In the Nation
Oil drilling starts off Alaskan coast
SEATTLE - A potential new energy frontier opened early Sunday in the U.S. Arctic as Royal Dutch Shell plumbed a drill bit into the bed of the Chukchi Sea, 70 miles off the coast of northwest Alaska.
The oil company, which spent six years and $4.5 billion trying to launch America's first offshore oil production in the Arctic, announced that its Noble Discoverer had anchored northwest of Alaska's North Slope and begun drilling the "top hole" of an exploration well. The work was the first step toward drilling a pilot hole that will go about 1,300 feet deep.
The company will not be allowed to plumb deeper into hydrocarbon deposits until its oil spill containment barge is completed and on site, a step that could come within the next few weeks, or perhaps not until next year.
The work is the first exploratory drilling in the Arctic since the early 1990s - when far less regulatory scrutiny was placed on the delicate ecosystem of the Far North. The project marks an important milestone for Alaska, where oil production has been declining steadily from the aging oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk on the North Slope.
- Los Angeles Times
Boy steers car after dad gets ill
PEABODY, Mass. - A 12-year-old boy steered his family's car to safety along Interstate 95 after his father suffered what appeared to be a seizure while driving, then brought his younger sister to safety behind a guardrail while waiting for help, state police said.
The boy, who's from Dracut, took the wheel Saturday, steered the car into a southbound breakdown lane in Peabody and applied the brakes, troopers said. He then used his dad's cellphone to call 911.
He told the dispatcher that his father was having a seizure while driving on the highway, state police said. He didn't know where he was or what road he was on, but was able to describe landmarks. Officials were only able to narrow the location to Peabody, about 20 miles north of Boston, by tracking the cellphone signal.
The boy's father, who was unconscious, was brought to a local clinic and is reported to be in good condition.
"The Massachusetts state police want to commend the quick thinking and courageous actions of this young man," state police said in a statement.
- AP
Stranded dolphin going to facility
NEW ORLEANS - A deaf dolphin found stranded in March off the Louisiana coast is being taken to live among other dolphins at a facility in Mississippi.
Suzanne Smith is the rescue coordinator at the Audubon Nature Institute. She says the 2- 1/2-year-old dolphin will be taken Tuesday to the Institute for Marine Mammal Studies because he would be unable to survive in the wild.
She says deafness is probably the reason the 6- 1/2-foot-long mammal was stranded on a mudflat where researchers found him March 6. He was deaf in the frequencies of dolphin sonar and was severely sunburned.
- AP