The Russians have claimed the North Pole. No, this was not a matter of Spetsnaz troops in Arctic camouflage storming Santa's workshop.

The Russians have claimed the North Pole. No, this was not a matter of Spetsnaz troops in Arctic camouflage storming Santa's workshop. It was, in fact, entirely symbolic, a Russian minisub planting a titanium flagpole on the sea bed at latitude 90[degrees] 00' 00". Actually establishing a proper legal claim to the Pole will involve years of haggling with dense legal bureaucracies bearing names like the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf and the International Seabed Authority, not to mention other parties (Canada, Norway, the U.S., Denmark) with competing claims. Even the symbolic act was not all it seemed. Footage of the flag-planting shown on Moscow TV turned out to include spliced-in scenes from the 1997 movie Titanic, and two members of the minisub's crew were foreign tourists who had paid $3 million apiece for the trip. Still, with the apparently unstoppable upward march of oil prices to $100 a barrel and beyond, and with global warming making for more open sea between the ice floes, the Arctic Ocean is beginning to look mighty appealing to oil and gas prospectors. Trade may follow that flag, too: A complete opening of the Northwest Passage would cut 2,500 miles off the journey from Europe to Asia. Santa is going to be having a lot of company up there.