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In the dock

A sacked employee of Norwegian Cruise Line Limited (ncll) has taken the wind out of the company's sails by turning whistle-blower. A tip-off from the ex-worker has led the us Environmental Protection Agency (epa) to crack the whip on ncll for dumping oily waste into the ocean and maintaining false records to cover it up.

ncll, the world's fourth largest cruise company, has agreed to pay a us $1.5 million penalty for its wrongdoing. Not only has ncll pleaded guilty to keeping a false log book in April 2000, it has also admitted that it lied to the coast guard for three years about illegal discharges from its 2,030-passenger liner.

The company has also confessed to polluting the ocean by flushing an oil sensor with freshwater to make contaminated discharges look clean and dumping untreated wastewater overboard.

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