With cooler temperatures approaching, you might be in the market for a perfect wintertime vacation. Maybe someplace sunny and warm, unspoiled by tourists, with beautiful views and rich culture. To find all that, you might consider South Sudan. That's the suggestion from Sophie and Max Lovell-Hoare, authors of the Bradt Travel Guide to the young country.

Only the most gullible or optimistic Italians ever believed that the Phoenix Project launched with great fanfare five years ago would allow Alitalia, Italy’s bankrupt flag-carrier, to soar to profitability. Half-year results approved on September 26th showed a net loss of €294m ($386m), taking total losses since the end of 2008 to well over €1 billion. Its share capital eroded, bleeding cash, with only €128m left, including unused credit lines, Alitalia has run into near-terminal turbulence.

Afghanistan's future stability remains unclear at best, but that didn't stop four local investors from pooling together $5 million to build the new Kabul Water Park. The 24,760-square-foot facility comes with all the standard bells and whistles of your typical water park, including huge slides, a wave pool, and kids area. Admission costs 500 Afghanis ($9) and comes with a full body search from armed guards before entering.

With the exception of eccentric former NBA star Dennis Rodman, there are probably few people on the planet who have North Korean spas and sports centers on their list of things to see before they die. The Hermit Kingdom has in recent years built a half dozen luxury hotels, where a single night in a deluxe room would cost the average North Korean worker more than 80% of his annual income.

Chinese tour operators have given mixed responses to a new tourism law that will take effect in China on Tuesday, with some saying it levels the playing field in the tourism industry, and others taking a wait-and-see attitude.

“I would like to emphasize once more the great significance of tourism as one of the most important means of public diplomacy that can help create relations and interactions among nations and lead to cultural proximity and mutual understanding of cultures and traditions,” Iran's President Rouhani said while addressing a conference on tourism.

Britons have had some good economic news to celebrate over the past few months. Unemployment is falling, house prices in England hit a record high in July and economic output appears to be growing at its fastest pace since 2010.

Take the typical, white, middle-class American (which is a far smaller percentage of the population than you might think) and ask them to free-associate with the country of Colombia. What springs immediately to mind isn’t likely to be flattering. I suspect it might be limited to jungles filled with FARC soldiers and the legacy of Pablo Escobar, or maybe the time when a Colombian scored an own goal against the US in the World Cup and on his return home was murdered in retaliation for his mistake.