Tourists

ATLANTIC CITY - In a town where high-stakes bets are a way of life, even gamblers and good timers were thinking twice Friday as Hurricane Irene aimed at the Jersey Shore. If predictions of tidal surges and winds exceeding 100 m.p.h. didn't scare them off, the sight of a fortune teller boarding up her shop might have. "The storm is coming, and Atlantic City is going to get hit hard," proclaimed psychic Chanel Mitchell, who for $50 will tell you what will happen tomorrow. "God is mad. " The question of whether to stay or go hung over the seaside city of 40,000 residents with the haze that drifted off the ocean ahead of the storm.

HATTERAS, N.C. - Hurricane Irene could hit anywhere from North Carolina to New York this weekend, leaving officials in the path of uncertainty to make a delicate decision: Should they tell tourists to leave during one of the last weeks of the multibillion-dollar summer season? Most were in a wait-and-see mode, holding out to get every dime before the storm's path crystalizes. North Carolina's governor told reporters not to scare people away. "You will never endanger your tourists, but you also don't want to overinflate the sense of urgency about the storm.

INTERCOURSE, Pa. - Ben Riehl counts himself well-blessed to live and work on the farm. Lots of Amish can't. Large families and high land prices have forced many to labor as carpenters or in machine shops among the "English," as they refer to outsiders. Even Riehl supplements his dairy income as a solar-panel installer. Lately, Riehl has gone one step further. He has opened his Beacon Hollow Farm to overnight guests. From all over the world, tourists have found his picturesque, 80-acre farm through an Internet he doesn't use "because we don't have a computer in the house.

YOU LIVE in a city with some history under its belt, so it's bound to happen: Someone polite and suspiciously well dressed - possibly even a man who is not wearing a Phillies cap - asks if you could point him toward the Liberty Bell. Or you hit the crackpot tourist jackpot and someone asks after Ben Franklin's privy pit. This happened to me once, in Old City. And not to brag, but I totally knew where ye olde poop hole lay. (In Franklin Court. They have three.) Olde Philly landmarks are a cinch.

Reading Terminal Market has fed generations of Philadelphians, wowed countless tourists and conventioneers, and set the gold standard for public markets across the country. But the market's growing profile and increasing sales, swelled by the expanded Convention Center, have created a need for more space - a good problem to have if the market weren't landlocked. "We are maxed out on space," said longtime general manager Paul Steinke. After Labor Day, several tenants are moving to larger spaces within the market as part of a $3.5 million revitalization.

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. - A mock Old West gunfight participant accused of wounding three South Dakota tourists by firing live ammo instead of blanks is facing a federal weapons charge. Paul Doering, 49, of Summerset, is charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm charge, Mark Salter, a U.S. Attorney's Office spokesman said yesterday. He said an indictment issued last week was sealed by the federal court. Three tourists were hit during the June 17 re-enactment staged by the Dakota Wild Bunch, who use blanks when they perform several times a week on a street in Hill City, a tourist town in South Dakota's Black Hills.

In January, antigovernment demonstrations erupted in Egypt and other African nations. As the world watched the young protesters take over Tahrir Square and clash with security forces, my three sisters and I watched our well-planned trip to the ancient wonders of the Nile evaporate. By February, the U.S. government had issued a travel advisory, and our British-based tour group started canceling tours. It appeared that our trip, planned for years, would have to wait. But in March, we got the go-ahead.

MOSCOW - A half-century-old tourist boat with 188 people on board listed and sank quickly in one of the world's largest reservoirs amid wind and rain yesterday, authorities and survivors said, and dozens of children were believed to be among the 101 people missing. Two bodies were recovered. About 30 children gathered in a cockpit in the double-decker Bulgaria moments before it sank into the reservoir on the Volga River, a survivor told the Interfax news agency. Russia's Vesti 24 television quoted another survivor as saying that the boat "tilted to the right and sank within minutes.