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GALVESTON (AP) – Recent outbreaks of hantavirus and norovirus on cruise ships are making headlines, but they’re unlikely to dim the growing popularity of vacation cruises, according to industry representatives and travel experts.

In fact, many within the industry still expect a record number of people worldwide to take cruises this year despite three passengers aboard the MV Hondius dying from hantavirus after the ship stopped in Argentina and a recent norovirus outbreak aboard a British ship docked in Bordeaux, France.

“The cruise consumer seems to be somewhat Teflon when it comes to stories like this,” said Rob Kwortnik, an associate professor at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration who closely watches the cruise industry.

In mid-April, an annual forecast by the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry trade group, estimated that 38.3 million people would travel on ocean-going ships this year, 4% more from a record 37.2 million passengers last year.

Industrywide sales figures are closely held. Asked about potential impacts from what happened aboard the MV Hondius, the trade association said it doesn’t comment or speculate on bookings. Several big cruise companies didn’t respond to questions from The Associated Press about customer demand, including Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and Carnival.

Oceanwide Expeditions, the Dutch company that owns the MV Hondius, said it doesn’t foresee any changes to its operations. It has a cruise setting sail from Keflavik, Iceland, on May 29.

Veteran cruisegoers said the outbreak would not affect their plans.

“I have eight cruises booked, and I’ll absolutely be booking another,” said Jenni Fielding, who blogs and posts social media videos about cruise trips under the moniker Cruise Mummy. “Cruising is as safe as any other type of holiday, provided travelers follow sensible health advice and stay aware of official guidance.”

Scott Eddy, a hospitality influencer, is currently on a cruise and docked in Monaco. Fellow passengers have not mentioned the hantavirus outbreak, he said.

“The average traveler understands that this is an isolated health situation and not something unique to cruise travel itself,” Eddy said.

CruiseCompete.com, an online marketplace where consumers making vacation plans can compare offers from travel agents, booked 31.7% more cabins in the first half of May compared to the same period last year, CEO Bob Levinstein said.

“I can categorically say that we have not seen any drop in demand,” Levinstein said.

Levinstein said that norovirus — an extremely contagious stomach bug that thrives in crowded environments — is conflated with cruises in the minds of many Americans because the U.S. Centers for Disease Control requires ships to disclose when 3% or more passengers report symptoms.

On a ship with 5,000 passengers, an illness impacting 3% of them “goes completely unnoticed by the vast majority of vacationers, and experienced cruisers know this,” he said.

Current news cycles rarely impact passengers’ decisions to join a cruise because the trips generally are booked at least 6 months — and often as much as a year – in advance, Kwortnik said.

“People who are booking cruises tomorrow are thinking about the holidays,” he said.

During a conference call Thursday with investors, Switzerland-based cruise line Viking said demand for its river cruises softened briefly during the first three months of this year after the Iran war began but then quickly rebounded.

Viking said 92% of its 2026 cruises and 38% of its 2027 cruises were booked. The company didn’t mention hantavirus or norovirus.

Andrew Coggins, a cruise industry analyst and professor in Pace University’s Lubin School of Business, said even if travelers set to embark on a cruise soon are unnerved by the latest news, they’re unlikely to get a refund.

“I think if there’s any impact on demand, it would be in the long term. If you’re cruising in the next few months, you’re past the point at which you can get your money back,” he said.

Coggins said he thinks the hantavirus story got a lot of attention because it reminded people of the Diamond Princess, which was quarantined off Japan for two weeks in early 2020 after the coronavirus that grew into a global pandemic was detected on board.

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the cruise industry, shutting down many smaller operators. Cruises didn’t see an upswing in passengers again until 2022, Coggins said.

There are still fewer cruise passengers from China and Japan than there were before COVID, according to CLIA. But Coggins said demand elsewhere is booming.

“There are new ships on order out to 2037. The cruise lines are bullish. They see demand growing and they want to offer new bells and whistles, new ports, new destinations,” he said.

One reason for cruising’s growth is broad appeal across generations and income levels. In a recent U.S. survey, Bank of America found that Generation Z respondents and millennials were the most likely to say they planned to cruise over the next 12 months.

The survey also found that cruise spending rose for lower-income households even as those households spent less on airfare and lodging. Cruise lines have been wooing those passengers in recent years with shorter, more affordable itineraries.

Kwortnik said cruising also offers travelers value for their vacation dollars.

“On average, it costs more just to stay at a hotel in Miami than it does to sail on a cruise out of Miami – and the cruise includes lodging, multiple destinations, food, entertainment, and transportation all in the fare,” he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — China has agreed to ramp up trade for U.S. agricultural products such as beef and poultry, buying at an annualized rate of $17 billion per year for 2026 and at that level for 2027 and 2028, the White House announced Sunday, two days after President Donald Trump returned from a high-stakes summit in Beijing where he sought to ease the impact on American farmers from the trade war he launched last year.

China would restore market access for U.S. beef and resume imports of poultry from U.S. states determined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be free of the bird flu, the White House said. The deals are on top of China’s soybean purchase commitments last year.

The agreements offer some hope to American farmers harmed by the trade war as they saw a major export market for soybeans and other products dry up. Farmers also are feeling new pressure from Trump administration policies — the war that the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran has curtailed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital trade corridor that has restricted global fertilizer supplies and sent those prices soaring.

There was no immediate confirmation of the terms from Beijing.

China’s Ministry of Commerce on Saturday said the two sides would “resolve or make substantial progress toward resolving certain non-tariff barriers and market access issues” regarding agricultural goods.

The U.S. would “actively work” to address China’s concerns regarding detention of its dairy products, seafood, the export of potted bonsai, and the recognition of Shandong province as a bird-flu-free zone, while the Chinese side will “likewise actively work” to address U.S. concerns regarding the registration of beef processing facilities and the export of poultry meat from certain states to China, a ministry spokesperson said.

The two sides also agreed to expand trade, including that of farm goods, through measures such as reciprocal tariff reductions on “a specific range of products,” though the spokesperson did not specify the products.

China, recognizing the link between food security and national security, has diversified its sources of imported soybeans, beef and other farm goods, turning increasingly to Brazil, Argentina and other countries over the U.S.

China sharply cut back US imports during the trade war

Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show China’s imports of U.S. agricultural goods peaked in 2022 with $38 billion but fell to $8 billion in 2025. These figures include nearly $18 billion in soybean purchases in 2022 and $3 billion in 2025.

It’s not immediately clear how much more China would buy from American soybean farmers, who were hit especially hard in the trade war. China, traditionally the largest foreign buyer of American soybeans, stopped purchasing them altogether last year after Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese goods.

The latest agreement builds on a trade truce Trump reached with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October in which China agreed to resume buying U.S. soybeans. The White House said then that China committed to buying 12 million metric tons in the current marketing year and 25 million metric tons for each of the next three years.

According to the White House, hundreds of U.S. beef plants, including those run by Tyson and Cargill, also will be able to export again to China, though it’s not immediately clear how much beef American businesses will be selling to China.

China let licenses for hundreds of U.S. beef plants expire last year, and the import value for 2025 fell to less than $500 million, according to USDA figures. China’s purchases of U.S. beef had peaked at $2.14 billion in 2022, the government data shows.

The U.S. export of poultry meats and products to China was $286 million in 2025, down from more than $1 billion in 2022.

Trump and Xi used summit to find areas of economic cooperation

During the summit last week, Trump and Xi discussed ways to enhance economic cooperation, including expanding market access for American businesses in China and increasing Chinese investment into U.S. industries, the White House had said. The two leaders agreed to set up separate boards of trade and investment — though offered few details on the proposals or how they would differ from existing trade dialogues.

The Board of Trade will allow the two governments to manage trade of “non-sensitive goods,” and the Board of Investments would provide a venue for the two sides to discuss investment-related issues, according to the White House.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said the two bodies would address respective concerns regarding trade and investment. The Board of Trade, the ministry spokesperson said, would allow the two sides to discuss issues such as tariff reductions on specific products. “In principle, the two sides agreed to reduce tariff on products of respective concern at equivalent scale,” the spokesperson said.

Xi said last week that China’s door of opportunity will open wider when he met with U.S. business leaders joining Trump on the trip. Among those who traveled to Beijing was Brian Sikes, CEO of the agricultural giant Cargill.

Soybeans, which are used for livestock feed and biofuels in China, are among the top U.S. agricultural exports. Soybean exports to China in the past had accounted for about half of U.S. exports of agricultural goods to the Asian nation.

USDA data shows the U.S. exported 10.9 million metric tons of soybeans to China as of May 7, putting China on track to fulfill its previous commitment by the end of the marketing year on Aug. 31. This is well below the 25 million to 30 million metric tons that China purchased in past years.

Before Trump’s initial planned trip to Beijing in late March — which was postponed by the Iran war — the American Soybean Association urged him to prioritize soybeans in the trade talks with Xi.

Scott Metzger, president of the association, said Thursday the group would like to see “additional soybean purchases this marketing year, as well as continued progress toward fulfilling future purchase commitments.”

“Greater certainty and consistency in the marketplace help provide farmers with the confidence they need as they make decisions for the year ahead,” he said.

SAN AUGUSTINE (KETK) – The San Augustine Police Department has arrested a juvenile after a shooting happened at a Texaco convenience store on Sunday afternoon.

San Augustine PD said officers were sent out to the Texaco Convenience store on MLK Drive in San Augustine in the early afternoon on Sunday after two people reportedly pulled up to the store and started shooting at each other.

After interviewing witnesses at the scene, the officers were able to determine who the two shooters might have been. One of the suspected shooters is a juvenile and has been arrested on a warrant unrelated to Sunday’s shooting.

San Augustine PD said there’s no ongoing threat to the the public and they’re continuing to investigate what exactly led to the shooting. No injuries have been reported in connection to Sunday’s shooting.

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call San Augustine PD at 936-275-2384.

WASHINGTON (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) – U.S. Customs and Border Protection awarded a $1.7 billion federal contract listed for border wall construction in the Big Bend region, fueling public confusion over the project after a previous assurance from a top agency official that no barriers would be built at the region’s national park.

The contract, awarded Monday, is designated “for border wall in Big Bend Texas” in its description. The $1.7 billion allocated in the contract is the single-highest amount awarded for a contract in Texas related to the border wall, according to listings on usaspending.gov, the U.S. government’s official public spending database.

A second contract for $4.5 million was awarded on Thursday for “resource monitoring support” of border wall construction in a separate area of the Big Bend region.

The new awards come a week after CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott told the Washington Examiner there would be no border wall built at Big Bend National Park because of pushback from local residents. Scott’s statements to the Examiner and a statement from CBP last week to The Texas Tribune indicated the agency would instead pave roads along the border in the national park and use digital surveillance equipment.

CBP did not respond to an immediate request for comment about the $1.7 billion award.

Opponents of wall construction in the region have seen their frustrations with the project mount as communication from the Trump administration about the project has been limited, and there have been few formal announcements about plans in the area.

“We obviously, at this point, don’t trust anything, but it’s like a roller coaster,” said Lico Miller, a business owner in Terlingua, a small, rural town a few miles west of Big Bend National Park.

An interactive “Smart Wall” map on the CBP website shows the agency planned to install roads and “virtual wall” technology that would alert Border Patrol agents when people cross the border in the “Big Bend 4” region. The $1.7 billion award is intended for a Big Bend “segment identified as BBT-4,” according to its description. CBP officials took down the Smart Wall map in late April, but later added it once more with changes in mid-May. The map currently states that no is wall planned around the national or state park despite the awarded contract.

“They have made it a mission to obfuscate and make this as confusing of a process as possible,” said Laiken Jordahl, National Public Lands Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “From constantly changing the online smart wall map — I mean, they’ve made dozens and dozens of changes to that thing without announcing any of them — to taking it down entirely.”

Jordahl said that even paved roads along the border would likely be harmful to wildlife in the region and could make border crossings easier in areas where terrain would otherwise be difficult to traverse. He also said roads would inevitably make barrier installation easier in the future if CBP changed its mind later on.
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On Thursday, the Trump administration waived environmental protections in the Big Bend region in preparation for construction, according to a federal notice first reported by Marfa Public Radio. The notice described Border Patrol’s 517-mile Big Bend sector as “an area of high illegal entry.” The sector is the least busy of the nine sectors, with agency apprehensions in the region accounting for 1.3% of more than 237,000 across the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025.

Residents point to the infrequency of border crossings in the area as only adding to the confusion and frustration.

“We’re 1.3% of the problem. What is this billions of dollars stuff when we are not an issue?” another Terlingua business owner Cynta de Narvaez said.

Thursday’s waivers follow similar action in February, when Trump administration officials waived over two dozen environmental laws to clear the way for a 150-mile-long border barrier through West Texas that initially included Big Bend National Park.

Advocacy groups in the region filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in mid-April arguing it had illegally waived those environmental laws and need Congress to sign off.