Free Republic

(Reuters) - Gunmen in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula kidnapped two American women on Friday in an apparent attempt to hold them for ransom, security sources said.

A tourist on a bodyboard was killed in a horrific attack by what was believed to have been a great white shark near Bunker Bay, south of Perth in Western Australia.A tourist on a bodyboard was killed in a horrific attack by what was believed to have been a great white shark near a beach on Australia's west coast. The 21-year-old was dead before fellow surfers could drag him ashore at a popular surfing spot called Boneyards, near Bunker Bay, about 3.5 hours south of Perth, the West Australian reports. The shark had pulled the man below the surface and...

Linky Here Foreigner on Korean bus verbally abuses elderly couple--all over a misunderstanding Description from here: http://www.rjkoehler.com/2011/08/29/to-foreigners-in-korea-please-learn-a-little-korean/ "A video is circulating on the Korean Internet of a black gentleman yelling at and threatening an elderly Korean couple.His violent behavior was the result of him misunderstanding the elderly man’s comment to him. The elderly man reportedly said “니가 여기 앉아” (a sign of consideration) ("You can sit here" = Niga Yuh gi anja"), but not knowing Korean, the man in question interpreted “니가” as the N-word which led to his violent outburst. [...] Apparently our culprit learned “개새�야” but couldn’t...

DAMASCUS — Is this your first visit to Syria, the passport control man asks me. No, I tell him, I came here once before over a decade ago. He stamps my passport. I had been very lucky to get a Syrian visa this time. The travel advice was not to visit. The Syrian regime is very wary of foreigners, fearing that journalists and spies are inflaming the situation further. I collect my bag and walk through customs, passing a poster, of modest size, of President Bashar al-Assad with the words in Arabic proclaiming: "Leader of the youth, hope of the...

Two British friends shot dead on a crime-ridden American housing estate were ambushed and murdered, possibly as part of a gang initiation. James Cooper, 25, and James Kouzaris, 24, were in Florida when they were killed at 3am in a gangland area rarely visited by tourists. They apparently accepted a lift from someone they met in a bar, thinking they were being driven home. A 16 year-old, named locally as Shawn Tyson, was charged with their murder. It emerged yesterday that he was freed by a judge last week despite being arrested over an armed robbery. The bodies of Mr...

Police investigating the murder of two British tourists in Florida believe they were ordered at gunpoint into a run-down housing estate where they were robbed before being shot dead. They are working on a theory that James Cooper and James Kouzaris were confronted by the alleged gunman Shawn Tyson as they tried to find an all-night restaurant. The 16 year-old is thought to have frogmarched the pair away from a well lit road and into the series of one way streets that make up the “no go” area of the Courts housing project in the Newtown, north Sarasota. [SNIP] Tyson...

CANCUN, Mexico – A lifeguard in the Mexican resort of Cancun says a tourist has been attacked by a shark after ignoring warnings to stay out of the water. It was the second shark attack in the hotel zone of Cancun in less than two months

MEXICO CITY – Joseph Proctor told his girlfriend he was popping out to the convenience store in the quiet Mexican beach town where the couple had just moved, intending to start a new life. The next morning, the 32-year-old New York native was dead inside his crashed van on a road outside Acapulco. He had multiple bullet wounds. An AR-15 rifle lay in his hands. His distraught girlfriend, Liliana Gil Vargas, was summoned to police headquarters, where she was told Proctor had died in a gunbattle with an army patrol. They claimed Proctor — whose green van had a for-sale...

The Obama administration will issue a warning Saturday to U.S. travelers in Europe to avoid places frequented by Westerners after new intelligence suggested an attack by Al Qaeda could be imminent, a senior U.S. intelligence official told Fox News. The travel warning is expected to be announced at 4 p.m., pending Secretary Hillary Clinton's approval, the official said. The move is expected to have significant implications for European tourism. The travel warning will advise Americans to stay away from European tourist sites, transportation hubs and other facilities because of fresh threat information, U.S. officials said. A European official briefed on...

THE release of a notorious killer who shot dead a German tourist and then savagely attacked his family has been criticised by MSPs as another example of "soft-touch Scotland". James Boyce, 70, is to be freed after serving 17 years for killing Thomas Boedeker, even after being told that he would be locked up for at least 20. The brutal murder and Boyce's savage attack on the victim's family stunned the quiet community of Cairnryan, near Stranraer.

Roughly 60 people, wearing flip-flops and toting water bottles and generating applause from a small group of onlookers, piled out of a coach bus in front of TownePlace Suites in the middle of the afternoon heat Friday. "Thanks for coming and welcome to Arizona," said state Republican Rep. Vic Williams, shaking hands with the Texas tourists who have become the latest symbol in the fight over Arizona's immigration battle. Saying they're countering the Arizona boycott by groups who say the state's controversial new immigration law will lead to racial profiling, the bus riders - plus a reported 60 others in...

Kim Jong-il's Eldest Son Drinks with S.Korean Tourists North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's eldest son Kim Jong-nam, who has reportedly been passed over in the succession, can sometimes be found drinking with South Koreans at a bar in Macau. A government official on Tuesday said, "I've heard that some South Koreans were watching Kim Jong-nam at a bar in Macau recently because he looked familiar, and he suggested they have a drink together. So they drank and had a chat." The official said a visit to China by Kim senior is "a possibility." Regarding Kim Jong-il's health, he said the...

Zimbabwean holidaymaker eaten by shark described by onlookers as 'longer than a minibus' Witnesses today described their horror at seeing a tourist being eaten by a "gigantic" shark in South Africa's most popular holiday destination. Lloyd Skinner was pulled under the surf and dragged out to sea by the shark, believed to be a great white, off Fish Hoek beach in Cape Town. His diving goggles and a dark patch of blood were all that remained in the water. "Holy shit. We just saw a gigantic shark eat what looked like a person in front of our house," witness Gregg...

A U.S. tourist got more then he bargained for when he was attacked by a crocodile while attempting to answer the call of nature in the Mexican resort of Cancun this week. According to Mexican police 20-year-old Andrew Dales, from Dallas in Texas, confessed that he had been on a mission to relieve himself at the edge of the local Nicupté lagoon , in the popular tourist resort of Cancun, when the crocodile suddenly snapped at him. He suffered ‘multiple bite wounds’ to his leg and neck and was also left with a head injury after the reptile knocked him...

Three Americans who were arrested after crossing into Iran have been accused of being spies, according to a local report. Tehran-based television news channel al-Alam quoted an Iraqi police officer as saying the trio were “working with the CIA.” The Swiss Embassy in Tehran was working to learn more about the Americans' fate through its contacts with the Iranian Foreign Ministry, spokeswoman Nadine Olivieri said. Switzerland represents U.S. interests in Iran. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here It also emerged that an American linguistics student traveling in northern Iraq didn't go on an ill-fated hiking trip because he...

For the second time this year a tourist at Yellowstone National Park has been attacked by a bison. a 55-year-old man from Norco, California, was taking pictures of a bull bison that was wandering in the Bridge Bay Campgrounds. The two were about 10 feet apart when the bison charged. a bull bison can stand six feet tall, weigh up to 2,000 pounds and run up to 30 miles an hour. During the next several weeks they are more dangerous than usual because it's their mating season.

PETA has taken a stand against one of the most popular tourist attractions in Seattle - the fish market at the Pike Place Market that tosses salmon. PETA heard that the American Veterinary Medical Association planned a Pike Place Fish Market demonstration at next month's convention at the convention center.

A teenaged American tourist says he spent two hours clinging to the side of a long-distance train as it sped across the Australian outback in the night. Chad Vance said he had to leap onto The Ghan as it left the station at Port Augusta, South Australia, after he had disembarked during a 40-minute stop. He became cold and tired as the train reached speeds of up to 110km/h (68mph) on the journey to Alice Springs. Engineer Marty Wells finally heard his yells and applied the emergency brake. Mr Vance, quoted in the Herald Sun, said: "I feel very lucky...

President Obama had ears on his mind as he visited one of Egypt’s most famous landmarks this afternoon, the Great Pyramids of Giza. While looking at a hieroglyphic on a tomb, the President remarked that there was a certain resemblance, that he has in the past had a penchant for noticing. “That looks like me!” the President exclaimed when he saw the image of a big-eared man on the tomb, “Look at those ears!” Dragging over his Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Senior Advisors Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod and even personal assistant Reggie Love, the...

Al Qaeda beheads British tourist kidnapped at African music festival A Briton kidnapped in North Africa has been murdered, reportedly by beheading, by Al Qaeda terrorists after demands for the release of fundamentalist cleric Abu Qatada... The 60-year-old Briton is said to have been killed on Sunday...by Al Qaeda ahead of Obama's speech in... Cairo today. Murdered: Edwin Dyer as seen in a video released by his kidnappers in February The statement...said they 'killed Dyer on May 31, finding that Britain...does not... care for its citizens'. It added: 'The British captive was killed so that he, and...the British state, may...

Egyptian police said Sunday evening a bomb detonated outside a historic Cairo mosque in the crowded bazaar area frequented by tourists, wounding at least eight people. Blood stains could be seen in the front courtyard of Hussein mosque, next to the famed Khan el-Khalili bazaar in Islamic Cairo. Riot police had cordoned off the area and sniffer dogs could be seen as worshippers were being evacuated. A security official said police were attempting to defuse a second bomb. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

PASSENGERS complaining about delays should spare a thought for a Japanese tourist who has spent almost three months in the Mexico City airport. Hiroshi Nohara flew into Mexico on September 2 with a tourist visa and a return ticket home, but has never left the airport. For reasons he can't explain, Nohara has been in Terminal 1 of the Benito Juarez International Airport, surviving off donations from fast food restaurants and passengers and sleeping in a chair.

Waiters have allegedly beaten an Australian tourist to death for being "arrogant" while ordering a beer in an Indian restaurant. The Times of India and local reports said Mr Kelly's beating followed an altercation in which he displayed an "arrogant attitude". Some reports said security staff at the bar joined in the bashing.

Four Mexican officers are found guilty in the death of an Oregon tourist near Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. The Yoncalla tourist on vacation was beaten in a Mexican jail, after getting arrested for stabbing a man outside his rented condo. A judge decided to convict the four Mexican jail guards of manslaughter. A surveillance video shows the men beating Sam Botner to death in a Cabo San Lucas jail. Botner and his wife were vacationing in Mexico to celebrate his completion of a commercial fishing trip.

A US tourist has been killed in central Beijing after being attacked by a Chinese man, officials have said. The man attacked two tourists and their tour guide as they visited the capital's ancient Drum Tower monument, injuring the second tourist and guide. The assailant then committed suicide by jumping off the second story of the monument, the officials added. No motive has been given for the attack. Officials have named the man as 47-year-old Tang Yongming. The city's municipal government said the attack happened at around midday local time on the first full day of Olympic competition. High security...

Bo (woof) In Commentary: How do you know you’re having a bad day? When you’re on vacation in Australia, and you stop to do your business and then this happens to you. Fortunately it happened to a human and not a canine, but even I feel embarrassed for this guy. ( A ROADSIDE toilet stop ended in pain, embarrassment and almost death for a tourist when a highly venomous snake bit the end of his penis. The deadly brown snake slithered between his legs and lunged at his manhood as he crouched on a roadside near Laura, 300km northwest of...

Tourism body urges Chinese tourists to give Paris department store a miss   Chinese reporters and officials of the French high-end retail group Galeries Lafayette attend the breakfast meeting in Paris, capital of France, Feb. 22, 2008. Galeries Lafayette held on Friday morning a breakfast meeting to make an apology to the Chinese tourists who have been treated insultingly while shopping in Lafayette Feb. 11, 2008. Accused of using forged notes, a Chinese couple from east China's Zhejiang Province suffered wrongful treatment while shopping at Galeries Lafayette Feb. 11, 2008. (Xinhua Photo)     BEIJING, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- A...

DOCTORS used a case of vodka to help save an Italian tourist being treated for poisoning in a Queensland hospital. And hospital authorities later proved very understanding about the booze bill. The 24-year-old man was brought to Mackay Base Hospital, in north Queensland, two months ago after he had ingested a large amount of the poisonous substance ethylene glycol, found in antifreeze, which can cause renal failure and is often fatal. In details just released by the hospital, Dr Pascal Gelperowicz, who led the man's treatment with Dr Todd Fraser, said the man was unconscious on arrival and his treatment...

February 23, 2007 A US tourist realized a robbery wasn't a joke when a masked robber put a gun to her head and a military veteran in her tour group grabbed the young assailant and killed him with his bare hands. "I thought it was a skit. But then he pointed the gun at my head and grabbed me by the throat and I thought I was going to die," Clova Adams, 54, told The Associated Press by telephone from the Carnival Liberty cruise ship on Friday, two days after the thwarted robbery. The assault took place during a ship...

Breaking News-Blast hits tourist site in Yemen; several people wounded, officials say. Banner heading. All I have so far.

Officials in Venice — as well as the handful of actual Italians still living in the lagoon city — have declared themselves fed up with a certain category of tourist: the pot-bellied, bare-chested, food-chomping, trash-spewing hordes that peak from now until autumn. To combat what they see as a scourge, Venice authorities are distributing leaflets and posting posters with a new set of rules. In St. Mark's Square, it is now forbidden to sit or recline under the porticos and on the steps along the Procuratie Nuove and the Ala Napoleonica, the buildings that ring the city's iconic St. Mark's...

As if you needed reminding: It's dangerous out there. And if your parents' warnings that the world is full of malevolent people and mishap-prone places didn't stick, the State Department is ready to fill the void.... [snip] "Driving in Qatar is (like) participating in an extreme sport." "Police involvement in criminal activity is both legendary and true in Mexico..." [snip] ...unflattering descriptions of countries are not uncommon. "The tragedy of Haiti is that Haitians have become great leaders in every profession and in every country, with the exception of Haiti,"...[snip] ..."Despite Malta's geographic proximity to Italy, organized crime is almost...

Cubans feel betrayed by tourist playground Last Updated: 2:58am GMT 13/02/2007 Carlos swung his legs over the sea wall bordering one side of Havana's famous Malecon seafront promenade and looked on curiously as a 1957 Chevrolet with an open top slowed to allow its passengers to photograph the faded facade of a colonial building. "They watch us and we watch them," he said with a resigned laugh as the tourists turned their cameras to capture the image of a young boy optimistically fishing in the oily waters. A tourist horse and trap pass infront of a Che Guevara mural "It's...

A man dressed as Chewbacca was arrested after police said the street performer head-butted a tour guide operator in front of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Frederick Evan Young, 44, of Los Angeles was booked Thursday for investigation of misdemeanor battery, police Lt. Paul Vernon said. Police said the 6-foot-4 street performer was seen arguing Thursday afternoon with a tour guide who had expressed concern the wookie impersonator was "harassing and touching tourists" in violation of city law. The city passed ordinances last year seeking to crack down on the colorful assortment of actors who perform outside the landmark theater....

Confused Tourist Lands in U.S., Not Australia BERLIN (Dec. 29) - A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed 13,000 kilometres away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site. Tobi Gutt planned on flying from Germany to sunny Sydney, Australia, left. He mistakenly booked a ticket to snowy Sidney, Montana. Big Sky, Montana, is shown at right. Dressed for the Australian summer in t-shirt and shorts, Tobi Gutt left Germany Saturday for a four-week holiday. Instead of arriving "down under," Gutt found himself on a different...

Rio thieves armed with grenades rob tourists Nov 26, 2006 Thieves armed with automatic rifles and military-issue grenades robbed a busload of British tourists in Rio de Janeiro before dawn on Sunday, the latest incident in a wave of violent crime plaguing Brazil's seaside tourist mecca. Police said four armed men pretending to be police stopped the tour bus as it pulled into an upscale neighborhood in the southern part of the city. At least 18 British tourists who had just arrived in Brazil were robbed, losing their luggage, passports and cash. One tourist who resisted was hit in the...

Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported Sunday. "A third of patients get better immediately, a third suffer relapses and the rest have psychoses," Yousef Mahmoudia, a psychologist at the Hotel-Dieu hospital, next to Notre Dame cathedral, told the newspaper Journal du Dimanche. Already this year, Japan's embassy in Paris has had to repatriate at least four visitors -- including two women who believed their hotel room was being bugged and there was a plot against them. Previous...

ARKALYK, Kazakhstan - The capsule carrying the world's first female space tourist touched down Friday on the Kazakh steppe after a bone-jarring journey from the international space station. Anousheh Ansari, Russian cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov and U.S. astronaut Jeffrey Williams had left the station aboard a cramped Russian Soyuz capsule about three hours earlier. After the capsule entered the Earth's atmosphere, search and rescue teams in three planes and 12 helicopters tracked the trajectory and scrambled to help the crew out of the craft. Officials monitoring the landing from Russia's Mission Control outside Moscow applauded after confirming that the capsule had...

As a long time space advocate I have seen many fads, hopes, and dreams come and go in our quest to open the space frontier for everyone. This week something special has happened that has to be commented on. Ms Anousheh Ansari has done something truly wonderful for herself, human spaceflight, and the people of her native Iran. She is not only the world's first female space tourist but the first female born in Iran to go to space. This is a doubly important event in that it has created a global stir among the Iranian diaspora as well as...

BAIKONUR, Kazakhstan - A Russian-built rocket carrying the world's first female space tourist lifted off Monday on a flight to the international space station. Anousheh Ansari, an Iranian-American telecommunications entrepreneur, was accompanied by a U.S.-Russian crew on the Soyuz TMA-9 capsule. Ansari paid a reported $20 million to become the fourth private astronaut to take a trip on a Russian spacecraft and visit the station. "I'm just so happy to be here," she said ebulliently as she entered the rocket Monday, watched by about a dozen relatives including her husband and mother. The Soyuz TMA-9 capsule took off less than...

On September 18, Iranian-born, Dallas businesswoman Anousheh Ansari (bio here) and two astronauts are scheduled to blast off in a Russian Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Ansari replaced Japanese-born businessman Daisuke Enomoto, who was pulled from the flight for medical reasons. The Iranian news media has not made too much of the first Iranian woman scheduled to go into space, but there have been a number of reports about it and this Iranian space site has a number of pictures. So it is interesting to me that one of the photos has clearly been photoshopped...

A young Iranian-born American woman who rallied her wealthy family to underwrite a $10m (£5.3m) competition for the first private spaceflight will soon get to experience for herself the thrill of being a space tourist. On Tuesday, Anousheh Ansari was confirmed as the replacement for Japanese businessman Daisuke Enomoto as a fare-paying passenger onboard the next Russian rocket mission to the International Space Station (ISS). Lift-off for the Soyuz capsule that will carry Mrs Ansari and two members of the next ISS crew is scheduled for 14 September from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan. In her quest to fly in space,...

A 69-year-old German tourist could go home to tell the ultimate "big fish story" after a fishing adventure on Norway's Sognefjord. Dieter Krüger of Hamburg also had to go home exhausted and slightly shaken after hooking a halibut that weighed in at 105 kilos (231 pounds). But very happy indeed, if a bit stiff.

CAIMITO, Cuba (Reuters) - They do not come to Cuba for the beaches and tropical mystique that draw more than 2 million other visitors each year. Instead they come to spend their vacations working in the countryside under a blazing sun, eating rice and beans and sharing a room without air-conditioning or toilet with seven others. They are so-called revolutionary tourists who arrive each year from about 50 countries for a "total immersion" in one of the world's few remaining socialist countries. "I call it a revolutionary vacation. I dedicate my free time to doing something concrete for the Cuban...

DIYARBAKIR, Turkey -- Police used tear gas and fired in the air to stop an enraged crowd from attacking five men suspected of raping a Swiss tourist in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast, officials and witnesses have said. The woman and her boyfriend, also Swiss, were attacked on May 31 as they were camping outside the town of Muradiye, in the province of Van which borders Iran. Press reports quoted the woman as telling police they were approached by several men, who, after chatting with them for a while, beat and tied up her boyfriend after which one of them raped...

Crumbling Chernobyl Shelter Poses DangerBy MARA D. BELLABY, Associated Press Writer Sat Apr 22, 6:37 PM ET An aerial view of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant shortly after the explosion of its still smoking fourth reactor is seen in this 1986 file picture. Ukraine marks the 20th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear accident, the world's worst civil nuclear disaster, on April 26 this year. The concrete was used for the building of a sarcophagus around the shattered reactor, designed to contain emanating radiation. BLACK AND WHITE ONLY REUTERS/Vladimir Repik/Files CHERNOBYL NUCLEAR POWER PLANT, Ukraine - Chernobyl's coffin is cracking. Birds...

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - New Jersey, trying to overcome its reputation for corruption, traffic and toxic waste dumps, has rejected dozens of sardonic and sarcastic entries in a contest for a new tourist slogan. A list of five possible slogans released on Wednesday leaves out "New Jersey: We can always use another relative on the payroll," and "Come to New Jersey: It's not as bad as it smells." Voters get to pick the winner in the competition launched after Gov. Richard Codey nixed "New Jersey: We'll Win You Over," created by a consultant who was paid $260,000 (149,000 pounds). "It makes...

On July 20, 1969, astronauts Neil Armstrong and "Buzz" Aldrin stepped onto the Sea of Tranquility, becoming the first humans to grace the moon. Shortly thereafter, the Soviets, plagued by system failures of their Soyuz 7K-L1 spacecraft, abandoned all hope of doing the same. Now the Russians may get to the moon after all, at least if the Arlington, Virginia, firm Space Adventures has its way—and you can tag along (if you start routinely winning the lottery). The company, which has sent two wealthy businessmen, Dennis Tito and Mark Shuttleworth, to the International Space Station atop Russian rockets, has announced...

Chinese on a Grand Tour By WAYNE ARNOLD SINGAPORE, Oct. 20 - There was near-pandemonium at the L'Oréal cosmetics counter. With only hours before the end of their weeklong National Day holiday earlier this month, a busload of package tourists from China descended on a local department store here and began clamoring for all the skin refiner and "wrinkle de-crease" they could buy. Karen Eu, one of three clerks attending to them and herself of Chinese ancestry, opened her eyes wide in exasperation. "Oh, my God," she said as she carried another fistful of Chinese yuan to the cash register....

Rocket company Interorbital Systems (IOS) announced today that Tim Reed, a Mid-western businessman and adventure traveler, is the first to purchase a ticket for week-long orbital expedition aboard the five-passenger IOS Neptune Spaceliner, scheduled for launch in 2008. Reed and IOS made history by inking the deal, since the ocean-launched Neptune will be the first manned orbital launch vehicle built totally without government funding. The Gladstone, Missouri resident will be among the first civilians to fly to orbit on the first completely commercial, private-sector rocket.