OTTAWA, Oct 5, 2007 (AFP) - Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced Friday a series of scientific projects designed to assert Canada's claim of sovereignty over the Arctic.

'Scientific inquiry and development are absolutely essential to Canada's defense of its North, as they enhance our knowledge of, and presence in, the region,' said Harper, speaking in the town of Churchill, Manitoba.

'Like I've said so many times before, use it or lose it is the first principle of sovereignty,' the prime minister said.

MONTREAL, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) - Global warming is believed to be softening the harsh Arctic environment, causing the algae population in Canada's northernmost lake to spike over the past two centuries, researchers said Wednesday.

The team, led by Laval University scientists Warwick Vincent and Reinhard Pienitz, found aquatic life in Ward Hunt Lake, located on island north of Ellesmere Island, increased 500-fold during the period.

The changes occurred at a speed and range 'unprecedented in the lake's last 8,000 years,' the researchers said in a statement.

OTTAWA, Sept 25, 2007 (AFP) - Sea traffic in the famed Northwest Passage will soon be monitored by underwater listening devices to be installed by Canada to bolster its disputed claim over the Arctic, media said Tuesday.

Canada's military will start keeping tabs on trespassers -- ships and submarines -- in the region as early as mid-2008, said public broadcaster CBC.

The detection technology is to be installed at Gascoyne Inlet on Devon Island, near one of the main arteries of the passage that links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the CBC said, citing unnamed sources.

MOSCOW, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - Evidence obtained by an Arctic research expedition this summer supports Moscow's view that a ridge of sub-sea territory that stretches to the North Pole is an extension of Russia, a government ministry said on Thursday.

In a statement the natural resources ministry said that preliminary data obtained during the 'Arctic 2007' expedition confirmed that a ridge known as the Lomonosov ridge 'is part of the adjoining Russian continental shelf.'

MOSCOW, Sept 20, 2007 (AFP) - Four Russian strategic bombers are to make training flights Thursday over the Arctic and the Atlantic ocean, an air force spokesman said Thursday, in the latest show of force by Russia's military.

Two Tu-95MS bombers 'from the heavy bomber regiment' will patrol the northern latitudes over the Atlantic and Arctic, spokesman Alexander Drobyshevsky was quoted as saying by state-run ITAR-TASS news agency.

PARIS, Sept 14, 2007 (AFP) - The Northwest Passage, the dreamed-of yet historically impassable maritime shortcut between Europe and Asia, has now fully opened up due to record shrinkage of Arctic sea ice, the European Space Agency (ESA) said on Friday.

It released a mosaic of images, taken in early September by a radar aboard its Envisat satellite, which showed that ice retreat in the Arctic had reached record levels since satellite monitoring began in 1978.

MOSCOW, Sept 11, 2007 (AFP) - Russia boasts 40 million tonnes of proven offshore oil and gas reserves, a minister said at an energy conference Tuesday that talked up the hydrocarbon riches of the Arctic region.

Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Alexei Varlamov outlined the estimate, believed to be four times more than proven onshore reserves, at an oil and gas conference in Saint Petersburg, the ministry said in a statement.

LISBON, Aug 31, 2007 (AFP) - Norway will treat the territorial issue of the North Pole in a 'responsible' manner, according to international rules, the country's foreign minister said Friday.

Competing claims over Arctic territory by numerous countries, including Canada, Denmark and the United States, have sharpened since a Russian submarine planted a flag on the North Pole seabed on August 2.

'We have to be responsible coastal states,' said Jonas Gahs Stoere during a press conference in Lisbon with his Portugese counterpart Luis Amado.

LONGYEARBYEN, Norway, Aug 31, 2007 (AFP) - The Svalbard archipelago near the North Pole is already seeing the dramatic effects of global warming: the mercury is rising twice as fast as elsewhere on the planet, posing a serious threat to the ecosystem.

The Arctic sea ice has never been as small as it is now. This year, it shrank to less than five million square kilometers (1.93 million square miles) -- a grim record for the planet.

BARENTSBURG, Norway, Aug 31, 2007 (AFP) - The statue of Lenin and the hammer and sickle emblems that adorn the Russian enclave of Barentsburg, in Norwegian territory near the North Pole, are potent reminders of Moscow's longstanding claim to the Arctic.

Barentsburg, located in the Svalbard archipelago, has been a Russian mining town since 1932. None of the 500 residents who live here today are Norwegian or even speak the language.