Winds may drive oil ashore

LA CORUNA, Spain -- The sunken Prestige tanker is leaking nearly 125 tons of oil a day into the waters off Spain's northwest coast, Mariano Rajoy, Spain's deputy prime minister, said yesterday.

Meanwhile changing winds threatened once again to drive oil slicks from the sunken tanker onto Galicia's oil-stained beaches yesterday, local government sources said.

A change in the wind direction would push the slicks toward Galicia's ecologically-sensitive beaches, the Galician government reported on its website.

Since Friday, easterly and northeasterly winds had given some stretches of Spain's northwest coast a reprieve, carrying oil into the open sea. -- Sapa-AFP