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"Middle-earth effect The impact of Sir Peter Jackson's The Lord of The Rings and The Hobbit Trilogies on tourism in New Zealand cannot be dismissed.  The International Visitor Survey from 2004, completed following the release of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, found that six percent of visitors to New Zealand (around 120,000 - 150,000 people) cited The Lord of the Rings as being one of the main reasons for visiting New Zealand. One per cent of visitors said that the Lord of the Rings was their main or only reason for visiting. This one per cent related to approximately NZ$32.8m in spend. In 2004, 63,200 visitors participated in a Lord of the Rings activity while here and since 2004, an average 47,000 visitors each year have visited a film location. In 2014 research completed by the New Zealand Institue of Economic Research found that the marketing of New Zealand as Middle-earth has had a significant and quantifiable impact on growth in visitor arrivals from Western markets.  International Visitor Arrivals data for year ending August 2014 show holiday arrivals into New Zealand are up 7.2 per cent on last year. Holiday arrivals from the United States, a key target market for the Middle-earth campaign, are up 14.2 per cent on the same period last year. The International Visitor Survey shows that 13 per cent of all international visitors surveyed July 2013 - June 2014, say The Hobbit was a factor in stimulating their interest in New Zealand as a destination. Source: Tourism New Zealand Corporate Website / Statistics New Zealand"

"Green with envy Published: 8 Apr 2013 at 00.00Newspaper section: Life I'm sure there are people out there who aren't aware that there is a 500-rai tract of lush green land sitting smack in the middle of the city. You might even drive past it, or around it, every day, but it has always eluded you. It's the big plot of land belonging to the State Railway of Thailand in Makkasan, bordered on one side by the Airport Link, and on the other by the Chaturatis Road that connects Si Ayutthaya Road with Rama IX Road. No one paid any attention to it until recently when the SRT announced it was considering developing the land into a commercial complex to boost its books, which always stand in the red. I do sympathise with them in a way, having to give away all those free train rides as part of the government's populist policies. As far as state enterprises go, the SRT incurs the highest losses _ over 7 billion baht a year, equivalent to 50% of its annual budget. But suddenly there looms the spectre of yet another commercial complex in Bangkok. The SRT governor was quoted as saying that he envisions a "new Bangkok landmark where people can use the facilities for important events to be seen around the world", citing the New Year's countdown and Songkran festivities among these. He also expects the complex to dwarf the nearby CentralWorld. According to the SRT governor, some 200 rai of the plot will be used for building new roads, and the remaining 300 rai or so will be for commercial development. He does say, however, that 15-20% of this _ approximately 60 rai _ will be landscaped as green areas. He makes it sound so generous I could cry. The way other cities calculate a per capita park area, it seems Bangkok thrives on a per capita shopping centre area. I'm sure we can be proud of the number of upmarket commercial complexes in the city. On the 4.5km stretch of road between Sukhumvit Soi 24 and Pathumwan intersection, I can already count almost 20 shopping centres ranging

"Floods and drought highlight summer of climate truth Published: 31/07/2012 at 01:46 AMNewspaper section: News For years, climate scientists have been warning the world that the heavy use of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) threatens the world with human-induced climate change. The rising atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, a byproduct of burning fossil fuels, would warm the planet and change rainfall and storm patterns and raise sea levels. Now those changes are hitting in every direction, even as powerful corporate lobbies and media propagandists like Rupert Murdoch try to deny the truth. In recent weeks, the United States has entered its worst drought in modern times. The Midwest and the Plains states, the country's breadbasket, are baking under a massive heat wave, with more than half of the country under a drought emergency and little relief in sight. Halfway around the world, Beijing has been hit by the worst rains on record, with floods killing many people. Japan is similarly facing record-breaking torrential rains. Two of Africa's impoverished drylands _ the Horn of Africa in the East and the Sahel in the West _ have experienced devastating droughts and famines in the past two years: the rains never came, causing many thousands to perish, while millions face life-threatening hunger. Scientists have given a name to our era, the Anthropocene, a term built on ancient Greek roots to mean "the Human-dominated epoch" _ a new period of earth's history in which humanity has become the cause of global-scale environmental change. Humanity affects not only the earth's climate, but also ocean chemistry, the land and marine habitats of millions of species, the quality of air and water, and the cycles of water, nitrogen, phosphorus, and other essential components that underpin life on the planet. For many years, the risk of climate change was widely regarded as something far in the future, a risk perhaps facing our children or their children. That

"HOME NEWS NEWSLETTER APPS DESTINATIONS FORUMS HOTELS CLASSIFIEDS WEATHER DATING MORE      Sign In    Create Account AdvancedThis topic Thailand Forum → News → Thailand News   View New ContentHelp  2 Bangkok Is In Desperate Need Of Open Spaces And Fresh Air"

Iceland 'best country for gender equality' Iceland's government is led by a female prime minister, Johanna Sigurdardottir Continue reading the main story Women in the Workplace Job gap 'narrowing for mothers' Gender case hits insurance costs Call for more women on boards Women find glass ceiling 'intact' Iceland remains the country that has the greatest equality between men and women, according to an annual report by the World Economic Forum (WEF). It is the second year in succession that Iceland has topped the foundation's Global Gender Gap Report. Nordic nations dominate the top of the list of 134 countries, with Norway in second place and Finland third. The report measures equity in the areas of politics, education, employment and health. Continue reading the main story Lowest gender gaps in 2010 1 Iceland - no change from 2009 2 Norway - Up from 3rd 3 Finland - Down from 2nd 4 Sweden - No change 5 New Zealand - No change 6 Republic of Ireland - Up from 8th 7 Denmark - No change 8 Lesotho - Up from 10th 9 Philippines - No change 10 Switzerland - Up from 13th 11 Spain - Up from 17th 12 South Africa - Down from 6th 13 Germany - Down from 12th 14 Belgium - Up from 33rd 15 UK - No change Source: World Economic Forum Sweden is in fourth place, with New Zealand fifth. "Nordic countries continue to lead the way in eliminating gender inequality," said Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum. "Low gender gaps are directly correlated with high economic competitiveness. Women and girls must be treated equally if a country is to grow and prosper." The UK came 15th in the latest rankings - no change from 2009. France was one of the biggest fallers, down to 46th place from 18th in 2009. WEF that said was a result of a decline in the number of women holding ministerial positions in the French government. Meanwhile the US has risen to 19th place from 31st in 2009, because of a higher number of women in President Obama'

"Tourism prospects remain fragile Published: 8 Mar 2014 at 16.30Online news: Local News BERLIN - UK visitor numbers to Thailand rose at the start of the year despite plunging numbers from some other markets in the face of anti-government protests in Bangkok. However, "at some point there will be a cost" if protests continue, according to Martin Craigs, chief executive of the Bangkok-based Pacific-Asia Travel Association (Pata). The "Teflon Thailand" image the country has earned for its "amazing" ability to bounce back from crises can't last forever, he added. "Of course, traffic [to Thailand] has dropped off," he told the UK-based Travel Weekly in an interview at ITB Berlin, the world's biggest travel trade fair. "What is instructive is how huge the drop is according to [government] travel advisories. Visitors walk past a cardboard cutout featuring a traditional Thai dancer at the Thailand stand of the ITB International Travel Trade Fair in Berlin. (AFP Photo) "Hong Kong dropped 60% from January 2013 to January 2014. But traffic from the UK was almost 10% up [in the same period]." Mr Craigs said the reason was simple: "Hong Kong's travel advisory put Bangkok in the same category as Syria." The UK Foreign Office has not advised against travel to Thailand, acknowledging the fact that the protests have been confined to limited areas of Bangkok. However, Mr Craigs reported hotel occupancy in downtown Bangkok at just 20-30%. He told Travel Weekly: "Of course, people book further in advance from Britain. The UK market is used to a little turmoil and the majority are not coming to spend two weeks in Bangkok. "The UK and Hong Kong are the most extreme examples of what has happened." Pata estimates total visitor numbers to Thailand were down 16% year-on-year in January. "It's not a Ukrainian-style situation [in Bangkok]," said Mr Craigs. "Twenty-two people have been killed in three months in sporadic attacks by extremists. "Nothing has been closed: 98% of Bang

" 12 celebrities you didn't realize were refugees"

"THEY live in stilted shacks built on a mud flat above piles of oyster shells, broken glass and rubbish, their nomadic days on the seas of South-east Asia gone forever. Liya Pramongkit, an elder and midwife of Thailand's largest group of Moken-speaking sea gypsies, saw her people on the small island of Koh Lao dying at the rate of one a week, many of them starving mothers and babies. "We have lost our traditional way of life as our children no longer hear the stories that have been handed down by our ancestors," Liya says, her deeply lined face showing the hardship the Moken have suffered since they were forced to leave their seafaring lives, where the only things that mattered were the tides, the fish, the storms, the moon and the sea spirits. "Before, when we lived and died on the sea, life was much better," she says. Advertisement More than three decades working in Bangkok's slums did not prepare Catholic priest Joe Maier for what he saw on Koh Lao when he made his first 30-minute boat ride here from the Thai fishing port of Ranong, in south-west Thailand, four years ago. "The people were literally starving to death, trapped between the modern world and the Moken world," Father Maier says. "I have never seen people as poor. "The women did not have milk in their breasts to feed their babies and everyone had [intestinal] worms ... there were no traditional values ... it was a matter of basic survival." For centuries, home for the Moken were hand-built boats called kabang which they plied through the Mergui Archipelago, where 800 islands are scattered along 400 kilometres of the coasts of Burma and Thailand, in the Andaman Sea. They lived on fish, molluscs, sandworms and oysters, accumulating little and living on land only during the monsoons. But massively depleted fishing stocks, the declaration of marine reserves and crackdowns on itinerant fishers in Burma forced them off their boats into an uncertain future where they are struggling to survive in a Th

"The U.S. Department of Defense's latest assessment of the Chinese military provided new detail on China's land reclamation efforts on several of the islets that it occupies in the South China Sea.  These include Fiery Cross Reef, Gaven Reef, Johnson South Reef, Mischief Reef, and Subi Reef in the Spratly archipelago.  By December 2014, the report estimated that China had reclaimed as much as 500 acres of new land, creating full-fledged islands where only coral reefs or sand spits existed before.  Since then, China has only accelerated its efforts, expanding the total land area that it has reclaimed to 2,000 acres and building military facilities, ports, and at least one airstrip on the islands."

"If a new scientific paper is proven accurate, the international target of limiting global temperatures to a 2°C rise this century will not be nearly enough to prevent catastrophic melting of ice sheets that would raise sea levels much higher and much faster than previously thought possible."