New York #1 for Bed Bugs (Again)

KGO AM810: The Big Apple apparently has a few bugs in it.

A study just released by Terminix reveals that New York City leads the country in bed bug infestations for the second straight year. Experts aren't too surprised by the result, saying New York City is a heavily populated metropolis with well-publicized infestations everywhere, from apartment buildings to department stores to corporate offices.

Terminix reports there has been an increase in reported bed bug infestations in most states during the past year, mainly because consumers are more aware and on the lookout for the little buggers.

Here's the extermination company’s list of most bed bug-plagued cities, based on customer complaints validated by Terminix and infestations discovered during pest calls:

1. New York
2. Cincinnati
3. Detroit
4. Chicago
5. Philadelphia
6. Denver
7. Washington, D.C.
8. Los Angeles
9. Boston
10. San Francisco
11. Columbus, Ohio
12. Dayton, Ohio
13. Baltimore
14. Louisville, Kentucky
15. Dallas

U.S. Navy Kicks Off Fleet Week

Hundreds of sailors on nine vessels are sailing up the Hudson River today to begin the U.S. Navy's 24th annual "Fleet Week," New York City's week long tribute to honor America's Navy and Marine Corps.

The hightlight of this year's event will be a visit by the USS New York, an amphibious transport ship that was constructed using 7 1/2 tons of steel salvaged from the wreckage of the World Trade Center destroyed on September 11, 2001.

Fleet Week will end on Memorial Day with a military flyover honoring American service members who lost their lives in service to the country.

FAA Recommends Safety Seats for Children Under 2

ABC News: The Federal Aviation Administration recommended today that children weighing 40 pounds or less sit in FAA-approved child safety-seats when flying. "The safest place for a child on an airplane is in one of these seats, and not in the parent's lap," said FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt at a Washington, D.C., press conference. The Association of Flight Attendants also joined in the recommendation.

In addition to the air travel safety implications, the FAA flight safety suggestion also means added cost for families with children under two wishing to follow the recommendation. Current rules allow children under the age of two to fly for free if they sit on the lap of an adult passenger.

While the FAA says it is safest for children under the age of two to sit in their own seats, the administration is not making this a requirement because it argues that the extra cost may push families to drive to their destinations instead of flying. The FAA maintains that a child is safer on a plane, even if sitting on a lap, than in a car.

Orlando Tops NYC as Tourist Destination

Orlando Sentinel: Metro Orlando took a bite out of the Big Apple on Tuesday when the City Beautiful announced it had become the first U.S. travel destination to draw more than 50 million visitors in a single year.

With a record-breaking visitor tally of 51.5 million in 2010, Orlando easily beat New York City in the unofficial race to the 50 million mark. New York announced earlier this year that it was host last year to an estimated 48.7 million people, making it the only other U.S. city to approach the 50 million milestone.

"What great news to lead the entire nation," Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer said during a midday news conference. "Last year, everybody was still talking doom and gloom and [saying] it might be three or four years before the tourism economy comes back." Orlando's tourist-based economy rebounded faster than expected: Last year's visitor count was up 10.5 percent from 2009.

New York, which said it doesn't consider Orlando a rival, acknowledged the city's accomplishment Tuesday. "If these numbers are true for Orlando, I'm proud of them," said George Fertitta, chief executive officer of NYC & Co., New York's destination-marketing organization. "It's good for the entire travel industry."

New York set a goal back in 2007 to reach 50 million visitors by 2012, and Fertitta said that's now well within reach. In its official statement Tuesday, New York did take issue with Orlando's head count, noting that it includes visitors to areas outside city limits.

"Visit Orlando counts travelers to three counties and 36 different cities and towns in the greater Orlando area," Fertitta said. "That's almost like us counting pilgrims to Woodstock in New York City's total." Woodstock, however, is 105 miles — or a two-hour drive — from New York City, according to Mapquest.com, while Walt Disney World — which straddles two counties — is 16 miles, or 22 minutes by car, from downtown Orlando.

From Orlando's point of view, the not-so-intense rivalry started in January 2010, when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said his city had surpassed Orlando as the nation's No. 1 tourist destination, based on 2009 visitor counts. Media from the New York area called Orlando's marketing agency to see what it thought of coming in second. But Orlando didn't cede the crown: Its visitor count at that point was an estimate, and when the final numbers emerged a few months later, they outstripped New York's by a million visitors.

The competition is rife with issues: Each destination has its own way of counting visitors, for starters, and comparisons aren't always on an even playing field. Orlando relies on numbers provided by the research firm D.K. Shifflet & Associates and the U.S. Department of Commerce's Office of Travel & Tourism Industries. Its count includes all overnight visitors and any day-trippers who travel more than 50 miles to visit.

New York also counts day-trippers, as long as they're not commuters. But its visitors have to be in the city to see an attraction, likely ruling out a lot of business travelers. The two destinations can both revel in one thing: When it comes to topping the 50 million mark, no other U.S. city comes even close: Chicago, for example, ranked third in 2009 with fewer than 40 million visitors.

The Ultimate Hotel Workout

The Jumeirah Emirates Towers

USA Today: How many minutes do you think it would take to climb all 1,334 steps of a 52-story hotel tower?

If you've ever wondered and you get to Dubai around this time each year, you might join the Jumeirah Emirates Towers' annual "Vertical Marathon."

This year, the fastest of the 236 people who tried it made it in an astonishing 8.49 minutes, a piece on breakingtravelnews.com says.

Brazilian national Gustavo Ayres Netto was the first man to reach the top in that breathtaking time, while the first woman - Jo Phillmore - did it in a still-incredible 11.57 minutes. Participants were timed using computerized timing chips.

It's an intriguing fitness challenge, to be sure, but the contest has a purpose: It was the ninth annual fundraiser for Doctors Without Borders. A local landmark, the towers include a 400-room Jumeirah hotel, shopping and offices.

Get Ready for the 1,000 Seat Airbus Jet

Airbus A380-900

Austrailian Business Traveler: If you think today's A380 is massive, wait until the next generation of the superjumbo. Airbus is working on an even larger version of the double-decker plane known as the A380-900 (compared to today's A380-800 series).

The -900 will carry 650 passengers in a standard multi-class configuration and 900 passengers if filled with with economy-only seating – although a 1,000 seat version is also on the drawing board, with Lufthansa and Air France-KLM already lining up for this model.

The aircraft is essentially a stretched version of the A380-800, measuring 79.4m from tip to tail -- 6.4m (the length of a shipping container) more than today's superjumbo. According to Louis Gallois, chief executive of EADS, expanding the already huge A380-800 to even larger variants was the plan from the start.

One indication of this is the A380's enormous 79.8m (261.8 foot) wingspan -- some 11m longer than Boeing's latest jumbo, the 747-8 Intercontinental – with the oversized wing believed to be designed to allow for the new ultra-big models now on the drawing boards.

The '900' variant was confirmed by Airbus chief John Leahy in 2007, though with no firm availability date, and there are persistent whispers of an even longer and higher-capacity A380-1000. These supersized aircraft are central to Airbus' belief that the global travel market will settle on using 38 cities as "mega-hubs" for long-haul travel – each of which will cater to more than 10,000 passengers per day – with other destinations being reached by transfers.

Chris Emerson, Airbus' Senior Vice President for Strategy and Forecast, said the industry needed to provide more seats on larger planes to serve those mega-hubs.

The Airbus A380-800 was initially though to be too big for airports to cope with, and pundits predicted boarding and disembarking would take much longer than current 747s. However, an intensive program of airport upgrades and new terminals allowing for multi-corridor boarding proved the pundits wrong.

"Yobot" Proves an Early Hit with New Yorkers

The Independent: Yotel's Times Square New York property doesn't open for a couple of weeks, but it's already proving a popular attraction for passersby. The reason appears to be the Yobot, a robot tasked with storing luggage in lockers for guests, which is already at work at the hotel's location on W. 42nd St and 10th Avenue.

The giant arm, an evolution of the robots working in auto assembly plants, takes luggage from guests through a small opening and slides it into the right locker space. When the hotel is open, guests will be able to swipe their card and leave their luggage, but not before the robot has performed dipping, twisting and other acrobatics designed to make the experience more fun for guests.

Yobot (real name Service Ambassador) is being billed as the world's first luggage robot, with the added advantages that it's not rude, doesn't require a tip and hopefully won't drop your bags. The ingenuity of the idea has produced positive reactions from several travel blogs and writers, although it's been helped along the way by a clever viral video created to promote Yobot.

In it, two characters interview a series of famous robots for the baggage handling role, encountering some human-machine problems along the way - watch it at http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/45f86e443c/celebrity-robot-audition.

Yotel is currently slated to open to the public June 7.

Legoland Florida to Open October 15

Tampa Bay Online: Legoland Florida has named Oct. 15 as the opening day for its kid-focused amusement park in Polk County.

The 150-acre theme park will cater to kids of ages 2 to 12 with more than 50 rides, from roller coasters to race cars, as well as family-focused shows and attractions. The park is being built southeast of Winter Haven on the former site of longtime Florida attraction Cypress Gardens.

Legoland Florida is the second park in the U.S. built by the Danish-owned company known for its signature plastic building blocks and stubby action figures. The first park is in Carlsbad, Calif., and there are also Legolands in Great Britain, Germany and Denmark, where parent company Lego Group is based. Another Legoland is under development in Malaysia.

Among the features of the Florida attraction are rides geared toward younger children, for instance, a merry-go-round over the water where kids and parents sit on jet-ski-like mounts, armed with sprayers to soak anyone nearby.

Some former Cypress Gardens features will remain, including the historic water-ski show area, now remade into a "Pirate's Cove." Park staff members are now test-driving special wetsuits for skiers that make them look like actual Lego action figures, yet let them jump and fly around.

"So far, it looks really cool, like pirates in mini-figure costumes," said Jill Swidler, marketing manager for Legoland. "It's completely different than it was before with Cypress Gardens."

There are also Lego building areas, miniature Lego versions of famous buildings and streetscapes, and a birthday pavilion. Kids can also tour a factory where they'll see automated machines punch out interlocking Lego blocks and stubby action figures. Building the Lego landscapes will probably take more than 50 million bricks, Swidler said.

There's also a "Castle Hill" area with an indoor/outdoor roller coaster and an area where kids can compete in simulated horseback jousts. A Duplo area focuses on the youngest of park visitors, with toys to fly and drive through a mini town built to their size.

One-day admission to the park is $65 for ages 13 to 59 and $55 for ages 3 to 12 and 60 and older. A standard annual pass for all ages is $99. A premium annual pass, which includes parking and discounts on food and merchandise, is $159 for adults, and $129 for children and seniors. Parking will cost $12.

The park also unveiled a new online reservations system to make the vacation booking experience easier. Travelers can now book tickets, accommodations, airlines and rental cars through the Legoland Florida website.

For instance, the online system now offers a two-bedroom suite at the Nickelodeon Suites Resort on the weekend of Nov. 5 for $139 per night and a two-bedroom at the Holiday Inn Winter Haven for $126 per night.

Boeing Rolls Out Futuristic Airline Cabins

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Rickshaws Returning to Coney Island

Ocean Rolling Chair

New York Post: And to think, I’ve been walking on the Boardwalk all these years like a sucker!

Two Jersey Shore rickshaw operators are bringing the iconic beach-side rolling chairs back to the Coney Island Boardwalk, which hasn’t had the man-powered taxis in nearly 45 years.

The new “Ocean Rolling Chairs” are being marketed as a summer job opportunity, as budding Coney cabbies can lease them and then pocket the dough they charge for rides along the Boardwalk.

"I wanted to bring back a piece of Coney Island history,” said the Brooklyn-born John Taimanglo, who runs the Ocean Rolling Chairs company in Atlantic City — and claims he’s a relative of Coney Island legend Charles Feltman, who, as we all know, practically invented the hot dog.

The original Ocean Rolling Chair Company operated on the Boardwalk from 1923, the year the iconic walkway was built, until the mid-1960s, according to the Parks Department’s website.

Taimanglo and business partner Christine Palumbo’s new blue-and-white rickshaws are four-feet wide and have room for three passengers. Cabbies will fork over $75 to operate them during the day, and $100 to roll them and night, and will charge $1 per block or $25 for a half-hour Boardwalk trip. That’s 50 times more than the $1 per hour rolling chair rides cost decades ago. The fleet of 30 chairs will be available every weekend through the summer starting Saturday, as allowed by a Parks Department permit. Hundreds of people signed up to push the fleet when Palumbo and Taimanglo hit the Boarwdalk last weekend to advertise the opportunity to “enjoy everything Coney Island has to offer while making great money.”

“We may have to turn people away next weekend because so many people are interested,” Palumbo said.

City officials are enthusiastic about the return of the rollers. “Rolling chairs are a unique part of Coney Island’s history,” said Coney Island Development Corporation spokesman Kyle Sklerov. “Their return to the boardwalk — along with the opening of Scream Zone this summer — will bring more visitors back to Coney Island and play an important role in the ongoing revitalization of this legendary amusement area.”

The city has only approved the chairs for 28 days this year, but Palumbo hopes to return year after year. “We’re here on a temporary basis so far, but who knows what next year will bring,” Palumbo said.

China Golf Courses Grow at Record Pace

Bloomberg: China’s ban on unauthorized golf courses failed to stem a record 14 percent increase in such facilities last year as developers circumvented rules aimed at halting the erosion of the nation’s farmland.

The world’s fastest-growing major economy added 60 18-hole courses last year, taking the total to 490, according to a report by Forward Management Group, a golf tour organizer in China. Only 10 of the nation’s golf facilities are licensed, with operators sometimes registering them as country parks or greenbelt areas, state-run Xinhua News Agency said.

The Ministry of Land and Resources banned construction of golf courses in 2004, and the ban will remain in effect until new rules are introduced, Gan Zangchun, deputy land inspector at the ministry, said last month. The Forward Management report highlights the difficulty China faces in stamping out illegal use of land that threatens the country’s ability to feed itself.

“It goes without saying how important it is to comply with the government’s farmland threshold policy to ensure grain security,” said Zhou Li, a professor at the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development of Renmin University of China.

Farmland shrank by 8.33 million hectares in the past 12 years, Premier Wen Jiabao’s top agricultural adviser, Chen Xiwen, said in March. The ruling Communist Party in 2007 set a threshold of 1.8 billion mu (120 million hectares) of farmland needed to feed the nation’s 1.3 billion people.

Last year 274,500 mu of farmland was used illegally for projects including golf courses, according to the land inspector’s annual report.

China’s farmland per capita is less than half the world average, and one-sixth that of the U.S., according to China Comment, a Communist Party magazine. Actual land loss may be greater than the government’s numbers suggest, as local officials fudge figures and illegal use proliferates.

Golf courses have sprung up all over China, except in Tibet, according to the report by Forward Management, which was published late last month and reported by Xinhua yesterday. “The golf tourism market prospect continues to be rosy after regular golf players jumped 11 percent to 330,000 people last year,” it said.

The central government failed to effectively curb the construction of the courses partly because of local government interests, the land ministry said in December 2009 on its web site, without elaborating. Some courses skirted supervision and won approval under the name of “forest parks,” it said.

Local governments made 2.7 trillion yuan ($415.5 billion) in 2010 selling rights to farmland for non-agricultural purposes, with total land sales constituting 60 to 70 percent of revenue, according to Landesa, a Seattle-based organization that works to secure land rights for the poor.

Final Stop for Lost Luggage

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Groundbreaking Day: Skyvue Las Vegas Super Wheel

8 News Now: It's groundbreaking day for the latest attraction on the Las Vegas Strip. The Skyvue Las Vegas Super Wheel will give riders a sky high view of the city.

The wheel will be on the southeast corner of Las Vegas Blvd. and Mandalay Bay Dr. and should be completed in 18 months. The wheel will be a 500-foot observation wheel that will be able to accommodate more than 800 riders for a great view of the Strip. It will be larger than the London Eye. The middle of the wheel will be 50,000 square feet of LED lights for advertising.

"I know a lot of people have talked about wheels -- doing observation wheel projects in Las Vegas -- but no one's ever been willing to give up their really valuable Las Vegas Strip frontage to do a wheel," said Howard Bulloch, one of the Skyvue developers.

Aside from being 50-feet taller than Mandalay Bay, the gondolas, which will hold the riders, will be about the size of a typical home's family room. The ride will take 30 minutes and there will be an option to eat dinner in the glass-enclosed rooms.

"Because it's hard to see everything at once, like the whole Strip, so I think it would be really fun to see it from the top and see everything especially at night time," said Jillian Maenad, a tourist.

The groundbreaking will be at 8:30 a.m. with the wheel opening in Dec. 2012 or Jan. 2013.

Bin Laden Raid Code Name: "Trip to Atlantic City"

Atlantic City?

Sify News: Several hundred people at the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were involved in the planning for the US raid on Osama bin Laden's hideout in Pakistan, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

To keep it under wraps before the May 2 raid on the Al Qaeda leader's hideout in Abbottabad, near the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, some referred to it in code as a 'trip to Atlantic City', according to a detailed reconstruction by the US daily.

In his windowless conference room at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, director Leon Panetta had a 16-square-foot model of bin Laden's hideout that was accurate down to the trees surrounding the Abbottabad house, the report revealed. The model was made with the help of satellite spy photos.

In February, a mix of CIA and military officials met around the model to discuss intelligence that suggested a 'high-value' terrorist was there. Analysts said there was 'a strong probability' it was bin Laden, the Journal said.

Working hard to keep the mission secret, officials spoke to one another about the plan in code, with one calling it 'the trip to Atlantic City,' it said. The close cooperation between the Pentagon and CIA revealed by the Journal report marks a shift from an era in which the troops and spies were at odds, analysts said.

It suggests that, moving forward, troops and spies will do more to work together to combat terrorism, they said.

Logan Airport Time Lapse Video

Jaunted: You know we can’t resist an awesome travel video—especially when it’s time lapse—so that’s why we just had to share a little snippet from Boston’s Logan International Airport.

As you can see it’s a pretty busy place, and when the weather’s nice, the airplanes just effortlessly flow in and out. It might not look as fluid if you’re just watching through the terminal windows, but thanks to this video from BostonAirborne we get to see how impressive the workings of a major international airport truly are.

All in all it’s about an hour of take-offs from earlier this month compressed into just a couple of minutes, so it’s a perfect office time waster. We’ve watched the thing a handful of times already, as we kind of get a kick out of trying to figure out each and every plane and find it relaxing in a weird way. We spied a couple JetBlue jets as well as planes from Delta, Continental, United, and Southwest too—they were the easiest ones to spot with their blue bellies.

We’re thinking that we’re going to need to pick-up a tripod sooner and later, and get in on creating our own time lapse videos—we just can’t resist being our own airport Spielberg.