AROUND THE WORLD: Bikini Airline profitable,Trump win breaks school’s voting record

Bikini Airline proves unsurprisingly profitable

VietJet Air, Vietnam’s only privately-owned airlines, has worked up quite a stir in the aviation industry with its young, attractive, bikini-clad flight attendants. Female VietJet employees don colorful bikinis and even put up an inflight performance for their customers, mostly during inaugural flights to beach locations. The marketing gimmick has earned the company huge profits, and plenty of criticism to boot.

These ‘bikini performances’ are not a standard practice on all flights – they’re more like a featured bonus on certain routes. Often, clad in vaporous string bikini tops and sarongs that flaunt the company colors of red and yellow, young, beautiful women file down the plane’s aisles for a bikini show.

Trump win breaks kid school’s voting record

Students at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School, in Yorktown Heights, New York, have been casting their votes to determine the winner of each presidential election, since 1968, and for the past 48 years, they’ve gotten it right every time. They failed this time when Republican candidate Donald Trump defeated Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

The school’s mock election took place again this year, and after calculating the votes and adding them to a spreadsheet, the teachers announced the winner: Hillary Clinton. The Democratic candidate got 52% of the votes (277), while the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, only 43% (230). The Nov.08 results were clearly different.

For most people, it is the process leading up to the vote that is genuinely interesting. The students spend months learning about the candidates, who they only know as ‘Candidate A’ and ‘Candidate B’, focusing on policy and real issues, instead of on their personality and popularity. “We talk about exact facts and issues and put them on two sides of a spreadsheet. Then the students debate the facts in class.

Eventually, the kids are told which candidate they had been siding with, and with this last piece of information in mind, they are ready to cast their vote.

Officials use photoshop to fake city cleanup

Russian authorities in the city of St. Petersburg recently came under fire after it was discovered that they had used digital editing software like Adobe Photoshop to fake the cleanup of a local lamp post.

It happened after a resident submitted a request on the local government official website asking that a lamp post covered with obscene advertising stickers be cleaned. An employ of the St. Petersburg administration responded to the complaint, letting the person know that the job had been done, even posting a photo of the cleaned up lamp post as proof. It had apparently been scrubbed of advertising materials, but after taking a closer look, a number of users noticed that the infrastructure element depicted in the photo didn’t look quite right.

Nightclub only admits attractive people

Beautiful people sick of having to share the same partying space with less attractive human specimens now have the chance to mingle only with their own kind at a new bar that turns away ugly people.

It sounds like a joke, but, sadly, it is not. The new venue was opened by BeautifulPeople.com, an exclusive social media platform that only accepts good looking men and women. Since it launched in 2002, it has reportedly rejected over 11 million people, with only 800,000 gaining the coveted membership status. To join the controversial website, applicants have to pass a strict rating process, where current members vote during a period of 48 hours, based on submitted photographs and a short bio.

Couple raises snake as their child

An elderly couple in China has been sharing their home with a 60 kilogram, 3.7-meter-long python for seven years, raising it as their child and even taking it for walks around their neighborhood.

68-year-old Shi Jimin, a retired meat processing worker, adopted the python in 2009, to save it from certain death. A fish and snake vendor had come by his workplace, and managed to sell his entire supply, except for a small 30-cm long snake that no one had wanted. Shi says that he eventually got it for free and took the young snake home to his wife, not knowing that it would grow up into a cattle-eating behemoth.

It often sits on their laps as they watch TV together, or just finds a comfortable spot and sits there like a good boy. In the evening, the couple give the snake a warm bath, and before going to bed, they take the python to his very own.

Prisons run out of prisoners

While much of the world struggles with overcrowded prisons, the Netherlands has the opposite problem. It is actually short of people to lock up. In the past few years 19 prisons have closed down and more are slated for closure next year.

Just 19 years ago, the Netherlands had one of the highest incarceration rates in Europe, but it now claims one of the lowest – 57 people per 100,000 of the population, compared with 148 in England and Wales.

Apparently, the Dutch prison service changed. It now looks at each individual case and tackles in the best way possible. So drug addicts are treated not jailed, aggressive people get anger management problems, and debtors get debt counseling. Sometimes people stay in their jobs, with their families and do the punishment in another way. One empty prison was turned into a fancy hotel south of Amsterdam, its four most expensive suites named the The Lawyer, The Judge, The Governor and The Jailer.

Woman upset by Trump victory spends day giving out free hugs

A Rhode Island woman upset over the election of Donald Trump spent Nov.10 giving out free hugs.

Jenny Daley, of South Kingstown, told journalists that she woke up Wednesday and needed a hug and figured a lot of other people did, too.

So the 31-year-old restaurant worker headed to downtown with a sign that said, “Need a hug today? They are free. Just ask.”

Daley says she did not want to “spend the whole day in fear” so she decided to show love to as many people as she could.

Daley gave out hugs to several people, including some who told her stories about their lives, and one woman who stopped and gave her an umbrella after it began to drizzle.

Why does this woman think she is ugly?

Alanah is a beautiful young woman, but when she looks in the mirror she does not see what others see.

She suffers from Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), and when her condition was at its worst she repeatedly checked her appearance in the mirror, taking pains to disguise any flaws she thought she saw. Her make-up routine could take up to four hours, and even after this she often felt too anxious to leave the house.

She would also pick her skin – picking at any blemish until the skin was broken and raw.

“I see marks all over my face, which my mum has told me that she does not see. I see my skin is just bumpy and blemished. I see my nose is way too big and crooked and sticks out too much. My eyes are too small,” says 20-year-old Alanah.

It’s thought about one in 50 people suffer from BDD, but many of us – and even some doctors – are unaware of its existence.

British man aims to swim Atlantic: From Senegal to Brazil

Ben Hooper, 38, is undertaking a swimming expedition to cross the Atlantic. He set off from in Dakar, Senegal on Nov. 13 and hopes to become the first person to swim the full 1,635 nautical miles from Senegal to Brazil.

The former British police officer says he trained three years as he gathered a crew for the Big Blue, the main boat on which he will eat and sleep when he is not swimming for about eight hours each day through waters infested with sharks and jellyfish. The crew, including a paramedic, will track the miles.

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editor@independent.co.ug