Protests staged by a teachers’ union in the Mexican state of Oaxaca turned violent on June 19 when police fired on protesters in two separate incidents, killing six people in the town of Nochixtlan and two in Juchitan. More than 100 people were injured, including more than 50 police officers.
On June 27, tens of thousands of people gathered in Mexico City to demonstrate against the police response to Oaxacan protesters. The event concluded peacefully.
A major storm hit New South Wales and Tasmania, Australia, June 5-6, killing at least seven people and doing millions of dollars worth of damage to houses and infrastructure. The storm produced strong winds along with flooding and high seas that inundated low-lying areas of Sydney. Damaged sites included Bondi Beach in Sydney.
In the eastern China province of Jiangsu, a tornado touched down in the city of Yancheng on June 23, killing at least 99 people and injuring at least 846 others. The tornado also destroyed homes and infrastructure. It was considered the worst tornado in China in 50 years.
Bad weather also affected nine provinces in southern China in mid-June, with severe flooding killing 22 people and causing more than 200,000 people to evacuate their homes.
In Saudi Arabia, terrorist groups (some affiliated with Daesh [ISIL] or Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula [AQAP]) have targeted both Saudi and Western interests over the past year, with multiple attacks on mosques and on places where members of the Shia-Muslim minority gather, resulting in significant loss of life.
A suicide-car bomb killed six Jordanian soldiers and injured 14 other soldiers in Jordan, near the Syrian border, on June 21. The attack occurred near the Rukban refugee camp in Syria, home to more than 50,000 Syrian refugees. No refugees were injured in the attack. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, which came from the Syrian side of the border.
Two Palestinian gunmen launched an attack at a shopping center in Tel Aviv, Israel, on June 9, killing four people and injuring 16. Both gunmen were arrested by Israeli security forces.
After the incident, Israel suspended the travel permits of all Palestinians for the month of Ramadan (June 6-July 5), save for work permits, preventing Palestinians from crossing into Israel or any Israeli settlements, including Jerusalem.
On June 28, in Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, three men attacked the international terminal. One opened fire with an assault rifle in the security-check area, then blew himself up. Another attacker made it to the second level before detonating his suicide vest. A third man detonated his vest outside the terminal entrance.
At least 44 people from at least 10 countries were killed, most of them Turkish, and 236 were injured.
After I remarried in 2015, my wife, Barbara, and I spent our 3-week honeymoon in two parts of France in May: Provence and Paris. Most of our time in Provence would be on bikes. Because Barbara hadn’t biked as much as I had, we chose what we thought would be easy day trips.
Shortly after arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport, we discovered that the bottom floor of the terminal housed the railroad station. We had tickets on the TGV from Paris to Avignon. After a wait of three hours or so, we boarded the train for a ride lasting almost four hours, stopping only once, in Lyon.
I read in ITN (Feb. ’16, pg. 52) that travelers flying into London at Gatwick, Heathrow or London City airport can have their luggage delivered anywhere in the city, and back to the airport, by AirPortr (phone +44 203 384 6677, portr.com). Traveling with friends, my husband and I used the service for the first time during a London Heathrow Terminal 5 arrival in May 2016.
My wife, Mary, and I traveled to Germany in September 2015, as we had been invited — as family — to attend the wedding of our former exchange student. The bride lived in Vechta, about an hour’s drive southwest of Bremen, so we booked a flight to Amsterdam, Netherlands, with the idea of (after a short adventure) renting a car and driving to Germany.
I deliberately scheduled seven days of unplanned time before we were expected at the bride’s home, with the idea that, once in Europe, we would go to a “last-minute-flight window” and fly to wherever.