ASIA
Hotels still have rooms for Beijing Olympics
Plenty of hotel rooms are still available for the Beijing Olympics.
Zhang Huiguang, director of Beijing’s Tourism Bureau, says the crunch that was predicted doesn’t seem to be happening. She said that about 500,000 foreigners were expected for the games, a figure Beijing officials have long been predicting.
Although 77 percent of capacity at Beijing’s five-star hotels has been booked during the Aug. 8-24 Olympic Games, she said, the four-star hotel rate is only 44 percent. And it’s even lower for three- and two-stars.
Observers said one reason could be China’s crackdown on visa procedures, targeting students and others on short-term stays who might be activists intent on protesting during the Olympics. Read the rest of this entry »
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DALLAS - If you’re taking a nonstop flight to summer vacation, better pony up a lot more money or start unpacking.
In many cases, major carriers have more than doubled or even tripled their cheapest U.S. fares from last summer’s fares. That’s on top of the new fees for checking luggage and other services.
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WASHINGTON - Domestic airlines’ on-time arrival rate improved in April, despite more than 3,900 flights canceled by American Airlines, according to government data released Wednesday.
More than 22 percent of commercial flights in the U.S. arrived late, were canceled or diverted in April, according to the Transportation Department’s Bureau of Transportation Statistics. That is down from more than 24 percent of late flights in the same month last year and over 28 percent in March.
The drop in delays — which was accompanied by declines in mishandled baggage and customer complaints — came despite the fact many carriers were forced to ground flights in April amid unprecedented government scrutiny of maintenance issues.
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Christopher Sanford, a Seattle travel-medicine doctor, spends most of his days helping globe-trotting travelers stay healthy.
Before they head off to less-developed countries, he advises them on everything from vaccinations to avoiding malaria. If travelers return with any nasty bodily souvenirs, Sanford helps cure them.
Yet more and more, he focuses on getting travelers to be careful on the road — literally. “The biggest threat in the developing world is not infectious diseases. It’s car crashes,” said Sanford.
Tempted to ride on the roof of a bus in India? Or to rent a motorbike and zip around an Indonesian island? Think twice, says Sanford, and take all the safety precautions you can. Wear a helmet on bicycles or motorcycles. Use seat belts, if you’re lucky enough to find vehicles that have them. And ride inside the bus.
Vehicle accidents cause about 25 percent of the deaths of visitors to the developing world, says Sanford, and only 1 percent is from infectious diseases. (Most of the rest of the deaths are from heart attacks, strokes, drowning, falls from heights, plus homicide and suicide.) Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: medical
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