There's a little encouraging news from the State Department's ongoing security investigation: Employees aren't trying to look at your passport... unless you're Beyonce. Or John McCain. Or the late Anna Nicole Smith.
The department ordered a probe after word leaked in March that files for the three presidential candidates still in the race had been improperly pulled from the Passport Information Electronic Records System, to which about 20,000 people have access. A new test showed that out of 150 celebrity names (chosen from Google's most searched-for-list and Sports Illustrated), 127 of them had been accessed recently. Knowles' documents were peeked at more than 100 times.
It's probably for the best that B seems to be staying in the country right now; she's set to film a thriller called "Obsessed" with Idris Elba and Ali Larter in LA and she is reportedly in talks to join the cast of "Desperate Housewives."
Our usual mentions of the New Zealand city of Christchurch are about half-naked women riding motorbikes through the streets. Since that sounds somehow inviting, at least for male travelers, we're a little distressed to hear the latest news of out of Christchurch: Tourists with accents sometimes get picked on.
Last weekend, a group of Danish and English tourists got more than heckled--a bunch of local men beat them up, after teasing them by saying "They speak funny, they sound funny." Given how amusing the New Zealand accent itself sounds, it's a real pot calling the kettle black situation here, but tell that to the poor tourists who ended up in hospital.
In the otherwise peaceful town of Christchurch, it was definitely a surprise event, and the locals are definitely worried that their reputation as a safe place to travel is getting tarnished. If it gets worse we'll all need to learn Kiwi English before our next trip.
When news broke that three separate contractors looked at Barack Obama's passport file three times since January, it got us thinking about protecting your personal information while traveling.
According to State Department spokesman Sean McCormack the breach appears to be an "imprudent curiosity" among the contract workers who viewed Obama's passport.
This incident was similar to a breach of Bill Clinton's passport information during the 1992 presidential campaign. The State Department reported that someone had ripped out pages from his passport file from the late 1960s and '70s, then the FBI investigated.
Don't fool yourself into thinking this sort of thing only happens to those running for president. Identity snoopers can quickly become identity thieves, and those who travel often are most susceptible. After the jump, we put together a quick list of seven things you can do to help protect your private information not only while on the road, but also once you return home.
You probably already know to stick to bottled water when traveling in developing nations. But a recent outbreak of typhoid in the Philippines is really driving this home. Over 2,000 people in a city just 30 miles outside of Manila have become seriously ill, and it's a nasty bug.
According to the World Health Organization, typhoid symptoms include high fever, malaise, headache and rose-colored spots on the chest. Typhoid is a bacterial disease caused by ingesting food or drink contaminated by the feces or urine of infected people. So now you're wondering, how does that get into the water supply? Blame it on the weather, says a WHO official:
Flooding during the wet season and typhoons cause open sewerage drains to spill, enabling effluent to seep into wells and water pipes and spread diarrhea-causing diseases such as gastroenteritis and cholera.
Make sure to look out for tap water in its other, commonly-overlooked form: ice in your drink. Play it safe by brushing your teeth with bottled water as well. And if you want to be really cautious, you should just drink beer the entire trip.
We know, we know. We're really supposed to pay attention to those pre-flight safety demos on planes. And honestly we usually do--though more out of sympathy for the FAs than interest in our own self-preservation. (True story: You'll fare better in a crash if you listen to the spiel.)
Even so, nobody else, it seems, tunes in when the crew is reminding you not to pull down on those red tabs before exiting the aircraft. Delta is making a new safety video to get passengers watching, and Virgin America came out with a witty animated clip awhile back. Still, is a fun video really gonna tear you away from those trashy celeb rags you bought at the airport newsstand?
Vendors in Bangkok have been selling puffer fish meat disguised as salmon, causing the deaths of more than 15 people over the past three years, according to local doctors.
Puffer fish was banned in 2002, however local markets and restaurants in Bangkok and elsewhere continue to sell the illegal meat. Here is what another local doctor had to say about the issue:
Some sellers dye the meat of puffer fish and make it look like salmon which is very dangerous.
In Japan many people dine on the fish as a form of adventure eating, but obviously, if the fish is dyed and sold as salmon, those folks have no idea what they are actually ingesting.
However, there are a contingent of people in Thailand that know exactly what they are eating. Recently, in the province of Khon Kaen a man and his family fell ill after eating puffer caught from a local pond. Furthermore, plenty of open-air barbeque restaurants off puffer fish on the down low. The Public Health Ministry of Thailand prohibits the production, selling, export, and import of puffer fish and offenders could face two years in prison and a 20,000 baht fine.
Obviously all good things to keep in mind on your next trip to Bangkok.
We've heard this criminal strategy often works on overnight trains, but a warning this week from the British Foreign Office tells us that nasty crimes in France are also using this trick: the gassed-while-you-sleep idea where you wake up and discover all your most prized possessions have disappeared.
So be careful if you take a caravan or camper to France, especially if you decide to save a few euro by sleeping on the side of the road. There have been several incidents where tourists sleeping in roadside rest areas have woken up to discover they've been robbed. As one victim explained, "When we woke up everything was gone and we had a really woozy feeling". So stay in an official campsite and make sure any woozy feeling you wake up with simply comes from too much French wine, rather than the actions of thieves.
Security camera video showed the Minnesota's Interstate 35W bridge's center section collapsing into the Mississippi river in less than four seconds. The northern end of the span goes first and the southern end follows.
Officials said at least 62 people were injured in the Wednesday evening disaster. Twenty to thirty people are still missing and searchers are currently combing the area.
Gary Babineau was driving his truck across the bridge when it fell:
I could see the whole bridge as it was going down and as I was falling, and it just gave a rumble real quick, and it all just gave way, and it just fell completely all the way to the ground.
A 2001 study conducted by the Minnesota Department of Transportation found "several fatigue problems" in the bridges structure. About 100,000 cars a day travel over the bridge and the collapse occurred during rush hour yesterday.
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by egw
