Greenpeace

A federal judge rejected a bid by the environmental group Greenpeace to stop a rig belonging to oil giant Atlantic Richfield Co. from drilling for oil just off Alaska's northern coast. While the court hearing was being held in Los Angeles, a Greenpeace ship blocked the rig, the MV Arctic Sunrise, from moving from its position about three miles off the coast near the giant Prudhoe Bay oil field to a new drilling area in the Beaufort Sea.

The environmental group Greenpeace called on the Mexican government and tourist firms Sunday to protect life off the nation's shores in the Caribbean Sea. On its first stop at the southern resort of Cozumel, the group said in a statement from its flagship, Rainbow Warrior, that Mexico needs to work harder to protect marine life and the world's second-longest reef off its Caribbean shores. "It is an absurd contradiction.

The environmental organization Greenpeace said Friday that an arbitration tribunal ordered France to pay it $8.16 million in damages for the sinking of the Greenpeace vessel Rainbow Warrior two years ago. Greenpeace chairman David McTaggart said the organization will use the award, made Friday by a three-member international tribunal in Geneva, to support its worldwide fleet and its campaigns for a nuclear-free Pacific. The French government had no immediate comment on the award.

A Russian coast guard vessel fired warning shots Monday at a Greenpeace ship as it tried to investigate the environmental threat posed by a vast nuclear dump site inside the Arctic Circle, officials said. After firing flares and repeatedly ordering the Solo--a 219-foot ship owned by the maverick environmental group--to leave Russia's economic zone, the Ural patrol vessel "was forced to fire several warning shots with a 30-millimeter cannon," said Vladimir Biketov, a Russian official spokesman.

Federal authorities and local police, including a SWAT team, arrested 13 environmental activists Thursday, four of whom had chained themselves to the crane of a Long Beach-bound freighter to protest the logging of old-growth rain forests.

Four Greenpeace activists jumped into the Baltic Sea on Sunday to block the way of the U.S. cruiser Ticonderoga, which the environmental organization said might be carrying nuclear weapons. The warship steamed past the activists and sailed into Stockholm's harbor. "The cruiser signaled with its horns, and police in small boats tried to pick our people up from the water but didn't succeed," Greenpeace spokesman Magnus Furugard said.

The protest group Greenpeace on Tuesday accused the Navy of "maliciousness" in ramming its flagship as it protested the test launch of a Trident 2 missile. "We have a message for the Navy," Greenpeace USA Executive Director Peter Bahouth told a news conference. "We are going to take legal action. They are going to have to pay us damages."

Greenpeace ended eight days of harassing a Japanese whaling fleet off Antarctica on Thursday, leaving whale-shaped gingerbread cookies to the crews with a note, "If you want to eat whales, eat these." The environmental group said that its ship, the Gondwana, is steaming toward a U.S. base on Antarctica's McMurdo Sound, which it claims is heavily polluted. "We have finally finished our project here," said spokesman Paul Bogart, interviewed by radio telephone aboard the Gondwana.

A group claiming to be combat veterans of Vietnam and conflicts in Africa has claimed responsibility for the sinking of the Greenpeace environmental organization's flagship, investigators said Saturday. An unsigned handwritten leaflet delivered to the New Zealand Broadcasting Corp. said the Rainbow Warrior was sunk by the unnamed group Wednesday in Auckland harbor to prevent the Pacific region from becoming "another Lebanon."

They didn't look like Russians. Several wore bowler hats, two had their hair in Rasta dreadlocks, and all looked distinctly Western, as only being in the Soviet Union can make you look. But just who they were eluded most of the Russian pedestrians going about their business in Red Square at 10 a.m.