ABBA museum to open in Sweden
Boston.com
A traveling ABBA exhibit is to get a permanent home in a new museum dedicated mostly to the Swedish quartet that has sold nearly 400 million records since its heyday in the 1970s.
Former band member Bjoern Ulvaeus said Wednesday that ‘‘ABBA The Museum’’ will be part of a Swedish music hall of fame to be inaugurated in Stockholm next spring.
The museum will feature some of the band’s glitzy stage costumes, instruments and other mementos that were displayed in the ABBAWORLD exhibition that toured Europe and Australia in 2009-2011.
Israel says armed Syrians approach Golan Heights, tourist site closed
Washington Post
Dozens of armed men gathered on the Syrian side of the cease-fire line in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights Wednesday, prompting authorities to close a tourist site as a precaution, the Israeli military said.
An Israeli spokesman said it was unclear what the armed Syrians were doing. He said there was no violence or attempts to cross the border. He spoke on condition of anonymity under military rules.
Marriott Beats Estimates as High-End Hotel Demand Climbs
Businessweek
Marriott International Inc. (MAR), the largest publicly traded U.S. hotel chain, reported earnings that beat estimates after demand for high-end brands increased and costs from a spun-off timeshare business went unrepeated.
Net income totaled $143 million, or 44 cents a share, compared with a loss of $179 million, or 52 cents, a year earlier, the Bethesda, Maryland-based company said today in a statement. The year-earlier results included $324 million of pretax impairment costs at Marriott’s timeshare business, which was spun off in November 2011. Earnings were higher than the 40- cent average estimate of 13 analysts in a Bloomberg survey.
U.S. airlines in no rush to allow in-flight cellphone use
LA Times
Craig Patton, a Denver resident who recently flew to Southern California, said he doesn’t mind the ban on cellphone calls on planes.
“I’m not addicted to my cellphone,” he said. “I can go two or three hours without texting or talking on the phone. I’m old school.”
Without demand from passengers, U.S. airline representatives say they won’t press federal officials to allow cellphone calls on domestic flights.
“Right now our focus is on what customers say they want, and that is in-flight Wi-Fi,” said Brad Hawkins, a spokesman for Southwest Airlines, the nation’s most popular domestic carrier.
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