The Globetrotters eNewsletter
eNewsletter Archive

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.

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: href="http://www.nationmaster.com/facts/">http://www.nationmaster.com/facts/

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.

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.

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
• href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/newsroom">www.guardian.co.uk/newsroom

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. href="http://www.globetrotters.co.uk/bites/">Travel Sized
Bites

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. 

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: href="http://www.globetrotters.co.uk/mutual/">Mutual Aid

Need to convert currency?

Take a look at href="http://www.globetrotters.co.uk/converter.html">The
Globetrotters Currency Converter - get the exchange rates for
164 currencies href="http://www.globetrotters.co.uk/trav_cheatsheet.html">The
Globetrotters Currency Cheat Sheet - create and print a
currency converter table for your next trip.

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.