Word: mururoa
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...what happened," said Peter Willcox, skipper of the Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior. "There were some loud bangs, the boat shook and we sank within four minutes." The 130-ft. converted trawler was berthed in Auckland, New Zealand, last week, preparing to lead a protest of French nuclear tests at Mururoa Atoll, 700 miles southeast of Tahiti. Two explosions ripped a 6-ft. by 8-ft. hole in the hull, scuttling the vessel stern first in 24 ft. of water and killing Ship Photographer Fernando Pereira. The twelve other people reportedly on board escaped unharmed...
...outside of the hull in the area of the engine room." New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange called the bombing a "major criminal act." Lange, who has banned port calls by nuclear-armed or -powered ships, said he would consider sending a New Zealand naval vessel to lead the Mururoa protest. The Rainbow Warrior was one of four ships used by Greenpeace, an international environmentalist group. "Our actions are all peaceful," said Bryn Jones, chairman of the organization's British branch. "We have not in the past provoked this kind of response...
DIED. DAVID MCTAGGART, 68, passionate environmental crusader who founded Greenpeace International in 1979; in a head-on car crash; in the Umbrian countryside near Perugia, Italy. McTaggart inspired a worldwide movement in 1972 by defiantly sailing his boat into a French nuclear test site at the Mururoa atoll in the South Pacific...
Thumbing its nose at near-unanimous international condemnation, France set off a third nuclear blast beneath the Mururoa Atoll in French Polynesia about 6 p.m. ET. "This test was necessary to guarantee in the future the security and reliability of our arms," the French Defense Ministry said in a statement. French President Jacques Chirac has promised to sign a global test ban treaty, but only after all eight planned tests have occurred...
...conflict between old-line "radicals" and new-style "suits" has erupted openly in recent months as Greenpeace has suffered one public debacle after another. In the latest, activists sailed into the waters off Mururoa atoll early last month in a futile effort to get the French to halt resumption of nuclear-test blasts in the Pacific. But the protesters blundered into a trap, allowing the French navy to seize two vessels--the flagship Rainbow Warrior II and, more significantly, the group's largest support ship, MV Greenpeace. French authorities impounded a third protest vessel a few days before setting...