A massive fiery  explosision near a waterfront, industrial section of Beirut, Lebanon killed over 70 people and wounded around 4,000 earlier today.  A video (below) of the blast, which was broadcast around the world, showed a large fire with smaller explosions followed by a horrific explosion which reportedly destroyed buildings far from the blast site.

Former Norwegian Cruise Line ("NCL") CEO Colin Veitch’s trial against his successor, Kevin  Sheehan, and their old cruise line, NCL, for defamation and breach of contract has been underway in the Miami-Dade County courthouse, here in Miami, Florida this past week.

Veitch worked at the helm of NCL from 2000 to 2008. According to Travel

USS Cole AttackFor the past couple of years I’ve been troubled by the increasing violence in North Africa and the Middle East and the unprecedented nature of the cruelty of jihadist terrorists who have beheaded and burned “infidels” alive. I have worried about various scenarios where cruise passengers are at risk of attack.

We already know that

Cruise List broke a story today about a power outage which occurred on Holland America Line’s  Statendam cruise ship last Thursday. 

The Cruise List blog explains that last Thursday evening his proprietary application which searches for cruise information on Twitter picked up a tweet about a “fuel pump explosion” that caused a “two hour Power Outage

Tonight I began to receive text messages from passengers aboard Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas stating that a fire broke out in the engine room.  Heavy black smoke billowed out of the stacks. There was initial panic by some passengers. The cruise ship made emergency announcement and altered its course so that the prevailing