Shell's beleaguered campaign to produce oil in the Arctic has suffered a further setback after the US Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said the company "screwed up" its attempt to drill in Alaska last year.

Shell last night announced it had shelved its controversial Arctic drilling plans after a series of failures in the quest for fresh oil supplies.

The oil giant will instead suffer a multi-million dollar loss on the exercise after the rig ran aground off the Alaskan coast

Crews aboard two aircraft which flew over an oil drilling ship that went aground in a severe Alaska storm say there is no sign that the vessel is leaking fuel or that its hull has been breached.

A drilling rig that Shell planned to use off Alaska's Arctic coast ran aground in a storm Monday night, after the crew had been rescued earlier by the Coast Guard. As of late Tuesday, no fuel had spilled.

Big country, big weather

At least 100,000 people in Hawaii were ordered to move from the shoreline to higher ground late on Saturday after a tsunami warning, but the first waves were less forceful than had been feared and no damage was initially reported.

Surely it's not the end of Sesame Street?

When Victoria Pendleton stepped off a bike for the last time at the London Olympics, she felt nothing but relief. She was 31, her race was run, her time was up. She was now a former sprint cyclist, albeit one with two gold medals. She embraced the fact.

The man who pays his way

The Andean eco-region of the Eduardo Avaroa Andean Fauna National Reserve starts at 4,200m above sea level and covers more than 700,000 hectares in the far south-west of Bolivia.

Shell is racing to begin a massive drilling campaign in US Arctic waters before they freeze over and postpone activities by a year.

Four years ago, she was the new Republican sensation, the most electrifying vice-presidential nominee in recent history. Now, it seems, Sarah Palin may not even be granted an official speaking slot at the party's coronation of Mitt Romney in Tampa, Florida, at the end of next month.

Teams of volunteers were heading to an uninhabited island in Prince William Sound near Anchorage yesterday to clean up debris washed out to sea by the Japanese earthquake and tsunami last year and sent by Pacific currents to Alaska.