Haunted hotels to keep you awake

October 29, 2008
Suicide, murder, untimely deaths, all set the grisly stage for macabre stories of hauntings and other ghostly tales drawing visitors to supposedly haunted hotels around the world ahead of Halloween.

Travel Web site ProfessionalTravelGuide.com has come up with a list of 9 haunted hotels (http://www.professionaltravelguide.com/Haunted-Hotels-2008) for thrill-seekers who like hearing things go bump in the night.

This list is not endorsed by Reuters:

1. Hotel Del Coronado, Coronado, California

Kate Morgan’s body was found six days after she checked into Room 302 of the Hotel del Coronado to meet her estranged husband on Thanksgiving Day 1892. He reportedly never showed up. Kate’s untimely death was ruled a suicide. Room 302 is now known as Room 3312, but Kate’s spirit is said to roam the entire hotel.

2. Roosevelt Hotel, Hollywood, California

The site of the first Academy Awards and the center of Hollywood during its heyday, The Roosevelt Hotel is said to accommodate the ghosts of Marilyn Monroe (Suite 1200) and Montgomery Clift, star of "From Here to Eternity" (Room 928). Marilyn Monroe was a frequent guest there. Her image is said to appear in a mirror now located in the lobby.

3. The Sagamore, Bolton Landing, New York

The Sagamore in Bolton Landing, New York, is said to harbor the ghost of a boy from the 1950s. The boy would collect lost golf balls and sell them to the pro shop for extra cash. Running after a ball one day, he was fatally struck by a car. Apparently, guests still see the boy on the golf course sometimes.

4. Driskill Hotel, Austin, Texas

The smell of cigar smoke can be detected when Colonel Driskill, a Texas cattle baron and Confederate officer, is said to be wandering the lavish Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas. In 1877, the daughter of a Texas senator took a fatal tumble down the grand staircase. It is said she can be heard bouncing a ball in the lobby and along the mezzanine.

5. Shieldhill Castle, Edinburgh, Scotland

Guests tell stories of "The Gray Lady" who is said to haunt Shieldhill Castle in Edinburgh, Scotland. According to legend, she was the daughter of the family who owned the castle until the mid-20th century. She is said to have fallen in love with one of the hired hands. When her father disapproved of the marriage, she committed suicide.

6. Hotel Provincial, New Orleans, Louisiana

New Orleans is renowned for its spooks and hauntings. Part of the Provincial Hotel was once a Confederate hospital. Maids have reported bloodstains mysteriously appearing and disappearing. Once, as the elevator opened on the second floor, the vision of an entire hospital apparently came into view.

7. The Marshall House, Savannah, Georgia

Used as a hospital during the Civil War and during yellow fever epidemics in the 19th century, the Marshall House in Savannah, Georgia, is reportedly one of the most haunted hotels in the city. For more ghosts, check out the famed Pirate House Restaurant with a tunnel dug by pirates that leads to the river.

8. The Heathman Hotel, Portland, Oregon

At this hotel, guests who have left their rooms clean have returned to find something amiss or moved about. Records for the hotel will have shown no one entering the room. Evidently, these occurrences are frequent, especially in rooms ending in-03.

9. The Carolina Inn, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Paranormal researchers have studied The Carolina Inn in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, believed investigating the spirit of Dr. William Jacocks who lived at the inn for many years. Orbs, piano notes, soft-spoken words and other ghostly happenings add to the spooky ambience.

China issues wanted list for Olympics terror plotters

October 23, 2008
China Tuesday released a wanted list of eight "terrorists" it said had carried out attacks aimed at the Beijing Olympics and were bent on separating the restive western region of Xinjiang.

It said the eight were all Chinese nationals and members of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a group listed by the United Nations as a terrorist organization in 2002 with links to Al Qaeda.

"The eight are all key members of the ETIM, and all participated in the planning, deployment and execution of all kinds of violent terrorist activities targeting the Beijing Olympics," Wu Heping, a spokesman with the Ministry of Public Security, told reporters.

Wu said they had carried attacks on targets in China and overseas, but provided no details.

Resource-rich Xinjiang, strategically located on the borders of Central Asia, has been rocked by sometimes violent unrest this year, including the killing of 16 armed police just before the August Olympics, blamed by China on Muslim militants seeking an independent state they call East Turkestan.

China in April said it had foiled a number of terror plots targeting the Olympics by two separate organizations which had included suicide bomb attacks and kidnapping athletes.

A statement handed out by police named Memetiming Memeti, 37, as the head of the ETIM.

Memeti, also named "Memetiming Aximu" among other aliases, had depatched more than 10 ETIM members to China and "certain Western Asian countries" to collect funds, explosives and carry out terror attacks on targets in China and overseas, the statement said.

The other suspects — Emeti Yakuf, Memetituersun Yiming, Memetituersun Abuduhalike, Xiamisidingaihemaiti Abudumijiti, Aikemilai Wumaierjiang, Yakuf Memeti and Tuersun Toheti — had variously been involved in planning attacks, leading terror cells, training and recruiting.

Wu called for international cooperation to track them down.

"We hope that relevant international governments and law enforcement departments can carry out investigations into these eight terrorist suspects according to the law, and if their whereabouts are discovered, that they be arrested and handed over to China," Wu said.

Many of Xinjiang’s 8 million largely Muslim Uighurs chafe at the strict controls on religion that China enforces and resent influxes of Han Chinese migrant workers and businesses.

Uighurs make up slightly less than half of the region’s people, and most of the rest are Han.

Dilxat Raxit, spokesperson for the World Uyghur Congress, dismissed the list as an excuse for China to crack down on Uighurs demanding greater autonomy for Xinjiang.

"The list has political motives," Raxit told Reuters by telephone. "They have produced no evidence to support these claims."

China finds melamine in 31 milk powder products

October 1, 2008

China has found the toxic industrial chemical melamine in 31 milk powder products, the government said Wednesday, announcing the results of a sweeping national check.

 
This represents 11.7 percent of a total of 265 products covered by the investigation, said the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the nation’s top product safety watchdog.
 
All products had been made before September 14, the agency said in a statement on its website, adding that products made after that date were safe.
 
The products came from 20 different companies, including Sanlu Group, whose tainted milk powder triggered the crisis, as well as several of its partner enterprises, it said.
 
The product quality agency said it had checked milk powder from a total of 154 companies, representing more than 70 percent of the entire market.
 
Melamine is an industrial chemical used for making plastic, but when added to watered-down milk, it makes it appear to be richer in protein.
 

The chemical has been blamed for the deaths of four children and for sickening of 53,000 in one of China’s worst product safety scandals ever.