"Call me paranoid,” writes Gigi Douban in The Morning News, “but I think the grocery store clerk was sending a message loud and clear, horse-head-in-the-bed-style.” The alleged uppity crime? Sprinkling a little English with Arabic when ordering groceries in Cairo.

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So says one of the 11 European tourists kidnapped at gunpoint in the Gilf al-Kebir region of Egypt and finally freed Monday. Remarked one of the Egyptian guides who was also kidnapped: “They told all the Egyptians to stand in one line and they cocked their weapons, and at that moment we thought we were dead.” As we noted yesterday, the Christian Science Monitor reports that the kidnapping “highlights new risks for adventure tourists in the western Egyptian desert due to the instability in neighboring Chad and Sudan.”

The 11 European tourists and their guides taken hostage by bandits in the Gilf al-Kebir region of Egypt roughly a week ago are finally free, the BBC reports. A number of their kidnappers were reportedly killed in the rescue operation.

* Add, 2:45 p.m. PT: Observes the Christian Science Monitor, “The rescue ends an ordeal that highlights new risks for adventure tourists in the western Egyptian desert due to the instability in neighboring Chad and Sudan.”

Eleven European tourists and eight others, including guides and drivers, were abducted while on an off-road tour near the Gilf al-Kebir plateau, the BBC reports. Egypt’s tourism minister said bandits demanding a ransom, and not terrorists, were responsible. Officials are apparently working to negotiate a release. Add: Reuters has confirmed the kidnappers have taken the hostages out of Egypt.

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Every time a new women-only travel option makes the news—recently, we’ve noted the revival of women-only hotel floors, and even an all-female hotel in Saudi Arabia—the question is the same: Is this new development a rare oasis for women, or an obstacle to full equality?

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The area surrounding the pyramids used to be “a zoo,” Zahi Hawass, Egypt’s chief archaeologist, told the AP. Now the area will be modernized, with a new entry building, X-ray machines and a 12-mile-long security fence.

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The man and his accordion wield some intriguing power abroad, at least for one expatriate family in Cairo. 

We’ve apparently been loving our favorite Egyptian boy-king to disintegration. Archaeologists in Luxor’s Valley of the Kings removed King Tutankhamun from his stone sarcophagus in his underground tomb last weekend and placed a climate-controlled glass box in his underground tomb, according to the AP. “The humidity and heat caused by...people entering the tomb and their breathing will change the mummy to a powder,” said Egypt’s antiquities chief, Zahi Hawass. “The only good thing (remaining) in this mummy is the face. We need to preserve the face.”

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Never mind that members of the Los Angeles-based Latin-funk-rock band Ozomatli oppose just about everything the Bush administration stands for. At the behest of the U.S. State Department, they’re touring the Middle East and beyond, from Jordan and Egypt to India and Nepal, as cultural ambassadors. “Our world standing has deteriorated,” saxophonist Ulises Bella told the Los Angeles Times. “I’m totally willing and wanting to give a different image of America than America has given over the last five years.”

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I just spent my first Fourth of July outside the U.S., and I found myself craving something hot off the backyard grill, slathered with all the fixins. Oh, to have access to a place like Lucille’s, which, according to Time’s Cairo Bureau Chief, serves the best all-American burger this side of, well, anywhere. In a Postcard from Cairo, Scott MacLeod pays homage to his favorite greasy spoon, located in the city’s Maadi district and run by an up-by-her-bootstraps American woman—Lucille—who he likens to Erin Brockovich. Lucille’s draws its share of U.S. expats hungry for a taste of home (she even serves a little Tex-Mex), but its no-alcohol and halal meat-only policies have been a big hit with locals; 70 percent of the diner’s customers are Egyptian.

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While Petra and other candidates for the New Seven Wonders of the World status are working hard to solicit votes, officials in Egypt are fuming about the Pyramids of Giza even being nominated. Why should the pyramids have to compete in a contest to become a new wonder when they’re the last remaining wonder from the original seven?

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News shorts for curious travelers.
Egypt
Pharaohs’ Tombs Trump Village Homes
Reports the New York Times: “Bulldozers moved Saturday into an Egyptian village near the Valley of the Kings in pursuit of a long-delayed effort to allow archaeologists to begin studying a wealth of tombs in the area.” More than 100 houses have been cleared in the last week. Interesting. In Los Angeles, they’d more likely destroy historic tombs to build new houses.

USA
What’s your travel terror score?
Did you know you had one? “Almost every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is assessed based on [Automated Targeting System’s] analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered,” the Associated Press reports. Creepy.

Spain
Bona tarda or buenas tardes?
The Los Angeles Times explores the pitched battle over languages in Catalonia. “Some ATMs in Spain offer a choice of six languages, four of which are the Spaniards’ own.”

Japan
Ping, Ka-Ching, Ka-Boom!
Money raised from Japan’s pachinko habit just might be supporting North Korea’s nuclear program, the Los Angeles Times reports. “The machines rake in more than $200 billion a year, some of which finds its way to North Korea.” As a result, some players are souring on the game.

USA
Bright lights, big city, mucho vino
Novelist Jay McInerney has a great side gig: traveling the world to write about wine for Home & Garden. Now, a number of those columns have been collected in a new book, A Hedonist in the Cellar: Adventures in Wine. His interest in wine “started with literature, really—as with so many other things,” he says in San Diego Reader. Among the inspirational books: Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises” and Evelyn Waugh’s “Brideshead Revisited.”