US airlines are expecting record breaking travel demand this year for Thanksgiving, with multiple executives across many airline companies gearing up to prepare for the influx in travel.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
The French government is vowing to take action and “reassure and protect” the public amid the “widespread” rise in bedbug infestations in its capital Paris.
Clement Beaune, the French Transport Minister, stated that he would convene a meeting to “undertale further action to reassure and protect” the public from the reporte of multiple surges in the numbers of bedbug infestations.
French transport operators are diligently working to combat the bedbug problem after some reports of the insect being sighted in public transportation systems, however, those reports have declined in recent days with no sightings.
RATP, the operator of the Parisian metro, stated that it’s “extremely vigilant on the matter,” according to reports from CNN.
RATP told the news outlet this week that “each sighting is taken into account and is subject to treatment, these last few days, there have been no proven cases of bedbugs recorded in our equipment.”
RATP also stated that a report of a sighting was made last week, but after an assessment, “no presence of bedbugs were recorded on the train.”
SNCF, a railway company that operates many trains throughout France, told CNN that “it takes reports of pests very seriously, but to date we have not observed any presence or proven resorts of bedbugs.”
Deputy mayor of Paris Emmanuel Gregoire called the phenomenon “widespread.”
“You have to understand that in reality no one is safe, obviously there are risk factors but in reality, you can catch bedbugs anywhere and bring them home,” he said.
Three years ago the government launched an anti-bedbug campaign that included an informational hotline and dedicated website for citizens to utilize should the bugs appear.
“There are 3.6 million people who come into Paris every day, and bedbugs do not stop on the outskirts of the city,” Gregoire stated.
A spokesperson for Anses, France’s national health and sanitary body, stated “the problem was “an emerging phenomenon in France and almost everywhere in the world.”
“It’s mainly due to the movement of people, populations traveling, the fact that people stay in short-term accommodation and bring back bedbugs in their suitcases or luggage,” Johanna Fite from the Anses department of risk assessment told CNN.
“There’s an escalation in numbers because bedbugs were increasingly resistant to insecticides. We are observing more and more bedbug populations which are resistant, so there is no miracle treatment to get rid of them.”
“Professional companies which intervene in residential areas are telling us that currently the proportion of interventions for bedbugs is atypical compared to normal and is increasing rapidly,” Gregoire said.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
According to Amtrak, within the past year train passengers had been delayed for 11 weeks when you calculate all the delayed minutes, with only 28% of trains running on time.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky is asking hosts on the short-term rental platform to lower their prices. In an interview with Bloomberg on Monday, Chesky said that he wanted the app to be able to compete with hotels.
“We want prices to move and to be more competitive vis-à-vis a hotels—that is really important. When our hosts provide better deals, they tend to make more money.”
Part of his solution includes giving hosts proper rate comparison tools for nearby hotels, which the app currently lacks.
“We’re [currently] giving tools to hosts to compare the prices of their listings to others in their neighborhood—and while we don’t yet have a hotel comparison, we do encourage them to look at rates for hotels in their area just so they have a sense of what travelers are getting on other platforms.”
According to Chesky, the company will also work to fix problems with pricing, transparency (by not showing customers the total price for each listing), and fake listings. Chesky’s remarks come as Airbnb has had a tumultuous year.
On the pricing front, the promise is to provide hosts with insights that ensure competitive nightly rates while also showing customers the total price per listing. These prices will include clear and lower cleaning fees, a frequent point of contention.
Additionally, the app’s search feature was enhanced with new filters for king-size beds and pet-friendly homes. There is also a new listing verification system to decrease calls to customer service by identifying and removing fake listings.
“We need to get our house in order,” Chesky says.
“We need to make sure the listings are great, we’re providing great customer service, and we’re affordable. And I’ve told our team that we can get back to creating new and exciting things once we’ve fixed that foundation.”
The year 2022 marked the first year of profitability for the business. However, in March 2023, many hosts took to Twitter to express their frustration with declining bookings, increased competition, and shrinking profit margins. The perceived short-term rental bubble was dubbed “Airbnbust.”
Jamie Lane, an economist at vacation analytics firm AirDNA, told Insider in 2022 that there was an increase in supply, causing demand to spread out over more listings, leading to “occupancy decline.”
In September 2023, New York City also cracked down on short-term rentals, implementing a set of regulations that made it much harder for users to book an Airbnb rental.
The new rules mandate hosts register with the city to guarantee that their listings adhere to the city’s occupancy and building code regulations. According to Bloomberg, the company is expected to lose thousands of listings in one of its biggest markets.
Officials claim that illegal short-term rental listings, often with inhabitable conditions, contribute to New York City’s affordable housing crisis by taking homes off the market.
Chesky claims that part of the app’s current struggles are due to the platform originally being “designed for a much smaller company,” before rapidly growing in popularity.
“To use a precise metaphor, it’s kind of like we never fully built the foundation. Like, we had a house, and it had four pillars when we needed to have 10.”
The company is using AI for quality control of its listings. According to Chesky, hosts are being asked to upload photos of the property’s interior and exterior as part of the listing process, with the intention of using computer vision technology to analyze the images and compare them to other databases, such as Google Earth, in order to generate a trustworthiness rating.
Any listing with a low score is sent to a human reviewer.
Chesky told the Financial Times that the company will also venture beyond short-term rentals, including offering long-term rentals.
“Travel is our sweet spot. Eventually, the big frontier for Airbnb is to go beyond travel. There’s an eventual opportunity for Airbnb to become a greater part of your daily life. Not just once or twice a year.”
Moumita Basuroychowdhury is a Contributing Reporter at The National Digest. After earning an economics degree at Cornell University, she moved to NYC to pursue her MFA in creative writing. She enjoys reporting on science, business and culture news. You can reach her at moumita.b@thenationaldigest.com.
If lawmakers don’t pass a federal budget or stopgap measure within the week, a government shutdown will take effect on October 1st, which could drastically impact the travel industry throughout the country.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Two individuals have been arrested in northern China after they allegedly damaged a section of the Great Wall using an excavator to create a huge gap in the ancient structure, local police said in an online statement.
A 38-year-old man and a 55-year-old woman, who were construction workers, were supposedly trying to create a shortcut in order to save time going around the world. The police stated that the structure was “severely damaged.”
“It had been one of the existing complete border walls and beacon towers with important protection and research value,” the county police department said.
China’s northwest Youyu County police responded to reports on August 24th of a gap that had been dug into the structure known as the 32nd Great Wall, a section that’s been standing since the Ming Dynasty.
“Excavators were used to excavate the original gap of the ancient Great Wall into a large gap, so that the excavator could pass through the gap, which caused irreversible damage to the integrity of the Ming Great Wall and the safety of cultural relics,” the police statement said.
The authorities detained the two suspects pending further investigation. The oldest portions of the Great Wall were created more than 2,000 years ago.
The structure is also listed as an UNESCO World Heritage site and is known as one of the greatest creations of ancient human engineering.
About 30% of China’s Great Wall has disappeared in recent years due to climate challenges and “reckless human activities,” including stealing bricks to build houses. This damage has eroded the already old structure, causing long term damage.
The investigation regarding the two construction workers is currently underway, ideally, this news will deter future individuals and groups from messing with the Great Wall and maintain its beauty that makes it such a historical landmark in our world’s story.
To avoid damage to the Great Wall, in recent years authorities have implemented multiple measures to deter individuals from damaging the structure.
For example, in April 2020 the Badaling Great Wall tourism site near the capital city of Beijing implemented new regulations that allows them to blacklist tourists and give them administrative penalties depending on their specific infraction.
In May 2021, two foreign tourists were banned from the Great Wall after ignoring a “no crossing sign” on an undeveloped section of the monument and climbing onto the restricted area, according to reports. In August, another tourist was detained and fined for using a hairpin to carve on the wall.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
American Airlines is suing Skiplagged, a travel company, claiming that they’re deceiving customers with a “bait and switch” tactic on ticket pricing.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
Thousands of flights were delayed or canceled in the wake of severe storms that pummeled the East Coast over the weekend. According to FlightAware, more than 330 flights were canceled, and another 1,400 were delayed as of Tuesday morning.
The figures reflect the ongoing travel disruptions caused by turbulent weather in the Eastern U.S. Midday on Monday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) tweeted that they were working to avoid delays and cancellations.
“The FAA is re-routing aircraft around the storms heading to the East Coast as much as possible. Soon we will likely have to pause departures in and out of East Coast airports, including NYC, Philly, DC, Charlotte and Atlanta. Monitor http://fly.faa.gov. #FAAWeatherSad”
By the end of the day Monday, however, 8,200 flights were delayed, and 1,600 were canceled. On Tuesday, Delta Air Lines had to cancel 100 flights, consisting of around 3% of its total schedule, and another 226 were delayed. There were 20 flight cancellations and 22 flight delays at New York’s LaGuardia Airport. Atlanta, Newark Liberty, and Boston Logan are a few of the other major airports experiencing a moderate number of cancellations and delays.
The recent storms left nearly 400,000 homes and businesses without power in large regions along the East Coast. Thunderstorms, tornadoes, and hail also led to the deaths of two people, damaged structures and homes, and left dozens of drivers stranded for hours.
People were trapped in their cars for up to five and a half hours in Westminster, Maryland. State police reported that severe weather on Monday caused power lines to fall onto vehicles. Crews worked for hours to de-energize the power lines so drivers could leave the scene.
On his way home from work, Jeffrey Campbell told CNN he was trapped for hours when a utility pole collapsed in front of his vehicle onto other cars, leaving exposed live wires on the ground on either side of his truck. A wire knocked his exterior mirror off the side of his car. “It’s just poles coming down one after the other,” Campbell said.
Authorities shared that no injuries were reported, but 33 adults and 14 children had to be rescued.
Tom Tomovich, a resident of Hockessin, DE, told 6ABC-TV that the storms ripped the roof of his house off.
“We saw the clouds coming and could hear a rumbling in the distance. We went into the house, and we were on the first floor, and before we could blink an eye, the winds just came right through the back of our house.”
The size of hailstones from Monday night’s storms in Caroline County, VA, came close to breaking state records. One hailstone, measured at around 4.75 inches, is the third largest ever found in Virginia. The last time hail this size hit the state was in the 1960s.
The initial storms affecting Philadelphia to Atlanta on Monday have since calmed. However, in the Southeast and New England, millions of people may face severe weather on Tuesday.
In a Facebook live briefing, National Weather Service meteorologist Christ Strong said, “This does look to be one of the most impactful severe weather events across the mid-Atlantic that we have had in some time.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, more than 220,000 homes and businesses still do not have power in five states, with around 125,000 customers residing in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.
Moumita Basuroychowdhury is a Contributing Reporter at The National Digest. After earning an economics degree at Cornell University, she moved to NYC to pursue her MFA in creative writing. She enjoys reporting on science, business and culture news. You can reach her at moumita.b@thenationaldigest.com.
Americans are moving further away from their original homes in order to find properties that are more affordable, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.
NASA has revealed plans for two aircraft projects that they are hoping will be the next generation of sustainable flights.
One of the aircrafts is called X-66A, which NASA and Boeing worked together on as a part of Boeing’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, according to reports. The two companies have the goal of building, testing, and flying the planes, which will be emission-reducing, single-aisle aircrafts, within the next decade; by 2030 ideally.
“It’s our goal that NASA’s partnership with Boeing to produce and test a full-scale demonstrator will help lead to future commercial airliners that are more fuel efficient, with benefits to the environment, the commercial aviation industry, and to passengers worldwide,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a statement according to CNN.
“If we are successful, we may see these technologies in planes that the public takes to the skies in the 2030s.”
The design could potentially reduce fossil fuel consumption and emissions by up to 30% when compared to current aircrafts.
According to NASA and Boeing, the concept of design is known as the Transonic Truss-Braced Wing, which relies on elongated thing wings that are stabilized by diagonal struts connecting to the wings of the plane, creating less of a drag and thus reducing the fuel that is burned.
The new designs were shown off at the EAA AirVenture Oshkosh.
“This is an experimental aircraft. This is not a commercial development of an aircraft that passengers are going to fly in today. And the reason we need to do this is because this is high-risk technology. We’re trying to validate technology,” Bob Pearce, NASA associate administrator for the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, said.
The first test flight is scheduled to ideally take place in 2028, with NASA hoping that the technology and new design will be used throughout around half of the commercial flight market for short to medium haul single-aisle aircrafts.
According to NASA, single-aisle aircrafts account for almost half of all aviation emissions around the world. Boeing also predicts that the demand for these single-aisle aircrafts will increase by 40,000 planes between the years 2035 and 2050.
“The goal is for the technology to serve about 50% of the commercial market through short- to medium-haul, single-aisle aircraft,” Nelson said.
As a part of NASA’s Electrified Powertrain Flight Demonstration project, the hybrid electric aircraft that GE Aerospace and magniX are developing will also be getting an updated look to include lighter and more efficient motors, and utilize materials that will also improve fuel use to reduce emissions.
Within the next five years, NASA is hoping to conduct at least two flight demonstrations to show off the new technology, so that ideally the aircrafts can be introduced commercially in the US between 2030 and 2035.
Eric Mastrota is a Contributing Editor at The National Digest based in New York. A graduate of SUNY New Paltz, he reports on world news, culture, and lifestyle. You can reach him at eric.mastrota@thenationaldigest.com.