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Reports of bedbug infestations are on the rise, news that strikes fear into the hearts of frequent travelers. While hotels and motels aren't the only places where these insects can hitch a ride on clothes or other belongings -- after all, you can pick one up just by visiting a friend's home, and recent findings in movie theaters and offices prove how easily these bugs get around -- the high-traffic buildings are some of the highest-risk places to encounter these tiny insects that live by feasting on human blood while we're sleeping. By knowing what to look for and taking...

What would you do if your child came home from school with bedbugs? Freak out? Well, one south-central Kentucky school is trying to avoid that problem by temporarily banning backpacks, lunchboxes and other items after finding bedbugs in a school building. A half-dozen of the bloodsucking pests were spotted recently at Salem Elementary School in Russell County. WKYT-TV reports they were found on the floor of a classroom and on one student's backpack. Though the bugs can cause itchy bites, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says bedbugs are not known to transmit or spread diseases. The bugs hide in dark...

Two weeks ago, there was a photo released of the White House covered in a tarp but without any explanation. At this time the Obama's were partying it up in the Gulf Coast for a pre-Cape Cod vacation while everyday Americans are facing 16% unemployment. With the outbreak of Bedbugs in Washington DC, does the tarp around the White House indicate that it was fumigated due to an infestation? While I hope the White House is safe from this Environmentalist/EPA caused pestilence, it would be rather amusing if true. Caption: "WASHINGTON - AUGUST 15: A view of a tarp covered...

DETROIT, - Residents of a Detroit high-rise apartment building said bedbug-related stoppage of mail delivery has interfered with their monthly income. Tenants in the Detroit Housing Commission's 143-unit Warren West Apartments said the mail stoppage, which the U.S. Postal Service said began last week when a mail carrier encountered exterminators spraying for bedbugs, is endangering their livelihoods by preventing them from receiving their Social Security checks in the mail, the Detroit News reported Thursday. "We have a bedbug problem, but it's not so bad; the exterminator comes in and takes care of it," said Robbie Wingate, 59, who suffered a...

Bedbugs are infesting U.S. households on a scale unseen in more than a half a century, and homeowners and apartment dwellers are taking desperate measures to eradicate the bloodsuckers, with some relying on dangerous outdoor pesticides and fly-by-night exterminators. The problem has gotten so bad that the Environmental Protection Agency warned this month against the indoor use of chemicals meant for the outside. The agency also warned of an increase in pest-control companies and others making "unrealistic promises of effectiveness or low cost." Ohio authorities, struggling against widespread infestations in Cincinnati, Columbus, Dayton and other cities, are pleading with the...

Imam Behind Park51 Ignores Low-Income Tenants Pleas, They SayThe Muslim imam who plans to build a controversial Islamic center near Ground Zero should first take on a smaller project, like ridding his New Jersey apartment buildings of rats and bedbugs, angry tenants told ABCNews.com. Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf owns buildings across the Hudson River in several New Jersey cities, including Union City, North Bergen and Palisades Park, which he reportedly renovated with tax dollars. Residents, many of whom are immigrants and most of whom are working-class Hispanic Catholics, say they have complained about unsanitary conditions for years. The imam, however,...

...While heirloom vegetables are actually benign–and frequently very tasty–it seems to me that we are currently witnessing an alarming wave of another type of heirloom: diseases. I started thinking about it when I read this post from Gateway Pundit earlier today, about an outbreak of typhoid (yes typhoid) in California and Nevada. Typhoid, once the scourge of many major cities, was nearly eradicated by the advent of clean water technologies in the early part of the twentieth century. Yet typhoid is back, and it’s not the only heirloom disease we’re seeing in America of late. We’ve probably all seen the...

(snip) The tiny, reddish-brown parasites, which live on warm human blood, were once nearly extinct. But thanks to a growing resistance to pesticides, and an increasingly mobile human population, they’ve had a resurgence since the mid-1990s. For years, they’ve been enjoying city life, crawling out at night from all sorts of mattresses to feed. The difference now, exterminators said, is they’ve made sizable inroads into suburbia. (snip) In the past decade, most urban-dwelling bedbugs arrived on the backs of roaming college students or migrant workers from South and Central America.Once they settle and mate, their offspring will eventually set off...

Sleep tight. Don't let the bedbugs bite. Unfortunately for residents of many urban areas such as New York and Philadelphia, the bedbugs are not only biting but spreading at an alarming rate. Despite this outbreak, the mainstream media has until recently kept insisting that bedbugs developed a resistance to DDT so any emergency lifting of the EPA ban on that pesticide is unnecessary. However, your humble correspondent has speculated that the MSM would eventually have to change its position on the DDT ban due to the fact that so many of its members are being assaulted by bedbug attacks which...

Bedbugs can be found in mattresses, furniture and clothing, and they feed off animal and human blood. Insect scientists say bedbugs are appearing on a scale not seen since before World War II. High-traffic areas such as hotels, airplanes and cruise ships are especially prone to infestations. Ohio has three cities in the top 10 — Cincinnati is fourth, Columbus is seventh and Dayton is eighth.

NEW YORK (AP) -- It survived the Depression, a bomber crash and King Kong's climb, but can the Empire State Building withstand a bedbug infestation? Officials say exterminators had to clean out an employee changing room in the tower's basement after bedbugs were found there last week. The officials tell The New York Daily News that an employee had the bedbugs on his clothes and brought them into the building, but that the problem is now under control. Tourists visiting the skyscraper say they are disgusted by the bloodsucking pests.

Jeremy Sparig spent months fighting bedbugs. Now, to some people, he is like a mattress left on the street, something best avoided in these times. “They don’t want to hug you anymore; they don’t want you coming over,” said Mr. Sparig, of East Williamsburg, Brooklyn. “You’re like a leper.” At the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, which recently had a bedbug breakout, defense lawyers are skittish about visiting, and it is not because of the fierce prosecutors. Even Steven Smollens, a housing lawyer who has helped many tenants with bedbugs, has his guard up. Those clients are barred from his office....

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For reasons still unknown, bedbugs really seem to like the state of Ohio. The problem is so dire in Cincinnati that some people with infested apartments have resorted to sleeping on the streets. Cincinnati created a Bedbug Remediation Commission in 2007 and, like other local and national governments around the world, the city is trying to mobilize strategies to control infestations of the resilient insects, which can hide in almost any crack or crevice and can go a year or more without eating. On Aug. 10, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a consumer alert about off-label bedbug treatments,...

Bedbugs are taking over New York. A new Daily News-Marist poll suggests that The City That Never Sleeps is probably too busy itching: One in 10 New Yorkers has now battled bedbugs in their home. That's twice as many as the city estimated were plagued by the pests in 2009. The poll results suggest that more than 800,000 New Yorkers have had bloodsucking bedbugs crawling in their sheets. "I got all chewed up," said Margaret Martinez, 61, of the Bronx, one of the 11% of poll respondents who reported having personal run-ins with the tiny bloodthirsty insects. "I woke up...

Don't be too surprised to soon see CNN's Wolf Blitzer go from merely rubbing his beard to violently scratching his entire body. And please, Anderson Cooper, do try to refrain from incessantly touching yourself on camera. However, perhaps they can be forgiven. You see, according to TV Newser, CNN/Time Warner has a severe bed bug infestation and has sent out the following internal e-mail: August 13, 2010 To: TBS, Inc. Employees From: TBS, Inc. Human Resources The Time Warner Center Facilities Department advises that bed bugs have been detected in Time Warner Center. This determination was made after testing was...

TVNewser has learned the human resources department of TBS Inc. has sent out an email this afternoon alerting staffers of a bed bug problem in their New York City offices at Time Warner Center -- home to CNN, CNNMoney.com and other Time Warner entities. The Time Warner Center Facilities Department advises that bed bugs have been detected in Time Warner Center. This determination was made after testing was conducted on several floors of the building.

NEW YORK, - The Victoria's Secret store in Manhattan's Lenox Hill neighborhood was shut down for several hours this week after bed bugs were discovered in "isolated areas." "When we found small, isolated areas that may have been impacted, we immediately took action to resolve the situation," the store's parent company, Limited Brands, said in a statement Friday. Limited temporarily closed the Upper East Side location after testing all of its Manhattan stores, The New York Daily News reported Saturday. Bedbug outbreaks were reported earlier this month at a Hollister's store in SoHo and Abercrombie & Fitch's South Street Seaport...

When bedbugs are causing such large-scale misery as to force elderly people and those with disabilities to give away their belongings and leave their homes, the time has come to do whatever will work the most efficiently against this growing infestation. So the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency should listen to the Ohio Senate, which has asked for an emergency permission to use the pesticide Propoxur, which hasn't been employed in homes for several years. Propoxur has proved significantly more effective than other treatments, to which bedbugs have grown resistant. But the company that manufactures it declined to renew its application...

When it comes to the budget, it is hard enough for New Yorkers to sleep tight. But now, they may have to worry the bed bugs will bite. Tucked in the myriad cuts in this year's tough-times fiscal plan, is an elimination of the Cornell Cooperative Extension Service, an organization devoted to agricultural solutions and education -- which means fighting pests.