Category: Sidebar

India: the Canadian Department of
Foreign Affairs and International Trade lifted its travel
advisory for India on July 23, 2002, but maintains that
Canadians should still not travel to Jammu and Kashmir and
those areas of Gujarat, Rajasthan, and Punjab close to the
border, and areas of Ladakh close to the Line of
Control.  Some progress has been made in reducing
tensions between India and Pakistan.  However, the
security situation remains unpredictable and could
deteriorate at short notice.  This can be expected to
continue for the foreseeable future.  Should there be
an escalation of hostilities, commercial travel could be
disrupted, limiting travellers' ability to depart on
short notice.  All Canadian citizens are encouraged to
monitor developments and to register with the Canadian High
Commission in New Delhi. See the Department's
Travel Reports for destination-specific
information.

Millionaire adventurer Steve Fossett has
reached Australia and finally succeeded on his 6th attempt
in becoming the first solo balloonist to circumnavigate the
globe, completed after covering nearly 20,000 miles (32,000
kilometres) around the southern hemisphere.  It took
13 days in the air and his silvery balloon, often travelled
along at speeds up to 200 mph (322 km/h), at an altitude
more familiar to jetliners.

One of the oldest indigenous peoples,
the Inuit, have turned to one of the most modern forms of
communication to tell the world about their culture.

The Inuit are a founding people of
Canada. Inuit hunters and their families started crossing
the 320-kilometres-wide (200 miles) Bering Land Bridge from
Siberia perhaps 30,000 years ago, then wandered slowly
across the Polar north, reaching Greenland 50 centuries
ago.

The Inuit were an entirely nomadic,
hunting people until about 50 years ago, when the central
government began an effort to bring them into mainstream
Canadian life.  They now live across the Arctic
reaches of northern Canada, where they are struggling to
decrease high rates of alcoholism, suicide, teenage
pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

They have launched a website detailing
their 5,000-year-old history, cataloguing their origins,
when they first came into contact with white explorers and
their struggle for land rights. Part of the reason for
setting up the website was to tell the story of the Inuit
in their own words, as until now, most of the research on
Inuit culture and history has been done by others. http://www.tapirisat.ca/

The British Museum, one of the greatest
museums in the world, tops the visitor charts. 
Founded in 1753, it is also the oldest museum in the world
and its contents catalogue over two million years of world
history and culture.  With over 94 galleries and
thousands of artefacts, the British Museum will have
something for everyone!  The most famous exhibits
include the Elgin Marbles – sculptures from the Parthenon
in Athens, Egyptian mummies and the Rosetta Stone. 
The Reading Room was recently incorporated into the Great
Court (a huge covered courtyard) has witnessed the likes of
Karl Marx, Mahatma Ghandi and George Bernard Shaw working
there.  Admission is free and there are lots of events
and special exhibitions taking place throughout the
year.

The British
Museum opens daily 10:00-17:30 Sat-Wed, 10:00-20:30
Thurs-Fri (selected galleries).  The Great Court opens
09:00-18:00 Mon-Wed, 09:00-23:00 Thurs, Fri and 09:00-18:00
Sat and Sun, closed 24-26 Dec and 1 Jan. Tube: Tottenham
Court Road, Holborn or Russell Square. Enquiries: 020 7323
8299

A disease which has devastated one type
of Caribbean coral, Elkhorn coral, has been traced back to
bacteria found in human faeces. On some reefs, 95% of
Elkhorn corals, which used to be the commonest coral in the
Caribbean, have been wiped out by the condition, called
white pox that shows itself as white spots on the coral,
which spread and kill the coral, destroying the living
tissue. On average, the disease spreads at a rate of 2.5
square centimetres of coral a day.

The problem is particularly bad in the
Florida Keys, where human waste is treated in septic fields
rather than extensively treated to kill bacteria.  It
is thought to be the first time that a human gut bacterium
has been linked to coral disease.

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!!

The FCO has just developed a web page of
advice for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender
traveller.  It starts by saying: “Attitudes
towards gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender travellers
around the world can be very different to those in the UK.
However, despite potential extra hassles, it is possible to
have a very positive and enjoyable travelling
experience.  One thing's for sure: the better
prepared you are, the fewer problems you are likely to
have. We hope the following tips will help you.”

The page then goes on to give some
sensible and quite detailed advice on a range of advice
about how to avoid problems, down to how to obtain a new
passport with a new post operative trans-gender
identity.  Visit:
Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender

Be careful dancing in Iran: an Iranian
dancer who left Iran 22 years ago and has been living in
Los Angeles has just been given a 10-year suspended prison
sentence in Iran on charges of corrupting the nation's
youth.  Mohammed Khordadian had been making a living
giving lessons in Iranian traditional dance and performing
for the large Iranian community in California. 

He returned to Iran after learning that
his mother had died and spent a couple of months visiting
relatives and friends but was arrested at the airport when
he tried to leave.  Some of his performances were
beamed into Iran by TV stations run by Iranian exiles and
his videos also found their way onto the domestic Iranian
market.  After several months in jail he has finally
been released, following sentence by a Tehran court. 
In addition to the suspended jail sentence, he was banned
from leaving the country for 10 years, banned from
attending weddings for three years, except for those of
close relations, and banned from giving dance lessons ever
again. 

Although many Iranians dance at private
parties, especially weddings, the ruling clerical
establishment frowns on such behaviour, especially when it
involves the mingling of the sexes. For unmarried people,
even to appear in public together is a punishable offence,
though it is only sporadically enforced, although there are
reports of alarm from young people in Tehran who have
noticed the recent appearance on the streets of a tough new
police unit, equipped with smart black four-wheeled drive
vehicles.

Win a Moon Handbook on Guatemala – see
www.moon.com by answering
these questions.

The winner of last month's Moon
Handbook on Vancouver is Dian Anderson from Canada.

The US House voted last night to lift
the ban on US citizens travelling to communist Cuba,
stunning hard-liners and defying a plea by the Bush
administration to retain harsh, 40-year-old sanctions
against a nation it sees as a terrorist state.  In an
unexpectedly lopsided and bipartisan 262-167 vote, the
House approved an amendment by Representative Jeff Flake,
Republican of Arizona, to prohibit funds from being used to
enforce the travel ban, effectively lifting it.

Since the amendment was attached to a
Treasury Department and Postal Service appropriations bill,
it had to pertain to spending to be considered in
order.

“Americans can travel to North
Korea and Iran, two-thirds of the axis of evil, but not to
Cuba,” said Representative William Delahunt, Democrat
of Quincy, MA. “That makes no sense, I would
suggest.”