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Following a fire that killed at least 24 and injured 13 others in one of Beijing's internet parlours, the mayor of Beijing has ordered the immediate closure of all cyber cafes in the Chinese capital.

Mayor Liu Qi also suspended new licences that are still waiting for safety inspections. An official hi-tech police – nicknamed “the great firewall of China” – keeps watch over the internet 24 hours a day. A few weeks ago, a senior figure in China's Communist government expressed concern about the amount of time young people are spending surfing the internet and called for tighter regulation of cyber cafes.

Tens of thousands of internet cafes have sprung up in China in recent years, with many people – especially the young – seizing the chance to explore life in other countries through the internet. Journalists say China's tight controls on the internet have driven many operators underground. 

Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett has reached Australia and finally succeeded on his 6th attempt in becoming the first solo balloonist to circumnavigate the globe, completed after covering nearly 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometres) around the southern hemisphere.  It took 13 days in the air and his silvery balloon, often travelled along at speeds up to 200 mph (322 km/h), at an altitude more familiar to jetliners.

A disease which has devastated one type of Caribbean coral, Elkhorn coral, has been traced back to bacteria found in human faeces. On some reefs, 95% of Elkhorn corals, which used to be the commonest coral in the Caribbean, have been wiped out by the condition, called white pox that shows itself as white spots on the coral, which spread and kill the coral, destroying the living tissue. On average, the disease spreads at a rate of 2.5 square centimetres of coral a day.

The problem is particularly bad in the Florida Keys, where human waste is treated in septic fields rather than extensively treated to kill bacteria.  It is thought to be the first time that a human gut bacterium has been linked to coral disease.

The FCO has just developed a web page of advice for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender traveller.  It starts by saying: “Attitudes towards gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender travellers around the world can be very different to those in the UK. However, despite potential extra hassles, it is possible to have a very positive and enjoyable travelling experience.  One thing's for sure: the better prepared you are, the fewer problems you are likely to have. We hope the following tips will help you.”

The page then goes on to give some sensible and quite detailed advice on a range of advice about how to avoid problems, down to how to obtain a new passport with a new post operative trans-gender identity.  Visit: Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender

One of the oldest indigenous peoples, the Inuit, have turned to one of the most modern forms of communication to tell the world about their culture.

The Inuit are a founding people of Canada. Inuit hunters and their families started crossing the 320-kilometres-wide (200 miles) Bering Land Bridge from Siberia perhaps 30,000 years ago, then wandered slowly across the Polar north, reaching Greenland 50 centuries ago.

The Inuit were an entirely nomadic, hunting people until about 50 years ago, when the central government began an effort to bring them into mainstream Canadian life.  They now live across the Arctic reaches of northern Canada, where they are struggling to decrease high rates of alcoholism, suicide, teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

They have launched a website detailing their 5,000-year-old history, cataloguing their origins, when they first came into contact with white explorers and their struggle for land rights. Part of the reason for setting up the website was to tell the story of the Inuit in their own words, as until now, most of the research on Inuit culture and history has been done by others. http://www.tapirisat.ca/

Win a Moon Handbook on Guatemala – see www.moon.com by answering these questions.

The winner of last month's Moon Handbook on Vancouver is Dian Anderson from Canada.