Paris hotel blaze kills at least 18 people
Paris hotel blaze kills at least 18 people — A fire at a hotel in central Paris has killed at least 18 people — including eight children — and injured dozens more, fire officials say. The blaze at the one-star Paris-Opera hotel in the city’s ninth district on Friday morning was so bad that guests jumped from upper floor windows to escape the flames and choking smoke, officials said.
Bush orders review of new passport rules — U.S. President George W. Bush has ordered a review of tough new rules that would require returning Americans and visiting Canadians to carry passports or similarly secure identity documents, saying he feared massive disruption of traffic across the border. “If people have to have a passport, it’s going to disrupt the honest flow of traffic,” the President said yesterday in a question-and-answer session with the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Groups push for stricter cruise pollution rules — The cruise industry has gotten so big that all its ships together could hold each of Miami’s 360,000 residents with room to spare. And just like cities, cruise lines have to deal with a nasty problem: the millions of gallons of sewage those people produce. While the industry is installing equipment that one executive says makes sewage and other wastewater almost as “clean as Perrier,” environmentalists, states and some members of Congress are pushing to toughen what they call outdated marine-pollution standards.
Berlin delays airport construction again — A German court suspended work on Berlin’s planned new international airport on Thursday, pending its review of a complaint by local residents. It is the latest setback for the 2 billion euro ($2.58 billion) Berlin Brandenburg International (BBI) airport project, approval for which has already taken more than five years. The Federal Administrative Court said construction could not begin until after its ruling on nearly 4,000 complaints filed against authorities’ clearance of the project.
Brits make false travel insurance claims — A fifth of British holidaymakers that claimed on their travel insurance last year bumped up their payout by making false claims. Damaged cameras, lost clothes, cash and jewelry were the most likely items to be falsified to increase the value of claims. One in 10 holidaymakers inflated the value of their claim and 5 percent added items to the list of stolen or lost goods.
Hotel robbery? Just kidding — The suspected Wednesday night robbery of an Oshkosh hotel actually was a story concocted after a theft that took place between the desk clerk and one of her friends, police said Thursday. Police arrested the 20-year-old female employee and a 24-year-old man after investigating the robbery complaint at the Ramada Inn, 500 S. Koeller St.
Contributing: Charles Leocha, John Frenaye