Good afternoon! Here we are on Friday, hurtling towards the weekend, with a quick update from London. Some bitesized pieces of the latest news specially selected to provide you with some good topics of conversation and some useful advice. To start off, here is some travel news! Maybe the summer is over, but there are still a lot of us that are waiting for our holidays and maybe are planning some travel right now. Maybe you need to organize some business travel… What is the best thing to do? Organise by oneself, booking and checking every detail or rely on a travel agency?

Airtravel with low cost airlines has had several problems in the last few weeks: shortly after the Spanish crash of last August, a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Barcelona-Girona had to make an emergency landing after loss of cabin pressure. And on the 11th of September another Ryanair flight (from Dublin to London) had to make an emergency landing shortly after take off at Dublin airport and oxygen masks were dropped into the cabin, leaving all the passengers afraid or their lives, but safe.

But today something different has happened: thousands of British travelers were stranded, because one of the largest tour operators collapsed under pressure from high fuel prices and a sagging economy, reports Ap, and the Timesonline.co.uk explains: ‘thousands of travellers were left stranded overseas today after XL Leisure, Britain’s third largest tour operator, collapsed and BA’s chief executive predicted that another 30 airlines would go out of business before Christmas’. At the moment at least 67,000 passengers across the globe are left waiting to be brought home…

Travel by train could be a good solution: the British train services are good and on time (well…mostly. ed.). But from yesterday we were cut off from the continent. Bbc.co.uk says: ‘thousands of passengers hoping to travel through the Channel Tunnel face further disruption after a fire on a freight train. The tunnel is closed after the fire broke out about seven miles from Calais on Thursday afternoon. Firefighters say the 16-hour blaze has now been put out. And unfortunately the opinions about the re-opening of the tunnel are divided: will the tunnel open tomorrow or in two weeks?

We shall see. Maybe this weekend it’s better to stay in London: the weather won’t be so bad and the city offers a lot of ways to escape from the boredom! A suggestion! Don’t miss the Thames Festival!