The India-based airline calls it a money-saving necessity. It claims their lower weight will save fuel costs. With the ever escalating oil prices, there is some kind of logic in the decision.

According to the report from the Times of India, the female attendants are 33 to 44 pounds lighter than the typical males on the same job. Based on current fuel prices, the savings can be calculated to save up to a half-million dollars a year. Wonder if the airline requires the attendants to refrain from eating until their flights land.

Two cruises next year featuring Paula Deen conducting onboard sessions in her Southern cooking styles are scheduled for the now-controversial kitchen diva.

Sponsored by the Alice Travel agency, a January sailing will be on the Celebrity Reflection. Another is tentatively planned in July 2014 aboard a yet-unnamed Royal Caribbean ship.

Many sponsors of the Paula Deen TV shows on the Food Network are falling all over each other to end their association with Paula. However, Alice Travel management and the cruise lines are staying with her well-established popularity, based on her previous highly successful cruise cooking programs.

If you’re interested in a cruise featuring Paula Deen, for more information, check with your favorite hometown or online travel agency, or go to alicetravel.com

Flight attendants and other members of the United Airlines team are all spiffy in Navy blue with new working apparel. Considering the recent flap about Cap'n Crunch showing only two stripes when a USN skipper would have four, the UAL employees are satisfied strutting around as real cool two-stripers.

According to AP, some hotels are taking those itsy soap pieces left behind by departed guests and sending them to a recycling plant. They’re melted together, sanitized and processed into fresh bars to be donated to families in poverty areas around the world.

A recent example is the Stonewall Resort in West Virginia. The hotel’s plan is to send the used soap to the nonprofit Global Soap Project processing center in Norcross, Ga. Global Soap Project representatives estimate that more than two million bars of guest-used soap are trashed every day by U.S. hotels.