Nation in brief

Va. search for tanker crew goes on

The Coast Guard searched the cold waters of the Atlantic until nightfall Sunday for 18 missing crew members of a 570-foot tanker that sank off the coast of Virginia, but no more survivors were found.

The Bow Mariner exploded Saturday night, leaving three crew members dead, six injured and 18 missing. The ship was loaded with ethanol.

Coast Guard officials were not optimistic that they would find any of the men, but they said the search would resume this morning.

The Norwegian owners of the ship said Sunday that they hoped to determine soon the cause of the blast. The Coast Guard is investigating, although all signs pointed to an accident.

"The explosion must have been significant for a ship of this size to sink. There were a lot of separate rooms that would have normally kept her afloat," said Jan Hammer, a senior vice president with Odfjell, the Oslo company that owns the ship. "I think it will be known today or tomorrow what caused it. We have some theories."

The Coast Guard received a radio call from the Bow Mariner at 6:10 p.m. Saturday, alerting them to the explosion about 55 miles east of Chincoteague, Va. "That was the last contact we had with them," Coast Guard Chief Petty Officer Steve Carleton said.

A Coast Guard helicopter picked up six survivors in a lifeboat Saturday night. Two were suffering from hypothermia because of the frigid temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean. Rescue efforts continued Sunday with two Coast Guard cutters, a motor lifeboat and air surveillance. "As long as there is hope, we will continue to search," Carleton said.

The Bow Mariner's 27-member crew included 24 Filipinos and 3 Greeks.

The ship was carrying more than 3.5-million gallons of industrial ethanol, 193,000 gallons of fuel oil and 48,000 gallons of diesel fuel when it exploded. The Singapore-flagged ship was on the way to Houston from New York, where it had unloaded 20,000 tons of MTBE, a fuel additive that has been linked to groundwater contamination.

Retail gas prices rose 6.9 cents in the past two weeks to a national average of $1.75 per gallon, a study released Sunday shows.

Since late December, the average price of gas has risen nearly 25 cents a gallon, but the cost Friday was still a penny less than at the same time a year ago, according to the Lundberg Survey of 8,000 stations.

Analyst Trilby Lundberg said several reasons account for the latest increase, including a rise in crude oil prices and higher refinery costs.

Gas prices jumped significantly in California, where many cities saw increases of 20 cents or more per gallon, Lundberg said.

The national weighted average price of gasoline, including taxes, at self-serve pumps Friday was about $1.72 for regular, $1.82 for midgrade, and $1.91 for premium.

PILOTTOWN, La. - Salvage crews have recovered the body of a fourth crew member killed when an offshore supply vessel collided with a container ship in the Mississippi River's only deep opening into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Lee III had five crew members aboard when it crashed about 80 miles southeast of New Orleans in the Southwest Pass, the river's only shipping channel deep enough for many container and cruise ships. The search for the body of the fifth man continued Sunday. The container ship was damaged, but no one aboard was hurt.

The collision closed the river to large ships until Wednesday. A backlog of 155 ships delayed by the accident was cleared by Friday night, the Coast Guard said.

The Coast Guard closed the Southwest Pass again Sunday as a crane lifted the sunken Lee III onto a barge. Officials searched the raised vessel for the remaining crewman.

The cause of the accident, which occurred in heavy fog, has not been determined. The Coast Guard has said an investigation could take several months.

BOSTON - Roman Catholics confronted the problem of clergy sex abuse from pulpits, at protests and in parishes on Sunday, two days after the release of reports outlining the scandal's scope and the church's failure to protect children.

Two church-sanctioned studies were released Friday by the National Review Board, a lay watchdog panel formed by church bishops.

One, compiled by the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, found there had been more than 10,000 abuse claims against nearly 4,400 priests from 1950 to 2002.

"We must pray ourselves out of this wilderness," said Monsignor Richard Sniezyk, who was installed administrator of the Springfield Diocese in February after Bishop Thomas Dupre resigned in the face of abuse allegations. "We need not panic. We need to pray."

About 100 victims and their supporters marched Sunday in Boston from Holy Cross to the Statehouse to urge Gov. Mitt Romney to appoint a clergy abuse task force to oversee the church in Massachusetts, where the sex abuse scandal erupted with reports in the Boston archdiocese.

Romney spokeswoman Shawn Feddeman said Sunday that the Republican governor would consider the group's request, but wouldn't elaborate.

Robert Bennett, the lay person who oversaw the study, said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press that he thinks bishops who sheltered guilty priests should resign.

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Election 2004

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