Postal Service to allow volunteers in Alaska town to write 'Dear Santa' responses. Wide-eyed children around the world will be hearing from Santa's "elves" at the North Pole after all.

Barneys New York display gathers favorite `SNL' characters, elsewhere interactivity reigns. It's not quite the warm and fuzzy crowd one imagines around most Christmas trees, but Barneys New York is celebrating the holidays with a motley crew that includes Roseanne Roseannadanna, the Church Lady, Father Guido Sarducci and Wayne and Garth.

No matter if children are naughty or nice, they won't get a reply from Santa this year, as the US Postal Service has blocked mail to a tiny Alaska town that answered Christmas letters for decades.

US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on Friday said Washington aims to boost cooperation with Canada in the Arctic, as Russia and others eye its vast untapped resources.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ground-based interceptor missiles to be deployed in the western United States in 2010 will be able to shoot down long-range Iranian rockets, Pentagon officials said on Thursday, brushing aside criticism of the Obama administration's European defense overhaul.

OSLO (Reuters) - Environmental activist group Greenpeace blocked on Friday a coal mine in Norway's Svalbard archipelago deep in the Arctic, protesting plans for more coal production in one of the world's northernmost regions.

British explorers say within a decade North Pole summers will be virtually ice free. The North Pole will turn into an open sea during summer within a decade, according to data released Wednesday by a team of explorers who trekked through the Arctic for three months

British explorers say within a decade North Pole summers will be virtually ice free. The North Pole will turn into an open sea during summer within a decade, according to data released Wednesday by a team of explorers who trekked through the Arctic for three months

LONDON (Reuters) - Global warming will leave the Arctic Ocean ice-free during the summer within 20 years, raising sea levels and harming wildlife such as seals and polar bears, a leading British polar scientist said on Thursday.

Trains, planes and motorized sled manufacturer Bombardier on Tuesday unveiled the torch it created to be used for Canada's upcoming Olympic Winter Games.

NY lawsuit sketches Madoff's prison life: bottom cell bunk, mob boss and spy for companions. Fallen financier Bernard Madoff has plunged from his Manhattan penthouse to the lower bunk of a cell he shares with a drug offender at a federal prison, where he eats pizza cooked by a child molester and hangs around with a mob boss and a convicted spy, according to legal papers filed Tuesday.

NEW YORK/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Some investors defrauded by epic swindler Bernard Madoff on Tuesday added accounting firm KPMG <KPMG.UL>, JPMorgan Chase <JPM.N> and Bank of New York Mellon <BK.N> to a civil lawsuit in a New York court, lawyer Joseph Cotchett said.

NY lawsuit sketches Madoff's prison life: bottom cell bunk, mob boss and spy for companions. Fallen financier Bernard Madoff has plunged from his Manhattan penthouse to the lower bunk of a cell he shares with a drug offender at a federal prison, where he eats pizza cooked by a child molester and hangs around with a mob boss and a convicted spy, according to legal papers filed Tuesday.

Convicted Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff presided over an office fueled by sex and drugs, with late night "wild" parties that included topless entertainers, a lawsuit said.

Olympic flame for 2010 Vancouver Games lit on top of Ancient Olympia in Greece. The flame for the Vancouver Olympics was lit by the sun's rays in an ancient ceremony Thursday, heralding the start of the torch relay for the 2010 Winter Games.

LONDON (Reuters Life!) - As Britain prepares to put the clocks back this weekend, one of its leading historians has called for the UK to join the same time zone as the rest of Europe -- and leave Scotland in the dark.

OSLO (Reuters Life!) - Palms flourished in the Arctic during a brief sweltering period about 50 million years ago, according to a study on Sunday that hints at big gaps in scientific understanding of modern climate change.

OTTAWA (Reuters) - The multiyear ice covering the Arctic Ocean has effectively vanished, a startling development that will make it easier to open up polar shipping routes, an Arctic expert said on Thursday.

The 2010 Vancouver Olympics torch relay, already the longest in Games history, will break another record on Sunday when it visits the North Pole.

The Olympic flame began its first trek through the Canadian Arctic by crossing paths with a polar bear on the shores of Hudson Bay, local media said Monday.