The captain and the navigation officer of a container ship that smashed into a reef off a popular New Zealand holiday resort were jailed on Friday for causing the country's worst environmental disaster in decades.

The two men, captain Mauro Balomaga and navigation officer Leonil Relon, both Filipino nationals, were jailed for seven months. They had faced maximum terms of seven years imprisonment.

Robot "fish" developed by European scientists to improve pollution monitoring moved from the lab to the sea in a test at the northern Spanish port of Gijon on Tuesday.

The developers hope the new technology, which reduces the time it takes to detect a pollutant from weeks to seconds, will sell to port authorities, water companies, aquariums and anyone with an interest in monitoring water quality.

It could also have spin-offs for cleaning up oil spills, underwater security, diver monitoring or search and rescue at sea, they said.

The Supreme Court on Monday refused to allow a controversial US ship to head to Alang in Gujarat for dismantling after an NGO pointed out that the vessel was required to give prior intimation of its decontamination. The ship, Oriental Nicety, was refused permission to enter Indian waters after NGO Research Foundation for Science pointed out that the credentials of the ship were doubtful as the ship itself was a hazardous waste. Earlier called Exxon Valdez, the ship was involved in one of the worst oil spills off Alaska in 1986.

A trial to apportion blame and damages for the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster will now start in 2013 after the New Orleans judge hearing the case scheduled a new start date.

The delay is a boost for BP BP.LN -3.11% PLC, which is facing billions of dollars in fines from the U.S. government for its part in the incident. Federal and state authorities had pressed for a summer trial, arguing that damages payments from the responsible parties were needed to speed up Gulf Coast restoration efforts.

Chevron Corp went to federal court in Miami on Friday seeking to force an Ecuadorean bank to release records of alleged bribes the company says were paid to an independent expert in a multi-billion dollar environmental lawsuit against the oil company.

The company is seeking records of eight bank accounts at the Banco Pichincha, an Ecuadorean bank with a branch in Miami that Chevron says was a conduit for $360,000 in "illicit payments" to the independent expert, Richard Cabrera.

The U.S. government said a trial to assign blame and damages among BP Plc and others over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill should not be delayed until after a hearing over a $7.8 billion settlement of private party claims.

BP has asked U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier in New Orleans to delay any trial over the spill until after he holds a Nov. 8 fairness hearing over the settlement of more than 125,000 economic, property and medical claims.

An oil spill in Nigeria for which Royal Dutch Shell is being sued for tens of millions of dollars in a London court was at least 60 times worse than it announced, a report by Amnesty International said on Monday, citing research it commissioned.

A Shell spokeswoman said it was not appropriate to comment on the estimate while the spill was still the subject of litigation, adding that efforts to clean up had been hampered by insecurity in the Bodo area of the Niger Delta and by oil theft that had caused even more oil to be spilt since.

Shrimp processors have asked a federal judge to delay preliminary approval of BP Plc's proposed settlement of economic damage claims from the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, arguing that it is unfair to parts of the shrimp industry.

The American Shrimp Processors Association said the accord, which calls for BP to pay $2.3 billion in seafood claims, favors shrimp harvesters and boat captains at the expense of shrimp docks, processors and others it represents.