Current News Illustrations, Second Week In March - 2010

Kidney Giving
Sixty-something security guard Ray Andrade and a thirty-seven year-old nurse Merri Lazenby,  longtime co-workers at Delnor Hospital in Geneva, Illinois, were never more than nodding acquaintances.  But one day in 2008, they got to chatting, and Ray revealed that he needed a potentially lifesaving kidney donation.  On impulse, Merri offered one of hers.  Tests confirmed that she was a perfect match, and the transplant went off without a hitch. Doctors say Ray's prognosis is good.  Merri Lazenby doesn't think she did anything special by offering a kidney to a near stranger.  “I'm a fixer,” she says with a shrug.  “That's why I'm a nurse.”

Millionaire Pastor
The siblings - of a millionaire priest in West Virginia who lived like a pauper - will each receive about $150,000 from the man's estate.  Father Anthony Wojtus died in 2007 at 77-years-old without leaving a will or known family.
He spent his retirement in a small, nondescript home in Cedar Grove and received a modest stipend from the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese.  County tax officials were surprised when they examined Anthony Wojtus' estate and found property, cash and investments worth $2 million. The priest had 12 siblings living in Poland and they will receive a share of his estate.

Heating Relief
A U.N.-sponsored program to distribute efficient wood-burning stoves is helping Pakistan's environment while making life easier for the women who use them.  The locally built earthenware stoves emit no smoke and use only a fraction of the wood needed to fuel traditional stoves.  The women of Pakistan's Sindh province now spend hours, rather than entire days, forging for firewood in the once-lush countryside, now nearly treeless because of the constant hunt for fuel.  “You cannot imagine what a relief this is,” said local resident Rozan Nazar.

Not Honored
The executive director of the film academy said Tuesday that Farrah Fawcett wasn't included in the Academy Awards' In Memoriam segment because the actress was known as a TV star.
It was a difficult decision for the committee that assembles the segment to omit Farrah Fawcett, said Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences executive director Bruce Davis, who added that he's not surprised some fans and family members are upset.
Fawcett's family issued a statement through a publicist Tuesday saying they were “deeply saddened” and “bereft with this exclusion of such an international icon who inspired so many for so many reasons.”
Bruce Davis and his colleagues thought that while she appeared in movies, she was better known for her television work and would be more appropriately honored by the television academy at the Emmy Awards.