Baker Hughes Inc. (BHI) News

NEW YORK, June 7 (UPI) -- The U.S. Travel Association said more consumers are ready to take a break from home this year with 2.3 percent more vacation travel expected than in 2009.

"We think people will take a vacation from 'staycations," IHS Global Insight economist Steve Piraino said, the Christian Science Monitor reported Monday.

"Staycation" refers to a vacation spent without leaving home, which became more popular in the past two years while the economy suffered.

Piraino predicted travel would not reach the levels of 2006 or 2007, but would still improve this year.

In the travel industry's favor, about 1.1 million jobs have been added to the economy since the first of the year, and "People feel better off and more confident in their financial prospects," said Suzanne Cook, senior vice president of research at the travel association.

The industry is also finding support from a stronger dollar. A $316 expense last year in one of the 16 countries that share the euro as currency now totals $244, the newspaper said.

A stronger dollar amounts to a discount across the board in Europe, not just in hotel expenses, but in meals, souvenirs, taxi rides and tickets to museums.

NEW YORK, June 7 (UPI) -- U.S. software giant Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) said the number of anti-virus protection scams for computers grew in the second half of 2009.

Microsoft measures the scams by the number of times computer owners used its free Malicious Software Removal Tool.

Microsoft's program wipes out what is known as "scareware" -- pop-up ads that scare users into purchasing fake anti-virus software, USA Today reported Monday.

Microsoft said its anti-scareware program had been used to clean 7.8 million computers July 2009 through December 2009. From January 2009 through June 2009, the program cleaned 5.3 million computers.

"Quite simply, scareware is booming," said Roel Schouwenberg, a researcher at the Kaspersky Lab home computer security firm.

Anti-virus software firm McAfee said the number of fake anti-software pop-up ads had grown 10 times since just two years ago.

Court records show one Ukrainian company, Innovative Marketing, made more than $163 million selling phony anti-virus protection to computer owners before it was shut down.

With easy access to credit cards, scareware businesses "can thumb their noses at the world, confident there likely will be no repercussions," said Andrew Brandt at anti-virus company Webroot.

HOUSTON, June 7 (UPI) -- A six-month ban on oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico could cost the city of Houston 50,000 jobs, an oil industry expert said.

"Six months could be 50,000 jobs that either people get laid off or redeployed out of their region, which means their money is not being spent here," said John Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil Co., the Houston Chronicle reported Monday.

President Barack Obama ordered a cessation of oil exploration at 33 oil platforms and banned new drilling permits in the gulf until November while investigations continue into the cause of an April 20 explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.

BP's Deepwater Horizon well is now the site of the largest oil spill in U.S. history. The explosion at the platform killed 11 people and oil has been spewing from the well for six weeks.

A number of firms, including Halliburton Co. (NYSE:HAL) , Baker Hughes (NYSE:BHI) Plains Exploration & Production Co. (NYSE:PXP) and Newfield Exploration Co. (NYSE:NFX) have said they were considering moving workers away from the Houston area or pulling away from projects designed for the gulf, the newspaper said.

Before the explosion, "The deep-water Gulf of Mexico was really looking like an important component of the future," of Houston's economy, said William Arnold, a professor of energy management at Rice University.