Google to buy Frommer’s travel guides
Los Angeles Times
Google Inc. has set its sights on the travel industry.
Looking to attract more advertising dollars, Google said Monday that it would buy Frommer’s travel guides from publishing house John Wiley & Sons Inc. for an undisclosed amount.
The proposed purchase would be Google’s second major entry into the travel information business. Last September it bought Zagat, a well-known restaurant guide. With the acquisition of Frommer’s, another marquee name in travel, Google moves closer to its goal of providing critiques of every hotel, restaurant and hot spot on Earth.
Tourism boom threatens China’s heritage sites
CNN
In a quiet corner of southern China’s Pearl River Delta, hundreds of abandoned watchtowers dot a landscape of water-logged rice paddies, lush bamboo groves and ancient villages.
Bristling with battlements and turrets, the ornate towers were built by families and villages in need of protection during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when much of the country was controlled by warlords and banditry was rife.
Now a UNESCO world heritage site, these days the Kaiping watchtowers, or diaolou as they are known locally, face a threat of a different nature — the incredible boom in Chinese tourism.
Tourist arrested after taking Auschwitz ‘souvenir’
Sydney Morning Herald
A 66-year-old Italian was held at Poland’s Krakow airport after being found with barbed wire from the former Nazi death camp Auschwitz, where his father had reportedly died, police said Sunday.
“The man was arrested on Saturday. He told the police that he wanted a souvenir from Auschwitz because his father died in the camp,” Krakow police spokesman Mariusz Ciarka said.
The man had 30 centimetres of barbed wire. Police said was later freed “after he showed the police the place from where he picked up the piece of barbed wire. It was not from a protected site,” Ciarka said.
“There was therefore no offence committed,” he added.
Maldives plans a floating tourist paradise
Fox News
Designers have revealed plans for a tourist paradise in the Maldives made up of floating islands that will include hotels, a convention center, a yacht club and a floating golf course.
The Daily Mail reports that the floating 18-hole state-of-the-art golf course and conference center complex will resemble a starfish from above and will be built within circular reefs where guests can dive right from the beach.
The futuristic designs are part of a massive plan to replace the sinking Maldives –which is made up of 1,192 islands in the Indian Ocean — and includes an underwater club house and a system of tunnels that will connect a network of article islands.
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