Passport power and Facebook squabbles
A few years ago, many of us would have turned through pages and pages of holiday brochures for inspiration on where to travel next. Today, it’s all a bit different – Pinterest has become the platform of choice for those wishing to create a ‘scrapbook’ of images as they plan their next break. This week, Mashable shared the most-pinned places on earth. You’ll know many of these destinations or sights, but some may surprise you!
In the news this week, Britain topped the list of the world’s most powerful passports, due to it having visa-free access to the highest number of countries in the world. Along with Sweden and Finland, British passport holders are able to enter 173 countries either without a visa or with a visa-on-arrival, while runners up the US, Denmark, Germany and Luxembourg were able to access 172 countries. Afghanistan ranked worst in the list with passport holders only able to access 28 countries visa-free.
With an increasing number of complaints about comments made on social networking sites, a senior officer has warned that Facebook squabbles are wasting hundreds of hours of police time. Most often linked to family matters and over sharing information online, which in the past would have been spoken about privately. While Facebook accounts for the majority of ‘harassment’ cases on social media, police do receive a number of complaints from all networking sites, including Twitter.
Smartphone users around the world rejoiced this week as Unicode announced it is releasing 250 new emojis this July. Highlights include: wind blowing face; derelict house building; the Celtic cross; black skull and crossbones, and of course the ‘reversed middle hand with middle finger extended’. Whilst extensive, the list is not all-inclusive, one notable absence is the hot dog despite a petition from Chicago drive-in restaurant, Superdawg.
While you wait for the release of the new emoji’s in July, get involved in the latest emoji craze over on Emojinalysis, which analyses your recently used emoji use. This hilarious new tumblr is setting the ‘Twittersphere’ alight with its witty and brash diagnosis with what is ultimately wrong with your life.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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