A Briggs Passport & Visa Expeditors

If you want to order one of the new a passport cards, get a passport application — it’s called a DS 11 and follow the instructions. On the new applications that will be available by February 1, 2008, you will find an option for applying for a passport card which you will select to order a passport card. Alternatively, you can order the traditional passport book with the same application.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

Continental Airlines will offer 36 channels of live TV to all passengers on new Boeing 737’s and 757’s beginning January 2009. It will also offer Wi-Fi including email and instant messaging.

The programming will include CBS, NBC, ESPN, MTV, CNN and Fox News. There will be no charge for first class and $6 for coach for the service.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

Going to China for the Olympics or for a visit or business?

You’ll have to get a visa first.

Here is everything you need to know to obtain your visa.

You have to have a valid passport with at least six months validity and at least one blank visa page. If you don’t have six months validity, you will have to renew your passport prior to applying. If you do not have blank pages, you will have to add pages to your passport prior to applying.

You will have to either appear in person at the Embassy of China or one of its U.S. consulates. If you cannot appear in person, contact A Briggs and we will secure your visa for you. China does not allow visa applications to be mailed or shipped to its embassy or its consulates. A personal appearance by the applicant or a representative is required.

Visas are required to transit China.

Special permits are required to visit Tibet. China visa applications to visit Tibet require a Travel Permit issued by the Tourism Bureau of the Tibet Autonomous Region in addition to other requirements listed below.

Single-entry visas must be used with three months of the date of issue. Double-entry visas must be used in three or six months, but are usually issued for use within three months. Recently single-entry visas have been extended to six months; however, there is no assurance that this practice will continue.

Multiple-entry visas are issued for use within either six or twelve months depending on the invitation.

You can stay in China for up to 30 days on each visit.

The validity of a China visa is not from the date you enter China but the dates issued on the visa.

China takes four days to issue visas. You can pay an extra $10 and secure it in two days or $20 and secure it in one day.

If you are going to China then Hong Kong and back into China, you will need to obtain a double-entry visa.

If you are traveling only to Hong Kong and do not plan to enter China, you do not have to have a visa. You can stay in Hong Kong for up to 30 days without a visa. You will need a valid passport. Each time you enter Hong Kong or Macao from the mainland, you need one entry.

Tourist visas are marked “L”, Business visas “F”, Student visas “X”, Work visas “Z”, Crew visas “C”, and Transit visas “G”. Single-entry visas are marked “1”, double-entry “2”, and multiple-entry “M”.

If you are traveling on business, do not apply for a tourist visa. We hear of persons traveling on business advised by some travel professional to get a tourist visa. Do not do that. If you are in China doing business and have an incident with the police or authorities and they learn that you there on business with a tourist visa, you will be in trouble. China is not the place to get into trouble with the authorities.

To secure your visa, the following documents must be presented:

Your valid passport with at least six months validity and at least one blank visa page.

One completed visa application form

One passport photo.

China consular fee for issuing the visa of $130.

If applying for a business visa, you must submit a letter from your U.S. employer indicating the purpose of your travel, duration of your stay, and taking responsibility for your moral and financial actions.

If you are applying for a multiple-entry business visa, you must submit an official invitation from the Chinese Provincial Government specifically requesting a multiple-entry visa.

For other types of visas, including single- and double-entry business visas, invitations from China are not required.

Applicants who were born in China must submit either their China passport or a prior U.S. passport with a China visa in the passport. Applicants born in China must put their names on the application in Chinese irrespective if they hold U.S. passports.

If you cannot appear in person, contact A Briggs and we will secure your visa for you.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

American Airlines has started to test full-service, high-speed broadband Internet service one airplane. It estimates that by the summer it will offer Internet service on all its Boeing 767-200 aircraft and then slowly add service to all its aircraft.

The service will be provided on the aircraft to passengers’ wireless devices, including laptops and Apple iPhones. For flights of more than three hours, wireless service will cost $12.95, with a charge of $10.00 planned for shorter flights. American will earn a small amount of revenue from the service, but an American Airlines official Backelin said its main goal was to improve its customers experience.

American is subcontracting the service to an outside company. which has a license from the Federal Communications Commission to provide wireless and broadband services to business and commercial aircraft in the continental U.S.

The WiFi connection will work only for data communication. Cellphone and voice over Internet service will not be offered or available because the FAA hasn’t approved the use of cellphones in flight

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

The new passport card has information encoded electronically in the card to speed processing of citizens coming back into the U.S. The card has been criticized by some for the fact that the data in the card could be hacked into because the data can be picked up from more than a few inches away. The critics say the data could compromise the holder’s personal information.

We have never agreed with this criticism because the only data on the card is a unique number of the holder that has nothing to do with their identity. Instead the number is only good for use on the database of the U.S. Customs officials. When put into Customs computer database, the number will identify the holder, so he or she can be correctly and immediately identified and allowed to enter the U.S.

So even if someone did successfully hack into the card and get the passport card number of the holder, it would only be helpful if they also had hacked into the Customs database, and that is as close to impossible as the government can guarantee. We respect the integrity of the databases of the U.S. government, so we do not think the passport card is a personal security risk.

Read an interesting editorial on this subject by the Buffalo News whose readers are heavily impacted by this card because they are only a few miles from the Canadian border.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

Amtrak employees have worked without a contract for eight years and have received only cost-of-living pay increases since 2000. A presidential panel created to avert a strike last week recommended that workers receive a 35 percent raise through 2009 and millions of dollars in additional back pay for the years worked without increases. The unions were pleased by the report, but Amtrak would need support in Congress to pay the increases.

The unions’ right to strike begins at 12:01 a.m. Jan. 30. Amtrak has never had a strike.

The unions said a strike is one of three possibilities, including a negotiated settlement with congressional intervention. “Amtrak’s concern has always been the railroad’s ability to make pay increases retroactive and to achieve efficiencies through work rule reform,” Cliff Black, an Amtrak spokesman, said in a written statement.

Commuter rail services on East Coast depend on Amtrak to operate. Amtrak owns or operates most of the routes between Washington, D.C. and Boston.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

The Department of Homeland Security is placing anti-missile systems on several passenger planes flying in and out of John F. Kennedy Airport.

The program will test to see if the anti-missile systems are effective in helping prevent a terrorist from using a shoulder-fired missile to shoot down a passenger jet. Three of the anti-missile systems will be placed on American Airlines flights flying between JFK and airports in California, officials said.

Military jets have the equipment and there were recent tests on non-passenger cargo flights.

The anti-missile system are attached underneath the aircraft and have a jamming technology that causes heat seeking missiles to go off course.

The program has been instituted because the FBI has conducted sting operations in Albany and Newark where several men were charged for trying to obtain or smuggle shoulder-fired missiles into the U.S.

DHS officials noted that there has been no attempts to use these missiles to strike an aircraft inside the U.S., but there have been several incidents overseas.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

A new program signed into law on December 27, 2007, will allow international travelers to register in advance of travel to speed their passage through security checkpoints at U.S. airports.

The government will publish guidelines for the program within about a year. It will be similar to the domestic Registered Traveler program that private contractors operate at U.S. airports.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

The Department of Homeland Security is placing anti-missile systems on several passenger planes flying in and out of John F. Kennedy Airport.

The program will test to see if the anti-missile systems are effective in helping prevent a terrorist from using a shoulder-fired missile to shoot down a passenger jet. Three of the anti-missile systems will be placed on American Airlines flights flying between JFK and airports in California, officials said.

Military jets have the equipment and there were recent tests on non-passenger cargo flights.

The anti-missile system are attached underneath the aircraft and have a jamming technology that causes heat seeking missiles to go off course.

The program has been instituted because the FBI has conducted sting operations in Albany and Newark where several men were charged for trying to obtain or smuggle shoulder-fired missiles into the U.S.

DHS officials noted that there has been no attempts to use these missiles to strike an aircraft inside the U.S., but there have been several incidents overseas.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.

Regular U.S. visitors to Mexican beaches just south of San Diego are showing up less because of an increase in armed robbery on the beaches.

The Associated Press reported “Surfers and kayakers are frightened to hit the waters of the northern stretch of Mexico’s Baja California, long popular as a weekend destination for US tourists.”

Weddings have been canceled and beach front restaurants have seen a dramatic drop in business, even on the usually busy New Year’s weekend.

Shakedowns by police and drug-related violence have continued as in past, but starting last summer, attacks by masked, armed bandits has frightened even longtime visitors, according to the A.P. store.The Baja California peninsula is known worldwide for clean and sparsely populated beaches.

The US Consulate in Tijuana has not reported an increase in attacks on American citizens but many crimes are not reported, according to US consular officials. The State Department has always warned motorists on Mexico’s border to watch for cars following them. But citizens should reasonably ask themselves what could they do if they were being followed in a remote area even a few miles from the U.S. border?

In Rosarito, a city an hour from the border, authorities recently forced police to surrender their weapons for testing to see if they were linked to any crimes.

In 2007, 18 million tourists visited Baja, down from 21 million in 2006. Mexican crime continues to soil the lovely nation and its people. The tragedy of this level of crime touches both the direct victims, the tourists, and the Mexican citizens who lose their jobs because of the crime driven drop in visitors.

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Planning a trip? Is your passport up to date? Click here to order a Passport.