the man had a certain way of killing: Prostitutes were stabbed. Homeless men were shot. Gays he choked.
Mail Online: “And young women — the victims he came to savor killing the most — he would shoot in the chest.”
The alleged suspect had also described accurately the locations of each murder and the emotions he had felt at the time, and police said he fired on his victims while cruising the streets.
Investigators said they were sifting through evidence, including closed-circuit TV footage, and had seized weapons and stolen license plates from his grandmother’s home.
OK, Fine. 