7 Days; 7 Travel Stories
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1. Airbus Gossip

A report by a NY research company, Basex, claims that Airbus' failure to share knowledge and collaborate among its multinational companies in recent years will cost the aircraft maker a staggering euro 4.8 billion ($7 billion) over the next four years.

Airbus, which recently delivered the first A380 superjumbo to Singapore Airlines, has faced repeated delays due to software and IT issues as well as cost overruns in the project, which is now two years behind schedule and 50 percent over budget.

2. Online

Facebook has become the preferred haunt of the 20 something crowd. The online social network, with more than four million users, recently added a “Where I’ve Been” application that allows its members to mark on a big blue map all of the countries in the world that they have visited.

The most popular destination is Florida followed by NY, California, France and Pennsylvania. Australia is ranked the place most people want to visit, followed by Italy, Brazil, Spain and New Zealand. The least desirable is "Russian Soil" followed by Pemba, Madeira, Tonga and Newfoundland. Only four Facebook users surveyed have been to Tonga, 12 to Newfoundland and 14 to Zanzibar, and strangely, more have been to Antarctica than have been to Western Australia. Facebook also features a travel quiz to test your world knowledge, travel chat rooms and more. Manchester Guardian

A new Internet radio travel show debuts: http://www.letstravelradio.com/. A podcast of each week's show is available on the Web site after the Thursday broadcast.

Boston along with Providence, Dallas, Fort Worth, Indianapolis, Detroit, Minneapolis and St. Paul became the latest cities where Google users can employ the popular search engine’s controversial Street View feature to plan a vacation, search for a shop and restaurant, or check out local landmarks. The feature, which covers only certain streets and neighborhoods, offers 360-degree street level images so clear that passersby can often be identified.

When it was launched last May in SF, people complained about everything from photos of recognizable men entering adult bookstores to an image of a cat in a window. 15 US cities now have the feature including New York and Chicago. Boston Globe

3. China Watch

China’s Legislative Affairs Office has proposed a rule that will penalize Chinese travel agencies if they force tourists to go shopping outside of the itineraries stipulated by their travel contracts. The agencies would be penalized from RMB100,000 to RMB500,000, and may also have their business licenses revoked.

A travel-in-China contract must include 10 important details such as departure location; places of connection; final destination; transportation arrangement and its standard; accommodation and its standard; dining arrangement and its standard; tour charges during the journey; times for shopping; time for the entire stay; and name of shopping venues. Travel agencies are not allowed to lure customers by pricing their products lower than the total travel cost. Many agencies offer cheap tours in exchange for forcing travelers to buy merchandise from expensive shops that offer commissions to the travel agencies. China Hospitality News

4. 10 Safety Tips for Women Travelers

TravelSmart magazine offers these possibly life saving gems:

1. Blend in, don't bring attention to yourself.

2. Leave the expensive jewelry at home.

3. Wear a costume wedding band if you're single and don't want to be approached by men.

4. Travel with a shawl to cover valuables and your head in places where religions require such attire.

5. Skip wearing high heels.

6. Ask directions from someone in uniform.

7. Keep your camera and guidebook out of sight.

8. Never reveal to a stranger where you're staying.

9. Stand near other women.

10. Give up your bag or valuables to a thief. They're not worth your life.


5. The Other Side of Travel: Food for Thought

A new term entered the lexicon of travel a few years ago: “Food Miles.” Enlightened environmental groups, especially in Europe, are pushing for labels that show how far food has traveled to get to the market and books like Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life” contemplate the damage caused by trucking, shipping and flying food from distant parts of the globe.

According to the WorldWatch Institute, food in the US typically travels between 1,500 and 2,500 miles from farm to plate, as much as 25 percent farther than in 1980. In Iowa, for example, the typical carrot has traveled 1,600 miles from California, a potato 1,200 miles from Idaho, and a chuck roast 600 miles from Colorado. 75 percent of the apples sold in New York City come from the West Coast or overseas.

The food miles equation is complicated and depends on many factors. Distance and the type of transportation used are the obvious ones. Also to be considered: use of pesticides and fertilizers; use of hormones, antibiotics, and genetic engineering; soil and water conservation; safe and fair working conditions for on-farm labor; healthy and humane care for livestock; protection and enhancement of wildlife habitat and biodiversity on working farm landscapes; food-related energy consumption; greenhouse gas emissions through energy conservation; recycling, and packaging.

According to a report by the U.K. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, it is more environmentally friendly for tomatoes to be grown in Spain and transported to the U.K. than for the same tomatoes to be grown in greenhouses in the U.K. requiring electricity to light and heat them.

One way to help consumers through this dilemma of calculating the effect of their food purchases is to have mandatory country of origin labels. In the US, COOL was incorporated into the 2002 Farm Bill as a way of protecting American consumers from mad cow disease and other threats from imported food. It was never implemented, at least partly due to lobbying by corporate agribusiness, the large supermarket chains and trading partners like Canada, Mexico and Australia. However, some groups are now lobbying for the implementation of COOL as a way to measure the environmental impact of food.

Other countries are already starting to implement programs. Beginning next year, Sweden will introduce a labeling system that will enable users to choose food according to the impact its production and transportation methods have on the climate. In the UK, the supermarket chain Tesco plans to label every product in its stores. The Carbon Trust, a government agency, has already produced a prototype label and is trying it out on shampoo, fruit juice and potato chips.

In Canada, a new Toronto organization called Local Flavour Plus is developing standards by which it can certify farmers and processors and then link them with local purchasers

Learn More:

Food Links - UK - http://www.foodlinks-uk.org/
Life Cycles - Victoria BC- www.lifecyclesproject.ca/initiatives/food_miles
Local Flavour Plus - Toronto ON - http://www.localflavourplus.ca/
Local Harvest - USA - http://www.localharvest.org/
Food Routes - USA - http://www.foodroutes.org/
The Hundred Mile Diet by Alisa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon (2007, Random House) http://www.100milediet.org/ Information for this article compiled from various sources.

6. Where to Go in 08

Laos, Lisbon and Tunisia topped the list of the top 50 must-go-to destinations in 2008. Greenland was named the top adventure destination; Argentina, budget; Africa, family; Istanbul, food; Moscow, luxury; Dubai, party; Berlin, culture; and Kazakhstan, emerging.

Among the lesser know places making the list:

Mauritius www.mauritius.net/index.php
Havar http://www.hvar.hr/
Courchevel http://www.courchnet.com/
Sylt http://gogermany.about.com/od/greatdestinations/p/sylt.htm
Verbier http://www.verbier.ch/
Lombok www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/asia/indonesia/lombok
Roatan www.roatanisland.net/tindex.htm
Malawi www.africaguide.com/country/malawi
Virgin Gorda http://www.bvitourism.com/

Two northern destinations where you can see the effects of global warming first hand: Greenland http://www.greenland.com/, and Svalbard www.bergen-guide.com/831.htm.

Visitors fly into Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, the site of a former US military base, where they can picnic at the foot of the polar ice cap and stare at a 250-foot wall of ice that, if it melts, has the potential to raise the world’s oceans by 24 feet. Also popular is the Illulissat ice fjord, a 45-minute flight from Kangerlussuaq and the site of the fastest retreating glacier in the Northern Hemisphere. A melting Artic means that its ecosystem will not last forever. Among the wildlife being placed at risk due to the warming trend: polar bears, narwhals, musk oxen, seals, and reindeer.

Another popular destination is Svalbard, an archipelago several hundred miles north of Scandinavia and part of Norway. The number of tourists visiting the island have doubled in the past decade thanks to summers of suddenly passable seas and 24-hours of sunshine. The most popular island, Spitsbergen, has been called the Tenerife of the North. Tenerife is the largest of 7 Canary Islands off the coast of Africa and a popular resort. NY Times

7. Up in the Air

Over the last few months, United, American, and US Airways have said they will look into spinning off their frequent-flier programs into a separate company. Analysts and investors say such a move would provide a higher stock value for the new company, possibly worth more than the carrier’s themselves.

On the plus side, an independent mileage program would increase the number of ways consumers earn miles and would expand the number of ways to use them—from booking hotel rooms to buying electronic goods. On the downside, as the miles pile up, there could be more competition for already limited frequent-flier seats and class upgrades. CNN

Rich’s Weekend Reader is published by AndTyler222 Communications. All rights reserved. Information from various sources and mostly rewritten. andtyler222@verizon.net http://www.itinarod.com/.