Watercooler Stories

Three sisters in 40s graduate together

RALEIGH, N.C., June 1 (UPI) -- North Carolinian Valerie Noel says graduating from the University of Phoenix with her two younger sisters was the culmination of a collaborative dream.

Noel said she and her sisters earned human services/management bachelor's degrees at the Raleigh, N.C., campus of the for-profit educational institution thanks to their ability to lean on one another in their individual times of need, The (Raleigh) News & Observer reported.

"When you didn't think you could go on, we could call on each other," she said. "We could help each other."

Noel said she and her sisters, Jeanette and Delores, all in their 40s, initially learned about the university, which also offers courses online, from their friend, Hazel Henry.

Noel noted with sadness a major motivating force for the siblings --their father, Arthur -- was missing from Saturday's graduation ceremony.

"He was an inspiration," she told the News & Observer of her father, Arthur, who died of cancer in 2007.

U.S. teenagers big on hugging

NEW YORK, June 1 (UPI) -- Hugging among U.S. teenagers has become so prevalent some schools say they've banned the embrace or imposed limits on how long a hug may last.

"Touching and physical contact is very dangerous territory," said Noreen Hajinlian, principal of George G. White School, a junior high school in Hillsdale, N.J., which banned hugging. "It wasn't a greeting. It was happening all day."

Hajinlian's school is among those from New Jersey to Bend, Ore., that have clamped down on hugging, The New York Times reported.

Ritual hugging has become so popular that students feel pressured to partake, said Gabrielle Brown, a freshman at Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School in New York.

"If somebody were to not hug someone, to never hug anybody, people might be just a little wary of them and think they are weird or peculiar," Brown said.

The phenomenon reflects how physical boundaries have changed, said Amy Best, a sociologist at George Mason University.

"We display bodies more readily, there are fewer rules governing body touch and a lot more permissible access to other people's bodies," Best said.

Idaho families survive postal cut

BADLEY RANCH, Idaho, June 1 (UPI) -- Twenty families in a roadless wilderness in Idaho say they've convinced the U.S. Postal Service to keep bringing their mail by airplane.

Service to the scattered residents on the Salmon River costs about 10 times the average cost of delivery -- $46,000 a year for plane service -- as the Postal Service faces a $6.5 billion budget deficit, The New York Times reported.

The families live in the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness -- the Postal Service's sole remaining air route into a wilderness in the continental United States.

Postal officials said they considered alternatives, including surface routes, but none would have provided acceptable service to the families, who have depended on pilot Ray Arnold, 72, and his Cessna 185 to bring them their mail, food and other supplies for the last 34 years.

"There's a tremendous community among the people in this canyon," said ranch owner Doug Tims, 62, calling the mail plane "the thread that ties it all together."

Flight delayed by search for ashtray

LONDON, June 1 (UPI) -- A British Airways flight was delayed for 25 minutes at London's Heathrow Airport last week as crews searched for a replacement bathroom ashtray, officials said.

After passengers were told the crew needed to find a "vital" part before taking off, it turned out the important piece was an ashtray to replace one that was missing, even though smoking on the aircraft was banned, the Daily Mail reported.

A new ashtray was eventually found after much searching, during which the flight's captain allegedly suggested the crew "rob" another plane of its bathroom ashtray.

A British Airways spokesman told the British tabloid the flight had to be delayed because all planes in Europe are required by law to have ashtrays.

"It is a legal requirement, under air navigation orders, to have ashtrays because while smoking is not permitted on flights, if someone were to light a cigarette on board there must be somewhere to safely extinguish it," the spokesman said.