KUALA LUMPUR ~ Malaysia’s tourism minister has said 2007 tourist arrivals will exceed expectations, and advised tour operators to “cool off” as the nation was running out of hotel rooms.

Malaysia launched a major campaign to attract visitors on the 50th year of its independence, but the marketing blitz appears to have been too successful.

Tourism Minister Tengku Adnan Tengku Mansor said almost all hotel rooms were booked in and around the capital until October.

KURUMATHI ISLANDS ~ Sabrina Chang decided this year to treat herself to a fancy vacation, opting to stay in a thatched bungalow over a lagoon in the Maldives where a swim with exotic fish is as common as taking a stroll.

The Maldives is celebrating the 35th anniversary since its first two resorts opened and visitors like Chang are among a growing breed of tourists who splash out for a slice of paradise on the remote islands.

Chang, 38, a Hong Kong-based programmer, said she wanted to be pampered for a week and learn about marine life at a biology centre on Kurumathi Island, 35 miles west of the Maldivian capital island Male.

“It’s a luxury holiday combined with an educational experience,” said Chang, who spent US$320 a night for her luxury room at Kurumathi Blue Lagoon.

Holidaymakers like Chang have made Maldives the richest nation in South Asia with a per capita income of $2,674.

The 600,000 visitors who jet here each year rarely see the congested capital Male. Once they clear the airport island, they are whisked off by speedboat or seaplane to resorts.

“They need not leave the resort unless to dive, snorkel or view dolphins,” Tourism Minister Mahamoud Shougee said.

Guests do not even need to change their hard currency into the local rufiyaa as dollar purchases are permitted and the few Maldivians they meet will often be resort staff.

Home to 300,000 Sunni Muslims, the Islamic Republic of the Maldives has relaxed rules in the resorts where alcohol is served, unlike in the capital island where it is prohibited.

Presently, 89 islands have luxury resorts, with occupancy rates averaging 95 percent. The government last year opened 51 new islands for a combination of resort and airport development.

“The hotel developments, some of which will come alongside 10 new airports, is part of our plan to attract a million tourists by 2010 and increase our bed capacity from present 20,500 to 36,700 by 2012,” Shougee said.

Investors are expected to inject $120 million within the next 10 years, some into exclusive villas that charge in excess of $30,000 a night, pampering to the rich and famous.

But most holidaymakers are package tourists from Italy, Germany and Britain - with countries like China, India and the Gulf fast emerging as the next big growth market, said Shougee.

“Some of the new resort developments are being tweaked in terms of menus and products on offer to cater to Chinese, Indian and Gulf tourists, who are not low-budget but want a slightly different experience,” he said.

However, Maldives Association of Tourism Industry head Mohamed Sim Ibrahim says the resort industry has “reached a crossroads.”

“The government is under pressure to release more islands for resort development,” he said.

President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom who has ruled since 1978, promises to “protect investors” and not “cheapen” the Maldives’ reputation as a premium eco-destination.

Tourism accounts for a large chunk of the Maldives’ economy of just under a $1 billion, with money coming from resort lease rentals, annual taxes on resort beds and airport departure taxes.

A three per cent goods and service tax on resort sales will also kick in later this year to boost government revenue.

But trouble may be on the horizon for the low-lying islands which are vulnerable to climate change. Gayoom has warned a rise of about three feet of water would swamp much of his nation, leaving mere sandbars.

SEMINYAK ~ Airbus and Singapore Airlines have agreed to a delivery timetable for the first A380 aircraft, the companies said.

The aircraft is planned for handover by Airbus to Singapore Airlines at a ceremony in Toulouse, France, on October 15, they said in a statement.

It will be configured with 471 seats in three classes: Economy, Business and the new Singapore Airlines Suites: a class beyond First, said the airline.

Within a few days of delivery, the aircraft will fly to Singapore’s Changi Airport, the world’s first A380 home airport, it said.

“World aviation history will be made when the Singapore Airlines A380 makes its First Flight – SQ380 – to Sydney’s Kingsford Smith Airport on October 25, and returns to Singapore on October 26,” said the statement provide to The Bali Times.

Singapore Airlines Chief Executive Officer Chew Choon Seng said the delivery would mark the beginning of a new chapter in the aviation industry.

“Everyone at Singapore Airlines is keenly anticipating the delivery of this new plane, and our people are working hard on final preparation for its entry into service. The first flight promises to be one of the most exciting occasions in aviation history.”

Seats across all three classes will be auctioned on eBay.

By Richard Quest

There was a bit of good news for travelers recently when United Airlines, one of the world’s largest carriers, announced it would go fully flat-bed in business class. You could hear the cheer resounding from frequent flyers like me! This decision put paid, once and for all, to the rubbish that all beds on planes are equal.

A question: When is a bed not a bed? When it is angled lay flat. My back hurts, my legs ache and my clothes are all rumpled - and all because the airline, which claimed to have a bed, actually offered up a torture machine which I prefer to call a slide.

You know the ones: when you put the “bed” into the full recline, you end up on a steep angle. Over the next few hours you slowly, but inexorably, slide down until you are on the floor with your underpants under your armpits.

The trend of moving from seats to beds began in 1995 when British Airways became the first carrier to install fully flat beds in business class. Its major British competitor, Virgin Atlantic, followed, and so began “The battle of the beds.”

The problem became immediately clear: going fully flat meant taking up a lot of room on the plane (valuable real estate in the language of the airlines). As a result, individual airlines have patented their own ways of doing this. BA has alternate rear-facing seats while Virgin adopted a fishbone style, with seats off centre to the plane.

And then there were the airlines that decided not to bother spending the money and instead concocted a cheaper alternative: the dreaded angled lie flat seat. Sure, the seat goes flat but it is not horizontal. You end up sleeping on a slope.

Airlines that should have known better (including Lufthansa and Swiss) went for this cheaper option. The airlines justify the angle by saying the plane flies at a slight incline so you are really flat after all. How many ways can I say that this is rubbish? Rot? Nonsense? Insulting to the intelligence? Let’s be honest. These angled “beds” are uncomfortable and almost never offer a good night’s sleep unless you are so tired you would sleep on the floor. If you doubt me, read the reviews on travelers’ websites. Almost no one likes angled lie flat.

Thankfully, the days of the angled lie flat are inevitably coming to an end. Last month’s decision by United Airlines to become the only US carrier to “go fully flat” almost certainly sounded the death knell for the horrible angled contraption in the years ahead.

If you are not sure what sort of bed you are about to suffer, let me give you some tips. First, ignore all the advertising the airlines put out on this. Do your own research and find out exactly what sort of bed is being offered. I always look at flatseats.com (run by the excellent SKTRAX people, with detailed analysis of plane seats and reviews). It will tell you clearly what sort of seat it is and whether other passengers have found it comfortable.

If you do end up trapped with an angled lie-flat seat, I recommend that you recline the seat as fully as possible, THEN start nudging it back up again which actually will make the seat more flat. That will give you support and protect your back and legs. Eventually you will get to a position you can live with for the flight. Just.

Swiss International has a whole set of instructions in the seat pocket dedicated to telling you how to jog their seat (perhaps the fact they have to put the instructions should have told them not to bother buying the seat in the first place…).

In the end, I would always go for flat bed over angled lay flat. It’s a simple choice. A good night’s sleep or a night spent sliding to the floor. Let’s get rid of the angled torture trap for business travelers once and for all.

Richard Quest is a CNN anchor and correspondent based in London.

BEIJING ~ China intends to ban all tobacco advertising by the beginning of 2011, the latest possible date required under an international treaty, state press reported this week.

The end of the advertising will be in line with China’s commitments to a World Health Organisation convention, the Xinhua news agency said, citing Jiang Yuan from the Health Ministry-affiliated State Tobacco Control Office.

China, home to one in three of the world’s smokers, ratified the WHO’s anti-smoking convention in 2005 and announced then it would eventually phase-out tobacco advertising.

WASHINGTON, Aug 28, 2007 (AFP) - Some 36.5 million people lived in poverty last year in the United States, with children and blacks the worst affected, a report by the US Census Bureau showed Tuesday.

The number of poor people out of the total US population of 302 million was equivalent to the entire state of California — paradoxically one of the richest states — one-and-a-half times the population of Malaysia or nearly everyone in the central European nation of Poland living in poverty.

But the Census Bureau stressed the positive in its report, which also looked at median income and numbers of people with health insurance, pointing out that earnings rose and the poverty rate fell from 2005 to 2006.

According to the report, around 12.8 million children under the age of 18, or around one-third of the 36.5 million poor, existed in 2006 with annual funds below the income threshold used by the Census Bureau to determine who lives in poverty.

For a single person under the age of 65, the income threshold was 10,488 dollars a year; for a single parent with one child, it was 13,896 dollars.

The number of people over the age of 65 who lived in poverty fell last year to 3.4 million from 3.6 million in 2005, while the 18-64 age group showed no change at 20.2 million in poverty.

In percentage terms, three times more black people — 24.3 percent — lived in poverty than the 8.2 percent of white people who did.

The south was the worst hit geographic area, with a poverty rate of 13.8 percent, and more than 29 million of the United States’ poor live in large cities or their suburbs.

The median household income in the United States increased by 0.7 percent from 47,845 dollars (35,097 euros) to 48,201 dollars (35,359 euros) last year from 2005, the report said.

But the increase for black households was only 0.3 percent, while white households enjoyed an increase of 1.1 percent and Asians of 1.8 percent.

Women tend to earn 77 percent of the salary of men in an equivalent job, the report said.

It also showed that 47 million people had no health insurance in the United States last year, an increase from the 44.8 million who had no coverage in 2005.

DENPASAR ~ The Health Ministry said this week that a 43-year-old woman who died in Bali with symptoms of bird flu was not infected with the virus.

“She tested negative,” said an official at the ministry’s bird flu information centre.

The woman, who died on Saturday, had been suffering from a serious lung infection, one of the main symptoms of avian influenza.

The H5N1 virus has killed 84 Indonesians, the highest toll in the world, and is endemic in birds across nearly all of the world’s fourth-largest nation.

Two people were confirmed as dying of the virus in Bali this month, the first human deaths reported on the island, though infected poultry were found there more than a year ago.

Officials have culled more than 6,000 fowl and banned the trade and transport of live poultry in response to the latest deaths.

Scientists worry that the virus will eventually mutate into a form that is much more easily transmissible between humans, triggering a disastrous global pandemic.