41.   With wireless communication demanding more satellite launches every day, companies are contracting for blast-offs from spots around the world, including an oil platform in the Pacific.

42.   Police and oil company officials began Tuesday to remove Greenpeace activists from an old North Sea oil platform before it is junked.

43.   A boycott of Shell Oil Co. over its plan to sink an oil platform widened on Wednesday.

44.   A day earlier, Chancellor Helmut Kohl asked Major to find some other way to dispose of the oil platform.

45.   A company spokesman denied the missile landed anywhere near the oil platforms or that it caused panic, it said.

46.   A Dutch chopper was standing by on a nearby oil platform to collect the remaining crew members if necessary, he said.

47.   A program to convert unused offshore oil platforms into permanent artificial reefs is taking off.

48.   A slump for oil companies can easily spread to other concerns that provide engineering services, supplies or build oil platforms.

49.   After years of planning and construction, the massive Hibernia oil platform produced the first barrels of oil from the North Atlantic seabed off Newfoundland.

50.   Applauding the climbdown, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said the North Sea states now must formulate common guidelines for disposing of oil platforms without sinking them.