Cities packed with billionaires

by Iva Skoch on

It has happened. Moscow has beat New York as the city most packed with billionaires, according to this Forbes research. Whereas New York has only 71, Moscow is now home to 74 billionaires (and probably also 740,000 starving people, but that is beside the point.)

  1. Moscow – 74
  2. New York – 71
  3. London – 36
  4. Istanbul – 34
  5. Hong Kong – 30
  6. Los Angeles – 24
  7. Mumbai 20
  8. San Francisco – 19
  9. Dallas – 15 (tie)
  10. Tokyo – 15 (tie)

The one that got me was Istanbul. Istanbul? What’s so lucrative going on in Istanbul? Why not Dubai?

What strange things have been found on planes?


Click the image to read the bizarre story…

Buffalo, New York, attempts to attract visitors with its crummy weather

by Catherine Bodry on

Only, the group of weather enthusiasts creating Buffalo’s interactive “Weather Experience Center” don’t consider blizzards “crummy.” Instead, they hope to capitalize on Buffalo’s changeable weather by feature it and other dramatic phenomena such as tornadoes and hurricanes in a museum-quality waterfront building.

One feature on the center’s drawing board is a “blizzard room,” where visitors can bundle into hats and gloves and experience the wind and snow of a blizzard. Also slated are an IMAX theater that will showcase tornado-chasing, and a glass-walled structure that will allow visitors to watch snow roll in off the lake while experts explain what is happening as it happens.

As a lover of extreme weather myself, I would be in to visiting an interactive weather center. It might not draw me to Buffalo, however, as I generally get a daily show 9 months out of the year from my living room window.

Dogs cracking down on bed bugs in New York hotels

by Anna Brones on

To avoid an infested hotel bed, the next time you visit New York, you might just want to ask if your hotel room has been inspected for bed bugs by… dogs??? Last year the city’s Department of Housing, Preservation and Development received nearly 7,000 bed bug complaints. The Department’s answer? A team of six dogs to sniff out bed bugs in hotel rooms and apartments across the city.

Radar the beagle and Taz the Australian kelpie are part of a new team called Advanced K9 Detectives. These hounds aren’t out to find drugs, they’re around to make sure you have a good, bug-free, night’s sleep. Although it might seem strange to use dogs to track down bedbugs, business is going well; according to Carl Massicott, the company’s mastermind, a lot of the company’s clients are top-end hotels.

The best part about using dogs for hotel inspection is that you can be sure they will never sell out. “A dog’s nose is cutting-edge technology,” Massicott said. “Our animals are 100% honest, and trained to work for food and love instead of profits.”

Better ask for the canine cleared room next time you are doing your New York bookings.

It’s snowing in New York today. You know what that means

by Iva Skoch on

No, I don’t actually mean flight delays although those are inevitable this weekend. Better avoid any place east of the Mississippi.

What gets me is the news coverage. Gothamist is right. The minute it starts snowing in the city, all news channels have a tendency to report the same old cliches over and over. You know some poor struggling journalist is waiting for his big on-screen break so he/she is more than happy to report (ski cap and gloves on, of course) from the side of the Long Island Expressway, calling the “events” all kinds of ridiculous names and showing fancy alert graphics. And, there is always that footage of some dude skiing through Central Park or kids building snowmen in Greenwich Village. Oh, please, no!

While the snow is nice, white and fluffy right now, I am pretty sure it will turn into nasty slush by the end of the day. If you have a choice, don’t come close to the city this weekend. If you want to be a part of it, watch the breathless coverage of the “worst storm this season” online.

100 years ago today: The Great Race

by Jerry Guo on

One hundred years ago on this date, a half dozen or so teams set out from New York on the longest automobile race in history. Six months later, the first team pulled into Paris.

Here’s a colorful account of their epic journey. If you’re thinking, “Boy I wish I could do something that awesome,” well, you can!

This May 30th, 40 teams will retrace the Great Race, except this time they’ll only take 2 months. I just checked on the logistics and details–you travel through a dozen or so countries from New York to Paris, having what I’m sure will be the trip of your lifetime. The only downside?

The entry fee is something like $100,000.