Answers to: So You Think You’re Well Travelled?
0 out of 5 – you need to get out more!
1-3 – not bad
4 – very good! You are a Globetrotter!
5 – are you sure you didn’t sneak a look?
Over 2,000 people are believed to have died or disappeared as a result of huge storms and an earthquake on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola. Aid agencies say bad weather is hampering efforts to deliver supplies to the survivors of severe flooding in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Emergency teams are trying to recover bodies before they contaminate the water supply.
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!!
Are you passionate about photography?
Taking pictures of family, friends and places you’ve been? Maybe you’ve captured a magic moment, an unusual situation or some humorous, crazy slice of life? Whatever it is, if you have a photo you’re really proud of, you should enter the Amateur Photo of the Year contest and you could become the 2004 Panasonic Batteries Amateur Photographer of the Year and win one of their fantastic prizes!
See this link for more details: Panasonic Photo Competition
If you are in London in June/July you might want to check these events out, you can get free tickets from culturalco-operation.org, Cultural Co-operation is an independent arts charity that promotes cross-cultural contact, dialogue and understanding. Their main activity is the international summer Music Village, Europe’s longest running festival of world culture.
MTV are looking for people who are planning to backpack around Europe this summer. If you are interested, see: and would like to be on the MTV show “True Life: I’m Backpacking in Europe” www.EuropeBackpack.com.
A pilot for Japan’s All Nippon Airways fell asleep at the controls for several minutes while on a domestic flight and had to be awakened by a government inspector who was travelling in the cockpit. An official from the Transport Ministry, who was in the cockpit for a routine inspection, woke the pilot after he fell asleep as the plane was cruising at 12,000 metres (36,000 feet), but he dozed off again and had to be awakened a second time. “He was asleep for two or three minutes,” the spokesman said. The spokesman said there was no danger to passengers since the plane was on auto-pilot and the co-pilot was also present. The pilot, who has been suspended, is undergoing medical tests.
Rwanda is marking the 10th anniversary of the 1994 genocide, one of the worst atrocities of the late 20th century – alongside what happened in the Balkans. A bit of background – it was triggered by the shooting down of a plane with Rwanda’s Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana onboard on 6 April 1994. By amazing coincidence the wreckage landed in the garden of the presidential residence. The crash served as a signal to Hutu extremists, supporters of the government, to start the systematic extermination of minority ethnic Tutsis and any Hutu opponents of the regime. The former UN commander in Rwanda said Western states were “criminally responsible” for the genocide. Canadian General Romeo Dallaire said France, which led the small international peacekeeping force at the time of the genocide, the UK and the US in particular did not care enough to stop the killing. The killing continued for 100 days before a Tutsi-dominated rebel army seized control.
New European low-cost airline WIZZ Air plan to start flights from Budapest to seven European cities from June 24. Destinations include London, Barcelona, Athens, Rome, Paris, Prague and Katowice from Budapest. From July 1 it would add Paris, Munich, Athens, Barcelona, Dortmund and Stockholm to its destinations from Poland, it added.
Qantas, Australia’s biggest airline has announced that it plans to start a new low cost Asian airline in November 2004. The new airline will be called Jetstar, the same name as Qantas’s new low-cost domestic venture. The new airline will be the fifth budget operator to fly to and from Singapore, following Thai AirAsia, a joint venture between Malaysian budget carrier AirAsia and Thailand’s Shin Corp, and Jakarta-based Lion Air, which both already operate flights. Valuair, owned by ex-Singapore Airlines staff, has just started flying. Tiger Airways, a budget venture between Singapore Airlines and Irish discount airline Ryanair is expected to start operations this year.
European travel agent Thomas Cook has said that its airline Condor planned to offer cut-price flights on long-distance journeys. Proposed services include flights to the US, Caribbean, Africa and Asia with prices starting at EUR99 (USD$120).
For a while now postage costs to the EU countries have been rising and has now reached the point where they are on a par with the costs for our other members worldwide members (USA, South America and Australia). We feel that it is unfair for one member to subsidise another and have decided to abolish the EU price band.
The new fees will be effective from the 1st June 2004 when the following fees will apply: