Travel Cruncher

By Philip Baillie

LONDON |
Fri Feb 3, 2012 11:01am EST

LONDON (Reuters) – London in the 21st century is not all that different from the heaving Victorian metropolis forever preserved in the novels of English writer Charles Dickens, whose 200th birthday is next week.

Fans of Dickens can still walk the same streets of the city – whose population helped to inspire such characters as Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge and Bella Wilfer – visit the writer’s house and have a drink at some of his old watering holes.

Local correspondents help you to spend 48 hours enjoying some of the London haunts of one of the English language’s greatest writers.

FRIDAY

7 p.m. – Check into a London Hotel near Russell Square, a stone’s throw from the Doughty Street home where Dickens penned some of his greatest works.

8 p.m. – Ride on London’s Underground railway (known to locals as the “tube”) to a late-evening theatre showing in atmospheric Covent Garden, a bustling square even in Dickens’s day which he used to frequent after a day’s work at his office.

Dickens was a dramatist and became involved in amateur theatre from his days at Tavistock house, directing, acting and raising money for London’s needy.

10:30 p.m. – Covent Garden is a hive of activity at night, with numerous bars and clubs lining the cobbled squares and streets. Duck into The Marquis on Chandos Place, explore the upstairs dining area, discuss the writer’s works or watch passers-by in the now modernised Dickensian haunt.

SATURDAY

10 a.m. – Start the day off at Borough Market (www.boroughmarket.org.uk) just up from the banks of the River

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FRANKFURT |
Thu Feb 2, 2012 7:06am EST

FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Air Berlin will join the oneworld alliance of airlines on March 20, Germany’s second-largest airline said on Thursday, allaying concern in the industry an investment deal with Gulf carrier Etihad may have prevented it becoming a full member.

While Air Berlin (AB1.DE) was invited to join the alliance — which includes British Airways (ICAG.L), Cathay Pacific (0293.HK), and Qantas (QAN.AX) — in July 2010, analysts and industry observers have said a deal to sell a stake of almost 30 percent to state-backed Etihad late last year was likely to irritate oneworld.

Etihad is not a member of any of the big passenger airline alliances — oneworld, Skyteam or Star — but is among a band of Gulf carriers muscling in on the highly competitive European market.

Legacy carriers like Lufthansa (LHAG.DE) have been vocal in their criticism of the Gulf carriers’ expansion, with the German flagship airline’s chief executive notably complaining that Emirates was unfairly benefiting from state backing.

Oneworld said the Etihad deal did not complicate the process, highlighting how the carrier already has relationships with airlines in both oneworld and other alliances.

“As far as invitations to other carriers to join oneworld (i.e. including Etihad), we have nothing to announce at this stage,” a oneworld spokesman told Reuters.

By spending 73 million euros to take a 29.2 percent stake in Air Berlin, Etihad became the first Gulf carrier to put cash on the table in Europe to gain scale.

The deal also provided Air Berlin with much needed cash as it strives to cut debt and return to

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By Rhys Jones

LONDON |
Wed Feb 1, 2012 5:19am EST

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain should consider all options for increasing capacity at London Heathrow airport, including a third runway and allowing planes to land and take-off simultaneously on its two runways, according to business group London First.

A report published on Wednesday by the capital’s connectivity commission — formed by London First — said all viable options for meeting the UK’s long-term need for further airport capacity, including a new airport, should be considered.

However, it added that the British government, which last month announced plans to hold a formal consultation on proposals for a Thames estuary hub, dubbed Boris Island after London Mayor Boris Johnson, criticised the government for ruling out a third runway at Heathrow for political reasons.

“Rather than kicking politically difficult solutions into the long grass, it should consider all options and look at what is best for the UK’s prosperity,” Jo Valentine, the chief executive of London First said on Wednesday.

“It could be viewed as negligent of government to make such an important decision on purely political grounds. A third runway at Heathrow should be ruled back into the options.”

The commission led by Peter Robinson, who is chairman of law firm Berwin Leighton Paisner, said a new hub airport was the type of long-term infrastructure planning London needed to remain competitive.

But it warned that a new airport could take up to 30 years to deliver and would be unable to meet the urgent need for new hub capacity that London currently faces.

The report said the absence of spare capacity constrained

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By Michael Stott

CARTAGENA, Colombia |
Tue Jan 31, 2012 11:02am EST

CARTAGENA, Colombia (Reuters) – More than 2,000 of the world’s top business and political leaders gathered last week in the Swiss ski resort of Davos looking for solutions to the world’s problems.

But were they in the right place?

Half a world away, in the balmy Caribbean colonial city of Cartagena, a very different type of “global conversation” was taking place among some of the planet’s leading thinkers, writers, poets, scientists and philosophers, inspired by the Renaissance notion that the exchange of ideas between intellectuals of different disciplines fosters original thought.

An offshoot of the Hay Festival of arts and literature founded around a kitchen table in 1987 and held each year near the Welsh border with England, the Hay Cartagena festival is now in its seventh year and has its own distinct identity, attracting a growing and eclectic crowd of intellectuals mainly from the Anglo-Saxon and Hispanic worlds.

The global Hay Festival agenda – once described by former U.S. president Bill Clinton as “the Woodstock of the mind” now stretches well beyond literature and the arts to encompass freedom of expression, climate change, conflict resolution and human rights and has spawned a worldwide network of events from Bangladesh to Mexico.

At first sight, the idea of comparing two such diverse forums – one a gathering of the rich and powerful, the other a mecca for bohemians – might seem bizarre. Yet Davos and Hay Cartagena were discussing some of the same big global themes and targeting some of the same audience of global thinkers with

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By Grace Nasri at www.FindTheBest.com

Mon Jan 30, 2012 11:59am EST

(Reuters.com) – The global economic downturn may have temporarily slowed business activity around the world, but many countries are playing their part to improve domestic regulations aimed at helping facilitate business.

According to the World Bank’s global economy standings – which ranks 183 countries on the basis of how easy it is to conduct business – the countries with the best and worst environments for business are:

Ease of Doing Business: Top 10 here

Rank: 1 Singapore | $222.7 billion GDP

Rank: 2 Hong Kong | $224.46 billion GDP

Rank: 3 New Zealand | $126.68 billion GDP

Rank: 4 United States | $14.58 trillion GDP

Rank: 5 Denmark | $310.4 billion GDP

Rank: 6 Norway | $414.46 billion GDP

Rank: 7 United Kingdom | $2.25 trillion GDP

Rank: 8 Korea, Rep. | $1.01 trillion GDP

Rank: 9 Iceland | $12.59 billion GDP

Rank: 10 Ireland | $203.89 billion GDP

Ease of Doing Business: Bottom 10 here

Rank: 183 Chad | $7.59 billion GDP

Rank: 182 Central African Republic | $2.01 billion GDP

Rank: 181 Congo, Rep. | $17.11 billion GDP

Rank: 180 Eritrea | $2.12 billion GDP

Rank: 179 Guinea | $4.51 billion GDP

Rank: 178 Congo, Dem. Rep. | $23.12 billion GDP

Rank: 177 Venezuela | $387.85 billion GDP

Rank: 176 Guinea-Bissau | $878.52 million GDP

Rank: 175 Benin | $6.63 billion GDP

Rank: 174 Haiti | $6.71 billion GDP

(View the full comparison table here)

The higher the global economic ranking, the more conducive that country is for people to establish and operate a local company. The index takes into consideration 10 equally weighted topics, including the ease of: Starting a business; dealing with construction permits; getting electricity; registering property; getting credit;

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By Steve Scherer

ROME |
Fri Jan 27, 2012 12:29pm EST

ROME (Reuters) – Costa Cruises has offered 11,000 euros in compensation to each of the more than 3,000 passengers aboard its liner that ran aground and capsized two weeks ago, Italian consumer groups said on Friday.

The offer is an attempt by Costa Cruises to limit the legal fallout of the accident off the coast of Italy.

Each passenger on the Costa Concordia will also receive a refund on the cruise and the costs of their return home. The offer applies to all passengers, whether child or adult, who suffered no physical injuries.

Injured passengers will be dealt with individually.

Sixteen bodies have been recovered after the 290-metre long cruise liner, with more than 4,200 passengers and crew on board, struck a rock near the Tuscan island of Giglio.

The ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, is under house arrest and is blamed for causing the accident by steering too close to the island’s shore.

Costa Cruises’ U.S. parent company Carnival Plc (CCL.N) is already facing legal action for compensation. Those accepting Friday’s offer will have to agree to drop all future litigation, and receive payment within seven days.

Codacons, a consumer group which did not participate in the negotiations, is collecting names for a class action suit to be filed in Miami requesting 125,000 euros for each passenger.

Carlo Rienzi, president of Codacons, said the offer was insufficient and urged passengers to see a doctor to check whether they had suffered psychological trauma.

John Arthur Eaves, a U.S. personal injury lawyer, is urging passengers to file individual lawsuits in the United States. Eaves

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By Alice Baghdjian

BERLIN |
Fri Jan 27, 2012 11:54am EST

BERLIN (Reuters) – Social upheaval and political awakening will form the focal themes of the 62nd Berlin film festival, director Dieter Kosslick said, as films depicting the Arab Spring and Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear facility take centre stage.

The festival will screen documentaries and fictional works from Arab film makers which trace the turbulent progress of the 2011 mass uprisings across the Arab region and explore the political and philosophical questions left in the wake of the often bloody demonstrations.

Some of the first films to address the social upheaval caused by the Japanese tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster last year will also make their international debuts at the festival.

The material complemented the political tradition of the festival, Kosslick said.

” is a natural path for us to take, not just because we are a political festival,” he told a small group of foreign reporters.

“We are showing the films in order to create a bigger picture about upheaval and awakening … it was natural to link these films with our other activities,” he said.

The film festival, also called the Berlinale, is well known for engaging in political debate — last year it became a platform to protest against the arrest of Iranian director Jafar Panahi.

Accused of inciting opposition protests in 2009 and making a film without permission, Panahi was banned from travelling outside Iran and was consequently unable to take up the seat he had been offered on the Berlinale jury.

This year the festival will continue the debate about the position of the artist in society

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