1. “Our engines break down all the time.”

The trucks weren’t needed, it turned out. The Boeing 767-300 jet landed safely, the pilot said in his account to NASA's Aviation Safety Reporting System, which allows airline employees to report incidents confidentially and without identifying the airline or the flight.

The pilot reported that he later was told by mechanics that the incident was caused by a landing-gear wheel that was missing a part and had been installed incorrectly.

The passengers on the unidentified international flight were on a jet that should never have left the ground. Improper repair work made it unsafe to fly. It was no isolated incident.

During the past six years, millions of passengers have been on at least 65,000 U.S. airline flights that shouldn't have taken off because planes weren't properly maintained, a six-month USA TODAY investigation has found.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR USA TODAY: Planes with maintenance problems have flown anyway – USATODAY.com.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS ARTICLE, CLICK THIS LINK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES: Practical Traveler – 10 Ways to Cut Your Travel Costs In 2010 – NYTimes.com.

Americans are suffering from high unemployment, income reductions and financial insecurity that continue to undermine the travel business, even as the economy shows tepid signs of recovery, according to economists and poll respondents.

“I crunched the numbers, checked numerous airlines and it just wasn’t a possibility,” said Lisa Emmett-Gagliano, 48, of Mesa, Ariz. Emmett-Gagliano, a single mother on disability, wanted to take her two daughters to Chicago to visit family they hadn’t seen for nine years.

A survey of 1,025 people, conducted Dec. 11 through Sunday, found that 35% said they had intended to travel more than 100 miles from home during the holidays. However, about one-third of the would-be travelers said the economy forced them to abandon plans, leaving only 23% who will actually take trips. And more than a third of those said they were cutting back “significantly” on the cost of their trip.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS STORY, CLICK THIS LINK FOR USA TODAY: Many Americans scale back seasonal trips or stay put – USATODAY.com.

As I made my way up the street — past a pizzeria, a liquor store and a cosmetics shop — I came across an easy-to-miss alleyway flanked by two metal gates. Then, at the far end of the alley, past a parking garage, I spotted the Market Hotel. My first reaction was to turn back and head to the closest Internet cafe to search for a new hotel, but as I inched closer, I noticed a surprisingly elegant exterior, with orange awnings shading sleek mirrored windows, and a row of lanterns providing a spark of warmth to the otherwise industrial street.

After being greeted exuberantly by the woman at the front desk, who immediately offered me a bottle of water to slake my thirst, I headed up to the room, where more surprises awaited. The room, though small, was elegantly appointed, with gleaming wood floors, Chinese-influenced cabinets, a flat-screen TV and a good-sized, comfortable bed. The bathroom was huge, compared with others I have encountered over the years in Europe, and was well stocked with toiletries in elegantly designed packaging.

As I opened the French doors that led out to a tiny balcony overlooking the street, I had one thought: How was it possible that this room was costing me only 60 euros a night?

That’s the thing about budget hotels. Sometimes they turn out to be a disaster, leaving you to lie awake at night, fighting to go to sleep as you try to shut out the noise from the busy street just beyond your window and hoping you will get to morning without having inherited a family of bedbugs. And other times, they turn out to be diamonds in the rough, places you can’t wait to brag about to friends back home.

And that’s what the Market Hotel turned out to be over the next three days. How had I found it? Well, it wasn’t a friend who had told me about it. It was a reader of the Travel section’s Web site who had recommended it on a posting on our Barcelona destination guide, saying it was “modern, inviting and simply wonderful” and that it only cost 80 euros a night. (I got an even better deal, it seemed.)

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS STORY, CLICK THE LINK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES.COM 100 Hotels Under $150 – NYTimes.com.

Predicting cities that will emerge as post-recession meccas for the young is easy to argue about, but impossible to forecast empirically. Whether you prefer hip, casual Austin, Texas, over the cosmopolitan allure of New York City is partly a matter of personal taste. Still, we asked six experts which 10 cities will emerge as the hottest, hippest destinations for highly mobile, educated workers in their 20s when the U.S. economy gets moving again. Our panelists—demographers, economists, geographers and authors on urban issues—picked their cities based on the criteria they deem most important, from economic diversity to lifestyle.

Big cities dominate our panelists’ forecasts. Where trendy smaller cities might have captivated youth in the past, today’s recession-scarred young people are more pragmatic, placing “greater emphasis on where high-quality, high-paying jobs are created,” says Ross DeVol, director of regional economics for the nonprofit Milken Institute. Northeastern and West Coast cities are ascendant, eclipsing former Sunbelt favorites such as Atlanta.

Other cities once lauded as youth magnets fell off the radar. Naples, Fla., cited in an influential 2003 U.S. Census Bureau report on migration among young adults, was bypassed by panelists, a victim of the sagging Florida economy. The housing collapse sank another past favorite, former real-estate boom town Las Vegas. And Charlotte, N.C., a banking center, lost some of its luster to the financial crisis.

Quirky urban cultures haven’t entirely lost their allure. Our panelists’ No. 4 pick is a city with double-digit unemployment—Portland, Ore., a haven for artists, musicians and outdoor enthusiasts. The city has shown “staying power” among youth, says Rachel Franklin, a geographer at the University of Maryland and author of the Census Bureau report.

Where young adults settle is no small thing. People 18 to 29 are the most mobile age group, and their past migration patterns have defined the future of regions, from the long rural exodus of the 1900s to the Silicon Valley boom of the 1990s. Youth-magnet cities gain an enviable cultural allure and a labor-market edge.

The young are likely to be more restless than usual when the recovery comes. The recession has brought migration to a grinding halt: Fewer people moved across state lines in 2008 than at any time since 1950, when the population was smaller by half, says William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit Washington research organization.

Here’s a look at our survey’s top five cities:  FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS STORY, CLICK THE LINK FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: The Next Hot Youth-Magnet Cities – WSJ.com.

But Mr. Nelson, a Democrat, has a big problem. The bill taken up this week by the committee would cut Medicare payments to insurance companies that care for more than 10 million older Americans, including nearly one million in Florida. The program, known as Medicare Advantage, is popular because it offers extra benefits, including vision and dental care and even, in some cases, membership in health clubs or fitness centers.

“It would be intolerable to ask senior citizens to give up substantial health benefits they are enjoying under Medicare,” said Mr. Nelson, who has been deluged with calls and complaints from constituents. “I am offering an amendment to shield seniors from those benefit cuts.”

Similar concerns exploded into public view on Wednesday as members of the Finance Committee slogged though a mammoth health care overhaul bill for a second day.

To help offset the cost of covering the uninsured, the Senate and House bills would squeeze roughly $400 billion to $500 billion out of the projected growth in Medicare over 10 years.

Republicans on Wednesday accused Democrats of using Medicare as a piggy bank to pay for coverage of the uninsured. Democrats countered by saying they were eliminating overpayments to insurance companies and extending the life of the Medicare trust fund, which could run out of money in 2017.

Senator Nelson said Republicans were waging a “scare campaign,” but he shares some of their concerns. His predicament highlights the political risks for Democrats eager to reassure older Americans who vote in large numbers.

There are risks for President Obama as well. He cannot afford to lose Mr. Nelson’s vote. White House officials have offered to work with him to address his concerns. Mr. Obama has said repeatedly that “if you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep it.”

The cost of Mr. Nelson’s proposed fix — to preserve benefits for many people enrolled in the private Medicare plans — could total $40 billion over 10 years, and that could also be a problem for the White House. Mr. Obama has promised not to sign a health bill that increases the deficit, and so far Mr. Nelson has not said precisely how he would pay for his amendment.

Approval of the amendment could invite other Democrats to ask for similar deals that might make the bill more palatable to their constituents, but more costly as well.

The legislation moving through Congress would make other huge changes in Medicare — raising premiums for some higher-income beneficiaries, cutting payments to hospitals and nursing homes, and trimming payments for many “overvalued services” provided by doctors. The legislation includes provisions to measure the quality of care provided by doctors and hospitals and to reward those who cure patients or keep them healthy.

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS STORY, CLICK THE LINK FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES: Senator Tries to Allay Fears on Health Overhaul – NYTimes.com.

Some of the places on my list are well-known tourist traps, but not all tourist traps are a waste of time (the Empire State Building, Mount Rushmore and Niagara Falls are all well worth a look).

Regardless, the following spots have left me either underwhelmed or exhausted for no good reason. I’m sure you have a similar list.

Fisherman’s Wharf

San Francisco

It’s very easy to have an enjoyable, fulfilling stay in San Francisco without ever touching foot in this awful place, which has all the appeal of a rundown (and yet somehow very expensive) amusement park. If you are forced to visit, however, I recommend the Musee Mecanique, a wonderfully eerie collection of vintage penny arcade games located at Pier 45.

Petrified Forest National Park

Holbrook, Ariz.

Petrified Forest National Park is located off of Interstate 40 between Holbrook and Navajo. From the north entrance of the park off of Interstate 40, a roughly 25-mile driving route meanders south among a spare expanse of rocks and sand, until you find yourself on Highway 180. Then you drive back up to Interstate 40 and continue on your way, an hour closer to the grave.

Wall Street

New York City

Wall Street could easily be described as a dark, narrow alley full of traffic pylons, heavily armed police officers, harried office workers and lots of tourists taking pictures of a street sign. Federal Hall, where Washington gave his inaugural address, consists of a mostly empty rotunda with a few exhibits, and the New York Stock Exchange is strictly off-limits these days.

Plymouth Rock

Plymouth, Mass.

Plymouth Rock sits inside a Greek Temple-like structure along a pleasant promenade in Plymouth Harbor, Mass. The rock is gray and worn, and roughly the size of a car engine, with the year 1620 stamped across its side. It marks the precise spot where William Bradford and the Mayflower pilgrims set foot in the New World, except for the fact that this actually happened in Provincetown.

The Alamo

San Antonio, Texas

The Alamo, otherwise known as Mission San Antonio de Valero, sits on roughly four acres in downtown San Antonio, a short distance from the River Walk. Much of the original structure is no more, and what remains are a few small stone buildings and some neatly trimmed lawns. The audio tour concludes in an exceedingly well-provisioned gift shop.

Hollywood

Los Angeles

Enjoy a concert at the Hollywood Bowl, watch the sunset from the Griffith Observatory, or take a stroll in Runyon Canyon Park. But don’t go looking for “Hollywood,” because you’re liable to wind up on the Walk of Fame being harassed by a Charlie Chaplin impersonator.

Bourbon Street

New Orleans

Everyone should make an effort to visit New Orleans, and the romance of the French Quarter is still alive and well in places such as Jackson Square and Decatur Street. But for the sake of your dignity, avoid Bourbon Street if you can. All the charming cast-iron balconies in the world can’t save this stretch of sadness.

RMS Queen Mary

Long Beach, Calif.

What do you get when you cross a Ramada Inn with a rusty old ship? The RMS Queen Mary, the once-proud jewel of the Cunard Line, which now lies permanently docked in Long Beach as a hotel, convention center and floating haunted house (paranormal tours are available). They should have given poor old Mary an honorable burial at sea.

FOR MORE TRAVEL INFORMATION AND THE CONTINUATION OF THIS STORY – CLICK THE FOLLOWING LINK FOR YAHOO TRAVEL:  U.S.’s Most Over-Rated Tourist Traps.

Article filed by Andrew Harper

The change comes as the Department of Homeland Security takes over responsibility for checking airline passenger names against government watch lists. The additional personal information, which airlines will forward to the Transportation Security Administration, is expected to cut down on cases of mistaken identity, in which people with names similar to those on terrorist watch lists are erroneously barred or delayed from flights.

U.S. airlines on May 15 started asking passengers for their full name as it appears on a government-issued identification card, a change intended to allow companies to upgrade their reservation and information systems. Starting Saturday, airlines will be required to get both the name and the additional information, although TSA is working with individual airlines to phase in compliance, TSA spokesman Greg Soule said.

Passengers should not be concerned if their airline does not ask them for the information, Soule said. The agency hopes to vet 100 percent of domestic passengers by March 31 and all passengers on international flights to, from or over the United States by the end of 2010 — a total of 2 million daily passengers.

For now, there will be no penalty for passengers who do not provide the information, Soule said. However, once the program is fully implemented, they could be denied boarding passes, he said.

“We have been assured that no passenger will be turned away or be denied the ability to travel,” said David A. Castelveter, a spokesman for the Air Transport Association of America, a domestic airline trade group. “It would simply mean if you didnt have the information, you would be subjected to secondary screening.”

The TSA seems to have softened its stance since October, when then-TSA Administrator Kip Hawley and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff announced the Secure Flight program. They said that except in rare situations, passengers who did not provide the additional information would be denied boarding and subject at minimum to being flagged for additional screening at airport security checkpoints.

Citing security reasons, the TSA would not say how many or which airlines are ready to comply with Secure Flight. However, an aviation industry official said that starting Saturday a majority of domestic travelers can expect to be asked for the added information.

Full implementation of Secure Flight would fulfill a top aviation security goal after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It was included in a 2004 law overhauling U.S. intelligence agencies.

U.S. officials said that by taking over watch-list vetting, the government will consistently apply the latest list information and sophisticated algorithms to catch name variations, and avoid the security risk of giving such data to industry.

Adding full names, gender and birth dates will allow 99 percent of travelers to avoid delays — or all but 2,000 passengers a day, they said.

Civil liberties groups have said the government still lacks adequate redress procedures for people mistakenly matched to watch lists.

Watch-list mismatches have delayed countless passengers whose names are similar to those on the agency’s no-fly list, or on a second list of “selectees” identified for added questioning. Travelers who are stopped often endure lengthy questioning without an explanation.

Watch-list mismatches have ensnared infants and toddlers and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.). The wife of former senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), Catherine, was stopped after a computer flagged her name because of its similarity to “Cat Stevens,” the pop singer who converted to Islam and took the name Yusuf Islam. The government said it placed him on the no-fly list out of concern over his donations to groups that it said might have terrorist ties.

U.S. officials in October said the no-fly list included fewer than 2,500 individuals and the selectee list fewer than 16,000, most of whom were not U.S. citizens.

FOR NEWS, INFORMATION AND CONTINUTATION OF THIS STORY, CLICK THE LINK FOR THE WASHINGTON POST:  Airlines to Begin Asking Passengers for More Information – washingtonpost.com.

Article filed by Spencer S. Hsu for the Washington Post.

The anglers have long since passed on, and the locality is now better known as Manchester, N.H. Time to add another title: best cheap city in the U.S.

The Manchester-Nashua metro area ranks first on our list of America’s 100 Cheapest Places To Live. Among the U.S. cities with the most affordable housing and lowest cost of living, the Queen City offers the best combination of safety, employment opportunity and general quality of life. Once an industrial mill town, Manchester (pop. 402,000) has reinvented itself as a haven for those repelled by the high price of living and doing business in other New England states.

“You have a lot of Massachusetts companies going there because of the low cost,” says Eduardo Martinez, senior economist at Moody’s Economy.com. “It makes sense for companies to scout that out as a location. The tax situation is a lot better.”

A lot better–there are no sales or income taxes in New Hampshire, fitting for a state whose motto is “Live Free or Die.” Though the lack of taxes hasn’t lured many corporate headquarters, Martinez notes that it has convinced companies like BEA Systems — which already has a large presence in Boston–to set up back-office operations in the Granite State.

Manchester isn’t the only mid-sized city that makes for a good all-around value. Utah’s 531,500-strong Ogden-Clearfield metro ranks second on our list, thanks to rock-bottom unemployment and crime rates. High salaries and copious amounts of culture help the Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., metro (pop. 3,229,900) finish third.

How can so big a metro offer a high quality of life? “The best place to be is on the fringe of one of those big cities,” says Al Lee, director of Quantitative Analysis at PayScale.com. “An hour or so outside of town, you’re still close enough to feel the influence of the high wage areas.”

“An hour or so outside of town, you’re still close enough to feel the influence of the high wage areas.”

Behind the Numbers

To form our list, we looked at America’s 380 metropolitan statistical areas and metropolitan divisions (or metros)–geographic entities defined by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget for use by federal agencies in collecting, tabulating and publishing federal statistics–and picked out the 100 cheapest. In order to do that, we ranked all on cost of living data from Moody’s Economy.com and home affordability figures from the National Association of Home Builders and Wells Fargo.

Once the 100 cheapest metro areas were established, we rated them across four quality-of-life measures: violent crime rate, from the Federal Bureau of Investigation; unemployment rate, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; average salary for college grads, from Payscale.com; and cultural opportunity, based on the leisure index from Sperling’s Best Places. In our slideshow, we pulled out the top three from each of the country’s Census-designated regions.

United, but Not Uniform

America’s cheapest places are by no means evenly distributed. Though Manchester ranks first on our list, it’s one of just three New England metros to crack the top 100. Worcester, Mass., and Springfield, Mass., rank No. 4 and No. 46 in the nation, respectively.

That shouldn’t come as a surprise. According to the National Association of Realtors, the median sales price for a single-family home in the U.S. is $169,000. In the South, the average is $147,000; in the Midwest, $132,000. Homes are almost twice as expensive in the West and New England–$238,000 and $236,000, respectively.

The country’s Pacific region–Washington, Oregon and California–boasts just two cheap places, making it the only one of America’s nine census regions that doesn’t contain at least three cheap metros. The lucky pair? Spokane, Wash., and Modesto, Calif., Nos. 72 and 91. Though the latter ranked fifth on our list of America’s Most Miserable Cities earlier this year due to its high crime and unemployment, relative to the other cities on the list, it offers Bay Area workers cheap living to compensate for a brutal 90-minute commute–enough to put pressure on local employers to offer competitive salaries.

“It’s kind of on the outer fringes, but it’s the realm that people might do it,” says Lee. “Given the possibility to commute to the closest part of the Bay Area, there’s the potential for people to go closer and get higher wages. That’s going to have an impact.”

The middle of the country claims more bargain areas, with Ogden, Utah, leading the pack in the Mountain region and Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., and Ann Arbor, Mich., pacing their respective halves of the Midwest. New York’s Albany metro is the cheapest of the Mid-Atlantic cities. Among the sub-regions of the South, Fort Worth, Texas, Knoxville, Tenn., and Durham, N.C., offer the best value.

Among the regions of the South, Fort Worth, Texas, Knoxville, Tenn., and Durham, N.C., offer the best value.

Martinez points out that many of the best cheap cities like Minneapolis and Ann Arbor are benefiting from the shift of technology research and development away from Silicon Valley. Though companies aren’t completely abandoning California, some, like Cisco Systems, are starting East Coast branches in smaller university towns like Durham because of the low cost and high concentration of engineers.

“In these particular areas, I think the technology imprint is an important underpinning,” he says. “A lot of these towns have top-tier research universities. From a salary and income perspective, there are going to be more opportunities. It’s all part of a larger shift with tech that you’re going to see in the U.S.”

For the less technologically inclined, Lee notes that places like Fort Worth offer myriad job opportunities that come with proximity to larger metro areas–without the cost.

“Durham is the less expensive side of the Raleigh-Durham area; Fort Worth is the same with Dallas,” he says. “You’re in a strong constellation, but you’re living on the cheap side.”

For the ultimate in cheap housing, there’s always Detroit. Some homes in the Motor City cost less than a Ford Taurus–but there are drawbacks.

“Declining population leads to housing affordability,” says Lee. “The big risk is that there are fewer jobs than people. If you a get a job in Detroit, it’s a great place to go and buy a house cheap. It’s just a gamble.”

Cheapest Places to Live

Spokane, Wash.

Pacific (Overall rank: 72)

Population: 462,700
Average Salary: 67
Unemployment: 63
Crime: 44
Culture: 71
Total: 245

Modesto, Calif.

Pacific (Overall rank: 91)

Population: 510,700
Average Salary: 19
Unemployment: 98
Crime: 77
Culture: 81
Total: 275

Ogden-Clearfield, Utah

Mountain (Overall rank: 2)

Population: 531,500
Average Salary: 27
Unemployment: 7
Crime: 6
Culture: 20
Total: 60

Fort Collins-Loveland, Colo.

Mountain (Overall rank: 9)

Population: 292,800
Average Salary: 33
Unemployment: 14
Crime: 11
Culture: 53
Total: 111

Greeley, Colo.

Mountain (Overall rank: 13)

Population: 249,800
Average Salary: 12
Unemployment: 36
Crime: 20
Culture: 48
Total: 116

FOR CONTINUATION OF THIS STORY:  Click here for the full list of America’s Best Cheap Cities

ARTICLE FILE BY ZACK O’MALLEY GREENBERG FOR FORBES