Camel beauties!

It is one of the world's most unique beauty pageants. Can you imagine who the beauties were? They are camels!

Camel beauties judged at UAE show

Thousands of camels were strutting their stuff in the beauty pageant where judges were impressed by long necks and big humps.

Every year people travel thousands of miles, from across the Gulf, to the Western Region of the United Arab Emirates to attend this prestigious event.

But you won't find any designer dresses, tiaras or make-up artists here because they've come to seek out the region's next top camel.

The Al Dhafra festival is in its seventh year and seeks to celebrate and promote Bedouin culture.

The highlight is the camel beauty pageant which sees thousands of contestants strut their stuff in two competitions: one for the light-coloured Asayel breed and another for the dark-skinned Majahim. 

They're judged on a range of criteria from the size of the head, length of its neck and the shape of the hump. And big is most definitely considered beautiful.

But looks aren't everything and points are also awarded for model behaviour with the very best camels sold for up to £2m.

A regular camel owner attending the festival explained how the winners are picked.

“There is a special committee, appointed by the authorities, which judges the competition. They place all the camels together in one pen and decide.”

As well as the beauty pageant the Al Dhafra festival, which runs for two weeks, also hosts camel races, saluki races, falconry competitions and a traditional Emirati market

Distraught lover jumps to his death

Shopping with one’s girlfriend can be an enjoyable and satisfying experience. But for some people like 38-year-old Tao Hsiao it could turn out to be a nightmare.

The situation arose when Tao had been accompanying his girlfriend in a shopping mall in Xuzhou, Jiangsu Province, in East China, when she decided that after five hours she just had to go into one more shop because there was an offer on. This resulted in a heated argument between the pair, witnessed by a number of shoppers, where Tao was heard to say that she ‘already had enough shoes, more shoes that she could wear in a lifetime and it was pointless buying any more.’ This enraged his girlfriend who accused him of ‘being a skinflint and of spoiling Christmas.’

It was then that Tao, flung all the bags of shopping he was carrying on the floor and threw himself over the seventh floor railings to his death. He smashed through Christmas decorations, fell onto a stall below on the lower floor and then fell to the ground, dying on impact.

Luckily, landing on a stall meant that he didn’t hit and injure/kill anyone else. Emergency services arrived soon after and took poor Tao’s body away.

A cosmetic saleswoman who was nearby when the incident happened said: “It was the weekend, so there were lots of mall-goers. I heard a ‘bang’ and then I heard people shouting that someone had jumped. I turned my head and I saw a man lying on the ground, totally motionless.”

Tao Hsaio being rushed to hospital.

Divorce filed for husband's ways

She couldn’t bear to watch her husband’s style of eating peas. The result? Divorce.

The report from Kuwait says this unnamed woman was married only for a week and she had filed for divorce after discovering her newly married husband doesn’t eat peas with a fork.

The woman is said to have been disgusted at the ‘shocking sight’ of her husband using bread rather than cutlery.

The incident was apparently so traumatising the unnamed newly-wed decided to try and end her marriage just days after their wedding.

It was also reported that another woman too had attempted to divorce her husband after he insisted on squeezing toothpaste tubes in the middle and not at the end.

‘We are always arguing.

I keep telling him that he should squeeze in the end of the tube, but he stubbornly refuses and keeps squeezing it in the middle. He is so obstinate,’ the woman is quoted as saying.