Assisted suicide is legal in Switzerland, but the public has become increasingly concerned about the number of people coming to their country with the intention of killing themselves.
Two proposals are on the table: one to ban assisted suicide for everyone, the other to limit it to city residents.
While assisted suicide is banned in most nations, the Swiss emphasis on personal liberty has meant the practice has been legal in Switzerland for many years.
Opinion polls indicate that the majority of people want it to remain so, but are opposed to international travelers flying to their country to end it all.
What do you think about assisted suicide? Tell us what you think in the poll and comments section!
Visitors from outside the United States are bringing plenty of cash with them. In February, they spent $11.6 billion on travel to the country and on tourism-related activities once they got here. That’s an increase of $970 million over February 2010. To top things off, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce, this is the fourteenth month in a row that foreign visitor spending has increased.
On average, the cash that visitors from outside our borders being spent has grown more than $1 billion a month, on average, this year. It looks like people are traveling – and spending – again!
Foreign visitors spent $2.7 billion on travel to the United States in February, up close to 15 percent year over year. Spending on travel- and tourism-related goods and services in the United States hit $8.9 billion in February, up 7 percent. This includes “food, lodging, recreation, gifts, entertainment, local transportation in the United States, and other items incidental to foreign travel.
In January and February, foreign visitors spent a total of $23.3 billion on travel to the United States and once here, up 10 percent year over year.
Meanwhile, Americans have spent $17.4 billion outside the country this year (including travel), representing an increase of 4 percent from the first two months of 2011.
The big event is over and the attention of the world has moved along to other stories but the verdict is in: the Royal wedding brought a huge spike in travel to the UK.
“Travelers from across the globe arrived in London to watch and be a part of one of the biggest events in history, with visitors from Europe, to Australia and Asia. Londoners and tourists camped outside Westminster Abbey for two days, hoping to get glimpse of Kate and William and the royal family” reports Breaking Travel News.
It looks like all the attention via television, websites and print media should bring more travelers to the UK over the long haul too.
“The royal wedding is a gift – it’s an accelerator. It takes the brand of Great Britain up people’s consideration list. The key is everything else you do after that,” Zaid Al-Zaidy, marketing specialist at the U.K.-based marketing firm TBWA told CBC news.
Our friends at AOLTravel covered the event extensively and told us the Palace released a statement as the newlyweds walked the royal grounds, saying: “The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge have chosen not to depart for a honeymoon immediately. Instead, after spending the weekend privately in the United Kingdom, The Duke will return to work as a Search and Rescue pilot next week. The locations of both their private weekend and their future honeymoon, which will be overseas, will not be disclosed in advance.”
If you were climbing a mountain, hiking, out of the loop for some reason or just can’t give up that royal wedding mania feeling, here is a sampling of stories leading up to the big even as well as some video and photos you might enjoy either viewing or ignoring:
1. The standard traveler’s money belt that hangs from your neck and is tucked under your shirt is very amusing to Ethiopians because Oromo women wear them. You’ll often see them digging them out in the market to get change. The above photo shows them being made.
2. The banknotes smell spicy. This is because Ethiopians eat with their hands and then handle money in order to pay for their meal. A few years of this treatment makes Ethiopian money smell like a spice stall in the market. Crisp, odorless banknotes fresh from the bank don’t seem real!
3. The currency is called birr, which means “silver.” Before coins became common, people used more practical objects as currency, such as bullets and slabs of salt.
4. Ethiopians have a unique dance called the uuzkista in which you jiggle your shoulders back and forth. Check out the video to see how it’s done.
5. I noticed that many crosses people wear are all the same bright green color. I wondered about this until one night I was walking down a dark street with an Ethiopian friend and noticed her cross was glowing in the dark. Soon I was seeing glowing Crucifixions everywhere.
6. Since most streets lack lighting, many cell phones come equipped with a mini flashlight.
7. To get a waiter’s attention, snap your fingers or clap your hands. What’s rude in one culture is normal in another. I saw a guy get kicked out of a restaurant in New York for doing this because in the West it’s the ultimate in low-class boorishness. Here in Ethiopia it’s completely acceptable, but it took me a long time before I could bring myself to clap at a waiter.
8. There’s a shortage of postcards in Ethiopia. Ethiopians aren’t in the habit of sending postcards and the fledgling tourism industry hasn’t printed many. Some entrepreneurs have taken matters into their own hands. In Gondar a local photographer wanders around the castles selling images he’s taken. It isn’t a proper postcard, but the post office accepts them.
9. When Ethiopians shake hands, they bump each other’s shoulder. If your hand is dirty because you’ve been eating, keep your hand closed and your arm straight down to signal that you can’t shake hands. Instead the other person grabs the forearm and does the shoulder bump. If both people’s hands are dirty, you touch forearms and still do the shoulder bump. Don’t forget the shoulder bump!
10. Farmers often carry water in gourds. Now some entrepreneur has come up with the modern equivalent-plastic gourds in bright colors! Some fashionable farmers are carrying these instead of bothering to prepare their own natural gourds.
It was already known that there was a castle here from the 6th century AD, when England was a patchwork of small Anglo-Saxon kingdoms. The kingdom of Northumbria was the largest and one of the most powerful. Little was known about the Anglo-Saxon period at Bamburgh, however, because of the massive later castle built atop it.
Now archaeologists have discovered a hall, perhaps a grand building used by the local ruler. The excavation will be featured on the next episode of Time Team, aired in the UK on Channel 4 this Sunday, April 24, at 5:30 PM. The Bamburgh Research Project has an interesting blog to keep you up to date about the excavation. They also offer a Dig for a Day program where you can learn what it’s like to be an archaeologist and maybe make a major discovery of your own.
A couple of years ago we chose Bamburgh Castle as one of the ten toughest castles in the world because of its amazing military history. Check out the link for more information.
