With travel restrictions barely easing, U.S.-Canada border towns stuck in economic limbo

BLAINE — At Border Mailbox and Parcel, just minutes from the U.S.-Canada border, owner Doug Hornsby all but trips over the economic fallout of the pandemic every time he comes to work.

Before COVID-19, Hornsby’s customers were primarily Canadians who used his Blaine address for their online purchases to take advantage of cheaper U.S. shipping.

But that bit of globalization ground to a halt in March 2020, when the pandemic shut the border to nonessential travelers — and turned Hornsby’s shop into a kind of package purgatory, with thousands of unretrieved purchases.

“I have stuff that’s been here 16 months,” the 71-year-old grouses as he steps around a 65-inch flat screen TV that showed up last spring and hasn’t moved since.

Nor is it clear when it will move. Canada recently announced it will start easing some border restrictions, on July 5. But other restrictions have been extended through July

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The best travel credit cards of 2021: Reviewed

There's no better travel companion than a top-notch rewards credit card.

— Our editors review and recommend products to help you buy the stuff you need. If you sign up for a credit card after clicking one of our links, we may earn a small fee for referring you. However, our picks and opinions are independent from USA TODAY’s newsroom and any business incentives.

Got a getaway on the brain? As vaccination rates climb and international borders open, some of us are looking to safely get out there. And you might want to do it with one of the best travel credit cards in hand, too.

Whether you’re looking for airline miles, a Global Entry or TSA PreCheck credit or a flexible rewards program that doesn’t box you in, there’s something for every type of traveler. Even the ones who only cash in on their vacation days every once in a blue moon.

Reviewed’s experts poured through dozens of credit

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Vacation Insurance policy Tips 2021 | Revenue

Travel is unique this summer season. So is vacation insurance plan. With each other, the modifications could have an affect on your determination on whether, and how, to insure your family vacation.

As the pandemic recedes, a comeback is underway for the full-fledged family members trip — the sort that will involve traveling and an Airbnb or hotel stay — and almost certainly expenditures more than the road trip you took previous yr. And as family vacation paying out rises, so could the amount of money invested to insure excursions. Adroit Market Investigation predicts the premiums paid out for vacation insurance policies will increase by an normal of just about 8% a 12 months involving 2021 and 2028.

Even as bacterial infections drop, even though, COVID-19 carries on to have an effect on travel and travel insurance policy, if in diverse approaches than it did past summer. Continuing considerations about

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Few vacation the world recreating scenes at motion picture areas

(CNN) — After going on numerous significant journeys together as a few, Robin Lachhein and Judith Schneider, both from Frankfurt, Germany, needed to do one thing extra unique for their following family vacation.

They talked as a result of many prospective tips just before coming up with anything that thrilled each of them — touring to a motion picture location and recreating a famed scene.

In 2014, they frequented Prague and re-enacted a clip from the 1996 movie “Mission: Impossible,” generating positive to doc the moment on digital camera.

About the subsequent couple a long time, Lachhein and Schneider frequented everywhere from Rome and Iceland, to New York and even Utah, recreating scenes or promotional pictures from films like “Thelma and Louise,” “The Starvation Video games,” “Take in Pray Really like,” “The Devil Wears Prada” as properly as Television collection these types of as “Recreation of Thrones” and “Downton Abbey.”

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Green list countries update latest: Travel industry reels from ‘chaotic’ review as Malta and Balearics added

Britishholidaymakers got a much-needed boost in Thursday’s traffic light review, which added Malta, Madeira and the Balearic Islands to the quarantine-free travel register.

A swathe of Caribbean islands including Barbados and Antigua were also added to the green list, which now numbers 27 territories in total – although most are inaccessible to Britons.

However, all new additions bar Malta have been added to the as-yet-unused “green watchlist”, which signals they are at risk of turning amber.

Former vaccine star Israel has also been shifted down a notch to the green watchlist.

As has become comically customary, a random assortment of inaccessible overseas territories were also thrown in: notably the Pitcairn Islands, deep in the South Pacific, and British Antarctic Territory, which has no permanent residents.

The green list changes will come into effect from 4am on 30 June. From that date, holidaymakers returning from those nations need not quarantine, but

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