Airline Puts Flight Attendants On Leave Until They Slim Down

• 28 flight attendants at Turkish Airlines have been asked to stay grounded for six months while they try and slim down. According to the airline, all of them had previously been received warnings about their weight.

The employees, 13 of which are women, will be on unpaid leave until they lose enough weight to fly again. “Weight and height are important factors at all airlines. These criteria are important both in terms of appearance and the ability to move about,” said an official statement.

• A recent study found that daycare costs more than tuition at the majority of state universities. The cost of center-based care for young children has increased twice as fast as the median family income throughout the country. But there is a lot of variation from state to state; in Mississippi it costs as little as $4,550 a year for infant care while in Massachusetts it costs as much as $18,750.
• Scientists have created a robot that has the ability to read human emotions and develop a bond with people. Nao is able to respond to people who treat him kindly, and can mimic the emotional skills of a one-year-old child. He is the first robot able to create a relationship with humans.
• Women in bikinis appeared outside a church in Warsaw, Ohio to protest Pastor Bill Dunfee and his congregation’s repeated harassment of patrons and dancers at the Foxhole strip club. Dunfee says the protesters have just “strengthened the resolve of his flock.”
• A leading UK doctor has written an open letter to the government arguing that smoking in front of small children, especially in enclosed spaces like cars, should be considered a form of child abuse. Weirdly, the BBC decided to illustrate this article with a picture of a shirtless man.
• Although there aren’t a lot of women on the “most powerful rabbis” list, female rabbis are still on the rise. Currently, between 40-68% of students at non-Orthodox rabbinical seminaries are women.
• A woman from Hong Kong is fighting for the right to marry her boyfriend. Known only as “W,” she is one of the few people to have undergone sex change surgery in a Hong Kong public hospital. Though she is legally recognized as a woman, her birth certificate says she is male, which the Registrar of Marriages is using as proof enough to deny her the right to marry.
• Dan Vergano at USA Today something we’ve long suspected: popular science is often really, really sexist.
• The World Sauna Championships are no more after a Russian man died in Finland after spending six minutes sweating it out in temperatures of 230 degrees Fahrenheit. “After this incident we decided that this game is over and done,” said Saija Jappinen, the cultural secretary at Heinola city.