TOO THIN IS IN

Click this link to the UK Times and tell us -- is this beauty?

The poster girl is Isabelle Caro, a French actress. She is 27. She weighs 68 pounds after 15 years with anorexia.

New billboards in Italy show her naked. They are supposed to highlight the hell of anorexia. But they're also promoting a fashion label.

As the UK Times reports:

Her emaciated body, framed by the controversial photographer Oliviero Toscani in a campaign to coincide with Milan Fashion Week, appears alongside the slogan “No Anorexia” and the brand name Nolita, a label intended for young women.

Fashionistas hailed the poster campaign as a turning point but health experts were outraged and voiced fears that teenage girls might be encouraged to “compete for extreme thinness” after seeing the images.

“I’ve hidden myself and covered myself for too long. Now I want to show myself fearlessly, even though I know my body arouses repugnance,” Caro told the Italian edition of Vanity Fair. She said that her own troubled childhood had provoked her illness, even if some in the fashion world conceded that stereotypes promoted by the industry itself were to blame.

Nolita, an Italian clothing company, said the billboards are supposed “to use the naked body to show everyone the reality of this illness, caused in most cases by the stereotypes imposed by the world of fashion." That, and to push the brand.

THEY 'LOOK LIKE THEY'RE BOMBERS'

But what does a bomber look like?

The Daily Mail reports on how easily paranoia strikes deep:

The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.

Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it.

The incident fuels the row over airport security following the arrest of more than 20 people allegedly planning the suicide-bombing of transatlantic jets from the UK to America. It comes amid growing demands for passenger-profiling and selective security checks.

It also raised fears that more travellers will take the law into their own hands - effectively conducting their own 'passenger profiles'. ...

The trouble in Malaga flared last Wednesday as two British citizens in their 20s waited in the departure lounge to board the pre-dawn flight and were heard talking what passengers took to be Arabic. Worries spread after a female passenger said she had heard something that alarmed her.

Passengers noticed that, despite the heat, the pair were wearing leather jackets and thick jumpers and were regularly checking their watches.

Initially, six passengers refused to board the flight. On board the aircraft, word reached one family. To the astonishment of cabin crew, they stood up and walked off, followed quickly by others.

The Monarch pilot - a highly experienced captain - accompanied by armed Civil Guard police and airport security staff, approached the two men and took their passports.

Half an hour later, police returned and escorted the two Asian passengers off the jet.

Soon afterwards, the aircraft was cleared while police did a thorough security sweep. Nothing was found and the plane took off - three hours late and without the two men on board.

Monarch arranged for them to spend the rest of the night in an airport hotel and flew them back to Manchester later on Wednesday.

College lecturer Jo Schofield, her husband Heath and daughters Emily, 15, and Isabel, 12, were caught up in the passenger mutiny.

Mrs Schofield, 38, said: "The plane was not yet full and it became apparent that people were refusing to board. In the gate waiting area, people had been talking about these two, who looked really suspicious with their heavy clothing, scruffy, rough, appearance and long hair.

"Some of the older children, who had seen the terror alert on television, were starting to mutter things like, 'Those two look like they're bombers.'

Unlike Don Stewart-Whyte and Brian Young, two of the 24 men arrested for the alleged UK terror plot. Looks indeed deceive.

BOOBY TRAP

Yes, this is a real item, courtesy of the blog at ABC News:

U.S. authorities are advising women not to wear gel bras on airplanes as information developed in the foiled London plot points to an expanding role for women in smuggling explosives on to an aircraft.

Authorities at Scotland Yard are questioning a husband and wife, suspects in the London terror plot, about allegations that they were planning to use their baby's bottle to hide a liquid bomb.

Police in the U.K. have recovered baby bottles containing peroxide, including some with false bottoms, from a recycling center close to the homes of some of the arrested suspects.

They should also watch out for men packing zucchini.