Say what? This story had me scratching my head.

Will a replica of India’s Taj Mahal in Bangladesh also draw tourists?

Tourists from around the world can now opt for which Taj Mahal to visit: the original in India, or its replica in Bangladesh. After work started in 2003, a life-size replica structure of the original Taj Mahal, located 30km northeast of Dhaka, is now almost ready to open its doors to tourists.

If you are a cruise ship operator then the nightmare scenario and the stuff of made-for-TV movies has to be pirates taking over your cruise ship and holding their passengers hostage. Cruise operators who cannot avoid the Gulf of Aden are taking precautions to avoid that scenario.

Cruise ship will evacuate to avoid pirate attack

A German cruise ship plans to evacuate passengers in Yemen and fly them to the next port of call Wednesday to avoid any possible encounters with pirates off the coast of lawless Somalia.

Several other cruise operators said Tuesday they were also shifting or canceling tours that would have taken clients past Somalia, as nations and companies around the world debated how to confront the piracy dominating the Gulf of Aden.

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Pirates are not just featured in Johnny Depp movies these days, nor is high tech piracy limited to software. There really are still pirates some places in the world where real life pirates reside.

From the Independent:

A luxury three-masted cruise ship seized off the Gulf of Aden last week is in the hands of the Somali “marines”, a loose network of fishermen-turned-pirates armed with satellite telephones and hand-held missiles.

The “marines”, to paraphrase the words of The Pirates of Penzance, are the very model of a modern pirate enterprise. They use converted fishing vessels as “mother ships”, from which small boats are directed by satellite telephone to menace targets.

They are believed by Somali and international officials to be responsible for many of the estimated 150 attacks on ships off the Horn of Africa last year. Captured ships and their crews are then ransomed back to their owners. Contacts are in progress between the French owner of the 88-metre yacht Le Ponant, seized last Friday and representatives of the pirates. The French government has refused to rule out the payment of a ransom for the vessel and its mostly French crew of 30. On past experience, officials warn, the negotiations are likely to take several weeks.

In more positive news, piracy seems to be on the decrease off the coast of Malaysia because of patrols from Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

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