State Department Issues Warning About Violence On Mexican Border

The Department of State has issued a travel alert that warns of drug-related violence on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The travel advisories and alerts from the State Department are always hair-raising in a matter-of-fact Joe Friday kind of way: “Some recent Mexican army and police confrontations with drug cartels have resembled small-unit combat, with cartels employing automatic weapons and grenades.”

Oh, nice.

But it’s important to put this in context. Mexico is a very big country, and as the travel alert points out, millions of U.S. citizens visit it every year without trouble. (I go there every time I run out of good tequila, which is often.)

Just do your research to be sure you know the security situation where you’re going. And, as always when you travel, keep your wits about you. 

Cruise Deals And Bargains: Transatlantic Repositioning Voyages

A mass-market cruise used to be considered a great bargain at $100 per day, per person. After all, passengers get lodging, entertainment and three meals a day.

It’s now possible in this extreme buyers’ market to find cruises at less than $50 a day, including all taxes and government fees.

These cruises are almost all transatlantic repositioning cruises of more than 10 days, with many of those days spent at sea. They leave in April from Florida or the Caribbean, moving ships to Europe for the summer cruise season. This means the passengers must arrange one-way or open-jaw flights home, which can add considerably to the expense.

Still, these are tremendous bargains. I’ve located several and researched price and availability to be sure they can be bought (at least as of this writing) for a total of less than $50 per day, per person, including all taxes and port fees. Here they are:

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Dozens Injured By Turbulence On Northwest Flight

What if you were sitting in a chair, reading, and you were suddenly blasted upward and hurled into the ceiling a couple of times?

This happens on airplanes, most recently on a Northwest 747 flying between Manila and Tokyo. Turbulence injured dozens of people — Agence France-Presse says 47 and the Associated Press says 50 — some of them quite seriously.

So, please, wear those seat belts.

go! and Island Air Announce Codeshare

The emphatically lower-case airline go!, a subsidiary of Mesa Airlines and a survivor of the brutal Hawaiian interisland fare wars, has announced a tentative code-share agreement with Island Air.

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