SAO PAULO: Former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva was diagnosed with throat cancer, a hospital where the ex-leader went for medical exams said on Saturday. Following a series of tests, the 66-year-old Lula “was diagnosed with a tumor located in his larynx” and will receive outpatient chemotherapy treatment, the Syrian-Lebanese Hospital of Sao Paulo said in a statement. He was otherwise in good health, the statement read.
The charismatic and popular Lula left power with a record 80 per cent approval rating after two consecutive terms from January 2003 to December 2010. Brazil’s constitution prohibits a third consecutive term. The former copper factory worker’s social programs helped lift 29 million Brazilians out of poverty, and his foreign policy turned Brazil into a global power player.
The Syrian-Lebanese Hospital, which specializes in cancer treatment, treated Lula’s former vice-president, Jose Alencar, who died in March following cancer in his abdominal area. President Dilma Rousseff was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 2009, before she was elected to Brazil’s top office, and was treated in September of that year at the hospital. Doctors say she is currently cancer-free.
High-priced hooker’s mum dismayed over ex-NY Guv Spitzer’s comeback moves
New York, Sep.2 (ANI): The mother of the high-priced hooker who famously serviced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer has expressed dismay over reports that he may consider running for office again less than two years after the sordid sex scandal.
“Only in America,” Ashley Dupre’s mom, Carolyn Capalbo, told The New York Post.
While Spitzer is discussing the possibility of a run next year, Dupre-who was 22 when the self-described “steamroller” of Albany paid to play with her-is struggling to get back on her feet, said Capalbo.
“I really can’t blame him, but at the same time, my daughter’s having a rough go,” she said at the beach, near her home in Wall. “I can imagine she’s not happy about it.”
“He has more credibility than a 22-year-old,” Ashley’s mom said in disbelief.
Capalbo said her daughter had turned down lucrative offers to make a buck off of the scandal, including posing for nude magazines.
Less than 18 months after he left Albany in a prostitution scandal, Spitzer has held informal discussions in recent weeks about the possibility of making a bid for state comptroller or the US Senate seat currently held by Kirsten Gillibrand, sources said.
The hooker-happy Democrat has also discussed his own halfway-decent poll numbers in recent surveys, which have shown him more popular than Gov. Paterson, whose own numbers have tanked.
“He”s weighing it,” said one source.
But Spitzer hasn”t shown any interest in campaigning for the office he briefly held, sources said.
The sources stressed that Spitzer, who also served two terms as state attorney general before his landslide election as governor in 2006, has not engaged in any active discussions with political consultants.
Reached at his father”s real-estate firm, where he has been working since he resigned as governor last spring, Spitzer declined comment.
But a source close to him insisted, “It”s not true,” and two other close associates also insisted he was not interested in running for office again and was looking at a range of other options.
Spitzer quit in disgrace in March 2008 after he was unmasked in Manhattan federal court as “Client 9″ in a prostitution bust involving a major call-girl ring. He was revealed to have paid 4,300 dollars for a romp with escort Ashley Dupre, then 22. (ANI)