Mario Ploner, the managing director of Tecnomeccanica Biellese, says the ship-based system will use external booms running parallel with the vessel's sides to channel oil onto wool that has been spread over the surface of the sea.

ECONOMIST: Monitor

This is a large calcite crystal recovered from a vessel that went down off the coast of Alderney, in the Channel Islands, in Elizabethan times.

ECONOMIST: How Norsemen found their way round in cloudy weather

Acquired series include "Friday Night Lights, " the inspiring high school football drama, and "Farscape, " a cult classic previously aired on the Sci-Fi Channel about a diverse group of passengers of a space vessel forced to work together to survive.

WSJ: Pivot, network for millennials, tries to change TV