Royal Caribbean Strikes Again; Cruise Worker Charged With Sexual Battery

With all of the controversy swirling over the George Smith missing persons case aboard a Royal Caribbean cruise liner in July 2005 comes the following black eye to Royal Caribbean. A Royal Caribbean employee, Henry Maceto Forbes, was arrested and charged with attempting to rape a passenger aboard the Legend of the Seas .

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — A Royal Caribbean cruise employee was arrested and charged with attempting to rape a passenger during a weeklong cruise, authorities said.

Henry Maceto Forbes, 34, was arrested Saturday when the Legend of the Seas docked in the Port of Tampa, according to the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office.

Forbes met the 22-year-old passenger in a bar on the ship Tuesday and offered to take her on a tour, a police report said. He allegedly pulled the woman into a dark room and attempted to rape her. She was able to escape, the report said.

Forbes was charged with false imprisonment and sexual battery and was being held without bond Monday. He did not yet have an attorney who could comment.
(AP)

Amber Alert Issued for Missing IL 5 year old Makayla Christy

Missing 5-year-old Makayla Christy’s local SARAA Alert has been changed to a nationwide AMBER Alert. Makayla Christy was last seen around 6:15 p.m. Sunday night riding in her grandmother’s car, who is facing previous felony warrants.

(Go to Missing & Exploited for the full story)

Aruba Will Survive with or without Natalee Holloway hype

Hype? After nearly eight months and a declining tourism on Aruba that’s what they think this is all about, hype? From Travel Video, comes a wishful and heavily slanted article on tourism that refuses to ask one simple question, but instead posts numbers that follow:

For a country with a population of about 100,000, it received about 344,401 Americans between January-July 2005, posting an 8 percent increase over 2004. This, despite the mysterious disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway who went missing since spring break on the island’s limited area of only 75 square miles — barely 19 miles long and 6 miles across the widest.

If Aruba’s tourism numbers have not been affected with or without the “Natalee hype”, why have they not been posted? Where are the August through December 2005 numbers? Most importantly, the American tourist numbers visiting the island. Instead they provide us with tourism numbers of other countries that do not come close to the nearly 70% of American tourism that makes up Aruba’s numbers. When they do actually report any relevant ones, the tourism numbers are down drastically.

Arrivals from Canada went up by 5.7 percent to 13, 548, up 11.1 percent to 36,986 from Europe but went down by 1.9 percent with other nationalities. From January to October 2005, Aruba reported cruise passenger arrivals totaled 393,671, down by 9.7 percent from 2004′s 436,089. (Data were supplied as at January 11, 2006)

Like it or not Aruba has been affected by recent events and the continued perception of a lack of an investigation. It really is important that Aruba finally understand this is not about “Natalee Holloway hype”, its about the disappearance and subsequent investigation of Natalee Holloway.

To think that this has not and will not continue to affect numbers is to look away from the obvious. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

(Full Travel Video article)

20 Years Later the Space Shuttle Challenger, “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.”

Its been twenty years and we can still hear the words of President Ronald Reagan and envision the images of that fateful day. One of those moments in time where one remembers what they were doing at that moment January 28, 1986.

The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye, and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.” 

Full address can be seen here.

We remember Christa McAuliffe, Dick Scobee, Mike Smith, Ellison Onizuka, Judy Resnick Ron McNair and Greg Jarvis.

As the blog, Oh How I Love Jesus  states, “Yet this was not just another day: it was supposed to be a day for teachers and students to be proud of. For seventy-two seconds, it was.”

Also Michelle Malkin, 73 SECONDS AFTER LAUNCH

Bloggers Offered (and accept) Netherlands Travel for Advertising Space

Why does Holland always seem to be in the mix?

BlogAds founder and the Netherlands Board of Tourism came up with an interesting trade out for advertising. They are providing a free junket to the bloggers in return for advertising space on their sites are getting a free trip to the Netherlands.

We are never ones to tell others how to run their blogs and whether individuals accept this offer is their own decision. This type of practice has occurred in the media for years; however, the difference being is that Blog owners and reporters/writers/editorialist are usually in in the same.

All we do have to say is, and we take garbage from others for having the ads we do to cover costs? We will say this to those out there that have complained ridiculously over the use of blogads to cover costs of a Blog and time spent, where the hell are your comments on this? Blogads that we use being created contextually, might we add. It would seem that taking such an offer would create a conflict in how one would blog on Holland. The perception of favoritism for being “pampered by people with an agenda” would seem evident.

Bloggers of all stripes love to bloviate these days about public officials who accepted money or luxurious treatment from corrupt lobbyist Jack Abramoff in his attempt to curry government favor for his clients. But that doesn’t mean bloggers are above accepting pampering by people with an agenda.

(Read the full story at The Travel Bloggers, it is rather eye opening)