Recent research from the United States publication Foreign Policy and the US NGO “Fund for Peace” has identified the twenty most vulnerable countries as: Ivory Coast, Congo, Sudan, Iraq, Somalia, Sierra Leone, Chad, Yemen, Liberia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Rwanda, North Korea, Colombia, Zimbabwe, Guinea, Bangladesh, Burundi, Dominican Republic and Central African Republic. Ten Latin American countries out of the list of sixty that run the risk of becoming what is described as “failed states” are: Haiti, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru and Honduras.

The “failed states” ranking is based on twelve economic, social, political and military performance indicators.  Other organisations have different views.  The World Bank has identified about 30 “low-income countries under stress”; the UK's Department for International Development has named 46 “fragile” states of concern.  A report commissioned by the CIA has put the number of failing states at about 20.

The Beijing Municipal Traffic Administration has launched a campaign to standardise road signs to make it easier for visitors to navigate the city.  Bilingual Chinese-English signs are to be displayed on streets as well as around the city's key tourist attractions. Many would agree that getting around Beijing can be difficult when you see signs saying “export” instead of “exit” for the word chukou and “scatter” instead of “evacuate” for the word shusan.

British health officials are concerned that UK citizens are not taking E111 forms with them when they jump on a plane to EU countries.  Form E111 covers medical treatment at public health centres at the 25 EU countries, plus Switzerland. The forms are currently being replaced by European Health Insurance Cards – the same system under a different name, with neater credit card-sized identification. The Department of Health website (www.dh.gov.uk) has information on the changeover, and how to apply for the new cards.

In the past two weeks, there have been two major armed robberies at separate hotels in Zanzibar.  The first robbery took place at the Coral Reef Hotel about 28 miles north of Stone Town.  Eight men disguised as police officers, armed with submachine-guns tied up security staff and made off with nearly £15,000 in various currencies, watches and mobile phones. 

Less than a week later, six people armed with a gun and machetes arrived after dark at the Nungwi Village Hotel, an eco-resort in northern Zanzibar (where the Beetle passed a happy 10 days a couple of years ago.)  After threatening to kill staff and guests, the gang robbed them of their laptops, mobile phones and cash before stealing nearly £9,000 from the safe.

Four people have been arrested in relation to the first incident but no arrests have been made re the second robbery.

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.

Indian Railways has announced that it plans to introduce electronic tickets.  Electronic tickets can be purchased for trains between New Delhi and Kalka, in northern India.  Passengers have to show an identity card and the printout of the electronic reservation.

Need help? Want a travelling buddy or advice about a place or country – want to share something with us – why not visit our Mutual Aid section of the Website: Mutual Aid

Ministers from 23 countries in Africa and south-east Asia have appealed for international help to save the world's great apes from extinction.

Urgent action was needed to protect the great apes and provide sustainable ways of living for local communities, the UN-backed meeting in Kinshasa agreed.

Poaching and damage to forest habitats have led gorilla, chimpanzee, bonobo and orang-utan numbers to fall sharply.

Kofi Anan says that substantial increases in illegal fishing, tourism, bio-prospecting, climate change and depletion of the ozone continue to pose major challenges to the Antarctic, and governments should continue to make major efforts to secure the area as a natural reserve devoted to peace and science.  Illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing for toothfish in the Southern Ocean still exceeds reported catches despite major efforts to address such activities.  Other major areas of concern are the increase in tourism over the last 10 years.  There is an increase by 308% in ship-borne tourists to the Antarctic Peninsula since 1993, up to 27,324 in 2004-5, from 6,704 in 1992-3.  An increase in high-risk, adventure tourism has also wrought havoc on the region, creating the need for new search and rescue missions and country liability assessments. 

Spotted on the Globetrotter's forum: http://milvetstravel.net/virtualtours.html is a website that allows you to take virtual tours of a whole host of places – check it out, it's pretty interesting!

If you have a travellers tale that your aching to tell. Then why not visit the “Travel Sized Bites” section of the Website and share it with the world. Travel Sized Bites

Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines, the third and fourth-largest US air carriers, both declared bankruptcy in September citing rising oil prices and low-cost competition among their reasons.

Saturday 12^th November 2005, 10.30am – 4.00pm                        

Location:
The Newsroom, The Guardian
60 Farringdon Rd, London EC1R 3GA
Cost: £87.50

A day of two intensive workshops:

Travel writing and how to do it and how not to with Dea Birkett, the Guardian Travel columnist and author of Serpent in Paradise and Off the Beaten Track

Fact, fiction and creating a traveller's tale with Rory Maclean, author of Falling for Icarus and Stalin's Nose

The workshops include practical writing sessions. Participants should bring pen and paper – they will be expected to write! The emphasis is – whether you are a beginner or already have some writing experience – on developing skills which can be applied to both articles and books. Our aim is that, by the end of the day, each of you will have the tools to produce a publishable piece of travel writing.

We hope to build up a community of those interested in travel writing, by providing opportunities for participants to submit work they have completed after the course for further expert comment. You will also be able to move on to more advanced workshops, suiting the particular focus of your writing.

Participants will also be invited to exchange email details, in the hope that you may benefit from continued mutual support and positive criticism.

To apply for a place on the Travel Writing Workshop, see:

• www.deabirkett.com
• www.rorymaclean.com
• www.guardian.co.uk/newsroom

On Wednesday, 29th March 2006, the shadow of the Moon will sweep a band starting from Brazil, through Atlantic Ocean, Gold Coast of Africa, Saharan Desert, Mediterranean Sea, Turkey, Black Sea, Georgia, Russian Federation, northern shores of Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan; ending in Mongolia. The duration of totality will be less than 2 minutes near the sunrise and sunset limits, but will be as long as 4 minutes and 7 seconds in Libya, at the moment of greatest eclipse.  The partial phases will be witnessed by all of Europe. All Asia west of Yakutsk, Mongolia, central China and Myanmar, and north of the line joining Bombay and Calcutta will see some of the Moon in front of the Sun. Also, only the south eastern parts of Africa will miss the partial eclipse.

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.