Blohn Voss of Hamburg, Germany, have been awarded the HK$350 million refurbishment and refit contract for Cunard's QE2 liner. The refit will be carried out while the QE2 is in dry dock between November 19 and December 15.

The newly refurbished QE2 will sail into Hong Kong from Kaoshiung, Taiwan, on its 1995 world cruise on February 26, before sailing to Bangkok on February 28. For details of the cruise, phone Jardine Airways, 846-7906.

THE New York Vista Hotel, closed by the terrorist blast at the World Trade Centre in February 1993, will re-open on November 1 after undergoing extensive renovations, including a new entrance and lobby.

The 820-room hotel is located between the two towers of the World Trade Centre and sustained extensive smoke damage as well as physical damage from the powerful explosion, which occurred in a garage beneath the main building.

THE Walt Disney Company has abandoned its chosen site in northern Virginia for a sprawling American history theme park, a project that was reviled by historians and environmentalists and hotly debated at local planning boards as well as the US Senate. The company will seek another site for the development.

It planned to build the park, Disney's America, 50 kilometres southwest of Washington, near the site of the First Battle of Bull Run, the first big conflict of the Civil War, and in a region that contains many battle sites from that war.

The planned centrepiece of a 3,000-acre, US$650 million development, inspired fervent opposition from some historians who said it could blot out important Civil War sites and from environmentalists who said it would bring crowding, road congestion and smog to an area where all these problems have mushroomed in recent years.