Mexico woos tourists as US warns of violence
The Seattle Times
Mexican President Felipe Calderón is touting 2011 as the year of tourism, and the Mexico Tourism Board is spending millions of dollars on ads.
Yet the nation’s deadly drug wars have led the U.S. government to widen its travel warnings in recent weeks, throwing a wrench into Mexico’s effort to attract foreign visitors.
Nearly half of all available rooms in 70 major resort centers in Mexico have been vacant this year, except for the Easter crowd that nearly filled the hotels for a few days over the holiday weekend, according to the tourism board.
Fears of air travel chaos as Iceland volcano erupts
Global Post
A volcano in Iceland has erupted, shutting down the country’s airspace Sunday a year after the eruption of the Eyjafjoell volcano caused aviation chaos across Europe.
Grimsvoetn, located at the heart of Iceland’s biggest glacier, Vatnajoekull, began erupting late Saturday, sending a plume of smoke and ash as high as 12 miles into the sky.
A spokeswoman for Iceland’s airport administration, Isavia, said the airspace closure “affects pretty much all of Iceland right now, at least for the next hours… Flights to and from Iceland are shutting down,” Agence France-Presse reports.
Egypt Is ‘Disintegrating’ as Tourism Drop Cripples Economy
Bloomberg
Egypt is disintegrating socially and its economy “is bust,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, the former director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and possible candidate for the Egyptian presidency.
“Right now, socially, we are disintegrating,” ElBaradei said on CNN’s “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” scheduled to air today. “Economically we are not in the best state. Politically it’s — it’s like a black hole. We do not know where we are heading.”
ElBaradei said many Egyptians don’t feel secure as the country struggles to create a new government after former president Hosni Mubarak was forced from power by protests earlier this year.
Southwest Airlines Tells Another Passenger She is Too Fat to Fly
International Business Times
During an Easter Sunday layover in Dallas, a woman was told by an employee of Southwest Airlines that she was “too fat to fly.” Kenlie Tiggeman, a blogger and political strategist, has already lost 120 pounds, but still didn’t meet the requirements under Southwest’s “Customers of Size” policy. The airline does not allow passengers to board who can’t fit between the 17-inch armrests, unless they buy a second seat.
While the airline says that it’s their policy to speak to overweight passengers in a discrete manner, Tiggeman says she was confronted in front of about 100 people.
“I know that I have a lot of weight to lose but I am definitely not too fat to fly,” says Tiggeman. “I do it all the time, domestically and internationally, and I have never had anyone approach me and particularly in the way that they did. I was embarrassed, humiliated.”
A supervisor eventually took charge and gave Tiggeman, and her mother who was traveling with her, vouchers and an apology. No extra seats had to be purchased.
