Situated at approximately 6,200 feet on the Colorado Plateau’s southeast corner, Chaco Culture National Historic Park’s abundant and distinguished collection of ancestral Puebloan public and ceremonial buildings, over 1 million artifacts, and roads permitted the site to be placed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1987. Chaco Canyon is one of only twenty World Heritage sites in the United States.

In an area that appears as an inhospitable desert where no life form is able to survive and the view only altered with the occasional butte land markers, the canyons that contain Chaco appear after 13 miles on the parched CR 7950 dirt road just three miles southeast of Nageezi in northern New Mexico on Navajo Nation. Chaco includes almost 4 thousand recorded archaeological sites.

A temporary visitor center, located in the closed Visitor’s Center parking lot, is currently available. An opening of the newly renovated Visitor Center is slated on February 2011. The temporary visitor center information desk offers assistance on tour guides, the nine mile paved trail loop, backcountry hiking trails, and the outlier sites of Chaco Cultural National Historic Park.

The nine mile paved trail loop is accessible by car or bicycle with five sites to be explored. Whether you choose a self-guided tour or a tour guide, Hungo Pavi, Chetro Ketl, Pueblo del Arroyo, Pueblo Bonito, and Casa Rinconada Community are all exemplary examples of Chacoan craftsmanship and petroglyphs.

Backcountry hiking trails supply new views of Chaco Canyon and access to additional sites only accessible on the hiking trails. Over four different backcountry hikes offer a panorama of stairways on rock faces, evidence of the 30 foot wide Chacoan Road, and a bonus of more Chacoan complexes. Your leashed pets can join you on the backcountry hiking trails.

Consult with a travel medicine doctor, read government alerts, and then, just as with any travel plans, decide on your own comfort level and evaluate the risks for yourself.

Whenever word of an outbreak of influenza or some other disease hits the airwaves, there will be plenty of news going around about worst-case-scenarios. TV newscasts will show you over and over again the few people that are suffering. They will show hospitals stockpiling medications and schools and restaurants closing.

With all that suffering, and with the disease spreading, should you still travel? Should you even leave you house!?!

Stop and think... did the newscasts mention that those schools and restaurants are closed as a precaution, not because everyone there was sick?

We don't want to make light of any disease outbreak. The first thing travelers need to do is to remain calm and stay informed. Each outbreak is serious, and each one has caused deaths for a few. But each outbreak needs to be evaluated for where you are going and what you will be doing. We don't think you should necessarily panic and cancel a trip.

The headlines scream the World Health Organization (WHO) has raised the health alert status to Level 5. That sounds terrible, doesn't it?

Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev discussed his plans to promote peaceful energy use and nuclear nonproliferation with US President Barack Obama during the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington DC. The summit lasted for two days, from April 12 to 13, 2010, and was attended by more than 40 state representatives.

During the Summit, Nazarbayev presented the outline of his plan to reduce the threats of nuclear terrorism in support of global security. The Kazakhstan president thanked President Obama for hosting the Nuclear Security Summit. According to him, the summit serves as an effective start to prevent the dangers of nuclear terrorism.

Nursultan Nazarbayev announced that Kazakhstan adopted a bold plan that prevents the onset of nuclear terrorism threats. The country reduces the occurrence of these dangerous threats through nuclear proliferation, disarmament, and peaceful civilian power use. Since the plan worked for Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev suggests that the other countries try implementing the same plan in order to gain security.

Nursultan Nazarbayev says that by keeping all sorts of nuclear material, as well as weapons of mass destruction away from the terrorists, Kazakhstan has helped in preserving the safety of nations.

Kazakhstan used to own the world’s second largest nuclear test site, as well as the world’s fourth largest nuclear missile arsenal. Aside from the possible rise of numerous terrorist threats, having these sites around can also pose a risk for the overall health of Kazakhstan’s citizens, as well as several risks to their environment.

So in order to reduce terrorist threats and save the Kazakhs from dangerously high nuclear radiations, Nursultan Nazarbayev decided to dismantle the nuclear test sites in 1991. That same year, Kazakhstan also got rid of more than a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles and more than a thousand nuclear warheads.