A tour company in Kuala Lumpur are offering a tour on Asian ghosts, spirits and superstitions. It costs US $44 and starts at the site where more than a decade ago, a terrible triple murder occurred in Bangsar in Malaysia. Two children and their maid were killed by a security guard who had just started work that day at the expatriate’s home. The guard was caught, tried, sentenced to death and hanged in 2002. The tour takes in an Indian temple, a Chinese cemetery, a prison, old railway station and a den. For those of you who would like more info, see: KL Ghost and Spook Tour

Three cyclists, two German, one Irish are reported missing between the city of Bam and Zahedan near the Pakistani border – a notorious opium smuggling route from Afghanistan to Western Europe. A ransom is thought to have been issued. Kidnappings there, as in the rest of the country, have been rare in recent years. A number of European tourists were abducted in southern Iran in 1999. We hope for their safe release.

Malaysia’s Petronas Towers used to be the world’s tallest buildings. Taiwan intends to top this (groan… with a 508-metre (1,667-feet) tower, the Taipei 101 which is expected to be completed in November 2004. No inauspicious activities have been spared – feng shui and geomancy experts have been called in. The $1.7 billion skyscraper is meant to resemble a bamboo stalk, known for its sturdiness and vigour. It will have 101 storeys and will house the Taiwan Stock Exchange and offices for 12,000 people. There are plans for the world’s fastest lifts: 34 double-decker shuttles that can reach speeds of 60 km/h (37 mph) and take passengers to the 90^th floor in less than 39 seconds. Wow! That will be some tourist attraction in its own right!

A recent report from Oxford University’s Wildlife Conservation Research Unit says that fewer than 20,000 lions may now survive in the whole of Africa, although they do not face immediate extinction. The greatest threats to the species are sport hunting and conflict with farmers over livestock. The estimate of 20,000 lions or fewer compares with a population put at about 200,000 in the early 1980’s. The researchers studied the impact of sport or trophy hunting in Hwange national park in Zimbabwe, surrounded by hunting concessions where the parks department allocates an annual quota: the hunters traditionally target male lions. Findings suggest the levels of hunting there were not sustainable. Of the adult males the team tagged or collared, 63% were shot by hunters in the surrounding area. WildCRU estimates there are about 42 adult male lions in Hwange, where between 1998 and 2002 the hunting quota in the concessions was set at 63 lions. It says the number shot annually far exceeded the recommended sustainable level of 4-10% of the adult males. The parks department is considering lowering the quotas.

With effect from Thursday 13 November, entry clearance will become mandatory for nationals of the ten phase one countries and all work permit holders (except for nine EU accession countries) who wish to stay in the UK for more than six months.

Nationals of Australia, Canada, Hong Kong (SAR passports), Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea and the USA will require entry clearance before travelling for all stays in the UK of longer than six months.

The entry clearance requirement will also apply to all work permit holders staying for more than six months, with the exception of the nine non-visa national EU accession countries (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland and Slovenia).

For more information, see: UK Visas

Club Reps, a bawdy real life UK TV documentary on the goings on in the town of Faliraki on the Greek island of Rhodes is blamed for an increase in drunken behaviour. A British policeman from Blackpool, (another delightful part in North-West UK), with similar issues has been dispatched to Faliraki to liaise with the Chief of Faliraki police after a British man was stabbed to death in a bar brawl and a woman jailed for baring her breasts.

Based on a successful model used in Blackpool, the UK police said the key to tackling problems is stopping the “aggressive marketing of drinks promotions” and bar crawls. Independent tour operators have sprung up which were taking 400 or 500 people on bar crawls. Suggestions have been made to install CCTV cameras on the streets, improve lighting, and increase police presence and officers are “firm but fair” early in the evening, to nip problems in the bud.

Ratu Filimoni Wawabaluva, a chief from Navosa, on the Fijian island of Viti Levu, has announced that a traditional apology ceremony is to be held to apologise 136 years after their ancestors killed and ate a British missionary.

Fiji were once known as “Cannibal Isles”. At the time, it is said that one local boasted after scoffing the Rev Thomas Baker, from Playden, East Sussex, in 1867: “We ate everything but his boots.” The Rev. Baker’s descendants were invited to the ceremony. Some residents of Navosa believe they have been cursed with bad luck since their ancestors ate the Rev Thomas Baker. Accounts differ on how he came to be eaten, with one version being that he broke a taboo by touching a chief’s hair to take out a comb.

An archivist at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies said that the story could be a myth saying: “It seems Baker got caught up in some sort of inter-tribal feuding relating to his right to travel across the island.”

A spokesman for the London Missionary Society, which sent dozens of missionaries to the South Pacific, said Baker’s was “not an unusual story”. Another missionary made a “similar cultural error” in Papua New Guinea around the same time and was also eaten.