Mice hitched a ride with Vikings to mount their own invasions in the 10th century, research has shown.

The total volume of water that has melted from all of the world's polar ice sheets, ice caps and mountain glaciers over the past decade would repeatedly fill Britain's largest lake, Windemere, more than 13,000 times, according to one of the most comprehensive studies of the Earth's frozen "cryosphere".

It may have been boom time in the Square Mile, but not everyone was along for the ride. While the Footsie closed last night at its highest since last July, Cairn Energy was among the stocks missing out on the rally amid fears the oil explorer is about to come under sustained pressure.

Fifteen months after striking a deal to sell a controlling stake in its Indian unit, Britain's Cairn Energy has received regulatory clearance and can complete the $6.5bn (£4.1bn) transaction.

Investors hoping to cash in on an oil boom off the vast, untapped coast of Greenland were dealt a blow yesterday after Cairn Energy said that, after spending $1bn (£636m) and drilling eight exploration wells, it had failed to make a commercially viable discovery in the region.

Christmas books of the year

Oil and gas explorer Cairn Energy revealed more misery for its controversial drilling campaign off the coast of Greenland today as it failed to find oil in two more wells.

Life on Marsden

Environmental campaigners today accused a UK oil company of "breathtaking irresponsibility" over its plans for clearing up a possible spill in the Arctic.

Greenland said last night it would publish its oil spill response plan, in a move which could dampen some of the controversy surrounding oil exploration in its waters.

Investors in Cairn Energy were left disappointed yesterday after the oil prospector said a well drilled as part of its controversial Greenland exploration campaign had come up dry.

Scarborough, the Yorkshire seaside town known for its bracing airs and donkey rides, plans to reinvent itself as the surf capital of the North.

Outlook Having seen what happened to BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, one can understand why Cairn Energy might feel a little edgy about the protests against its drilling for oil in the Arctic Ocean off the coast of Greenland. But if an oil company were to write a masterplan for setting itself up as a big bad bogey figure, the way Cairn is behaving in its continuing dispute with Greenpeace would surely provide the blueprint.