“How to Get a Duplicate U.S. Passport” and other links…
chrisguillebeau.com: “U.S. passports are good for a number of reasons: notably, they are valid for 10 years, and when you fill up the pages with lots of stamps and visas, the State Department in Washington, D.C. or any embassy abroad will issue more pages at no charge. I’ve had three passport page extensions so far, and without that option I would have needed at least four passports by this point. No other major country that I am aware of offers a passport that includes both of these important features.”
New services offer more protection to UCLA travelers / UCLA Today
Cynthia Lee: “One click, and [Dean] Malilay can tell whether there are faculty, staff or students in these high-risk areas and contact them–as long as their travel plans are registered online. …The invaluable new service is offered free to all UC faculty, staff and students traveling abroad or out of state on official UC business or on UC-sponsored and supervised activities and programs abroad.”
Al-Qaeda sniffs opportunity in Gaza
Syed Saleem Shahzad: “A similar situation could exist in Egypt, where, according to Asia Times Online contacts, several thousand men associated with different groups linked to al-Qaeda are lying low. At present, there is a serious leadership dearth within al-Qaeda to mobilize these militant groups, as they are doing in Iraq and Yemen, and it is extremely difficult to send leaders from Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Wikipedia.org Moment: Lençóis Maranhenses National Park
“Composed of large, white, sweeping dunes, at first glance Lençóis Maranhenses looks like an archetypal desert. In fact it isn't actually a desert. Lying just outside the amazon basin, the region is subject to a regular rain season during the beginning of the year. The rains cause a peculiar phenomenon: freshwater collects in the valleys between sand dunes, spotting the desert with blue and green lagoons that reach their fullest between July and September.”