Southwest Gives Free Extra Seats: How Airlines Handle Plus-Sized Passengers - Time   

“Hi, I’m hoping to use your customer-of-size policy today,” a woman says to a Southwest Airlines gate agent before being handed a complimentary second ticket for the adjacent seat on the flight she was boarding, in a now-viral TikTok video. The post, which has racked up more than 900,000 views since it was first shared in October, has sparked strong, mixed reactions about the ways in which plus-sized travelers are—or aren’t—accommodated in the air.

Some have praised Southwest’s approach as “amazing,” while others have criticized the airline for “rewarding obesity.”

Southwest’s customer-of-size policy isn’t new, but the renewed attention brought to it in recent weeks reflects the increasing relevance of airlines’ plus-sized-passenger rules—especially as Americans on average continue to grow larger, while airplane seats have allegedly become smaller.

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How Apple finally cracked the India market—at exactly the right time - Fortune Asia   

Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai’s commercial hub, oozes luxury. Affluent shoppers stroll in and out of stores like Emporio Armani, Satya Paul, and Swarovski. The corporate headquarters of tech giant Amazon towers over the upscale shops. The large plaza in the BKC, as it’s known, hosts concerts and sports events. The Backstreet Boys performed there recently. 

On a Tuesday in April, swarms of Indians streamed into the plaza to glimpse a pop star of a different kind: Apple CEO Tim Cook, who was there to open one of the tech giant’s first two stores in India. After a brief countdown, Cook thrust open the doors of the 22,000-square-foot BKC location. Surrounded by cheering, green-clad Apple associates, the chief executive high-fived and posed for selfies with some of the first visitors. 

Cook was all smiles. Rightfully so. The Indian market presents an unprecedented opportunity for growth: Only half of India’s 1.4 billion people own a smartphone, and Apple is only now gaining a real, direct foothold in the retail market. 

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Sheikh Hasina’s party is set to be re-elected in January - The Economist   

SHEIKH HASINA has served four terms as Bangladesh’s prime minister, three of them consecutively since 2009. Nobody seriously doubts that she will begin her fifth after an election due on January 7th. The government claims the election will be competitive; 29 parties are contesting it. Yet the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), the biggest opposition party and the only one capable of mounting a challenge to the ruling Awami League (AL), is boycotting the poll. It could scarcely take part if it wanted to. Most of the bnp’s leaders and thousands of its activists have been jailed over the past six weeks. Five have died in custody since late November. Many of those who have so far evaded arrest are in hiding.

This farce points to the conundrum that Sheikh Hasina, the world’s longest-serving female prime minister, represents. In her nearly 15 years in power, she has presided over one of the world’s fastest-growing economies and the biggest improvement in living standards in South Asia. She has also skilfully negotiated the rival interests of China and India, the feuding giants Bangladesh’s 170m people are sandwiched between, and also America, which has a long-standing interest in the country’s stability. At the same time, the 76-year-old prime minister has assailed Bangladeshi democracy with impunity.

She has cowed the press and captured the police, courts and judiciary. She has built a personality cult around her father, who was murdered in a coup in 1975 and whose face is now plastered everywhere in Dhaka, the capital. She has neutralised the BNP’s leader, Khaleda Zia, who has been under house arrest since 2018. Bangladesh’s previous two elections, in 2014 and 2018, were also massively stacked in the ruling party’s favour. The coming one could make the BNP almost defunct. To manufacture an impression of a competitive poll, observers say the AL has encouraged its party members, their acquaintances and also defectors from the opposition to run as independent candidates.

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Amazon to connect Kuiper satellites with laser links to boost space internet network - CNBC   

Amazon will include a key speed-boosting technology in its coming Project Kuiper internet satellites, the company announced Thursday.

Amazon says it tested the laser link tech successfully during its recent Protoflight mission. Traditionally, satellites are limited to sending data between an individual spacecraft and the ground. Laser links connect satellites to each other.

The Kuiper satellites' "optical inter-satellite links," also known as OISLs, serve as a way to transmit data through space. Laser links are a feature that Elon Musk's SpaceX began introducing in later generations of its Starlink satellites. The links help improve both the latency and speed of these networks.

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