Great Scotland Yard opens as luxury hotel
LONDON: Great Scotland Yard - the iconic building that housed the London Metropolitan Police for over 60 years until 1890 and was bought by Indian billionaire M A Yusuff Ali for £110 million in 2015 - is all set to open as a luxury hotel later this year.
The room tariff for the hotel will reportedly run into thousands of pounds - even up to £10,000 per night.
The leasehold of the iconic building, constructed in 1829, was sold in December 2013 to Galliard Homes as part of the British defence ministry’s efforts to sell assets to raise funds. Kerala-born Yusuff Ali bought the leasehold from Galliard in 2015.
Transformed at a reported cost of £75 million, the hotel that is located close to Trafalgar Square has more than 150 rooms. Some of them were converted from what used to be cells for criminals.
“Hotel guests will be reminded of London’s famous criminals during their stay. As well as military uniforms and artwork by prisoners, features include a chandelier made of glass shards that references the Forty Elephants, a 19th-century gang of women known for smashing shop windows to steal jewellery,” The Times reported on Saturday.
“The cells have been transformed into meeting rooms and workspace areas that can be rented. Guests will also be able to use a secret whisky bar, a tea parlour, a ballroom and a restaurant,” the news report added.
Yusuff Ali , who heads the Abu Dhabi-based Lulu Group, is among several Indian investors acquiring prime London property in recent years.
The Mumbai-based Lodha Group bought the Canadian high commission building in November 2013 and the Hinduja Group purchased the Old War Office in December 2014. PALMBEACH,FLORIDA:US President Donald Trump tweeted on Friday that he had reversed his administration’s decision to slap new sanctions on North Korea a move that left officials at the treasury department and observers across Washington scratching their heads.
Trump delivered the news from his private club in Palm Beach, Florida, tweeting, “It was announced today by the US treasury that additional large-scale sanctions would be added to those already existing sanctions on North Korea. I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional sanctions!”
The problem was - the treasury did not announce any new action affecting North Korea on Friday, let alone “additional large-scale sanctions”.
The administration on Thursday did sanction two Chinese shipping companies suspected of helping North Korea evade sanctions - but not the country itself.
So what was Trump actually referring to? The White House wouldn’t say. Press secretary Sarah Sanders issued only a brief statement saying that Trump “likes” North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and “doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary”.
But a person familiar with the action later told AP that Trump’s tweet was not about reversing existing sanctions.
Instead, the person said, the president was talking about not going forward with additional large-scale sanctions on North Korea at this time.
It was the latest example of the confusion sometimes sparked by Trump’s governance-by-tweet, which has often sent agency heads scrambling, trying to figure out what he meant.