American Airlines announced this morning that beginning June 15, they will charge a $15 fee for EVERY checked bag from their passengers. They cite the increasing fuel costs for transporting passenger’s luggage for the new charge.

Will airplane cabins become even more overloaded as more passengers bring their luggage as carry-ons instead? I can see more passengers bringing their allotment of carry-on baggage making TSA security checkpoint lines even longer as more packages and wheeled suitcases need to be screened.

On top of all this, American’s parent corporation, AMR, this morning also announced “significant reductions” to its 2008 domestic flight schedule.  The…

Clashes between Tibetan protesters and Chinese police on Sunday have threatened the Dalai Lama’s efforts to keep his campaign for Tibetan freedom a pacifist movement, even as they focus the world on his cause.

Stories in Sunday’s and Monday’s Post-Dispatch say that the protests spread from Tibet into three neighboring provinces Sunday as Tibetans defied the Chinese government crackdown. Demonstrations widened to Tibetan communities in Sichuan, Qinghai and Gansu provinces, forcing authorities to mobilize security forces across a broad expanse of western China.

In a sign that authorities were preparing for trouble, foreign journalists were ordered out of the Tibetan parts of…