This Week's Travel News: News you need to know

By Bruce Parkinson, Takeoffeh.com - Monday, May 3, 2010 at 3:00 PM - 5 Comments

Plastic Only Please: Air Canada Moving To Cashless Cabin
As of May 1 passengers will need a credit card for on-board purchases on Air Canada including food, alcoholic drinks, headphones and duty-free items. The airline is moving to a cashless cabin and debit cards won’t be among the options. For both the airline and its flight attendants it is good news. Retired Air Canada flight attendant Alexandra Ludgate says handling cash was one of the most time consuming parts of the job. “Running back and forth for change and waiting for passengers to rummage through their wallets was really impractical.” Passengers will also have the ability to purchase vouchers before boarding a flight. However, vouchers are only available online and will also require a credit card for purchase. Reacting to the news on TakeOffeh sister site OpenJaw.com, one travel industry member wrote: “While I agree going cashless cabins will make things more efficient, it seems to me that they might have also included debit cards. The transaction takes about the same time, and some people may not have a card or wish to use a credit card on board.” WestJet says it is considering a similar move but has not yet made a decision.

You Have The Right To Remain Prone On A Sun Lounger
It’s not enough that Europeans get weeks and weeks of paid vacation every year. Or that whole countries slap up a ‘Closed’ sign for the month of August. Get ready to go green with envy, my vacation-deprived North American friends, for the worst is yet to come: The EU has declared that vacations are a human right and plans to subsidize holidays for those who can’t afford it. “Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life,” EU commissioner Antonio Tajani said recently. Under Tajani’s plan, taxpayers would foot up to 30 per cent of the travel bill. Expected to cost hundreds of millions of Euros, the plan will be open to pensioners, young people between 18 and 25, disabled people, and families facing “difficult social, financial or personal” circumstances. No doubt you can find one of those categories to apply to you, but there is little hope North American government will subsidize our annual pilgrimages to a swim-up bar.

Lots Of Car Rental Brands, Few Car Rental Companies
If anyone’s keeping score, Avis and Budget are one company, National, Enterprise and Alamo are owned by the same group and now Hertz has swallowed up Dollar Thrifty, which was already a dual-brand car rental company. With all the car rental brands out there, there are surprisingly few car rental companies. The announcement of Hertz’s $1.2-billion Dollar Thrifty purchase raises fears that rental prices will climb even further —  after a year in which they reached historic highs. Chris Brown, executive editor of Auto Rental News, told CNN: “We’re in an era of higher-priced car rentals and that era is probably going to stay in place for a while. I’m not sure that Hertz buying Dollar Thrifty [will be] a driver of a rate increase.” Insiders say that the main cause of higher prices is tighter lending, which means car rental companies can’t buy as many cars.

Will The Next Cancun Please Stand Up
You may have never heard of the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, but odds are you will soon. Like Cancun, Loreto, Huatulco, Ixtapa and Los Cabos, the coastal region of Mexico’s sixth-largest state is going to be another of the country’s “Integrally Planned Centers” — in other words, a massive new resort area. Located on the Gulf Coast with Texas as its northern border, Tamaulipas will be home to ‘Megaproject Costa Lora,’ which in its first stage will be home to 6,900 hotel rooms and 11,500 condominiums and tourist villas. The federal government, through tourism arm Fonatur, has agreed to fund up to 90 percent of the $5.5 billion project. Despite its well-publicized drug war and last year’s struggles with swine flu, Mexico is one of the world’s leading destinations, and continues to build a tourism product highly regarded for quality and value. Here’s an idea of the scale of the new project: it begins with the provision of basic services followed by the development of golf courses and water sports facilities, a central marina, a residential area with housing for 150,000 and a new international airport. No doubt there’s a Senor Frog’s in there somewhere too.

By: Bruce Parkinson
Bruce Parkinson is a travel industry journalist and regular contributor to Takeoffeh.com as well as sister company, OpenJaw.com

Photo Credits: aircanada.com, cdwheatley, tourbymexico.com



It takes a village to raise an idiot, He did it for the kids and Bad times for burkas

By macleans.ca - Friday, February 12, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

It takes a village to raise an idiot
Jacques Rogge and the rest of the executive board of the International Olympic Committee have relented and will allow the Australian International Olympic Committee to fly its iconic “boxing kangaroo” flag from a balcony of the Vancouver Olympic Village. The flag was ordered removed because the IOC bans unauthorized commercial symbols, and the cartoon ’roo is trademarked, albeit only to the Australian Olympic Committee. The dispute fired up Aussies everywhere. Deputy PM Julia Gillard called it a “scandal.” Vancouver radio phone-in callers raged at the IOC’s bully tactics. IOC spokesman Mark Adams called the issue “a storm in a teacup.” Meantime, athletes are streaming to the Oz sector of the village for a photo with the giant ’roo.

He did it for the kids
It was death in the afternoon for any bull that Jairo Miguel Sànchez Alonso faced Saturday at an arena in southwest Spain. The 16-year-old killed six bulls without mussing his sparkly white suit of lights. He returned to Spain after several years apprenticing in Mexico, where there is no minimum age for fighters. He almost died there in 2007 when a bull gored him. Alonso holds no grudges. “I feel quite bad when the bull has been good and you see the expression on his face, the innocence,” he says. “He has given you his bravery.” The event, while bloody, had a softer side. It was a fundraiser for children with autism.

Bad times for burkas
French Prime Minister François Fillon announced this week he’ll deny citizenship to a Moroccan national who forces his French-born wife to wear a burka. “If this man does not want to change his attitude, he has no place in our country,” he said. Meantime, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s call for a law banning full burkas is gaining steam. He has declared the full veil and body covering “not welcome” in France, and inconsistent with the country’s values. It’s certainly not welcome in Paris post offices. Two burka-clad robbers walked into a post office in the Paris suburb of Athis Mons, an area with a large immigrant Muslim population. They pulled out handguns and stole the equivalent of $6,000.

Blades of glory
Germany’s Katarina Witt and Canada’s Elizabeth Manley met on the ice in Vancouver Sunday, 22 years after the Teutonic bombshell and Canada’s sweetheart squared off in Calgary during the 1988 Olympics. Witt won gold but Manley, under enormous home-country pressure, pulled off the skate of her life to finish second. Both women are doing television colour commentary in Vancouver, but they took a turn on the Robson Square ice rink with young members of the Coquitlam Skating Club. “We’re not here for a rematch,” joked Manley, 44. “Not at our age, I’m 20—plus tax.” Replied a razor-sharp Witt: “Oh, my God! How much are taxes here?”

Tea time in Tennessee
Cranky country singer and musical comedian Ray Stevens’s flagging career was ready for a death panel. Then the 71-year-old singer of such novelty hits as Ahab the A-rab and Gitarzan wrote We the People, a lighthearted attack on President Barack Obama’s health care initiative. The video, which shows Stevens strumming a bathroom plunger and singing, “You vote Obamacare, we’re gonna vote you outta there,” is a YouTube hit and an unofficial anthem of the ultra-conservative Tea Party movement. Stevens sang at the group’s convention in Nashville on the weekend, where Sarah Palin raised eyebrows with her $100,000 fee for giving the keynote speech. “That’s a lot of damned tea,” grumbled one delegate.

Do as I say, not as I…ahh-choo!
As deputy health minister for the Czech Republic, Michael Vit has the job of deciding whether to impose mandatory swine flu vaccinations on “all people indispensable for the functioning of the country.” The day after receiving the assignment, Vit came down with H1N1 himself. “I have muscle problems, a headache, simply all symptoms of the flu,” he said. The deputy health minister admitted he had yet to receive the vaccination. “As you see, I’m a living example.”

‘Funeral’ for friends, and strangers
Canadian orchestral rockers Arcade Fire made it to the Super Bowl last weekend, when the group’s stirring anthem Wake Up, from their hit CD Funeral, was used in a series of NFL promo ads. While the group is protective of licensing its music, they had their reasons in this case. They turned over the fat licensing fee to Partners in Health, an agency with deep roots in Haiti. Band member Régine Chassagne’s family came from the island. She expressed her grief in an article in Britain’s Guardian newspaper: “I am mourning people I know. People I don’t know. People who are still trapped under rubble and won’t be rescued in time.”

Broom versus stick
Icy, obsessed with winning and not above the occasional cheap shot. Yes, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and hockey are a match made in heaven. Hockey is “deeply reflective of the character of the nation,” he explained in a pre-Olympic interview with Sports Illustrated. Harper, who has studied the origins of the sport, said it contributes to “a uniquely Canadian sense of belonging in a community across the country.” Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff waxes poetic about a different sport: curling. Naturally, he identifies with the skip. “It’s the leadership and the precision, and the quiet,” he told the Globe and Mail. Apparently he’s not the sort of skip who shouts unseemly commands like, “Hurry, hurry hard.”

Very, very teed off
A Kelowna, B.C., entrepreneur is cashing in on Tiger Woods’s extramarital mayhem. Mike Caldwell has produced the Mistress Collection, a boxed set of 12 golf balls, each bearing a portrait of one of Woods’s mistresses. “He likes to play a round with them…and now you can, too!” notes his website, tailofthetiger.com. Caldwell says he sold 1,500 sets at US$54.90 in the first six days. Less than impressed is Joslyn James, an adult film star and alleged Woods mistress. She called a news conference to denounce the balls as hurtful and in bad taste. “It bothered me to think that someone would be standing with a dangerous club in their hands hitting a ball with my photo on it,” she said. She then showed her sensitive side by releasing 100 tawdry text messages she said she received from Woods.

You don’t want a visit by Oscar
Oscar the cat has a near infallible ability to detect which of the patients in the Steere House Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in Providence, R.I., is next to die, says Dr. David Dosa, a geriatrician. When Oscar curls up with a patient, staff know to phone the next of kin. “It’s like he’s on a vigil,” says Dosa. Such insight would come as no surprise to cat owners, who are themselves terribly smart. Certainly smarter than dog owners, according to a study by Dr. Jane Murray at the University of Bristol. Winston Churchill was a cat lover. Paris Hilton loves dogs. Want more proof? Cat owners (if anyone really owns a cat) are 1.36 times more likely than dog owners to hold a university degree. They’re also 100 per cent less likely to have to follow behind their pet and scoop droppings off the sidewalk.

Gay but not cheerful
The headline in the Seattle Weekly says it all: “Gay, mentally challenged biracial male cheerleader claims discrimination.” All that high school student Benjamin Grundy wants is to shake his pom-poms like the girls on the squad at Garfield-Palouse High School in tiny Palouse, Wash. Instead, the cheer coach suggested he’d make a great mascot. He was eventually given a cheerleader’s top but denied the rest of the uniform, pom-poms, and the right to join the dance routine. “I was reduced to standing there and moving my arms,” he says. The school board denies discrimination, but Benjamin’s mother, Suzanne Grundy, is pressing the case with the ACLU and her congressman. “The combination of a biracial, mentally challenged gay male may be too much for them,” she told the local TV station.

L’état c’est moi
Quebec’s Lieutenant-Governor Pierre Duchesne has revived a tradition that ended 44 years ago—awarding medals, in gold, silver and bronze, and bearing his coat of arms, to those making contributions to their communities. The practice of awarding such medals ended in 1966 after Quebec nationalists condemned the symbolic tie with the monarchy. Duchesne has no such qualms: he also invoked royal privilege to avoid testifying before a national assembly committee on how he spends some $1 million annually in taxpayer money. His refusal to testify was condemned by all sides of the legislature.

Disharmony in the house of Wang
It was Hong Kong feng shui master Tony Chan’s skills in arranging buildings to create a positive life force that drew Chan to the eccentric, pigtailed property magnate Nina Wang. He began a 15-year affair with Wang, 23 years his senior. Now, he’s accused of arranging her $4-billion fortune in a manner auspicious to himself. When she died at 69 in 2007, he claimed to be her sole heir. Her family contested the will, and he’s charged with forgery.

She also has a Ph.D. in thankless tasks
Leila Ghannam, a former Palestinian intelligence officer, is the first woman governor of Ramallah, the unofficial capital of the West Bank. Her challenge is to quash a resurgence by hard-liners in Hamas. “My intelligence experience, like my degree in psychology, helps me carry out my job,” she says.

In Mexico, a new murder mystery

By Tom Henheffer - Thursday, October 1, 2009 at 5:40 PM - 9 Comments

Renee Wathelet quit her job as an investment counsellor and moved to the island paradise of her dreams—Isla Mujeres, Mexico—last May. Every morning, she would sit on the sandy beach, listening to waves and thinking about her friends back home in Montreal. It was exactly how the 60-year-old grandmother wanted to spend her twilight years.

Last week, she was found dead in her condo, her throat slit and her body stabbed multiple times. Continue…

'I don’t feel qualified to intervene in the debate'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 10, 2009 at 9:26 PM - 51 Comments

The Prime Minister sat down with ABC’s Jake Tapper today for a chat about continental relations, trade and health care.

Most interesting might be the exchange on health care, during which Stephen Harper proved rarely reticent. That portion of the conversation after the jump.

Those interested in what Stephen Harper might say if Stephen Harper had something to say about wait times in Canada might consult his party’s 2006 election platform. A report this June from the Wait Times Alliance—entitled Unfinished Business—noted slight improvement from 2004.

Continue…

Our bad

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, August 9, 2009 at 11:00 PM - 35 Comments

The Prime Minister gives Mexico the It’s-Not-You-It’s-Me treatment.

“This is not the fault of the government of Mexico – let me be very clear about this,” Mr. Harper told reporters, explaining his mid-July decision to clamp down on soaring bogus refugee claims from Mexico by requiring Mexicans to obtain visas before entering Canada. “This is a problem in Canadian refugee law which encourages bogus claims.”

This week in citizenship

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 31, 2009 at 9:17 PM - 10 Comments

Paul Koring, July 24. Abousfian Abdelrazik, the Canadian citizen whose reputation remains tainted by ministerial accusations, wants his name restored and those Canadian security agents who aided his imprisonment in Sudan brought to justice … But the Harper government made it clear yesterday that Mr. Abdelrazik couldn’t expect any support in his efforts to remove his name from the UN list. Foreign Minster Lawrence Cannon, in a letter delivered yesterday, told Mr. Abdelrazik to check out a UN website that explains delisting procedures for individuals. “I regret to inform you that I must decline your invitation to meet,” the minister wrote.

Michael Petrou, July 27. There is nothing in Foreign Affairs’ response to indicate that Canada considered using Vafaseresht’s information in a legal case against Mortazavi … And Canada might have had good information to suggest that Vafaseresht’s story is not credible. But I also spoke to Shahram Azam, a former doctor in Iran’s Defence Ministry, who examined Kazemi four days after her arrest and found extensive evidence of torture. Azam now lives in Canada and says he is willing to testify against Mortazavi. But he too says no one from the Canadian government has talked to him about Kazemi either. MacKay said Canada would do whatever it takes to bring Mortazavi to justice. This apparently doesn’t include talking to the doctor who examined Kazemi’s broken body.

Canadian Press, tonight. The Canadian government has also formally asked Brazilian authorities for “more information” about Gatti’s death … ”The government of Canada is seeking more information on the investigation into the death of its citizen, and on the findings of the investigation,” Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said in a statement Friday.

Week in Pictures: July 9th – July 15th, 2009

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 16, 2009 at 2:49 PM - 0 Comments

Dispelling myths about Mexico

By Doug McArthur, Takeoffeh.com - Tuesday, June 9, 2009 at 12:42 PM - 4 Comments

As Mexico launches a multimillion-dollar campaign to entice travellers back to its beaches, it is time for Canadians to confront the myths and misconceptions that tarnish the destination’s reputation.

Myth No. 1 There is a high risk of catching swine flu in Mexico.

The facts: Authorities in Canada, the U.S. and Britain have withdrawn their travel warnings, but only after they devastated Mexico’s tourism industry. The World Health Organization opposed such advisories from the start, arguing that sealing borders does nothing to contain a virus.

The original H1N1 flu cases were in Mexico City, not at resorts. Mexican officials reported recently that new cases in Mexico City were petering out, that 89 per cent of municipalities are flu free, and that no cases had been reported at beach resorts. In fact, the World Tourism Organization has cited Mexico’s moves to control the virus as a benchmark for other destinations.

While there were a number of deaths in Mexico early on, most travellers who brought the disease home had relatively mild cases. And, as of this week, the number of confirmed cases was higher in the United States (over 10,000) than in Mexico (over 4,000). Canada is third with over 1,000 reported cases. Continue…

Calderón's last stand

By Philippe Gohier - Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 3:00 PM - 1 Comment

Mexico could soon become the first North American country to fully legalize the possession of illegal drugs for personal consumption. A bill proposed by President Felipe Calderón and passed earlier this month by Mexico’s congress would make it legal to carry up to five grams of marijuana, a half-gram of cocaine, and small amounts of heroin and methamphetamine. It’s expected to be signed into law within days.

While efforts to loosen Mexico’s drug possession laws have proven controversial in the past, this latest attempt doesn’t represent a radical departure from Mexico’s current legislation. Mexican law currently allows for possession charges to be dropped if a person can prove they are an addict and the drugs found on them were for personal use. The new law simply drops the addiction requirement and sets out the maximum quantities permitted, effectively taking the arresting police officer’s judgment out of the equation.

Continue…

If you're going to get jailed abroad, it helps to be white

By Michael Petrou - Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 8:47 PM - 5 Comments

This story, about Canadians who are jailed in Haiti and ignored by Canadian politicians, is in the current print issue of Maclean’s.

Mexico’s civil war

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, November 27, 2008 at 10:30 AM - 3 Comments

Silver or lead? It is an offer that is difficult, if not impossible, to refuse for thousands of Mexican police, judges, and politicians tasked with confronting Mexico’s powerful drug cartels. The silver is bribe money. Lead is a bullet to the head—if the victim is lucky. The murders of uncooperative justice officials, and others who cross the cartels, have become increasingly gruesome of late. Beheadings are common.

For decades, during the 70 years that Mexico was effectively a one-party state run by the Institutional Revolutionary Party, a tacit understanding existed between drug cartels and members of all levels of government and state institutions that it was better to choose the silver. This does not mean that everyone from the president on down was on the take. But there was a pervasive lack of political will to confront the cartels, and when drug lords could count on politicians staying in office regardless of how many elections they might face, it made sense to seek mutually beneficial arrangements. Continue…

Divisoria Continental

By Andrew Potter - Monday, November 10, 2008 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

Item #38 on the Things To Read pile is Stephen Clarkson’s new book Does North America Exist?, a post-9/11 and post-NAFTA look at whether North America can be said to now “exist” in the same way that Europe exists — as a set of political and economic institutions that might provide the foundations for a new North American identity. 

Yet without even reading a word I think I can safely say that the answer to Clarkson’s titular question is No. I wrote something on this almost two years ago now for the magazine, lamenting the failure of something approximating a new North American identity to get an traction in this country – predictions of a new Here turned out to be far too premature.

To understand just how premature, consider this story – probably the single biggest non-Obama story to come out of the lower portions of this continent last week, and which has gone almost completely unremarked by the press or by our elected officials. Imagine if, say, a plane carrying Rob Nicholson or Stockwell Day were to crash into Rockliffe Park, killing a dozen or so government officials and more on the ground. And imagine if it happened against the backdrop of the government fighting a major domestic insurgency. That is, what if there was at least some reason to suspect they had been assassinated by criminal gangs. You’d think that this would be newsworthy to our NAFTA partners, no?

***

UPDATE: Reader Clarence S points out the Current did a show on this. Link here. 

BTC: What do you see?

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 31, 2008 at 5:51 PM - 11 Comments

This week’s asbestos thing is probably difficult to get excited about. A little lacking in relevance to your day-to-day life, what with your kids, your spouse, your job, those leaves that need to be raked, the flavoured tobacco your kids are smoking, Stephane Dion’s permanent tax on everything, Angelina Jolie’s marital status, the decline in the housing market, your retirement savings, international terrorism, the socialist who is about to be elected president of the United States, Madonna’s marital status, and the financial crisis that will ultimately leave your children with nothing to eat but flavoured tobacco already demanding so much of your attention.

So here’s another way to look at it. How you feel about asbestos defines how you feel about the fundamental human responsibilities of your government. It’s a political inkblot test. Continue…

Canada's soccer triumph. Well, sort of.

By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Thursday, October 16, 2008 at 11:38 AM - 0 Comments

Although most of you were probably watching the war of words unfold between John “I’d jump over this desk and punch you if I could” McCain and Barack “Smile big when feeling uncomfortable” Obama last night, Canada’s men’s national soccer team pulled off a mini miracle by tying Mexico in a World Cup qualifying game at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton before an embarrassingly pro-Mexico crowd. Unfortunately for our boys the result, an exciting 2-2 draw, does little to enhance our chances of participating in the biggest tournament in world as last weekend’s loss to Honduras snuffed out all hope of our advancement to the next stage. Nonetheless, a job well done.

Mexico’s new war on kidnappers

By Cameron Ainsworth-Vincze - Thursday, September 25, 2008 at 12:00 AM - 0 Comments

From the numerous reports of beheadings and execution-style murders, to the 40,000 soldiers deployed in 2006 to reduce the power of drug cartels, Mexico’s war on drugs has grabbed international headlines while becoming a national calamity. This year alone there have been an estimated 3,000 drug-related murders reported across the country, including the recent discovery of about a dozen headless bodies in the Yucatán Peninsula. Yet an equally sinister development has percolated to the surface and is now boiling over. Authorities have reported that a staggering 650 people have been abducted so far this year, a huge increase over the 430 reported in all of 2007. So worried and outraged are Mexicans over their safety that in late August hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in protest to encourage the government to do something, anything, to protect them.

In response, the Mexican government launched an anti-kidnapping squad consisting of some 300 officers working in five centres, and last week pledged $1 million to all 31 states and the federal district to set up specialized anti-kidnapping units. President Felipe Calderón has also urged congress to pass a bill that would send kidnappers to prison for life without parole, while the country’s national security council is mulling over the idea of erecting high-security prisons for kidnappers, along with standardizing anti-abduction laws.

But the problem may be far worse than it appears on the surface for a country that is second only to Colombia in the overall number of kidnappings reported every year. Human rights groups claim that up to two-thirds of all kidnappings in Mexico go unreported, and they accuse corrupt police officials of aiding criminals in the abductions. To make matters worse, some critics argue that the government’s crackdown on drug activities is the reason why kidnappings are soaring.