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.

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Vietnam Airlines has announced that it will change the current two-tier price system for Vietnamese and foreigners from January 1 next year to boost tourism. Foreigners will no longer pay 20% more for domestic flights and will pay the same amount as Vietnamese nationals. A round trip ticket from capital Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City costs 3.3 million dong (USD$212) for foreigners while locals pay 2.7 million dong.

When you sit on that plane and feel for the sick bag, think again. Online auctioneer eBay has a section for unused sick bags from almost ever airline around the world, described as being in “mint and very fine conditions.” There are dedicated Web sites, including the Air SicknessBag Virtual Museum, which has bags from airlines, trains and ships — and even some from outer space. American Steven Silberberg, who runs airsicknessbags.com says: “I don't use them for their intended purpose, I just leave them at home in binders… most expensive bag I've ever seen sold was for $220. It was a Court Line Aviation bag, a company that folded in 1973,” he told CNN. Scandinavian bags are highly prized for the artistic impression on the bags where US airlines have plain bags.

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.

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.

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.