Be careful using the internet in Zimbabwe. President Robert Mugabe has suggested the internet, widely developed in Zimbabwe, is a tool of colonialists. The Zimbabwean government is in the process of asking the country’s internet providers to divulge details of e-mails deemed offensive or dangerous. They would be required, in the event of an investigation, to pass to government officials user details relating to material featuring anything from obscenity to “anti-national activities”. It is already illegal in Zimbabwe to “undermine the authority of the president” or to “engender hostility” towards him as well as to make abusive, obscene or false statements against him.

Take a look at modern day adventurer John Pilkington’s website. In this, you can see details of the latest and most exciting of John’s journeys which took him up the world’s twelfth longest river from the South China Sea to Tibet and beyond. Starting among the rice paddies of Vietnam, he made his way via Cambodia, Thailand, Laos and Burma and through the gorges of China’s Yunnan province, meeting river-people of seven nationalities along the way. In a climax to the trip, he and two Tibetans reached the glacier on Mount Guosongmucha, north of Tibet, where the Mekong rises at over 17,000 feet.

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.