Marriott announced on Dec. 4 that it will pay for replacement passports for anyone who can show that their passport numbers were used fraudulently due to the data breach of Marriott's Starwood-brand hotels (Jan. '19, pg. 4). The personal information (names, addresses, etc.) of at least 500 million people was stolen in the breach, and passport numbers were among the info of about 327 million of them.
Two border crossings, near the cities of Lefke, in the north, and Dherynia, in the south, were opened between the Greek and Turkish halves of the island of Cyprus on Nov. 12, the only official crossings to be open in more than eight years.
Any traveler entering New Zealand, if asked by a Customs officer to hand over his cell phone and pass code, must do so, according to a law (the Customs and Excise Act 2018) that went into effect on Oct. 1. Anyone refusing to do so will have his phone confiscated, be fined NZD5,000 (near $3,330) and face arrest and/or deportation.
On Oct. 15, Syria reopened two border crossings that had been closed due to its civil war.
On its border with Jordan, to the south, the Nassib crossing reopened to civilian traffic months after it was retaken from rebels in July.
Upon arriving at Queen Beatrix International Airport (AUA) in Oranjestad, Aruba, in March 2018, I was impressed with how well the process worked. Not so with our departure. We were advised to arrive three hours before our flight time, and we did. We just didn't expect the process to actually take 2½ hours or to be so exhausting.
There was one place before the line made it into the terminal, itself, where there was a handful of chairs, but beyond that there was no place to sit.
My wife, Karen, and I needed Russian visas in order to take the tour "Waterways of the Tsars," traveling from St. Petersburg to Moscow with Viking River Cruises (Woodland Hills, CA; 855/338-4546, www.vikingcruises.com), June 1-13, 2018.
On July 25, Belarus increased the number of days that some visitors can stay visa-free from five to 30. To qualify, you must be a citizen from one of 80 countries (the US among them) and enter the country as a tourist through Minsk National Airport (MSQ). You also must present evidence that you will be flying out of MSQ within the allotted time.
My husband, Clyde, and I had to renew our passports in June 2018, and we vaguely remembered reading something in ITN about a new procedure ("Extra Passport Pages Nixed," June '15, pg. 4). We found the Travel Brief through a search on the website.
The item stated that additional pages will no longer be added to existing US passports, noting, "Under the new rules, all new and renewed passports will come with 52 pages, 43 of which will be blank. The current standard US passport has 28 pages, 18 of them blank."
