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<p>The National Science Foundation says two technicians working on a fire-suppression system at an Antarctica scientific station were found unconscious and died.</p> <p>The foundation said Wednesday the two had been working in a building at McMurdo Station, which is on Ross Island. It says they were found on the floor by a helicopter pilot who had landed after spotting what appeared to be smoke from the building.</p>

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration is pushing to protect Antarctica's fragile environment by imposing mandatory limits on the size of cruise ships sailing there and the number of passengers they bring ashore.

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - One of the last shipments to a U.S. research base in Antarctica before the onset of winter darkness was a year's supply of condoms, a New Zealand newspaper reported on Monday. Bill Henriksen, the manager of the McMurdo base station, said nearly 16,500 condoms were delivered last month and would be made available, free of charge, to staff throughout the year to avoid the potential embarrassment of having to buy them. The base only has a skeleton staff through the long winter. "Since everybody knows everyone, it becomes a little bit uncomfortable," Henriksen told the Southland Times...

Two men, one with a suspected broken jaw, have been airlifted from the Antarctic's most remote research facility after an incident described as a "drunken Christmas punch-up". The brawl happened at the US-operated Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, located at the heart of the frozen continent. The station, where staff carry out a range of scientific investigations from astrophysics to seismology, is currently being rebuilt in a £76m project. After reports of the fight reached staff at McMurdo station, the headquarters of the US Antarctic Programme, which is located on Ross Island, a US Air Force Hercules was sent to pick...

1/8/2007 - MCMURDO, Antartica (AFNEWS) -- The Coast Guard became part of the Air Force-led Joint Task Force Support Forces Antarctica Jan. 1 with the arrival of the Cutter Polar Sea at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Home ported in Seattle, the Polar Sea arrived after a month-long voyage including stops in Honolulu and Sydney, Australia. The Polar Sea joined the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which began breaking ice Dec. 26. For the past 50 years, Coast Guard icebreakers have deployed to Antarctica in support of Operation Deep Freeze, where ships have broken through as much as 84 nautical miles of ice to...

PORTLAND, Maine -- U.S. Sen. Susan Collins and two of her Senate colleagues are headed to Antarctica to meet with leading researchers studying climate change. Collins left Washington Tuesday for what will be an eight-day visit to McMurdo Station. She's joined by fellow Republicans John McCain of Arizona and John Sununu of New Hampshire. <snip>

The make of jet plane that for years linked Christchurch to Antarctica has taken its last Ice flight. C-141s were the first jets to land in Antarctica and have transported people and supplies to the United States' McMurdo Station in Antarctic for the past 40 years. Although destined to become scrap metal on its return to the States, the last great old grey StarLifter to make the Ice flight was farewelled with much sentiment by Antarctic personnel yesterday in Christchurch before it flew back to the United States. "It's like men and their cars – you get kind of attached...

Adventurer stranded in Antarctica The first person to fly a home-built single-engine plane over the South Pole has got stranded in Antarctica. Australian Jon Johanson was forced to land his RV-4 plane at a US base when it ran short of fuel. But both the Americans and a nearby New Zealand base refuse to give him the fuel, saying they do not want to encourage tourism in the Antarctic.Mr Johanson flew over the South Pole after travelling 5,880 km in just over 24 hours from New Zealand. The adventurer had planned to continue to Argentina, but strong headwinds ate into his...