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Research boom in Arctic village as oil reserves draw big powers |
| Home | (The Guardian) - Lying barely 650 miles from the North Pole and shrouded in freezing darkness for several months of the year, the Norwegian islands of Svalbard make an unlikely property hotspot. Yet at Ny-Alesund, a tiny former coal-mining settlement on the west side, an international boom is under way. The Chinese have moved in, bringing with them two marble lions that stand guard outside their Arctic Yellow River research station, and so too have Japan and South Korea. |