Air France KLM denied media reports on Wednesday that it planned an extra charge for overweight passengers if they were unable to fit into a single seat.
Instead, the national carrier said that from Feb 1. overweight passengers who had freely chosen to buy an extra seat for comfort would get their money back on flights that were not fully booked.
"Contrary to reports in the press this morning, Air France is not planning to force corpulent passengers to pay for a second seat," the statement said.
Air France said that since 2005 it had offered overweight passengers an option to buy a second seat at a 25 percent discount.
Southwest Airlines and United Airlines have a policy where "oversize" people need to buy a second seat and can claim a refund if the plane is not full. This followed complaints from adjacent passengers.
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Police said a prank turned potentially dangerous when a man angry about a snowball hitting his car allegedly pulled a knife on a group of youths and kidnapped one of them.
No one was injured. Joshua Good, 25, was to be arraigned Monday in Superior Court on charges including first-degree kidnapping, threatening and reckless endangerment. The kidnapping charge carries 10 to 25 years in prison.
Police said a group of youths was throwing snowballs near Colony Park Friday night when Good's car was hit. Police say Good threatened the youths with a knife and forced a 13-year-old boy into his car.
Authorities say Good drove the boy home and didn't hurt him.
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A tiny Indonesian lizard has become big business for impoverished villagers in Indonesia, where growing Asian demand for reptile-based traditional medicines has driven a boom in gecko farming.
Geckos -- the pale, soft-skinned lizard with a distinctive call -- are abundant in Indonesia and are believed by Chinese and Korean traditional medicine devotees to help cure cancer as well as skin and respiratory diseases.
In rural Banjarsawah village, on the eastern half of Java island, struggling farmers have discovered geckos make a surprisingly lucrative commodity.
A farmhand who earns 10,000 rupiah (about $1) a day feeding other people's cattle, now makes 1 million rupiah or about $110 a month hunting geckos in a local forest.
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An eastern Pennsylvania man was charged after he allegedly broke into a home, cut his hair and prepared fried chicken before being discovered.
The man was charged with breaking into the home in Easton, about 50 miles north of Philadelphia. According to court documents, the homeowner returned home Sunday to discover him watching TV and cooking chicken.
Authorities said the man threw a rock through a front door window to get inside and appeared to have rummaged through every room in the house. He also took a shower. |