Jockstrip: The world as we know it

SCHOOL FOR GAME SHOW HOSTESSES

An Italian school for television game show hostesses is being cited as a waste of European Union funds.

The EU gave the First Tel School more than $1.5 million for 97 students to take an eight-month course to learn how to be Vanna White.

The school -- based in a region of Italy where young people have 50 percent unemployment rate -- will offer classes in: diction, show presenting, make-up, singing, dancing, acting, and the history of cinema and theater, the London Telegraph reports.

One of the school's founders, Dino Giordano, says the school is aimed at giving students a head start for show business. However, student Simona Toto tells the Telegraph, "I want to be famous, rich and marry a footballer."

OCEAN FLOOR TOURISM HOT

Underwater tourism used to mean scuba diving, but deep underwater tourism is the hot thing, Newsweek reports.

Just about five years ago only scientists, submarine pilots and moviemakers saw any part of the ocean floor.

James Cameron's film "Titanic" sparked entrepreneur Mike McDowel to pioneer undersea tourism.

The first 12 tourists paid more than $32,000 to cram into Russian MIR submersibles and descend 2.5 miles to see the sunken ocean liner, Newsweek says.

Future trips cost about $40,000 and are planned for shipwrecks, hydrothermal vents and the North Pole.

FORCED EXERCISE BY COMPANIES

Companies who pay the lion's share of health care costs are planning office space that requires their workers to get up and walk.

Sprint's headquarters in Overland Park, Kan., has elevators and escalators that are deliberately slow to encourage its workers to take the stairs.

The telephone company also banned cars on its 200-acre headquarters, forcing employees to park at the perimeter as well as putting food facilities at the edge of the buildings not in the middle.

"It's a forced wellness program," Dan Jeakins, an architect in Dallas who has designed office buildings that encourage walking and stair-climbing, tells New York Times.

ALLEGED WINDOW VOYEUR CAUGHT

A Port Authority of New York and New Jersey police officer is facing child sex-abuse charges after he allegedly was caught secretly videotaping an 11-year-old girl.

Forty-two-year-old Russell Bass is being held on $75,000 bail on charges including video voyeurism and child endangerment, the New York Post reports.

"The alleged victim is a child whose privacy was crudely invaded and whose innocence has been shaken," says Richard Brown" class="tpstyle">Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.

The girl was showering in the morning before school when she noticed a hand holding a video camera in a partially opened bathroom window.