This has been debunked on a number of shipping/naval forums. Here's the crux:
It wasn't heading to the Middle East. It was heading TO Singapore, FROM the Middle East (reference
here
The ship didn't sink. It split in half from the keel up, but both pieces retained water-tight integrity and salvage operations are underway.
The ship was apparently built with a new type of high-strength steel. Speculation is that the steel was especially rigid for an aircraft-carrier sized vessel with a relatively high center of gravity but still built to commercial and not military standards (especially when it comes to compartmentalization). The ship hit heavy weather and wasn't able to flex properly given the waves it was encountering, so the hull failed (thankfully along a bulkhead)