Washington: There could be a brief time this summer when there is no ice on the North Pole, said a U.S. scientist, blaming global warming that has melted the Arctic ice sheet over decades. "We could have no ice at the North Pole at the end of this summer,' Mark Serreze, a scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, told AFP. "And the reason here is that the North Pole area right now is covered with very thin ice and this ice we call first year ice, the ice that tends to melt out in the summer.'

fuel price India fails to shield consumers A pressed Indian government raised petrol and diesel prices by 10 per cent on June 4, curbing losses to its state-owned refiners but stoking inflation and risking a political backlash. Petrol and diesel prices are now dearer by Rs 5 and Rs 3 a litre, while the price of an lpg cylinder has gone up by Rs 50. The hike triggered protests across the

Washington: Climate experts have warned that the world might have already reached the tipping point of climate change, where immediate actions needed to be done to reduce the effects of global warming. According to a report in Discovery News, the scientist who first put forward this theory is Nasa climate scientist James Hansen. Though Hansen had earlier warned about the dangers of climate change in 1988, his latest theory determines that "we have used up all slack in the schedule for actions needed to defuse the global warming time bomb.'

It has been getting ever harder to pretend that Antarctica is a pristine place. We like to think of it as being scoured clean by hostile winds and extreme cold. But more and more, Antarctica, like the Arctic, shows the lasting scars of human negligence. The effects of climate change are being felt far more strongly at the poles than elsewhere on the planet. Some of the most persistent and dangerous chemicals ever created have accumulated there and remain there.

The prospect of designating the Arctic region

Amitabh Sinha Three decades after it set up a permanent base in Antarctica, India plans one not very far from the North Pole NEW DELHI, JUNE 22: Three decades after it set up base in Antarctica, India will have a home on the other extreme of the globe when a permanent research station is inaugurated in the Arctic later this month.

Amitabh Sinha Three decades after it set up a permanent base in Antarctica, India plans one not very far from the North Pole NEW DELHI, JUNE 22: Three decades after it set up base in Antarctica, India will have a home on the other extreme of the globe when a permanent research station is inaugurated in the Arctic later this month.