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Transparency International recently published its new index on the world's most countries. At the top of the list, i.e. the least corrupt country is Iceland, followed by Finland and New Zealand in joint second place, Denmark in fourth place and Singapore in fifth place. In sixth to tenth position are Sweden, Switzerland, Norway, Australia, and Austria respectively.

Lying at the bottom of the league in joint 158th position is Bangladesh and Chad, in joint 155th place are Haiti, Myanmar and Turkmenistan, in joint 152nd position are Cote d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria. Angola comes in at no 151 and there are seven countries at joint 144 th position: the DRC, Kenya, Pakistan, Paraguay, Somalia, Sudan and Tajikistan.

A 9-year-old boy, wanting to help Hurricane Katrina victims, swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco, raising $30,000 in donations in the process.

Fourth-grader Johnny Wilson made the mile-and-a-half swim in the choppy, 53-degree water of San Francisco Bay in under two hours.

Wilson called the swim tiring, but said he kept telling himself, “I'm almost there, I'm almost there.” The 9-year-old boy said the beginning was the hardest because that's when he was the coldest. His classmates on the shore, cheered: “Go, Johnny! Go, Johnny!”

Alcatraz prison closed in 1963 and is now a tourist attraction and not a single inmate ever successfully escaped.

The Chief Executive Tony Davis of Singapore based low-cost airline Tiger Airways said that they want to be the Ryanair of Asia. Tiger Airways flies from Singapore to Macau, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines, competing with Malaysia's AirAsia and a partnership of Valueair Ltd and Qantas Airways associate Jetstar Asia. Tiger is 49 per cent owned by Singapore Airlines.

Sir Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic has collected $10m in deposits from people wanting a quick journey beyond Earth's atmosphere. More than 34,000 would-be astronauts have registered for rides aboard a commercial version of the experimental Ansari X Prize winner SpaceShipOne. If you are wondering about how much this may cost – BBC reports say that between four to five minutes of weightlessness will set you back around $200,000 (£113,242). Test flights are on schedule to begin in 2007, with commercial operations to begin a year later.

The spaceships will be about the size of a Gulfstream Five business jet and like SpaceShipOne, will be attached to a larger airplane before its rocket engines ignite to travel beyond the atmosphere. The joyrides are being designed so that passengers should be able to witness views of Earth-in-the-round. The seating compartments on SpaceShipTwo are being designed so that passengers can float around weightless while still connected to their seats.

Travel Facts

• One in three adults aged 15-49 are infected with HIV/AIDS in Botswana, Zimbabwe, and Swaziland.
• If you thought Antarctica was inhospitable, think again – its land area is only 98% ice. Reassuringly, the other 2% is categorised as 'barren rock'.
• The Mall in Washington, D.C. is 1.4 times larger than Vatican City.
• Moldova has one of the lowest rates of movie-going of any nation, and the highest rate of death by powered lawnmower. Coincidence? Surely not.
• In 2002, every 1000 Swedes made a bus.
• Looking for geniuses? Head straight to Iceland. There are more than 3.5 Nobel Prize Winners for every million Icelanders.
• People might eat oats when they're hungry, but people from Hungary don't eat oats.
• Japan's water has a very high dissolved oxygen concentration – but not enough to prevent drowning in the bath.
• The four largest nations are Russia, China, USA, and Canada.

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Terminal 5, whose sole tenant is British Airways is due to open on Sunday, 30 March 2008. The £4.2bn project is intended to bring some … to your transit. Never mind the passenger experience; your baggage will have a first-class journey. Amazingly, Terminal 5 is said to be Europe's biggest construction project.

About a dozen people have been killed by salt-water crocodiles in Australia in the past 20 years. Now divers in northern Australia are calling for development of crocodile warning devices following two recent crocodile attacks. The numbers of crocodiles have increased rapidly in recent years, due to a ban on hunting passed in the 1970s. The deaths have also reopened debate as to whether limited limited hunting should resume. The salt-water crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) is the largest living reptile in terms of mass. There is a large population in Australia, with the majority being in the Northern Territory.