We have seen four fatal plane crashes this month in Europe and South America claim the lives of hundreds of people.   On 6 August at least 13 of 39 passengers and crew were killed after a Tunisian passenger plane made an emergency landing in the sea off the Italian island of Sicily.  On 14 August, all 121 passengers and crew on a Cyprus airline flight bound for Prague died when it crashed into a mountainside near Athens.  Two days later, a Colombian plane operated by West Caribbean Airways crashed in a remote region of Venezuela, killing all 160 people on board.  In the latest crash, a passenger plane came down in Peru's Amazon jungle, causing the deaths of at least 40 of the 100 people on board.  Investigations continue into what went wrong on these flights. 

The Operations and Safety editor of Flight International magazine says that airline safety worldwide is now six times better than it was 25 years ago.  In 1979 there were three fatal accidents per million flights, compared with one fatal accident per two million flights by last year, according to International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) figures.  Safety improvements are due to better technology, compulsory industry audits and tougher competition, he said.  When compared with all other modes of transport on a fatality per kilometre basis, air transport is the safest, insists the Civil Aviation Authority.

In some parts of Nepal, particularly the western parts of the country, there is a tradition of keeping women in cow sheds during their menstrual cycle.  Nepal's Supreme Court has ordered the government to declare the practice as evil and have given one month to stop the practice.  Women's rights activists have said that this is a positive move but a change in the law alone is not enough, that people need to be educated against such a scourge of society.

Clarence House stands next to St James's Palace and was built between 1825 and 1827 to the designs of John Nash for Prince William Henry, Duke of Clarence.  He lived there as King William IV from 1830 until 1837.  During the second world war, the War Organisation of the British Red Cross and Order of St. John of Jerusalem for the duration of the war. Two hundred staff of the Foreign Relations Department maintained contact from Clarence House with British prisoners-of-war abroad, and administered the Red Cross Postal Message Scheme.  In 1949 Clarence House was returned to Royal use, when it became the London home of Princess Elizabeth, elder daughter of George VI, following her marriage to Lieutenant Philip Mountbatten on 20 November 1947. The couple could not move in straight away since the building needed complete refurbishment. Wartime restrictions on building work made progress slow. The Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, as they were then known, moved to their new home in June 1949.

It was the London home of Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother from 1953 until 2002.  A story goes that she once (probably often) rang down to the butlers after getting no response from her bell pull and said in a very camp way: “I don't know what you old queens are doing down there but this old queen up here is dying for a glass of gin.” For a time Princess Margaret lived there too.  After the death of the Queen Mother, Clarence House became the official London residence of The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall. It is open to the public during the summer months each year.

The latest in a series of setbacks for the $1.8bn (£1bn) Hong Kong Disneyland occurred after Health Inspectors were called in after three cases of food poisoning.  The two health officials were asked to take off their uniforms to avoid scaring clients.  Hong Kong officials, angered that food inspectors were asked to remove their uniforms told Disney it is “not above the law”.  Disney has apologised and has promised to comply with local laws.

An editorial in the Ming Pao Daily News says Hong Kong residents suspect Disney “wants to engineer special rights and turn the theme park into an independent kingdom that Hong Kong laws can't reach”.

The park faced criticism from animal welfare groups in July, after reports local officials had been called in to destroy at least 40 dogs roaming the site.  A month earlier, it withdrew shark fin soup from planned banquet menus after campaigners condemned the dish, a local luxury, as cruel and ecologically destructive.

Strange Facts

• Swedes and Norweigans rank top 5 for both providing aid and exporting weapons.
• On the probability of not reaching 40 graph, the top 34 countries are all African.
• Former enemies, the Americans and Russians now have a great deal in common – they both lead the world in locking people up .
• English speaking kids are the biggest novel readers but are the least enthusiastic comics readers.
• Japanese and South Korean kids are the best at science and maths.
• Three quarters of Japanese kids read comics.
• Around 1992, Saudi Arabia overtook the United States as the world's largest oil producer.
• Danish workers strike 150 times more than their German neighbours.
• Many Americans live alone – America leads the world in one person households.
• Libya is the only country with a single-coloured flag.

Source:

The British Foreign and Commonwealth Office advise against all travel to Uganda.  This is what they have to say:

We advise against all travel to northern and north eastern Uganda because of rebel insurgency and tribal clashes.  In July 2005, there was an armed attack on a vehicle in the northern part of the Murchison Falls National Park. We strongly advise people not to visit this park.

There have been no incidents in Mgahinga National Park and those parts of Kisoro District that border the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since early December 2004, but we advise travellers to this region to continue to check our Travel Advice regularly.

Most visits to Uganda are safe. Kampala is a relatively safe city. By day you can walk the streets and visit local markets. But opportunistic crime such as burglaries, muggings and drive-by bag snatches is on the increase in Kampala. We strongly recommend that after dark, you avoid going out on foot. Do not make yourself an obvious target for muggers and pickpockets. Do not carry large sums of cash in the streets or wear expensive looking jewellery or watches.

In urban areas keep car doors locked and windows shut at all times. There have recently been a number of thefts of personal property from cars and taxis while stationary in traffic. If stopped by armed men, do not attempt to resist. Avoid travelling outside main towns after dark.

Take care of your passport: theft of EU passports has increased in recent months.

We strongly advise that you obtain comprehensive travel and medical insurance before travelling.

The Great Express, a luxury overnight train for rich Russians and foreign tourists is now running between Moscow and St. Petersburg.  The cost ranges from 3,150 roubles, or $110, for the nine-hour overnight trip in a first-class seat to 12,500 roubles for a luxury compartment with a bed and bathroom.  All compartments are fitted with flat-screen televisions showing satellite channels and have wireless Internet connections.

The US government is dropping plans to collect data from commercial data bases to identify potential terrorists on passenger lists. The main reason cited is concern over privacy.

You don't have to go far to encounter trouble!  New research from the UK's Direct Line Travel Insurance indicates that over one in 10 Britons has been robbed while on holiday and a further 27 percent know someone who has. Spain is the country with the highest number of thefts with 38 percent of those who have experienced robberies claiming it happened there.  France is next on the list with 14 percent, Italy seven per cent and Greece five percent.

Money is the most frequently stolen possession (41 percent), followed by purses, wallets, cameras and jewellery.

Be careful what you write whilst on-line in China.  Yahoo was accused last week of helping Chinese authorities identify and imprison a reporter who described government fears about pro-democracy activists.  Shi Tao of China's Contemporary Business News attended a meeting at which an official read a government memo warning of possible social unrest during the 15th anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.  Using an Internet alias, Shi described the government memo in an email sent to a U.S.-based pro-democracy website, incurring the anger of Chinese authorities.

According to Reporters Without Borders, Yahoo's Chinese division helped local authorities crack Shi's alias, leading to his arrest, two-hour trial, and 10-year prison sentence.  Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft are all competing for a share of the Chinese internet market and all three come under criticism for lowering ethical standards when it comes to free speech.  In June, Microsoft fended off criticism for blocking Chinese bloggers on its sites from using words like “liberty,” “capitalism,” and “human rights.”

A member of Globetrotters Club? Interested in a £1,000 travel award?

Know someone who is? We have £1,000 to award each year for five years for the best submitted independent travel plan. Interested?

Then see our legacy page on our Website, where you can apply with your plans for a totally independent travel trip and we'll take a look at it. Get those plans in!!

Zimbabwe is said to be about to import four endangered Siberian tigers from China for captive breeding.  China had received zebras, elephants and impala as part of an “exchange programme”. Yes, this comes from a country that is rapidly imploding, people being displaced from their homes and land, rampaging inflation and there is not enough to eat.  A local biologist working in Bulawayo, said the plan was “a complete load of garbage”, adding that the country even lacked the resources to look after its own wildlife.

Since 2001, in Swaziland, teenage girls have had to wear large woollen tassels as a sign of their chastity. Now news comes that Swaziland's King Mswati III has ended a five-year sex ban he imposed on the kingdom's teenage girls a year early and there is to be a ceremony where all tassels are burned. The sex ban was allegedly imposed to fight the spread of HIV/Aids.

The king fined himself a cow for breaking the ban by marrying again – he married a 17-year-old girl as his ninth wife just two months after imposing the sex-ban in September 2001, sparking unprecedented protests by Swazi women outside the royal palace. Swaziland has one of the world's highest HIV infection rates, at about 40% of the population. Meanwhile, the health ministry has released new figures which show that 29% of Swazis aged 15-19 are HIV positive and for pregnant women, the figures were 42%.

British airline bmi plans to launch daily services to Mumbai. Bmi, which hopes to compete with larger rivals British Airways and Richard Branson's Virgin Atlantic, starts the four-times-a-week service from London to Mumbai this Saturday.

Kenya Airways will start direct flights to Istanbul in June 2005, hoping to serve an increasing number of African traders visiting Turkey. The twice weekly flights to Istanbul will make Kenya Airways the only airline from sub-Saharan Africa to fly to Turkey, the airline said.

Mexico's government is privatising top carriers Mexicana and Aeromexico, and has recently handed out concessions to low-cost airlines. A Mexican billionaire called Carlos Slim and broadcaster Televisa are joining forces in a new low-cost airline to be called Vuela. Vuela already has a concession to operate and expects to begin flights in the first half of next year from the international airport in Toluca, west of Mexico City. Earlier in July 2005, Brazilian airline Gol said it planned to launch a low-cost carrier in Mexico. Another new airline, ABC Aerolineas, also plans to begin service in the low-cost market, which has quickly grown in the United States and Europe with mixed results.

Yes, it is possible to tour one of the most famous television centres in the world. The tour lasts up to 2 hours. You'll see into the studios, visit BBC News, play in the interactive studio and be shown around by well-informed, entertaining guides.

Please note that Television Centre is a working building so no two tours are ever the same.

Pre-booking is essential. Regular tours Monday to Saturday. They are open to anyone over 9 years old.

Prices – Adult £8.95 Concession £7.95

Students £6.50

Children (over 9 years) – £6.50

Family ticket (2 adults & 2 children or 1 adult & 3 children) £25.00

Group rates available
Prices valid until 31st March 2006

To book tickets:

Please call: 0870 603 0304

Outside the UK call: +44 28 9053 5904

Textphone for hearing-impaired callers: 0870 903 0304

If you have any special interests or requirements please state them at the time of booking.

The Inka Porter Project has issued a new set of environmental guidelines for trekkers on the Inca Trail in Peru and other Andean hiking circuits. Visit their website at www.peruweb.org/porters for the full guidelines, which give advice on dealing with rubbish, washing with biodegradable soap, using refillable water bottles, toilet etiquette while trekking, and how best to respect flora and fauna.

Reunion Kingston London Sunday 11th Sept 2005 for any member of Globetrotters who travelled overland to India or on the rail tours organised by Butterfields. Please e-mail butterfieldashley@yahoo.co.uk

In a speech accusing the South African government of failing to make crime a priority issue, a South African politician claims that the murder rate in South Africa is roughly the same as the death rate from terror attacks on civilians in Iraq. “The murder rate in South Africa, at about 43 murders per 100 000 people, is roughly the same as the death rate from terror attacks on civilians in Iraq” were the figures quoted. “So, despite the government's claims that crime is 'stabilising', South Africans are still living in what amounts to a state of civil war between criminals and law-abiding residents.

According to the South African Law Commission, only 6% of violent crimes reported to police result in a conviction, and 75% do not even make it to court. South Africa's overcrowded prisons were described as “universities of crime”. and said they are not rehabilitating criminals. An alarming recent trend is the rise in crime involving youths. “Forty-four percent of the children under 14 who were taken to Durban mortuaries in 2004 had been shot dead, for example.” Young people are also, increasingly, the perpetrators of crime. “The number of children convicted of violent crime jumped by 5% from 2003 to 2004, according to the National Institution for Crime Prevention and the Reintegration of Offenders.

Spotted by Webmaster Paul, here's a satellite photo from Google of the Lake District.

French President Jacques Chirac has again urged world leaders to impose a levy on airline tickets to finance extra aid for Africa. If accepted, the tax would be imposed on tickets of planes leaving from airports in participating countries.

Chirac, who told the World Economic Forum in January that a tax of USD$1 per airline ticket could raise USD$10 billion a year to fund campaigns against diseases in Africa, pressed his case in a letter he wrote to more than 140 world leaders.

“I offer you to associate yourselves with the establishment of an international solidarity contribution on plane tickets, aimed, particularly, at financing the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria”.

The Group of Eight industrialized nations have decided to consider imposing a levy on airline tickets to finance extra aid for Africa, a proposal which has run into opposition in Europe and the United States.

Chirac's idea has received support from Germany, but even though talks so far have centered on a voluntary tax, some other European governments, including tourist destinations Greece and Italy, have given the idea an icy reception.

Every September the annual Open House London event takes place and this year the dates are 17th & 18th September 2005. Over 600 buildings are opening their doors to everyone and turning the capital into a living architectural exhibition. And it's absolutely free!

Two former America West pilots have been convicted of operating a packed passenger plane while drunk and sent to prison on Thursday by a Florida judge, who called their crime “outrageous and horrendous.”

Judge David Young sentenced Thomas Cloyd, 47, to five years behind bars — the maximum term — and Christopher Hughes, 44, to 2-1/2 years in prison for trying to fly from Miami Airport on July 1, 2002, after a night of beer drinking.

The pilots' Airbus A319 aircraft was being towed to the runway for takeoff to Phoenix with 124 passengers and three flight attendants aboard when it was ordered back to the terminal. A security screener had reported that the pilots smelled of alcohol. They had spent the evening before playing pool and drinking at a Miami area bar. They left the bar around 5 a.m. after running up a tab for 14 jumbo glasses of beer — the equivalent of nearly 22 pints (10.5 litres) — and showed up late for the 10:30 a.m. flight. FAA rules bar pilots from consuming alcohol for eight hours before a flight.

Unusually high concentrations of jellyfish have appeared along Spain's Mediterranean coast this summer. The Red Cross said its lifeguards had treated almost 11,000 people for stings on beaches so far this season in the north eastern region of Catalonia alone, twice the number from the same period last year, when the jellyfish count had already begun to rise. Factors like drought, heat and over fishing contribute to a rising jellyfish count, according to the international environmental group Oceana.

France: water-rationing is in place across more than half of France, with the west particularly affected by drought. A plague of locusts in the south of France, around Aveyron, has been put down to the continuing dry, hot weather.

Spain: is suffering its worst drought since records began in 1947, with the east particularly badly hit. Temperatures have risen to 40C (104F) in parts of Andalusia, in the south. Water is also being rationed across half the country, including in major tourist centres.

Portugal: Portugal faces its worst dry spell since the 1940s. Some 97% of the country is suffering a severe or extreme drought, ministers say. Shortages are particularly acute in the Algarve region, where the population more than doubles during the peak tourist season.

Italy: the temperature has topped 35C (95F) in cities including Milan, Florence and Turin. Several people have died in northern Italy as a result of the intense heat.

According to the Nepal Tourism Bureau, in the first four months of this year, covering the peak spring tourist season, Nepal logged roughly 72,000 tourists, a reduction of 34 percent from the same period last year. The Tourism Board has also tried to lure back trekkers, slashing fees by half – to about $5,000 for a team of seven – for some prime peaks, including Kanchenjunga, which at 8,600 meters, or 28,200 feet, is the world's third-highest mountain. Government tourism officials have said that Nepal, after King Gyanendra's emergency proclamation, is safer than ever before.

The Maoist insurgents, who have been fighting the government since 1996, officially welcome foreign tourists. Well, they would – a significant part of their income is derived from charges or tolls extracted from individual tourists, lodges and other tourism-related industries.

Many foreigners have stayed away from Nepal. Peace Corps activities were suspended in September because the U.S. government lists the Maoist rebel group as a terrorist organization so American citizens are forbidden to contribute funds, goods or services to or for the benefit of the Maoists, according to the State Department.

Huge parts of the countryside are effectively no man's land, where the rebels or government troops may be found. On the Annapurna trail, there are plenty of rebels who try to collect their taxes from tourists and it is considered dangerous to refuse the demands of the guerrillas. The Mount Everest trail from Lukla onward remains untouched by fighting, according to trekking groups that organize tours to Everest.

Sometimes a tourist hotel is bombed, but it is said that this some of these attacks are staged because the hotel owner's payments to the guerrillas have been regarded as unsatisfactory. The latest incident came on May 20, when a hotel in Pokhara, in the foothills of the Himalayas and a stop on the Annapurna trail, was attacked with a homemade bomb, injuring two waiters.

Educational travel conference at York St John College in York, UK on Saturday 15th October 2005 from 9.30 am to 5.00 pm. Tickets cost £15 (£10 for students) including lunch and refreshments.

A practical day of advice and guidance to help prepare and support young travellers on their gap year travels.

Young travellers, educators and parents are
encouraged to attend this one day Educational Travel Conference & Exhibition which will provide information & options on how to get the maximum out of travel experiences whilst keeping safe.

Full programme of experts including former BBC war correspondent and independent MP, Martin Bell and Deidre Bounds, founder of Leeds-based i-to-i the UK's largest company specialising in volunteer travel.

For further information, see:
www.carolinesrainbowfoundation.org

When the first modern humans evolved in Africa, they lived mainly on meat hunted from animals. Scientists had always thought the exodus from Africa around 70,000 years ago took place along a northern route into Europe and Asia. Now, according to a new genetic study, it seems that early modern humans followed the beach, possibly lured by a seafood diet. The study believes that humans quickly reached Australia but took much longer to settle in Europe. Dr Martin Richards of the University of Leeds, who took part in the study, says the first humans may have moved south in search of better fishing grounds when stocks in the Red Sea dwindled due to climate change. The new research suggests they moved along the coasts of the Arabian peninsula into India, Indonesia and Australia about 65,000 years ago. An offshoot later led to the settlement of the Middle East and Asia about 30 to 40,000 years ago.

Need to convert currency?

Take a look at The Globetrotters Currency Converter – get the exchange rates for 164 currencies The Globetrotters Currency Cheat Sheet – create and print a currency converter table for your next trip.

Potential good news for those wishing to travel to Spain. According to newspaper ABC, Spain's flag-carrier Iberia will launch a low-cost airline at the beginning of next year. The new airline may be called “Mediterranea” and will have its hub in the Mediterranean city of Barcelona, the paper said. An Iberia spokeswoman said it was still considering the option of a no-frills sibling, but nothing had been decided yet. “We still don't know whether we're going to do it or not,” the spokeswoman said. “It's something that will be covered in the strategic plan we'll unveil in September.”

Tens of thousands of Snickers and Mars chocolate bars have been withdrawn from sale in Australia’s New South Wales after the manufacturer was sent a letter threatening to poison a member of the public. The letter warned that up to seven Snickers and Mars bars in the metropolitan Sydney area had been contaminated. Police believed the products were randomly chosen and may have been tampered with.

You may have heard about Schappelle Corby, the Australian surfer who has been arrested and sentenced to 20 years in prison for smuggling in 4.5 kgs of cannabis in her boogie board case into Bali. Some people say that the drugs were put inside her case by luggage handlers in Australia – and if true, this is not the first time Australian baggage handlers have come under suspicion for this kind of thing. It makes you wonder about how just safe your luggage is from tampering. Many airports offer plastic shrinkwrap around suitcases and yet the US advises that luggage should be left unlocked so that customs can make routine inspections. What to do – what do you think?