WELLINGTON: Television star Lucy Lawless and five activists prepared Sunday to spend a third night atop a 53-metre rig on an oil drilling ship in New Zealand. Greenpeace claimed growing worldwide support for their protest bid to stop it sailing to the Arctic. The protestors have been inundated with emails and messages on twitter and Facebook from supporters, the environmental group said. Lawless, 44, star of Xena: Warrior Princess and Spartacus boarded the Noble Discoverer with six others at the Taranaki port in the central North Island on Friday and hung a Save the Arctic banner. One of the party came down on Saturday and was arrested by police, who said they would not try to remove the others for safety reasons, although they were trespassing. The protest was designed to stop the rig from sailing to Alaska's Chukchi Sea on Sunday after ending drilling off the Taranaki coast. Greenpeace quoted one of the activists, Vic Hadlow as saying, “It's been so inspiring to get all of these online messages and to know that standing alongside the six of us on this ship, there are hundreds of thousands of other people around the world who feel passionate about the Arctic and are prepared to take action to put a stop to Shell's crazy Arctic drilling plans.” BM with David Barber of dpa ShortURL: http://goo.gl/uz9w6 Tags: Big Oil, Greenpeace, Lucy Lawless, Warrior Princess, Xena Section: Going Green, Latest News, Oceana, Women
