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Remember the tightwad tourist whose baggy shorts, frequent complaining and shouted questions about why none of the locals spoke any English made the ugly American the world's Visitor From Hell? Well, it's time for Archie Bunker to move over and make way for Petulant Pierre. According to a recent international survey, the French are now considered the most obnoxious tourists from European nations, and behind only Indians and the last-place Chinese as the worst among all countries worldwide. And it's not only the rest of the world that have a gripe with the Gallic attitude: the French also finished second...

US to demand 72hrs notice for British tourists By Andy Bloxham Last Updated: 12:50AM BST 03/06/2008 British visitors to the United States will have to register their trip with the American government 72 hours before they leave under new plans. All travellers from countries which do not currently require a visa will be forced to tell the Americans that they are coming. The rule is intended to bolster US security and was expected to be announced today by Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff. The move is likely to renew the worries of big business in Europe that deal-clinching, last-minute flights...

Why the same things that attract millions of happy visitors to New York—the glamour, the skyline, the anonymity—also draw people from around the world to kill themselves here. Stephen was no stranger to New York. He’d been to the city as a boy, and regularly came here for work now that he was in his twenties. A consultant, he’d take the train from his hometown several hours south of the city, stay from Monday to Friday, then return on the weekends. He loved New York, his mother, Judith, says. The energy, the people, figuring out the streets and subways. He...

BEIJING - Chinese authorities jittery about protests during the Mount Everest leg of the Olympic torch relay have abruptly reversed a decision to reopen Tibet to foreign tourists. Foreigners have not received permits to visit the Himalayan region since deadly anti-government riots broke out in the capital, Lhasa. Tourism authorities announced last week that foreign tour groups would be allowed in on May 1, the start of a three-day national holiday. Tour operators said Thursday, however, that the Tibetan Tourism Bureau told them this week to stop arranging trips for foreigners. They said the bureau cited the need for safe...

CAIRO, Egypt - Al-Qaida in Islamic North Africa claimed responsibility for kidnapping two Austrian tourists last month in Tunisia in an audio recording aired Monday on Al-Jazeera television. A man who identified himself as Salah Abu Mohammed said in the recording that the terrorist group kidnapped the two Austrians on Feb. 22 in retribution for Western cooperation with Israel, but said the hostages were in good health. "We tell Western tourists that at the same time they are flowing into Tunisian lands seeking joy, our brothers are being slain in Gaza by the Jews with the collaboration of the Western...

Two Belgian tourists were among three people killed, with four more Belgians injured, when gunmen opened fire on them in Yemen's Hadramut province on Friday, a local official told AFP. The tourists' Yemeni driver was also killed by the attackers in the southeastern province. The attackers were said to have targetted the tourists in the province's Do'an Valley, before fleeing the scene in a car. The tourists were travelling to the historic city of Shibam, which lies around 450 kilometres east of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa. The 16th century city has been dubbed the "Manhattan of the Desert" for its...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 8, 2007 – On a day as clear and sunny as the fateful one six years before, tourists and local citizens came to the Pentagon today to pay homage and honor those who lost their lives when a terrorist-controlled airliner crashed into the building Sept. 11, 2001. In hushed voices or with respectful silence, hundreds of people came to the U.S. military’s headquarters to see the crash site of American Airlines Flight 77 that left 184 people dead and a country grief-stricken. Spectators filed by the side of the building draped with a gigantic American flag in...

OSLO (Reuters) - A chunk of an Arctic glacier broke into the sea and triggered a huge wave that injured 18 people on a sightseeing boat, almost all of them British tourists, Norwegian officials said on Thursday. Four people were seriously hurt in the accident by Hornbreen glacier on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard and were flown south to a hospital in Tromsoe on the mainland. The others were treated at a local hospital, mostly for minor injuries. "The glacier calved (split off) and a big wave washed over the boat," Elisabeth Bjoerge Loevold, acting governor of Svalbard, told Reuters....

"No idea," he replied in French with a bad-tempered shrug - even though he knew the nearest Starbucks coffee shop was only 50m away. Haughty indifference to tourists is as Parisian as the Louvre, yet tourist officials are hoping to eliminate that attitude, if only for one day.

MEXICO CITY (AFP) - Two armed men posing as tourists interested in snapping photos from a helicopter ditched their pilot Monday and stole the chopper, Mexican police said. The suspects, who hired the helicopter at the airport in Atizapan, Mexico, instructed the pilot to take them to an isolated area for a photo shoot. "When we got there, they told me to get out, so we could see where we were going to take the pictures. And then they pulled a gun on me, bound and gagged me, and left me there," pilot Eduardo Merito told Radio Formato 21. The...

LAS VEGAS -- There's lazy, and then there's Las Vegas lazy. In increasing numbers, Las Vegas tourists exhausted by the four miles of gluttony laid out before them are getting around on electric "mobility scooters." Don't think trendy Vespa motorbikes. Think updated wheelchairs. Forking over about $40 a day and their pride, apparently healthy tourists are cruising around Las Vegas casinos in transportation intended for the infirm. You don't have to take a step. You don't even have to put your drink down. "It was all the walking," 27-year-old Simon Lezama said on his red Merits Pioneer 3. Lezama, a...

Madrid - Holidaymakers may be ruining their favourite destinations through pollution and greenhouse gases, making the tourism industry one of the world's worst polluters, experts say. A flight to that pristine beach and a few nights in an air-conditioned hotel room, when repeated on the mass scale of modern tourism, is all it takes to put the holiday business on a polluting par with heavy industries. "Tourism is unfortunately one of the vectors of (climate) change at the moment and contributes, through its excesses, to the process of global warming," World Tourism Organisation (WTO) director general Francesco Frangialli told an...

SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (AP) -- A tour bus of U.S. senior citizens defended themselves against a group of alleged muggers, sending two of them fleeing and killing a third in the Atlantic coast city of Limon, police said on Thursday. One of the tourists _ a retired member of the U.S. military aged about 70 _ put assailant Warner Segura in a head lock and broke his clavicle after the 20-year-old and two other men armed with a knife and gun held up their tour bus Wednesday, said Luis Hernandez, the police chief of Limon, 80 miles east of...

A Canadian tour bus was attacked Saturday as sightseers in East Jerusalem became the target of protests over a disputed holy site. Palestinian youths hurled stones at the vehicle carrying vacationers during the second day of protests against excavation work at the religious compound. This bus came under attack on the second day of Palestinian protests against excavation at a religious site. (CBC) Muslims know the site as the Noble Sanctuary, which houses the al-Aqsa mosque, the holiest mosque outside Mecca. It's known to Jews as the Temple Mount, which is connected to the Western Wall, described as the holiest...

Leadership: Harry Reid has blown off President Ford's funeral because it would be "hard to cancel" his meetings with South America's leaders or put off his junket to Inca ruins. How's that for class? Reid's visit to a tourist site in Peru, instead of presenting himself as the next Senate Majority Leader at a rare state funeral, shows how little respect he has for Gerald Ford, a good man whose presidency was marked by his willingness to put duty to country first in an effort to heal a wounded nation. Not so Reid, who put his own agenda above the...

The pink plastic flamingo, a Florida-inspired icon that has been reviled as kitschy bad taste and revered as retro cool, is dead at age 49. The pop culture symbol met its demise after its manufacturer, Union Products, of Leominster, Mass., was socked with a triple economic threat -- increases in costs of electricity and plastic resin combined with loss of financing. Production ended in June, and the plant is scheduled to close Nov. 1, according to president and CEO Dennis Plante. Union Products made 250,000 of its patented plastic pink flamingos a year in addition to other garden products.

10 British tourists hurt by bombs in Turkey By Stephanie Condron and James Burleigh (Filed: 28/08/2006) Ten Britons were injured last night in a series of bomb explosions in the Turkish Mediterranean holiday resort of Marmaris. Another bomb exploded in Istanbul. In all 22 people were hurt. All 10 Britons were taken to hospital and four were said to be in a serious condition. It is believed that at least one of the Marmaris bombs went off on one of the many dolmuses - minibuses that serve as a taxi service for holidaymakers. Residents said one exploded near a McDonald's...

(VIDEO) Bus carrying Israeli Arab tourists on organized tour overturns near Egyptian town of Nuweiba. MDA crews prepare to receive casualties at Taba Terminal on Israel-Egypt border VIDEO - Several Israeli passengers were killed Tuesday afternoon and dozens were injured as a bus overturned near the Egyptian town of al-Saada near Nuweiba in Sinai. Official sources in Sinai and Israeli passengers reported that about 50 people were injured and several were killed in the accident. The Egyptian authorities reported that 11 people were killed in the accident, some of them Israelis from Arab communities in northern Israel. The accident occured...

OSLO, Norway - A bus carrying 40 elderly French tourists toppled into a ditch by a motorway in central Norway on Tuesday after passengers demanded the driver get closer to a moose grazing by the roadside so they could take snapshots, police said. One woman suffered minor injuries in the accident on the motorway about 174 miles north of Oslo, the Norwegian capital. Eager to photograph the moose "in its natural environment," the tourists had asked the driver to get closer to the animal, after which the bus skidded off the edge of the motorway, district police officer at Gudbrandsdal,...

CBGB Owner Relocating Club — Urinals Included — To Vegas This Spring Hilly Kristal vows to put on finale shows at NYC venue. Hilly Kristal's got an awful lot of packing ahead of him. The owner and operator of New York's legendary CBGB club says by mid-October, the last drinks will have been poured and the last unsigned band will have taken the stage inside the punk-rock landmark. In compliance with an agreement Kristal reached with the club's landlord last December (see "CBGB Owner, Landlord Reach Accord: Club To Close On Halloween '06"), CBGB will no longer exist on the...

A medical team worked through the night to rebuild the bodies of two conjoined twins who were successfully separated after a daylong operation, a hospital spokesman said. A calm feeling filled the operating room at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles after surgeons gently cut the last pelvic bone connecting the sisters and moved on to the reconstruction phase of the marathon operation, said hospital spokesman Steve Rutledge. "They seem to be doing fine," Rutledge said. Ten-month-old Regina and Renata Salinas Fierros spent their first moments apart when one of them was wheeled to another room late Wednesday so plastic surgeons could...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Alarmed by the relentless rise of anti-Americanism around the world, a business-backed group is trying to change the behavior that spawned an enduring stereotype of Americans abroad -- loud, arrogant, ill-dressed, ill-mannered and lacking respect for other cultures. For many years, much of the rest of the world distinguished between the United States and the American people. Americans tended to get better ratings than their country and its policies. But recent surveys show that favorable perceptions of Americans have been shrinking while views on the world's only superpower grow increasingly hostile. Enter Business for Diplomatic Action Inc....

An elderly woman has been killed in South Africa in a bush fire raging out of control on Cape Town's landmark Table Mountain. The flames are being fanned by strong winds. Thick smoke has engulfed the centre of the city as the fire spreads rapidly across the lower slopes. Firefighters are struggling to contain the blaze and a number of hikers are trapped on nearby Signal Hill.

Tourists queue for disaster trips in the ruins of New Orleans By Alec Russell (Filed: 07/01/2006) Every morning Isabelle Cossart sets off in her white minibus to pick up tourists from their hotels to take them on a tour of the Big Easy and its swampy surroundings. She has followed the same routine for 27 years. But in recent weeks her guests have headed into more controversial territory as they bump around an area that is not mentioned on any of the city's tourist maps: the Lower 9th Ward, the mainly black and poor neighbourhood that was all but levelled...

In a small corner of the world rocked by Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of people got to see the world differently now. They see it through a camera lens or a car window, up close for the first time. In a city fighting to preserve one of its top industries, Lakeview has become a new destination for tourists in New Orleans. It seems to be a pilgrimage for many to go to the hardest hit areas. Some hope all the attention brings help. "This is heart-wrenching is what it is; to actually see it for yourself in three dimensions,” said Morgan...

NEW ORLEANS (Reuters) - Visitors to New Orleans who once toured the graceful mansions of its Garden District or learned the history of its Mississippi River plantations have a new attraction: The Hurricane Katrina disaster tour. Gray Line New Orleans will begin on January 4 a "Hurricane Katrina Tour - America's Worst Catastrophe!" to show the ruin that befell the city when the storm hit on August 29, breaching a faulty system of river levees and flooding 80 percent of its neighborhoods. Gray Line New Orleans normally organizes trips through the city's historic districts as well as its swamps and...

ARAB RACISM & ISLAMIC JIHAD!!! Are Militant Muslims DECAPITATING Tourists in S. Philippines? IT'S ARAB MUSLIM FANATICS' RACISM + JIHAD!!! Did Sadistic Saddam attack Arab Kuwaiti 'brothers' tortured them horrifically? IT'S ARAB MUSLIM FANATICS' RACISM + JIHAD!!! Did Sadistic Saddam BUTCHER/GASSED/TORTURED HIS OWN PEOPLE? IT'S ARAB MUSLIM FANATICS' RACISM + JIHAD!!! Do Arab Muslim Militant Hamas/Islamic-Jihad/other 'Palestinian' Militants (& often Fatah - connected to the official 'Palestinian' authority) TARGET BABIES, (not as the West targets terrorists) Yes or no? IT'S ARAB MUSLIM FANATICS' RACISM + JIHAD!!! Did Arab Islamists attack French subways? (1985) IT'S ARAB MUSLIM FANATICS' RACISM +...

MIAMI -- Opponents of a new Florida gun law are taking their protest to the skies. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, named after former President Ronald Reagan's White House Press Secretary Jim Brady, is handing out fliers at Miami International Airport in opposition to the new "No Retreat Law" that allows Floridians to meet force with force to prevent death or bodily harm in public places. The Washington-based Brady Campaign group is targeting tourists with fliers that advise them not to "argue unnecessarily with local people." They have also distributed the fliers at Orlando International Airport. Supporters of...

There are hardly any souls in this country who want to believe their eyes when they glance at the faces of the refugees that Hurricane Katrina left behind to fend for themselves in the once-great city of New Orleans. To see some of America's poorest residents, virtually all of them African American, scrap and fight for food, for water and for survival, only confirmed for many people that race and class divisions affect every portion of our nation's culture -- right down to providing emergency relief for people whose lives hang in the balance. And while officials in Washington, D.C.,...

One day after NASA brought the shuttle Discovery back from low Earth orbit, a private company plans to announce a more audacious venture, a tourist trip around the Moon. Space Adventures, a company based in Arlington, Va., has already sent two tourists into orbit. Today, it is to unveil an agreement with Russian space officials to send two passengers on a voyage lasting 10 to 21 days, depending partly on its itinerary and whether it includes the International Space Station. A roundtrip ticket will cost $100 million. The space-faring tourists will travel with a Russian pilot. They will steer clear...

AN ISRAELI cruise liner was diverted from Turkey to Larnaca port yesterday, again amid security concerns, Cypriot authorities have confirmed. Meanwhile Israel’s Counter-Terrorism Office issued a travel warning, urging Israelis to refrain from visiting the southern coast of Turkey, between Alanya and Kemer, due to "concrete terrorist threat". The strip includes the city of Antalya, which is very popular among Israeli tourists. The precise nature of the threat was not made known. The Mirage 1, with 650 people on board, sailed into Larnaca early in the morning, after being ordered overnight by Israel’s Transportation Ministry to stay away from Alanya...

Call it the terrorists' War on Tourism -- a war waged by jihadists that long predates 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq. Last week's terror attacks on Egypt's Sharm el-Sheikh resorts left nearly 90 dead. The attacks also sent an economic and political shockwave throughout the rest of Egypt. Jihadist terrorists wage a war to create and maintain poverty. In Egypt, damaging the tourist industry does just that. Tourists climbing the Pyramids, sailing on the Nile and sipping coffee in Cairo are a source of very good jobs. In 1992, the jihadists launched an "insurrection" against the Egyptian government, and the tourist...

Two Britons reported dead in resort atrocity as tourists flee Egypt fearing fresh wave of attacks By Hugh Miles in Sharm el-Sheikh and Colin Freeman (Filed: 24/07/2005) Hundreds of British tourists fled Egypt last night, fearing fresh terrorist attacks after three bombs ripped through the popular Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Hospital officials said that two Britons were among 88 dead, though last night the Foreign Office confirmed only that two men were missing. The market place in Sharm el-Sheikh after the blast A further eight Britons were among the 120 wounded, including a 14-year-old girl and a 30-year-old...

TEHRAN, July 22 (MNA) -- The deputy director of the Qeshm Free Trade Zone Organization said on Thursday that a tourist and recreational complex for non-Muslims will be established on the Persian Gulf island of Qeshm. Islamic law and some restrictions will not be enforced at the tourist complex, Ali-Akbar Einollahi told the Persian service of the Cultural Heritage News (CHN) agency. He said that an agency named Marina, owned by an Iranian Christian woman, has obtained a license for the complex and a beach to be shared by men and women, which would be the first of its kind...

DUBAI — In coordination with the consulates, Dubai Police are seeking the cooperation and adherence of tourists in preserving and maintaining the norms of the country especially those that violate the very fabric of society such as expressing intimate feelings in the public places which is punishable by the country’s law. Lieutenant-Colonel Mohammed Rashid bin Seray, Director of the Tourist Security of the General Department of Criminal Investigation, told Khaleej Times that the force represented in the department is working towards building “clean tourism” and devising ways to imbibe inner respect in tourists for the country’s values and norms. “We...

Visitors should be aware of their surroundings at all times, even when in areas generally considered safe. Women traveling alone are especially vulnerable and should exercise caution, particularly at night. Armed street crime is a serious problem in all of the major cities. Some bars and nightclubs, especially in resort cities such as Cancun, Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan, and Acapulco, can be havens for drug dealers and petty criminals. Some establishments may contaminate or drug drinks to gain control over the patron. Victims, who are almost always unaccompanied, have been raped, robbed of personal property, or abducted and then held...

A bomb blast and gun attack in popular tourist areas of the Egyptian capital Cairo have left two people dead and at least 10 injured, including foreigners. The interior ministry said a wanted militant who was being pursued by police had detonated explosives in the city centre, killing himself. In a separate attack, two women opened fire on a tourist bus in a historic part of the city. One of the veiled attackers was then shot dead by the security forces. And reports are coming in of a third attack in the city. The BBC's Paul Wood, in Cairo, says...

Stickers ban free sex on tourist island BANGKOK, Apr 29 (TNA) - Tourists arriving on Thailand's southern resort island of Pha-ngan are to be issued with stickers stating the island's ban on 'free sex', following government concern over visitors having sexual intercourse in public places.The decision follows pleas by Khon Kaen Senator Rabiabrat Pongpanit to prevent tourists on the island having sex in public after the island's notorious Full Moon parties.Today Mr. Pramoth Supyen, Director of the Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT)'s Southern Office Region 5, warned that although it would be difficult to ban the parties, which were...

Jan 20, 2005 - FreeMarketNews.comby staff reportsDavid H. Smith, Newsbriefs Correspondent ZIMBABWE WANTS FAT AMERICAN TOURISTS TO WORK OFF POUNDS ON PLANTATIONS FreeMarketNews.Com, Jan. 20, 2005 - Zimbabwe is lurching toward another in a series of domestic crises it has endured over the years, under the despotic rule of Robert Mugabe. Inflation is currently running at around 150%, interest rates exceed 100% and unemployment is over 70%. Even the IMF has refused to lend more money to the endless financial sink that this once economically vibrant and self-sustaining nation has become. In an interview with Zimbabwe Independent, President Mugabe presented...

PATONG, Thailand (AFP) - A second surge of tsunami terror is hitting southern Thailand, but this time it is a wave of foreign ghosts terrifying locals in what health experts described as an outpouring of delayed mass trauma. AFP Photo AP Photo Slideshow: Asian Tsunami Disaster Tales of ghost sightings in the six worst hit southern provinces have become endemic, with many locals saying they are too terrified to venture near the beach or into the ocean. Spooked volunteer body searchers on the resort areas of Phi Phi island and Khao Lak are reported to have looked for tourists heard...

Tourists run for their lives as the first of six tsunamis starts to roll towards Hat Rai Lay Beach, near Krabi in southern Thailand. One woman runs towards the waves. Photo: AFP The woman continues to run as the wave advances.Photo: AFP With the waves engulfing boats, the woman makes contact with her group. It is not known if they survived.Photo: AFP

‘Water started to go funny,’ 10-year-old recalls LONDON - A 10-year-old British girl saved 100 other tourists from the Asian tsunami having warned them a giant mass of water was on its way after learning about the phenomenon weeks earlier at school, a newspaper reported. “I was on the beach and the water started to go funny,” Tilly Smith told the Sun at the weekend from Phuket, Thailand. “There were bubbles and the tide went out all of a sudden. I recognized what was happening and had a feeling there was going to be a tsunami. I told mummy.”While...

PHUKET, Thailand - While volunteers struggled to collect bodies washing up on the once-pristine beaches of this upscale resort isle, ghoulish tourists rolled out their towels yesterday, doffed their bikini tops and vacationed like nothing had happened. On Patong Beach and Kata Beach - where hundreds died or disappeared four days ago - the smell of suntan lotion wafted from the shore as a new influx of tourists determinedly ignored the carnage around them, frolicking in the surf or reading under umbrellas. An indignant Russian who arrived at the Novotel Phuket Resort on the day after the tsunami loudly complained...

It seems almost impossible.Just days after the tidal wave disaster, one of the devestated beaches was returning to normal yesterday.On Sunday, Patong Beach was hit by a wall of water that swept into Phuket, claiming at least 120 lives.Parasols, chairs, and other beach paraphernalia were swept to the top of the tree-lined beach, dragging helpless holidaymakers with them. It was at this beach that six-month-old Melina Heppel, of Perth, disappeared from her father's arms when the huge wave struck.For some tourists yesterday, however, the tragedy was bedoming a memory, albiet a vivid one, as they made the most of the...

What happened to the rare tribes? SANJAY DUTTA & CHANDRIKA MAGO TUESDAY, DECEMBER 28, 2004 11:19:06 PM NEW DELHI: An enormous anthropological disaster is in the making. The killer tsunami is feared to have wiped out entire tribes — already threatened by their precariously small numbers — perhaps rendering them extinct and snapping the slender tie with a lost generation. Officials involved in rescue operations are pessimistic, but still keeping their fingers crossed for the Sentinelese and Nicobarese, the two tribes seen as bearing the brunt of the killer wave. The bigger fear is for the Sentinelese, anthropologically the most...

Last Updated: Tuesday, 28 December, 2004, 17:17 GMT E-mail this to a friend Printable version Kohl rescued as Swedes fear worst Helmut Kohl was airlifted from the roof of his flooded hotel Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl was among thousands of foreign tourists caught in the tsunami disaster in southern Asia. Britons, Swiss, French, Australians, Danes, Italians, Japanese and Americans in the region were hit, but Swedes seem to be among the worst affected. Sweden's foreign minister said 1,500 were still missing, mainly in Thailand, and she feared many would not be found. Sri Lanka says its troops airlifted Mr...

Tourists venturing atop the Empire State Building have been disturbed to see horrible images of Sept. 11 greeting them in the gift shop. Two 9/11 tribute booklets adorn the top of the display stand, where news magazines and entertainment periodicals are stocked. The color pictures on the covers of the booklets show the Twin Towers engulfed in flames. There are terrified people running from the scene, and one shot actually captures the second plane plowing into the South Tower. "It's disturbing," said Alma Sanguinetti, 70, who was visiting from San Francisco.

However, the government said two thirds of the capital was under about four feet (1.2 meters) of water in some areas. About a third of the country’s 330,000 population live in the highly congested capital island. Maldives is a cluster of 1,192 tiny coral islands scattered some 800 kilometres (500 miles) across the equator and is vulnerable to any rise in sea levels. The fate of tens of thousands of tourists in the Maldives was not immediately known.

An organization called Global Exchange, based in San Francisco, promotes political tourism to Venezuela, defined in its brochure as a country where "winds of change are blowing." The introduction to the sales pitch is full of praise for the strongman Hugo Chávez, while all references and links recommended to those who might be interested are those known to be shameless propaganda appendices of the Venezuelan regime: Venezuelanalysis.com, VHeadline.com and such. Chávez's agenda, reads the brochure: "includes fighting corruption, redistributing national wealth and opposing the Free Trade Area of the Americas." My laughing aloud gave way to indignation when the brochure...

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