It is a great white elephant, held back by the feeble condition of Cuba's economy.
Derek Granger, of the Kemptown Society, said he feared it would be "another white elephant" for Brighton.
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Much, then, is riding on the success of a plane that Boeing dismisses as a white elephant.
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The naysayers insist that the tunnel will be an ugly, expensive white elephant.
They point out the "ghost town" of Kilamba in Angola, a grandiose project often labeled as a white elephant.
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Obviously, it would not be good for business if one of Russia's premier overseas initiatives remained an inoperable white elephant.
Africans joke that the animal they see most often these days is the white elephant high-profile investment projects that serve no purpose.
Before those two series comes international cricket's great white elephant, the Champions Trophy, which is due to be phased out after 2013.
However Fife Council has insisted it would not become a white elephant.
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To counter the 787, Airbus is offering a white elephant called the A350, which has been widely derided as out of step with the changing times.
The Youth Voices Challenge is being held in conjunction with the WE SPEAK 2011, that is being run by the White Elephant Trust and Otautahi Youth Council.
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In some ways, then, the expression "white elephant" carries with it in Thailand a very different meaning from that which we associate with it in the West.
Add in the likelihood that the rate cap leads to escalating subsidies, and no wonder that some Brazilians wonder whether an all-too familiar species has re-emerged in the Amazon: a white elephant.
The recipient of this vengeful act of royal generosity was thus confronted with the high costs of looking after the white elephant, and as often as not went broke as a result.
Hence, in turn, our own notion that a white elephant is a valuable possession which cannot be disposed of, even though the expense of maintaining it is out of all proportion to its usefulness or worth.
Matthew Sinclair, chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, which campaigns for lower taxes, said HS2 was a "great vanity project... poor value compared to more affordable alternatives, but there is still time to reconsider that white elephant".
The escalator, originally built to ease traffic on the narrow street, was initially criticized by the city's director of audit as a costly "white elephant" because it overshot its budget by 153% and failed to reduce traffic.
But there are many here who now fear the high-speed rail network may turn out to be a white elephant, too expensive, saddled with massive debts that it will never pay off - a wealth destroyer not a wealth generator.
Yankee swap (or white elephant) items.
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There will be endless promises to ensure that there is a positive legacy of London 2012, that we are more sporting as a nation, more inclusive and that the Olympic Park revives east London and does not become a white elephant.
For it's a term of esteem and appreciation, and this helps explain why in 1861, an earlier Thai monarch established the Most Exalted Order of the White Elephant, consisting of six separate grades, which soon became the most frequently-awarded honour in the country, as it remains to this day.
The fuel crisis has coincided not only with the latest reverse for the Millennium Dome the white elephant now indelibly associated with Mr Blair's love of empty monuments but also with the serialisation of a thoroughly plausible account by the Observer's Andrew Rawnsley of the unending, self-destructive feud between the prime minister and his chancellor.
Indonesians have come to cherish their local freedoms, with good cause even if it means a white-elephant stadium or three.
Dick Durbin assure us, not because they want to use federal money to indemnify their home state for a white-elephant prison Illinois taxpayers should never have built, but because Guantanamo Bay simply must be closed.
He began to write a novel, set during Brazil's hosting of the World Cup in 2014, in which public money was yet again disappearing into private pockets, and white-elephant stadiums were rising across the land.
The plan initially is to import elephant, white rhino, warthog, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest and a range of antelope.
That master of hype once wooed more people to pay to see an elephant he'd painted white than a rival circus master attracted with a real snowy one.
But when the criminals and leaders are white men, race and gender become the elephant in the room.
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