Crackdown on cruise priests
Crackdown on cruise priests — The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has started screening priests who celebrate Mass aboard cruise ships to prevent unqualified clergy from ministering to Catholic passengers. The bishops have approved more than 650 priests to work on cruise lines in a process designed to weed out unsuitable candidates such as clergy who were suspended in the church’s sex abuse scandal or those who have left the priesthood.
Washington hotel workers agree to contract — The union representing nearly 4,000 workers at 14 upscale Washington, D.C., hotels has reached a tentative agreement with the hotels on a new three-year labor contract, both sides said on Friday. The negotiating committee for Local 25 of the Unite Here union — which had threatened to strike Saturday ahead of Thursday’s Presidential Inauguration — has strongly recommended that the deal be ratified.
DC travel industry expects a good year — This week in Washington, hotels will be effectively 100 percent occupied, their room rates the highest they have ever been, and practically every limousine driver, florist, and caterer in town will be too busy to breathe, say executives in the tourism industry. But the presidential inauguration is just the beginning of what is shaping up to be an excellent year for Washington’s travel-related industries.
Why hotel Internet is so expensive — Staying at a decent hotel without paying steep prices for extra amenities is like going to the movies and expecting to pay real-world prices for popcorn. It’s wishful thinking. Connecting to the Internet, though often a necessity, is such a costly frill.
AirTran fires inebriated pilot — AirTran Airways said it fired one of it pilots yesterday after he allegedly showed up for work in Las Vegas smelling of alcohol and carrying a government-issued firearm in a lockbox. The pilot, Oliver Paul Reason Jr., 37, was trained by the federal government to carry a gun in the cockpit under a program passed by Congress in response to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
US Airways – or Hooters Airways? — David Bronner might be chairman of US Airways’ board of directors, but he’s also been talking recently with a top name from another airline: Hooters Air. The Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser reports that Bronner, head of the Retirement Systems of Alabama, had a long conversation last month with Hooters Air founder Robert Brooks.