From Babykim & Carnotzet, EU forums.
1). The Saipan requirements are officially disclosed: 20 wins in any carriers and one battle in a tier 5 or higher carrier. The offer will be distributed via personal offers, a newly implemented feature. (Seb: you also have to pay for it 9500 doubloons) WG promises the players won’t be spammed with offers in the future.
2). Starting from 1 April for month an experimental 20% reduction in repair costs all tier 8-10 ships.
Why drive-tests were removed. Vallter_ gives an in-depth explanation on this subject.
“We won’t run drive-tests anymore since they failed to deliver the expected results. We received negative feedback and there were countless pages of negative discussion on the forums. Moreover, they didn’t give us enough relevant statistics about the progression of the new lines.
Some players had a hard time destroying two ships in a single battle. Some thought that, having earned the ships, they could keep them forever and we hadn’t the right to take them away. Others thought they couldn’t farm the ships and the event was “and incentive to lose silvers”. All in all, the negative outcry was considerable, and the test-drives didn’t change players’ opinion about the new lines or their progression whatsoever.”
In other news, there were some speculations over on the French forums about the upcoming French premium ship.
Tanatoy explained that the ship has already been decided upon for some time (they have already visited archives to collect data) and that, according to him, it will please everyone. To learn more about it, we’ll have to wait a few months.
GASOVER also said that it will apparently be a low-tier ship.
Let the guessing game begin 
Info from the RU forums.
Responding to a post regarding the inaccurate historicity of certain ships (ships missing their real armaments configuration, hulls, etc.) mal_h says they will soon create a post exclusively on that subject. “As per your request, we have decided that Community Managers will regularly relay your (relevant) question to the art department, and NT’s will provide the answers. [I have absolutely no idea what NT means (it’s written in latin alphabet in the OP). It’s supposed to be a position in the company. So if anybody has a suggestion, I’ll be happy to hear it]
