tourism
Los Alamos (United States) (AFP) - Christopher Nolan's $1 billion-grossing "Oppenheimer" hasn't just lined the pockets of Hollywood studio executives -- it has also brought an unexpected windfall to the secretive community of Los Alamos. The movie, the clear frontrunner to win best picture at the Oscars on March 10, tells the story of the invention of the atomic bomb. Much of the action takes place in Los Alamos, a town built around a top-secret lab that was created from scratch in New Mexico at the suggestion of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had a lifelong passion for the surrounding m...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - The world's largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean's Icon of the Seas, set sail from Miami on its maiden voyage Saturday, carrying what amounted to the population of a small city. The ship, built over 900 days at a shipyard in Turku, Finland, is a monument to enormity, longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall, with 20 decks and room for more than 5,600 passengers (7,600 at maximum capacity) and a crew of 2,350. To ensure no one goes bored or hungry, the monster ship, registered in the Bahamas, has seven swimming pools including a 40,000-gallon "lake," six water slides, a carousel,...
AFP
Medellín (Colombia) (AFP) - All Israeli expat Omer Bloch knows for sure about his Tinder date in the Colombian city of Medellin is that she was "beautiful" -- and used a powerful drug to knock him out and rob him. A recent spate of what the US Embassy termed "suspicious" deaths of eight American men in Medellin has cast a spotlight on the dangers foreigners face using dating apps in the city. "I matched with a girl on Tinder. Just another girl, I thought. Just another date," recalls the 28-year-old businessman of his 2021 encounter. After their dinner, he remembers they returned to his house ...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - Virgin Galactic on Friday announced it had sent three paying customers on an hour-long journey to space and back, racking up its fourth successful flight in as many months. The private astronauts aboard the Galactic 03 mission were among the first people to buy their tickets from the company founded by British billionaire Richard Branson in 2004. American real estate entrepreneur Ken Baxter, South Africa-born conservationist Timothy Nash, and British engineer and entrepreneur Adrian Reynard took their places aboard the rocket-powered spaceplane VSS Unity, along with Virgin G...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - Virgin Galactic launched its first tourist passengers into the weightlessness of space Thursday, the culmination of a nearly two-decade commercial pursuit, the company said. The three passengers -- Jon Goodwin, Keisha Schahaff, and her teenage daughter Anastatia Mayers -- floated gravity-free through the Virgin spacecraft about 45 minutes after taking off. "They are officially astronauts. Welcome to space," said Virgin Galactic announcer Sirisha Bandla as the spacecraft pushed above 80 kilometers (50 miles) in altitude, the level marking the edge of space where the pull of g...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - The long-awaited, first civilian space tourism flight by Virgin Galactic was set for takeoff Thursday, carrying an 80-year-old ex-Olympian and a mother and daughter who won their tickets in a sweepstakes. The three passengers -- Jon Goodwin, 80; Keisha Schahaff, 46; and her daughter Anastatia Mayers, 18 -- will spend a few minutes in space, where they can admire the curvature of the Earth and briefly float in weightlessness. The flight will be the culmination of a nearly two-decade-old promise by British billionaire Richard Branson, Virgin Galactic's founder, to bring touris...
AFP
Rome (AFP) - The skipper of a motorboat which crashed into a sailboat off Italy's Amalfi coast, killing a US tourist, is being investigated for suspected manslaughter, a chief prosecutor said on Saturday. Adrienne Vaughan, 45, the head of Bloomsbury publishing house's US branch, was killed after she was flung from the motorboat in the holiday hotspot in southern Italy. The Italian skipper "is being investigated for suspected manslaughter and causing a shipwreck", Salerno chief prosecutor Giuseppe Borrelli told a news conference. Vaughan had been on the boat late on Thursday afternoon with her ...
AFP
Washington (AFP) - Instead of snapping selfies at the White House, some tourists to the US capital got a taste of real Washington political drama Thursday. Former president Donald Trump's court hearing attracted protesters, security officials, news media -- and visitors whose summer vacations suddenly included a piece of history-in-the-making. The scene outside the E. Barrett Prettyman judicial building was "kind of a spectacle," said Tom Kerr, visiting from Massachusetts. The 78-year-old and his wife Gayl Kerr had planned their trip before the indictment against Trump was unsealed earlier th...
AFP
Los Angeles (AFP) - "Titanic" director and renowned deep-sea explorer James Cameron said many warnings were ignored about the safety of the tourist submersible that imploded near the famous shipwreck, killing five people. Cameron said the sub had been the source of widespread concern in the close-knit ocean exploration community, and drew parallels to the 1912 ocean liner sinking in which around 1,500 people died. "I'm struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field ...
AFP
Buena Vista (United States) (AFP) - A healthy Rocky Mountain snowpack looks set to offer a bumper season for thrill-seeking white water rafters on Colorado's rivers. Operators plying waterways fed by the US mountain range say a decent winter and a slow snowmelt should offer months of fun for those intent on hurtling over bubbling rapids. "This river has doubled in size... since three days ago," said Corey Coker, who has been leading rafting expeditions on the Arkansas River in Colorado for well over a decade. "I believe today we're just under 1,000 cubic feet per second," he told AFP in mid-Ma...
AFP
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