7 Greenpeace protesters are held, Soviets confirm

The Soviet Union confirmed it is holding six American environmentalists, members of Greenpeace International, and said they were in good health. This was the first Soviet comment on the six Americans and a Canadian, who were arrested Monday after going ashore near the whaling station at Lorin on the Siberian coast. Other members of the Greenpeace group raced back to Nome aboard the organization's trawler carrying a film of the whaling station and the arrests.

The arrests coincided with a meeting in England of the International Whaling Commission, which wants commercial whaling banned by 1986.