Travel

NEW ORLEANS - Nasty weather that includes a chance of strong tornadoes and howling thunderstorms is forecast on Christmas Day along the Gulf Coast from east Texas to north Florida.

SANIBEL, Fla. - Visit the beaches on this Gulf Coast barrier island and you're likely to see people doing the Sanibel Stoop.

CHICAGO - Getting stranded at an airport once meant enduring hours of boredom in a kind of travel purgatory with nothing to eat but fast food.

MADRID - A car bomb was defused in a megabrothel's parking lot in northeast Spain early Monday and 300 people were evacuated from the site, the Interior Ministry said.

CHICAGO - Getting stranded at a U.S. airport once meant enduring hours of boredom in a kind of travel purgatory with nothing to eat but fast food.

MAD ISLAND, Texas - Armed with flashlights, recordings of bird calls, a small notebook and a stash of candy bars, scientist Rich Kostecke embarked on an annual 24-hour Christmastime count of birds along the Texas Gulf Coast. Yellow rail. Barn owl.

Hamburg is Germany’s second-largest city and its most important port. Like other great European “second cities” — such as Marseille, Glasgow and Barcelona — this northern port city has a special pride.

MERIDA, Mexico - Dec. 21 started out as the prophetic day some had believed would usher in the fiery end of the world.

BUCHAREST, Romania - Twenty-three years after communism collapsed, the Palace of the Parliament, a gargantuan Stalinist symbol and the most concrete legacy of ex-dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, has emerged as an unlikely pillar of Romania's nascent democ

LAKE PLACID, N.Y. - When Lise Luckie and her husband Len need to flee the hustle and bustle of their advertising business in Montreal, they make a beeline for the Mirror Lake Inn. "It's so welcoming," said Luckie. "The people here are so nice.