UNITED KINGDOM: Thousands Of British Tourists Arrive Back In UK

Thousands return from Sharm el-Sheikh to the UK as many more remain stranded

About 1,500 British tourists are expected to return to the UK on Saturday from Sharm el-Sheikh after airlines began operating flights from the Egyptian resort on Saturday.

A Thomas Cook flight carrying about 220 people left Sharm about 3pm bound for Gatwick, where it will touch down this evening. A second Thomas Cook flight is also expected to leave for Manchester.

Monarch has two flights, to Bristol and Manchester, while two Thomson planes will also bring holidaymakers back to Manchester tonight.

EasyJet has two flights carrying another 445 passengers due to land at Luton tonight. The company has around 4,000 passengers in Sharm el-Sheikh, of whom 1,000 have been delayed.

British Airways sent an empty plane to Sharm this morning to return holidaymakers to Gatwick.

UK government officials warned that increased safety measures mean many holidaymakers will be forced to stay in Sharm longer than they had hoped.

A Department for Transport spokesman said that the limited number of flights able to leave Sharm el-Sheikh each day for the UK meant that tour operators or airlines were likely to advise some customers to remain at their resort.

“We understand that tour operators and airlines are working to ensure that where people need to extend their stay at their resort necessary costs will be covered,” he said.

“It is important that people stay at their resort until they have confirmation from their airline or tour operator that they are on a flight back to the UK and that they follow their airline’s advice on the appropriate arrival time at the airport.”

Monarch plans to operate two flights from Sharm to Manchester today.

Flight ZB8009 was due to depart at 505pm local time and arrive at Manchester at 2050pm UK time, while flight ZB685 was due to leave Sharm at 5pm and land in Manchester at 2045pm.

The airline said that customers due to travel on these flights were contacted by text message.

Easyjet has posted a proposed flight schedule from Sharm on its website. Two flights - both of which were originally due to fly into Gatwick - are expected to land at Luton on Sunday. The airline will operate another three flights on Monday and Tuesday respectively, with more later in the week.

While many tourists will make it back to Britain today, many are not so lucky. Emma Beeney, who has been in the Egyptian resort with her two children for the past 10 days, had been due to fly back to Birmingham on Saturday with Monarch but did not expect to do so.

She also described witnessing “officials” at Sharm el-Sheikh airport offering tourists the chance to skip the passport control queue for £20 a head.

There’s a few places on a couple of flights going out today but they’re giving priority to people with disabilities and young children. I have registered but I don’t think we’ll be going. I’m not even going to the airport. I’m not going to take my kids into that chaos - there’s no point queuing up and checking in.

Nine flights due to land in the UK on Saturday evening

A Thomas Cook flight has left Sharm el-Sheikh bound for Gatwick airport as airlines continue their efforts to bring British tourists home. The plane took off shortly before 3pm with 220 passengers and will land tonight.

It is one of nine flights expected to bring thousands of stranded tourists back to the UK today. Monarch has two flights, to Bristol and Manchester, while two Thomson planes will bring holidaymakers back to Manchester.

A second Thomas Cook flight is also expected to leave for Manchester, while British Airways sent an empty plane to Sharm el-Sheikh this morning to return holidaymakers to Gatwick.

EasyJet also plans to bring another 445 passengers back, with two planes due to fly into Luton tonight. The airline has about 4,000 passengers in Sharm el-Sheikh, of whom 1,000 have been delayed.

The chairman of Egypt’s crash investigation committee, Ayman al-Muqaddam, says a noise can be heard in the last second of the cockpit recording from the downed Russian jet.

A British flight to Sharm el-Sheikh narrowly missed being hit by a missile in August. Holidaymakers reacted angrily to the news that the public was not informed at the time.

A cartoon about the crash, which was published in controversial French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, has been condemned by Vladimir Putin.

Some British tourists may have to wait up to 10 days to get home, a UK official has said.

Only seven flights are scheduled to being holidaymakers back today, despite 2,600 still waiting at the airport or nearby hotels.
A cockpit record did register a noise in the last second of recording, the head of an investigation committee into the crash has said.

BOLIVIA: Pink River Dolphins In Bolivian Wetlands

The bufeo (river dolphin) is a creature of myth, but you're pretty much guaranteed a sighting on a river cruise in Bolivia's north-eastern wetlands on the edge of the Amazon basin.

It's late afternoon and the sultry heat of the day is beginning to diminish. Young people circle the plaza on scooters, eyeing each other up as they cross paths. Oblivious to the sexual tension, a sloth – the most leisurely of tropical creatures – surveys the scene from a tree in the middle of the square while chewing slowly on a leaf.

Trinidad, in Bolivia's north-eastern lowlands, not far from the border with Brazil, feels a million miles away from the Andean culture that dominates the South American country's politics and culture. Capital of the province of Beni, Trinidad sits on the banks of the Marmoré, in an area of vast wetlands, jungles and rivers that flow into the Amazon further north. And the star resident of these waters is the bufeo, a beautiful pinky-grey river dolphin.

There are several varieties of South American river dolphin, the best- known being the pink boutu, a popular draw on Amazon river trips in Brazil. Their less startlingly pink Bolivian cousin was formally discovered by French naturalist Alcide d'Orbigny in 1832: he named it inia boliviensis, borrowing inia from the word he'd heard indigenous people use. Like many facets of life here, the creature comes cloaked in myth. When a handsome stranger appears at a local fiesta, he is said to be the bufeo in human form – dancing all night long and seducing women.

The beauty of this wilderness is that tourism is in its infancy here: you'll share your dolphin sightings with relatively few outside visitors. Some miles west of town, at Puerto Ballivián on the Ibare river (a tributary of the Marmoré), is a settlement of wooden houses on stilts at the edge of the jungle. We're doing a day cruise, within a 25,000-hectare reserve, to spot the dolphins, which are unique to the area and protected under law since 2012.

At the helm of our little motorboat is Roger, a fifty something local with salt-and-pepper hair and a broad grin. As we chug down river, he points out tarope plants growing in the water which, he says, act as a natural filter.

"It's clean here," he adds, "but the biggest threat to the dolphin is contamination near urban centres."

We spot a pair of parabas – gold-and-blue parrots – in the trees and hear the thunderous roar of a group of elusive monkeys in the distance. But the dolphin is the star attraction.

The first one we spot teases us, revealing just parts of its body, from the blowhole and beak to a flipper. We play a leisurely game of cat-and-mouse, spotting it in the distance, edging nearer and then watching it disappear, only to surface again further away moments later. Sightings are almost guaranteed here: there are plenty of bufeos in this part of the river, and there's something mesmerising about the graceful way the dolphin, one of several we see, glides just below the water's surface.

While spotting a dolphin in the water is pretty much a given, how much you'll see of them – and whether they'll jump out of the water – depends on patience and luck. But there's plenty to see if they're not playing. The trees are full of birds (a mind-boggling number of species), including toucans, rare jacamars and herons. Its astonishing to see so many weird and wonderful creatures so easily, but that is a major part of Beni's appeal – its untapped feel and sense of being in a place few people even know exists.

USA: Boeing To Increase Production Of 767 Aircraft

Boeing Co said that it will push production of its 767 aircraft up by 25 percent in 2017 to help fill a historic order for 50 planes from FedEx Corp.

Boeing said it would lift the production rate to 2.5 a month from two a month starting in the fourth quarter of 2017. The company makes 1.5 a month currently and is due to reach two a month in the first quarter of 2016.

"We are confident the market will support a long-term future for the 767," Brad Zaback, vice president and general manager, said in an internal memo.

The backlog of 767 orders reaches into the mid-2020s, he said, and will result in a small increase in employees in 2017.

Boeing also is ramping up output of 787 and 737 jets but reducing production of its bigger 747 jetliner, which has suffered from slow sales.

Some analysts have said Boeing will need to temporarily cut production of the twin-aisle 777 as it switches to a new version later in the decade, but Boeing has said it has no current plans to cut that rate.

The 767, which first flew in 1981, is a twin-aisle plane that holds up to 290 passengers and is also a popular freighter.

A modified version is being developed as a military refueling tanker. Boeing is due to supply the first 18 tankers to the U.S. Air Force by August 2017. Boeing said last month the first flight of the tanker was delayed about a month.

The FedEx order for 50 767 freighters was the largest single order for the aircraft in its history, Boeing said.