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But after surviving cancer, Arbel was no longer afraid. “After cancer, I felt fearless in every way,” she said. “I just felt whatever will happen, will happen. Before cancer hit me, I was afraid in a way. But after cancer, I was afraid of dying, that the treatment wouldn’t work. Fear had a different point of view. I just felt, whatever, I’m gonna try it. When you’re fearless and add to that and I believed in my product, that what I had made for myself made me feel better. If I felt like that, a lot of girls will probably feel like that.”

After one year of studying prosthetics, Arbel made her first nipple out of silicone — a similar material found in most post-mastectomy implants — for herself. If she was a happy customer, she figured she could make others happy as well. In 2012 she started Pink Perfect, which makes readymade custom prosthetic nipples for breast cancer survivors.

Unlike other prosthetic nipples companies, Pink Perfect makes personalized nipple molds. Similar businesses such as ReForma and Softcare Silicone UK offer adhesive nipple stick-ons that are considerably cheaper, with pairs starting at $40. But they don’t offer the option to get a personalized mold of your existing nipple.

In 2013 Arbel was named Israeli Entrepreneur of the Year by the philanthropic organization Keren Shemesh Foundation. CEO Michal Even-Chen told PolicyMic, “Michelle was awarded first prize for managing to combine her ambition for economic and business independence with her own personal struggle.”

More: One Woman’s Mastectomy Becomes Her Inspiration to Create the Perfect Nipple - PolicyMic

Now that a Sen­ate com­mit­tee has rec­om­mended nine changes to Bill C-23, Fair Elec­tions Act, the leg­is­la­tion seems pretty solid. And, since Pierre Poilievre has, ap­par­ently, in­di­cated pri­vately that he’s open to changes, an amended ver­sion of the bill will likely be­come law by this sum­mer.

We would prob­a­bly have got­ten to this point ear­lier had not the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble for the bill been MP Pierre Poilievre (Ne­pean-Car­leton), Min­is­ter of State for De­mo­c­ra­tic Re­form.

More: Russ Campbell’s Blog: Bill C-23, Fair Elections Act Seems Now on Solid Ground

WASHINGTON, Apr 9 2014 (IPS) - Three years after Colombia agreed to U.S. demands to better protect labour rights and activists, a “Labour Plan of Action” (LPA) drawn up by the two nations is showing mixed results at best, according to U.S. officials and union and rights activists from both countries.

Pointing to continuing assassinations of union organisers, among other abuses, U.S. lawmakers and union leaders here are calling on President Barack Obama and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos to do much more to ensure that the LPA achieves its aims.

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“In spite of numerous new labour laws and decrees… companies still are violating worker rights in Colombia with impunity.” — Richard Trumka

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“(V)iolence against trade unionists continues; in the three years since the Labour Action Plan was signed, 73 more trade unionists were murdered in Colombia. That alone is reason enough to say the Labour Action Plan has failed,” said Richard Trumka, the president of the biggest U.S. union confederation, the AFL-CIO, Monday in response to a new report by the Colombia’s National Labour School (ENS).

“In spite of numerous new labour laws and decrees, and hundreds of new labour inspectors not a single company fined by the Ministry of Labour for violating the law and workers’ rights has paid up, and companies still are violating worker rights in Colombia with impunity,” he added.

For years Colombia has been considered one of the most dangerous countries in the world for trade unionists, more than 3,000 of whom have been killed since the mid-1980s.

More: U.S.-Colombia Labour Rights Plan Falls Short - Inter Press Service

The president of a company that is currently challenging Obamacare laws before the Supreme Court is also trying to bring a class about the Bible to thousands of schools.

Earlier this week, Mustang Public Schools in Oklahoma voted to adopt a Bible course developed under the leadership of Hobby Lobby president Steve Green, according to The Washington Post. Those involved with the course told the outlet they hope other school districts will soon follow suit.

The course, which Mustang schools will offer as an elective during the fall 2014 semester, focuses on the history of the Bible and the influence of the Old and New Testaments, according to the Christian Post. Mustang Schools Superintendent Sean McDaniel told the outlet the course is totally nonsectarian and was written by scholars with various religious backgrounds.

“The curriculum has been through a rigorous review to check for bias and ensure the content is neutral,” McDaniel told the Christian post.

More: Hobby Lobby Leaders Hope to Spread Bible Course to Thousands of Schools

Kyle Hunt is a reclusive man, paranoid enough to log my IP details when I contact him. He’s also the Massachusetts-based founder of the White Man March, which “involves coordinated pro-white activity around the world. The purpose is to spread information through activism, but also to make a statement that white people are united in their love for their race and in their opposition to its destruction.” Though its website claims it has no centralized leadership, it is obviously Kyle’s brainchild and seemingly his alone. Through it, he sells (white) T-shirts emblazoned with “Diversity is a codeword for white genocide.” The subtext of this is not too hard to work out, but I wanted to hear the sugar-coated sour press release.

“The anti-white ‘diversity’ agenda involves government-sponsored racism against white people in the form of affirmative action and ‘diversity’ quotas, which requires employers and colleges to give preference to less qualified non-whites,” Hunt said. “With fewer opportunities, white people are able to make less money and are now having much smaller families. The anti-white ‘diversity’ agenda also stipulates that there can be no all-white countries anywhere, and there can be no all-white areas within the confines of those formerly all-white countries. Massive immigration and forced assimilation, along with persistent race-mixing propaganda, will inevitably lead to the destruction of a racial group. This is genocide. The White Man March will continue,” he added, “on the third Saturday of every month until the anti-white genocidal system is destroyed.”

Kyle refuses to speak on the phone. It must be via electronic correspondence or not at all. This was not ideal, especially given someone who clearly thrives on uncontested rhetoric. I acquiesced because something unbidden told me to, on the condition we may go back and forth as much as I’d like. I did wonder why he won’t pick up the phone. I had seen him give a peer at Vice, David Schilling, the same line with a bizarrely different excuse.

More: White Supremacist’s Genocidal Paranoia: Inside the Mind of the White Man March Founder

Video at link.

A California deputy accidentally shot himself while trying to kill a dog that he said was threatening his life on Wednesday, but video captured by a local television station later showed the animal much smaller than reported and peacefully playing with children.

According to a Riverside County sheriff’s spokesperson, the deputy was serving an eviction notice at around 2 p.m. on Wednesday when a “large” dog tried to attack him, KCAL reported.

“A dog came at the deputy in an aggressive manner,” Deputy Armando Munoz said, according to The Press-Enterprise. “The deputy, (attempting to defend himself) pulled his service weapon, shot one round, and injured himself in the leg.”

“He’s OK. He has non life-threatening injuries.”

Munoz said that the dog’s aggressive behavior ended when it was startled by the gunfire.

More: Calif. TV Station Films Dog Calmly Playing With Kids After Cop Shoots Himself Trying to Kill It

Greg Larson recounts his recent visit to North Korea.

Each year, a limited number of tourists are allowed to visit North Korea, the most isolated nation on earth. All tours are highly scripted and follow a similar pattern. Tourists are only allowed to visit a limited number of preapproved sites. Most days you are confined to the bus; government minders accompany tour groups everywhere and dictate everything, corralling you through tightly circumscribed itineraries. Our tour was coordinated by a travel agency in Beijing. Leading up to the trip, the agency sent our group, composed of fifteen students, informational PDFs that read like inverted Miranda rights. “Foreign visitors to North Korea may be arrested, detained, or expelled for activities that would not be considered criminal in any other country.” Prohibitions included straying from the group, practicing religion, and interaction with the local population. There are designated tourist hotels, where North Koreans are not permitted to stay—in Wonsan, the Songdowon Hotel is on a foggy, abandoned pier jutting out into the Sea of Japan. In Pyongyang, the Yanggakdo Hotel is marooned on an island in the middle of a river, with a checkpoint restricting North Korean citizens from entering. The hotel mostly serves Chinese tourists and businesspeople. When we were there, only a few of the forty-seven floors were in operation; if you pressed the other buttons on the elevator, the doors would open to pitch-black hallways, some with wires hanging from the ceiling, others with no carpet.

More: Traveling in the North Country — Lucky Peach — Medium

If you were looking to the wind down of the Afghan war as creating a potential peace dividend, that’s now unlikely due to Putin’s nationalistic moves on the Ukraine.

Poland and the United States will announce next week the deployment of U.S. ground forces to Poland as part of an expansion of NATO presence in Central and Eastern Europe in response to events in Ukraine. That was the word from Poland’s defense minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, who visited The Post Friday after meeting with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon on Thursday.
Siemoniak said the decision has been made on a political level and that military planners are working out details. There will also be intensified cooperation in air defense, special forces, cyberdefense and other areas. Poland will play a leading regional role, “under U.S. patronage,” he said.

More from Fred Hiatt at The Washington Post

- Gov. Sam Brownback has indefinitely extended a ban on expanding Medicaid in Kansas under the federal health care overhaul.

Brownback on Friday signed a bill approved by the GOP-dominated Legislature to keep the ban in place. The governor and other Republicans have been strong critics of the 2010 federal health care law.

More: Kansas Extending Ban on Expansion of Medicaid - KMBZ

The dominance of the Android platform in the U.S. smartphone market continued as it again took the top spot during the first quarter of 2014. According to new data from research firm Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, CIRP, Android smartphone activations accounted for 53 percent of the entire market share in the U.S., but Apple’s iOS platform witnessed a significant drop from the previous quarter, nabbing 42 percent of all activations during the CIRP’s survey period.

The results were based on a survey of 500 U.S. residents who activated their devices from January through March. CIRP’s data only shows the number of new activations and not the total number of devices running Android or iOS.

Since Android and iOS took the majority share, with 95 percent of all activations in the U.S., other competing platforms were left with a mere 5 percent. Based on the findings, Microsoft’s Windows Phone and BlackBerry OS took one percent each and the remaining three percent was mustered by basic phones.

More: Android Smartphone Activation in the U.S. Triumphs Over iOS in Q1 : News : Headlines & Global News