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Congressman wants better data on cruise ship crime WASHINGTON (AP) -- Only five of the 28 people who disappeared from cruise ships in the past three years were found, according to data disclosed to Congress by the world's largest cruise lines. A congressional memo compiled in advance of a House hearing on cruise ship safety Tuesday also details 177 sexual misconduct incidents, ranging from inappropriate touching to rape, and four robberies of amounts over $5,000. During that three-year period approximately 25 million people embarked on cruises from North America ports, the memo said.

Queen Mary 2 Passengers Threaten Sit-In Sun Jan 22, 6:43 PM ET LONDON - Some passengers on the Queen Mary 2 are threatening a sit-in when the cruise ship reaches port in Brazil to protest a last-minute change in itinerary, the vessel's operator said Sunday. ADVERTISEMENT The world's largest and most expensive ocean liner left New York on Jan. 15 and was scheduled to arrive in Los Angeles on Feb. 22. Carrying more than 2,500 passengers, it hit the side of a Florida shipping channel Jan. 18, damaging a motor and reducing its speed. The cruise cut stops in Barbados,...

AUSTIN (AP) - Katherine Reedholm and her husband booked a seven-day Caribbean cruise out of Galveston as a family Christmas gift for the couple's four children. Now, she says, Carnival Cruise Lines has canceled the trip to shift around ships to accommodate a $192 million Hurricane Katrina relief contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and offered the Reedholms a refund or the opportunity to book another cruise at a higher rate. Reedholm says she understands the need to provide housing to refugees and emergency workers, who are living on Carnival ships off the New Orleans coast. But she says...

DELTA QUEEN CANCELS FALL AND WINTER CRUISES FOR AMERICAN QUEEN September 7, 2005 Due to Hurricane Katrina and the resulting impact on the Greater New Orleans area it will be impossible to operate the American Queen on her regularly scheduled fall 3- and 4- night cruises this year. In addition, we are working with various government authorities to make the American Queen available in the overall relief efforts for the Gulf Coast region, especially greater New Orleans. All American Queen voyages beginning with September 16 onward are cancelled. The American Queen voyage sailing from Memphis on September 10 will arrive...

Carnival to Make Subsequent Fleet Deployment Changes to Accommodate Guests MIAMI, Sept. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Carnival Cruise Lines has chartered three of its cruise ships to the Military Sealift Command (MSC) on behalf of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for six months as part of Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. The three cruise ships are the Ecstasy, Sensation and Holiday. The Ecstasy, normally homeported at Galveston, Texas, operating four- and five-day cruises, and Sensation, normally homeported in New Orleans operating four- and five-day voyages, will be pulled from service effective Monday, Sept. 5. Initial plans are for both vessels to...

The transfer of about 4,000 Katrina evacuees from Houston to cruise ships in Galveston is expected to begin later today, officials announced late Monday. Red Cross staffers, medical professionals, volunteers and others were to work through the night to begin identifying those eligible to leave shelters at Reliant Park and the George R. Brown Convention Center for the ships, said Lt. Joe Leonard of the U.S. Coast Guard and area commander for the Houston shelters. Under criteria set by Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, evacuees age 60 and over will have the top priority for the transfer to the ships, said...

Today's relocation of about 4,000 evacuees from the Astrodome and Houston's other giant shelters to two Galveston-based cruise ships has been delayed because shelter residents don't want to go. Volunteers trying to fill buses bound for Kentucky also found few takers

Carnival Cruise Lines announced Saturday that the U.S. government has chartered three luxury cruise liners - Ecstacy, Sensation and Holiday - for the next half year, to provide temporary housing for victims of Hurricane Katrina. Two of the ships, the Ecstasy and Sensation, have a maximum capacity of 2,606 people each and will be based in Galveston, Texas. The third, the Holiday, has a maximum capacity of 1,800, and will likely be docked in Mobile, Ala. Carnival Cruise Lines would not reveal how much FEMA was paying to charter the ships. Carnival crews will operate the ships, which will be...

Carnival Cruise Sending Three Big Ships for Katrina RefugeesBy Travis Reed Associated Press Writer Published: Sep 3, 2005 Federal officials are chartering three of Carnival Cruise Lines' ships for six months, part of a plan to provide shelter for as many as 7,000 people displaced by devastating Hurricane Katrina. The three ships - the Ecstasy, Sensation and Holiday - will be pulled from regular use starting Monday. Ecstasy, normally ported at Galveston for four-and five-day cruises, and Sensation, normally in New Orleans for similar trips, will both be pulled Monday and are scheduled to dock and house Katrina refugees in...

Two weeks ago, Turkish police arrested an Islamist with ties to many upper tier al-Qaida members. The man not only tried to get asylum in Germany, but claims to have known about the London bombings beforehand and to have helped the 9/11 pilots. The Turkish interrogators in Istanbul's high-security prison wanted to be polite; they wanted to show respect for Islam. They offered their prisoner, an Islamist named Luai Sakra, 31, a chance to pray during a pause in questioning. They'd done the same thing with earlier suspects. The move was supposed to establish trust. But this prisoner reacted a...

WASHINGTON [MENL] -- The United States has issued an alert of a strike against Western shipping in the Red Sea. The State Department has posted a warning for Americans to avoid cruises or travel in the Red Sea. The department has raised the prospect of piracy near the coast of Yemen or Somalia. "This Public Announcement is being updated to alert Americans to ongoing security concerns in the region, including for seaborne vessels traveling in the southern Red Sea," the Aug. 4 announcement said. "U.S. citizens are reminded to maintain a high level of vigilance and to take appropriate steps...

ISTANBUL (AFP) - Turkish police have detained 10 people suspected of links to the Al-Qaeda extremist network and of plotting attacks on Israeli cruise ships in southern Turkey, security sources said. The suspects, one of them a Syrian, were detained several days ago in the Mediterranean province of Antalya, home to some of Turkey's most popular resorts, which attract millions of foreign tourists each year, said the sources, who requested anonymity. They were believed to be planning to attack Israeli cruise ships on behalf of Al-Qaeda, they said. Israel's counter-terrorism unit Monday warned Israeli holidaymakers to avoid a strip of...

STAMFORD, Conn. — The night a newlywed vanished from his honeymoon cruise, the sounds of a loud party were coming from his stateroom, followed by male voices arguing on the balcony and then a "horrific thud," a fellow passenger says. The ship was in the Mediterranean Sea when Connecticut resident George Smith IV disappeared more than three weeks ago. No one has been charged, but Connecticut's top federal prosecutor said Tuesday that the 26-year-old's disappearance is being aggressively investigated and reports of blood on the ship raise concerns. The comments are the first by a U.S. prosecutor on the case...

The Carnival Cruise Ship "Holiday" was delayed from making her scheduled run this afternoon by a Bomb Threat, local TV Station WKRG TV 5 reported on its 10 pm broadcast. After a search, the FBI pronounced the ship now 'safe' and allowed it to leave port. No mention if anyone was arrested.

Disability requirements extended to foreign cruise ships The Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 that cruise lines operating in US waters must take steps to make their ships accessible to all passengers. By Warren Richey | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor WASHINGTON – Foreign-flagged cruise ships serving US ports must comply with the public accommodations requirements of the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). In a case with important implications for the increasingly popular cruise ship industry, the US Supreme Court Monday ruled 5 to 4 that cruise lines operating in US waters must take reasonable steps to make...

"Outsourcing" – which has become synonymous with sending American jobs to India or China – could soon mean foreign workers sleeping in ships just a few miles off America's coasts. In an outrageous affront to U.S. labor laws, a California company plans to anchor a 600-cabin cruise ship just beyond the three-mile limit off the coast of El Segundo, near Los Angeles, and stock it with foreign software programmers. Story Continues Below The company, SeaCode, will seek to classify the workers as "seamen," avoiding U.S. payroll taxes and the need for immigration visas. Programmers from places like India and Russia...

AN Australian port could be attacked or a ferry hijacked by terrorists to transport weapons of mass destruction, because of gaps in the maritime border security net. The Australian Strategic Policy Institute has found a lack of awareness from states and the federal Government about the specific threats posed from the sea. "A determined and expert terrorist is still likely to have little difficulty in entering Australia by sea, and will probably only be defeated by advance intelligence of his movements," the institute says in a report titled Future unknown: the terrorist threat to Australian maritime security. "We have high...

A "freak wave" more than 70 feet high slammed a luxury cruise ship steaming for New York yesterday, flooding cabins, injuring passengers and forcing the liner to stop for emergency repairs. The Norwegian Dawn, an opulent ocean liner almost 1,000 feet long, limped into Charleston, S.C., yesterday afternoon after it hit vicious seas in an overnight storm off Florida - then was creamed by the rogue wave after dawn. "[My room] was destroyed by stuff getting thrown all over the place," passenger James Fraley, of Keansburg, N.J., told NBC News before embarking on the 12-hour drive home because he didn't...

Portability is a familiar concept in the NFL. Television-network villages, tons of bulky football equipment, and entire teams journey weekly from city to city. For Super Bowl XXXIX, however, the cutting-edge league is experimenting with something new. Like so many Port-a-Potties, 3,500 hotel rooms will be whisked into town before the big game and moved out again the day after it concludes. At least one-fifth of all Super Bowl-related rooms in and around Jacksonville next week will be located on five luxury cruise ships that will dock on the St. John's River, not far from Alltel Stadium, the site of...

<p>Cruise ships aren't supposed to discharge waste into the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, according to city of Monterey policy and a slew of resolutions passed by other cities around the region.</p> <p>But 13 scheduled visits from a Celebrity cruise ship in Monterey this year pose an intriguing question: What if the discharge is supposedly the quality of drinking water?</p>

Cases of a winter sickness bug have doubled in the past year and have now reached a record high, it emerged today. Hospitals across London are on the alert for signs of the virus which can spread rapidly through wards and affect hundreds of people at a time. Cases of Norwalk-like virus - named after the Ohio town where it was first identified - are on the increase in the wake of Christmas and the New Year. Experts warned there will almost certainly be large-scale outbreaks of the bug, better known as winter vomiting virus, in the coming weeks as...

MIAMI, Florida (CNN) -- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday that 197 passengers and 15 crew members aboard the cruise ship Oceana have come down with a gastrointestinal illness. A CDC field team boarded the ship Saturday in Barbados to gather more information on the outbreak. "We conducted interviews with passengers and crew members and gathered samples," said CDC spokeswoman Susan McClure. "The investigation continues." There are 1,859 passengers and 868 crew aboard, according to a statement released by the CDC.

<p>An environmental advocacy group is suing to stop the first cruise ship visit planned for Moloka'i on Dec. 28, saying an environmental assessment of the potential impact is needed.</p> <p>Earthjustice, on behalf of Moloka'i community group Hui Ho'opakele 'Aina, filed the suit in Maui's second circuit court yesterday arguing that the state must conduct an environmental study because the cruise line Holland America will use state land when it anchors and ferries passengers in its visit.</p>

I've recently received a disquiting thought. The terrorists last week have warned they are about to launch terrorist attacks against us and inflict massive casualties. How are they going to accomplish this? Almost daily, the FBI and other government agencies are issuing alerts, resulting in many high profile targets being protected. However, the warnings seem to point to soft targets. What has a thousands of Americans, is incredibly soft, completely unprotected, and has minimal chances of survival if suffering a sudden, massive attack? Answer: cruise ships! Also, what is the easiest terrorist method of inflicting thousands of casualties if they...