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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
Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina has a population of around 3 million, (metropolitan area of 13 million) and there is a 12,000 strong Greek community. Emigration from Greece to Buenos Aires peaked between WWI and WWII. Today, the Greek community of Buenos Aires is the largest and wealthiest of its type in Latin America. Many are successful businessmen, ship owners, scholars and writers.
Buenos Aires’ most famous Greek immigrant is Aristotle Onassis, a refugee from Smyrna, who arrived in Buenos Aires on September 21st, 1923. Onassis was involved with tobacco manufacturing, before buying his first merchant ship in the early 1930s. In 1932, Onassis was appointed Honorary Deputy Consul of Greece to Buenos Aires. He later became one of the world's wealthiest men.
John F. Kennedy International Airport has become the first airport in the United States to use iris scanning technology to prevent employee security breaches. Kennedy has been testing the technology on about 300 employees working at Terminal 4 for two months, although the program is not mandatory for now. The idea is that the technology prevents employees from giving their ID cards to someone else. The scanner stores 247 traits of a person's iris into a computer and on his or her ID card's magnetic strip.
Terminal officials said they believe the technique is more specific than fingerprinting, which checks for 85 traits. The $2,000 iris scanner and the $15,000 door barring entry into a secure area have been installed at the customs area leading to the tarmac. If the scanner fails to match an employee's eyes and card, an alarm sounds and security guards are dispatched. After swiping their cards, workers peer into the scanner for 10 to 15 seconds, until the door clicks open. The system works with contact lenses and eyeglasses, but not with sunglasses. The Charlotte, North Carolina, airport used similar technology in 2000, but suspended the system last year.
An economist has warned that global efforts to combat malaria are on the verge of collapse as scarce international donor funds were being used to fight AIDS instead. Malaria is estimated to kill more than 1-million people each year, most of whom are children in sub-Saharan Africa. Mr Sachs, speaking to journalists during an international teleconference said that international donors were not living up to their promises to help combat malaria. To make matters worse, he said, AIDS took the lion's share of donor funding. For example, the UN Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria, had committed only 22m for malaria programmes during its first round of funding (out of a total of 616m committed). Sachs also lashed out at the World Bank for failing to meet its commitment to raise $500m to help eradicate malaria. “The situation is paradoxical. Knowing what to do insecticide coated bed nets alone could save millions of lives and we even have new organisational funds, but the pieces have not come together to produce results,” said Sachs. Sachs said that malaria cost the African economy more than $12bn a year, and that the disease could be controlled for $2-3bn annually.
Source: Massive Effort
You can now “see” a whole load of manuscripts, paintings and artefacts from ancient caves and temples along the Silk Road on the Internet in digital form.
By visiting http://idp.nlc.gov.cn or http://idp.bl.uk, websites developed jointly by the British Library and the National Library of China you can see a collection of artefacts recovered from the Dunhuang cave in China in the early 20th Century.
“The cave was sealed in AD 1000 and completely hidden,” Dr Susan Whitfield, Director of the British Library's International Dunhuang Project told the BBC programme Go Digital. “It was discovered accidentally in 1900 and when it was open, it was found to contain these 50,000 items of manuscripts and paintings.” These offer a glimpse into the daily life of merchants, officials, soldiers, monks and farmers in Silk Road towns.
“The idea is that scholars will always get as close as they possibly can on their computer screens to the objects,” explained Dr Whitfield. The artefacts are now spread across the world, in major museums in Beijing, London, Paris and St Petersburg. The other reason behind making digital copy of the artefacts is to ensure that they are preserved for future generations.
Scientists are set to explore the world’s highest fresh water lake 4 miles up in the Licancabur volcano near Antofogasta in Chile.
Their aim is to find out how the organisms that live there can survive in such a hostile environment. They will do this by taking samples and diving to the bottom of the lake.
Although the lake at Licancabur volcano is covered with almost two feet of ice during much of the year, the expedition will take place in the southern hemisphere's spring, when the lake is not completely frozen.
The information they hope to gather will help astrobiologists devise strategies and technologies to search for life on planets like Mars during future missions.
A diver discovered a 40.2-carat emerald embedded in a conch shell while diving at the site of a Spanish galleon wrecked in a Florida Keys hurricane 380 years ago.
The diver, who unsurprisingly does not want his name revealed, discovered the giant raw emerald while washing shells in a classroom laboratory. “Out popped a 40.2-carat emerald,” Patrick Clyne, vice president at Key West-based wreck salvage company Mel Fisher Enterprises, said Monday. “It was one of those freak-of-nature things that somehow got swept up in the conch shell.”
The diver had gathered the shells from a dive off the Spanish galleon Santa Margarita, which sank Sept. 6,
1622, about 30 miles west of Key West. “This is an excellent indication that the Margarita had raw emeralds
smuggled aboard the ship,” Clyne said. “There were no emeralds listed on its cargo manifest.” There were no
estimates for how much the emerald might be worth. But in 1985, a 77.7-carat emerald from the vessel
Nuestra Senora de Atocha, a sister ship of the Santa Margarita, was appraised at $1.2 million. The vessels,
part of a 28-ship fleet that left Havana on Sept. 4, 1622, for Spain with treasures from Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela, sank during a hurricane.
The Beetle likes cityguide.travel-guides.com
Here you can select from a number of cities around the world and compile your own guide, for free. There is a very diverse set of headings from which to chose, e.g. history, cost of living, getting around, shopping, excursions, major sites, tourist information, street maps, nightlife, sport, culture, special events etc.
If you are going away for the weekend and don’t want to buy a guidebook or just want to do some digging around, this is an excellent resource.
The Youth Hostels Association (YHA) has teamed with English Out There to offer English language courses for visitors to London. Accommodation will be at one of six YHA hostels in the capital and the packages include bed and breakfast, an Underground pass and tickets to some famous attractions.
The language lessons are designed around themes or tasks, and students can choose how many they want to take from 20 modules. The students are expected to be mainly families or young people, who want to combine a holiday with improving their English.
Websites: yha.org.uk and EnglishOutThere.co.uk.
Source: britainexpress.com
Love them or hate them, the one thing McDonalds has, all over the world, is clean bathrooms! As a part of a cost cutting exercise, and increasing competition from the likes of Wendys and Burger King, McDonald's is to stop operating in three as yet unnamed countries, in the Middle East and Latin America. It also plans to close 175 restaurants shedding 600 staff to beef up profits.
Ever wondered how far it is from Paris, France to Paris, Texas? Well, as the crow flies, it is 4847 miles (7800 km) or 4212 nautical miles.
Expedia.com’s lowest return fare flying from Paris, France to Dallas, the closest international airport to Paris Texas on 30th November costs $626.86, which is equivalent to around 13c a mile.
And in case Paris, Texas catches your eye: Paris received recognition in 1998 for being named “Best Small Town in Texas” by Kevin Heubusch in his book “The New Rating Guide to Life in America's Small Cities.”
Paris, Texas is located approximately 100 miles northeast of Dallas, in the Heart of Red River Valley. It was founded in 1839 and became the Lamar County seat in 1844. It later became incorporated in 1845 and today plays a major role in Texas economy within Northeast Texas. Aside from the numerous parks to stroll around, Paris, Texas has the “Second Largest Eiffel Tower in the Second Largest Paris.”
Britain and the United States are warning of the risk of an attack on the world's biggest camel fair in the deserts of western India and urged their citizens to stay away. The fair, which runs in mid November, draws thousands of foreign and Indian tourists to the lakeside town of Pushkar in the desert state of Rajasthan.
The British High Commission said on Wednesday that although it had received no specific threat against its citizens, it regarded the carnival as “a potential target of terrorist activity”. “Information has been received which suggests that there is a risk of terrorist activity at the Pushkar Camel Fair,” the U.S. embassy in New Delhi said in a statement. “While we have no indication of a specific threat to American citizens, we advise that they should avoid this event.”
Win a Moon Handbook on the San Juan Islands. See www.moon.com for info on Moon guidebooks.
The winner of last month's Moon guide is Mary Attick.
There are several reasons why travellers do not visit Colombia, but perhaps they come down to the same thing: the cocaine industry and the people who control it. Even the Colombian government acknowledge that 80% of the world's supply of the drug comes from Colombia, and 70% of this was now grown in the Amazon region.
Colombia is without doubt a very beautiful country with mountains, forests, beaches, colonial towns and cities, but it is just not safe. Everyone, from people who live in the towns and cities to the countryside, including tourists are at risk. It is one of the few countries in the world that the Beetle would not visit herself. The Beetle’s former Spanish teacher, a London based Colombian was herself viciously mugged within minutes of arriving in her hometown of Medellín.
The new Colombian government have just announced a policy called Trees for Drugs, under which poor farmers would be paid to protect the forest instead of growing coca and are appealing for international funding from the international community to help fund a scheme to pay poor farmers to protect trees instead of cutting them down to grow drug crops.
Cocaine-users across the world are helping to destroy the Amazon rainforest, Colombian Environment Minister Cecilia Rodriguez has warned. Dr Rodriguez said the message to the world's drug users was clear: “I should call the attention of all consumers of cocaine that they're are harming dramatically the tropical rainforest of the world, because this is what the world needs for its oxygen.”
Those of you who are planning to come to London should be aware that because of a firemen’s strike, some of London’s deeper tube stations are closed where safety officials feel that the use of lifts may cause safety issues. To find a list of the closed tube stations, take a look at the London Transport website:
LondonTransport
The Canadian Government has issued a travel advisory to its citizens about visiting the United States.
Because of tightened border controls in America, Canadians born in some Middle Eastern countries should now think carefully before entering the United States, Ottawa says.
American border regulations introduced last month require that people born in Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan or Syria be photographed and fingerprinted as they enter the US – even if they are now full citizens of other countries, including Canada.
That has prompted the travel warning from the Canadian Government.
This week it advised its citizens who were born in any of the five countries to “consider carefully whether they should attempt to enter the US for any reason, including transit to or from third countries”.
In the Canadian parliament on Wednesday, politicians accused Washington of harassing Arab-Canadians.
One Syrian-born member of parliament said the American rules make him a second-class Canadian.
Canadian Foreign Minister Bill Graham says he has already registered his strongest disapproval to US Secretary of State Colin Powell.
He added that he believes changes will be made to the American move when common sense prevails.
The American regulations come as a convenient target for Canadian politicians who sense growing unease amongst Canadians with US policy in the Middle East.
Many Canadians also worry about increased administration and delays at the border, which can be expensive for their export businesses.
Under 30? 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!!
Olympia London from January 30 – February 2
You'll find the largest range of holidays and ideas to be found under one roof – hundreds of tour operators, travel companies and tourist boards offering everything from adventure experiences to cultural weekend breaks. A limited number of complimentary tickets are available to telegraph.co.uk readers (maximum 2 per user) if booked in advance for Destinations 2003.
Visit www.destinationsshow.com, click on 'box office' and enter the code 'tcuk' when prompted.
by Charles Arthur / Independent/UK (via Common Dreams News Center)
The snows of Mount Kilimanjaro, immortalized by an Ernest Hemingway short story, are melting so quickly they are expected to disappear within two decades.
Researchers have found that the ice fields capping Africa's highest mountain shrank by 80 per cent in the last century, from 4.6 square miles in 1912 to just one square mile two years ago, which has brought down the height of the mountain by several feet.
The ice covering the 19,330ft peak “will be gone by about 2020”, said Lonnie Thompson, a glaciologist at Ohio State University. The process has cut water volume in some Tanzanian rivers that supply villages and hospitals. Global warming is one reason, but scientists say it alone cannot have caused such a dramatic change. The other factors behind the transformation remain a mystery.