Chimp Study: Travel Makes You Smarter
Posted on 08/17/2016, 5:00 PM
Findings published last month in the journal eLife indicate that travel broadens the mind and makes you more innovative. A seven-year experiment in the field among 70 animals in Uganda by researchers at the University of Neuchâtel and the University of Geneva showed that chimpanzees—which share an immense amount of DNA in common with us—were far more likely to come up with creative solutions...
Senators Demand Answers from Delta, Southwest
Posted on 08/17/2016, 4:45 PM
In the past month alone, service on two major U.S. airlines ground to a halt because of computer glitches. Now, some Senators demand to know why the country's airlines are falling apart and can't cope with their self-created problems. “Now that four air carriers control approximately 85 percent of domestic capacity," they wrote jointly in a letter, "all it takes is one airline to experience ...
Best Hotel Loyalty Programs for 2016 Are Named
Posted on 08/17/2016, 4:00 AM
How easy it is to earn a free stay from a hotel chain? U.S. News has released its annual appraisal of the best and worst hotel loyalty programs—and the previous winner has been dethroned. The publication evaluated "18 leading programs using an unbiased methodology that analyzes network size, property diversity and the ease of earning a free night, among other factors" and came up with a l...
There's a New Low-Cost Shuttle in Texas
Posted on 08/17/2016, 4:00 AM
There's good budget travel news in Texas, one of the tricker American states for tourists to see without a rental car. Now rolling this week: Shofur, which is serves 12 daily routes between Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Waco. Like the low-cost bus services in the East (Bolt Bus, Megabus), the vehicles of Shofur have free on-board Wi-Fi, power outlets, and one-way fares that s...
New Alabama Memorial to Racist Lynchings
Posted on 08/17/2016, 4:00 AM
It's been a long road, but the state of Alabama will receive major acknowledgment of its role in some of America's most painful historical moments. Equal Justice Initiative, a Montgomery-based legal rights organization, unveiled formal plans for a six-acre complex overlooking the city that will include a national memorial, The Memorial to Peace and Justice. The design calls for a forest of 801 ...
Ticket to New Harry Potter Play Costs $10,768
Posted on 08/16/2016, 4:00 AM
London's newest tourist attraction is Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a two-part sequel to the Harry Potter books. Bizarrely for the most popular character franchise of all time, author J.K. Rowling, whose judgment is usually so unerring, decided it should first be not a film, which everyone can enjoy, but a play, which only 1,400 people at a time can see. Worse, the play is in two parts, re...
Rare Michael Jackson Icons Move to Vegas
Posted on 08/16/2016, 4:00 AM
Michael Jackson may be gone, but he has found new live as a tourist attraction. The Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas has convinced the estate of Michael Jackson to loan it some of its most important mementos to promote the Michael Jackson ONE show by Cirque du Soleil—its second Jackson-themed show, after its Immortal World Tour, to pack houses. The original, 10-foot-tall statue of...
This Hotel is in Two Countries at Once
Posted on 08/16/2016, 4:00 AM
The Hotel Arbez in the European village of La Cure is, bizarrely, located in two countries at once. Originally a grocery/pub, the building was bureaucratically cleaved in two when an 1862 border revision—everyone wanted the land because of the strategic importance of the nearby Vallee des Dappes—drew the line between France and Switzerland right through it. In 1921, it became a hotel. Now the...
Dubai Detains Tourist for Being Transgender
Posted on 08/15/2016, 4:00 AM
Canadian transgender YouTube personality Gigi Gorgeous says she was detained in Dubai's airport, interrogated for five hours, and summarily denied entry to the United Arab Emirates. An airport security agent in Dubai told her that he was informed that she was transgender, she says, and in a strong reminder that full North American freedoms cannot yet be exported to other parts of the world, ...
Using a Mobile Phone in Flight? That'll Be $7,500
Posted on 08/15/2016, 4:00 AM
China's not putting up with any more monkey business, do you hear? A draft amendment to the country's Civil Aviation Law calls for fines of up to 50,000 yuan (USD $7,535) for passengers who turn on their mobile phones or other electronic devices. The rules may have softened in the United States, where aircraft tends to be equipped with anti-interference systems, but in China, where ...
