Four years ago, the luxury liner Queen Elizabeth 2 was sold to financial interests in Dubai who planned on converting her to a luxury hotel. Unfortunately, the arrival of the ship coincided with a credit crunch and near financial melt-down in the emirate. Last July, a more modest hotel conversion plan in a less fashionable section of Dubai was announced for the QE2, after the luxury hotel plan fell through. Then, just before Christmas, it was reported that the ship had been sold for scrap to Chinese interests for £20 million. Not long afterwards, ambitious, though rather vague, plans were announced to convert the ship to a luxury hotel and move her back to the Thames.
And now it has been announced that an agreement has been signed with Oceanic Group Pte Ltd., a cruise company with offices in Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, to convert the ship into a five-star hotel. Other terms of the deal, including where the converted ship/hotel will be operated, have not been disclosed. From the Oceanic Group website:
The minesweeper 
When I first visited New York’s South Street Seaport in the early 70s, it was a fairly lonely place. There was no shopping mall on Pier 17 and the high-end chain-stores like Guess, Abecrombe and Fitch and Brookstone had not yet been attracted to the historic buildings along Fulton, Water and Front Streets. Many of the old warehouses and boarding houses were still shuttered.
The Norwegian shipyard Fjellstrand and Siemens are developing the world’s first electrically powered car ferry. Starting in 2015, the 80-meter ferry will will operate across the Sognefjord between the towns of Lavik and Oppedal. The ferry will have the capacity to carry 120 cars and 360 passengers. Remarkably the batteries which power the ferry will be able to recharge in only 10 minutes.
If the reporting is accurate, this doesn’t seem like the argument that Carnival should be making.
On the island of Giglio in Italy’s Tyrrhenian Sea, relatives of the 32 passengers and crew who died when the 
Last summer, 29 year old Matthew Clark almost won the latest 
At around 5:00 AM local time, the officer on watch of the nuclear submarine, 
The New York Times, this morning, features in their “
They are the subject of myth and legend, the giant squid who battle massive sperms whales and leave battle scars on the whales’ flesh. Now for the first time in history, a living giant squid has been recorded in its own habitat, nearly a third of a mile below the surface. Dead giant squids have been found washed up on shore or caught in nets but this is the first time that one has been seen live on video. Thanks to 
Just before Christmas 