Victims of the Prestige oil tanker spill will receive initial compensation payments totalling 15% of their assessed losses, the International Oil Pollution Compensation Fund has said.

The Greek captain of the sunken tanker that caused one of Spain’s worst environmental disasters ended an 80 day spell in jail today after his €3m bail was paid.

FRANCE'S Atlantic coast could be swamped with oil from the sunken tanker Prestige within days after high winds tore up an oil slick out at sea, authorities said yesterday.

FIVE holes in the sunken and leaking oil tanker Prestige have been plugged

Portugal began deploying floating barriers across a river mouth today, fearing patches from a major oil spill affecting Spain could drift south.

TENS of thousands of angry demonstrators took to the streets of Galicia’s capital yesterday to protest at Madrid’s response to a tanker disaster as a new wave of oil began hitting beaches.

The government of Spain’s Galicia region, grappling with an ecological disaster following the sinking of an oil tanker, today warned coastal residents to brace for the worst as the biggest slick yet oozed relentlessly toward land.

Amid increasing criticism over the Spanish government’s handling of the Prestige disaster, Environment Minister Jaume Matas blamed a Dutch salvage company for the spillage of millions of gallons of toxic fuel oil from the sunken tanker last week, a newspaper reported Sunday.

Picturesque coastal areas hit by the Prestige oil tanker spill were facing a fresh deluge of sludge today, with fierce winds blowing slicks in from the Atlantic.

Cleanup crews braced today for the possibility of a massive oil spill and environmental catastrophe, propping up 18 miles of floating booms around the spot where an oil tanker broke in two and sank in the Atlantic.

A TIME bomb of almost 20 million gallons of thick oil was ticking on the bed of the Atlantic last night, threatening to swamp Spanish and Portuguese coasts with one of the world's worst ecological disasters.

AN environmental time bomb was ticking in the Atlantic last night after the sinking of the stricken Prestige oil tanker 500 miles from Mizen Head.