Free Republic

Russian President Putin vowed to 'knock the teeth out' of nations who grab pieces of the state's vast territory Secretary of State Blinken warned Moscow the North Pole must remain 'free of conflict' at Thursday's summit His Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov hit back, saying the Kremlim saw 'no grounds' for conflict in the Arctic, but warned the West about militarising on Russia's doorstep and said the country would defend itself Comes as Russia revealed a massive polar military airbase, Nagurskoye, in the Franz Josef Land archipelago It has been heavily militarised with missiles, a radar system and a runway handling...

Exchange of knowledge and expertise, bartering and wooing. Kirkhellaren Cave on Sanna in Træna is one of Norway’s oldest meeting places, having first been used about 10,000 years ago.So far west out at sea that witty people claim that the gulls here speak English, it is midsummer on the Arctic Circle and we are on the island of Sanna in Træna Municipality.A 10 to 15-minute walk from the quay we find Kirkhellaren, a very famous cave where, throughout repeated ice ages, the frost and sea have carved out a cathedral in a crack of the mountainside...The first archaeological excavations in...

The movie "Thirteen Days" is the latest dramatization of President Kennedy's showdown with the Soviets during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Retired Air Force Maj. Gottlieb "John" Wilmsmeyer, 71, hasn't seen the film. But the Missouri farmer figures he can match that Cold War tale with a nail-biter of his own. It occurred about the same time. It might even have influenced the missile crisis. But for nearly 40 years, Wilmsmeyer had to keep quiet about "Operation Speedlight Delta." He was crew commander on a KC-135 tanker at Forbes Air Force Base, Topeka, Kan., in the summer of...

“The size, shape, and arrangement of the cusps on the two teeth are characteristically hyena, in that the teeth are very robust, and with sharp shearing blades,” Humans took a similar route to reach North America some 15,000 years ago, but the hyena migration happened much earlier. “It is amazing to imagine hyenas thriving in the harsh conditions above the Arctic Circle during the Ice Age,” “So they are an all-around ‘triple-threat’ of a predator, being able to run with their long legs, hunt and cut meat with their sharp teeth, and scavenge with their powerful premolar teeth,” he said.

Isolated, polluted and – above all – cold, it is a city built on misery and blood. It is also a city of surprising wealth – the reason for its unlikely existence. Norilsk, squatting 250 miles north of the Arctic Circle, has the largest deposits of nickel, copper and palladium on earth and its hellish mines are thriving. Gulag prisoners began expanding the Siberian settlement in 1935 and over the next 20 years, 500,000 slaves took part in its construction . Thousands lost their lives.

Aerial photo of Kotzebue, Alaska, which is located 26 miles north of the Arctic Circle. (City of Kotzebue) (CNSNews.com) – President Obama promoted solar energy to residents of Kotzebue, an Alaskan town located 26 miles north of the Arctic Circle that gets less than six hours of sunlight for 34 days in early December through early January. “I know you guys have started putting up solar panels and wind turbines around Kotzebue. And because energy costs are pretty severe up here, for remote Alaskan communities, one of the biggest problems is high energy costs,” the president said in a...

Yesterday I posted this quote from Elizabeth from the Will Steger Foundation global warming expedition to the artic.............. It felt so good to be back on trail. The weather was relatively warm for this time of year, there was little wind and the sun was shining. The mountains plunge dramatically to the ice on all sides. The U-shape of the head of the fiord ahead of us gave us a clue to the glaciations that sculpted this land, grinding away the granite to leave sheer walls of bare rock. I felt like I was inside an I-Max movie. I couldn't...

In early March, a mysterious ship the size of a large passenger ferry left a Romanian wharf, glided through the narrow Bosporus that separates Europe and Asia, and plotted a course toward Scandinavia. About a month later, at the fenced-in headquarters of Norway's military intelligence service, the country's spy chief disclosed its identity. It was a $250 million spy ship, tentatively named Marjata, that will be equipped with sensors and other technology to snoop on Russia's activities in the Arctic beginning in 2016. "There is a demand from our political leadership to describe what is going on in this region,"...

Russia is launching an expedition to map the extent of the country's arctic continental shelf as part of an effort to extend its influence, officials say. In 2001 Russia filed a request to extend its continental shelf border beyond the standard 200-mile limit, a request turned down by the United Nations for lack of evidence to support the claim, RIA Novosti reported Friday. Russia says it will spend $50 million to explore and define the extent of its continental shelf to support its request. Seventy-five expedition members will board a ship in the northern Russian city of Arkhangelsk in mid-July...

Russian sub plants flag under North Pole By Guy Faulconbridge Russian explorers dived deep below the North Pole in a submersible on Thursday and planted a national flag on the seabed to stake a symbolic claim to the energy riches of the Arctic. A mechanical arm dropped a specially made rust-proof titanium flag onto the Arctic seabed at a depth of 4,261 meters (13,980 ft), Itar-Tass news agency quoted expedition officials as saying. Russia wants to extend right up to the North Pole the territory it controls in the Arctic, believed to hold vast reserves of untapped oil and natural...

IQALUIT, Nunavut (CP) - A mysterious skull discovered on the edge of the Arctic Circle has sparked interest in what creatures roamed Baffin Island in the distant past, and what life a warming climate may support in the future. Andrew Dialla, a resident of Pangnirtung, Nunavut, says he found the skull protruding from the frozen tundra during a walk near the shore with his daughter about a month ago. The horned skull is about the size of a man's fist. It resembles a baby caribou skull, except at that age, a caribou wouldn't have antlers, researchers and elders have pointed...