Free Republic

A Ketchikan jury correctly convicted a Greenpeace ship's captain of criminal negligence for sailing in Alaska waters without the proper oil spill response plan, the state appeals court ruled Thursday. The opinion partly cancels a 2005 decision by a Ketchikan judge to overturn guilty verdicts against Greenpeace Inc. and Arctic Sunrise Capt. Arne Sorensen of misdemeanor charges. At the time of its anti-logging campaign, the ship was carrying more than 70,000 gallons of "petroleum products," according to district court documents. In Alaska, non-tank vessels larger than 400 gross tons must file an oil spill response plan application five days before...

ANKARA, Turkey - Turkish tuna fishermen rammed their boat into a Greenpeace ship Friday and pelted it with lead fishing weights, the environmental group said. No one was injured. The fishing vessel was among several that swarmed the Arctic Sunrise, which was carrying activists campaigning against overfishing in the Mediterranean. The boat rammed the Greenpeace ship at high speed, said Yesim Aslan, a spokeswoman for the group. The barrage of lead weights damaged a helicopter that the activists had used earlier in the day to document the vessels' activities, Aslan said.

Japan on Wednesday released a video in a bid to prove Greenpeace targeted its whaling ship in an Antarctic collision this week and accused the environmentalists of violent tactics. Japan's main whaling body put a video on its website that showed Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise moving steadily forward before hitting the whaling ship Nisshin Maru, whose movement was impeded by another whaling vessel nearby. "It was a deliberate action to get media coverage," Japan's Institute for Cetacean Research said in a statement. "The Arctic Sunrise could have avoided this collision. Instead the skipper turned the boat into the path of the...