Experts warn that there is great danger of avalanches in most parts of the country over the next days, but the danger is greatest in Northern Norway.
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Northern Norway under power blackout
- Wednesday, 13 March 2013 16:02
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At least 50,000 people were without electricity late Tuesday and Early Wednesday morning, after several faults developed on the power grid in Southern Troms and the Lofoten/Ofoten region.
Statoil to supply oil to new Finmark terminal
- Wednesday, 13 February 2013 12:12
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Norwegian energy provider Statoil and its partners have confirmed that they plan to bring the oil from the new Skrugard Field in the Barents Sea through a 280km pipeline to a new land terminal near the North Cape.
Western Norway under Flood alert
- Wednesday, 30 January 2013 14:38
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Norway's Water and Electricity Authority (NVE) has issued flood warnings for the whole region of Western Norway, due to high winds, milder weather and melting snow.
Norway goat cheese fire closes tunnel
- Wednesday, 23 January 2013 02:07
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A road tunnel in Norway has been closed - by a lorry-load of burning cheese.
About 27 tonnes of caramelised brown goat cheese - a delicacy known as Brunost - caught light as it was being driven through the Brattli Tunnel at Tysfjord, northern Norway, last week.
The fire raged for five days and smouldering toxic gases were slowing the recovery operation, officials said.
The tunnel - which is said to be badly damaged - is likely to remain closed for several weeks, they added.
"We can't go in until it's safe," geologist Viggo Aronsen told Norwegian broadcaster NRK.
Police officer Viggo Berg said the high concentration of fat and sugar in the cheese made it burn "almost like petrol if it gets hot enough".
The lorry driver had noticed the fire in his trailer and abandoned it about 300m (1,000ft) from the southern entrance. No-one was hurt.
Kjell Bjoern Vinje, of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration, said it was the first time he could remember cheese catching fire on Norwegian roads.
"I didn't know that brown cheese burns so well," he said.
Norway - Health boss quits
- Monday, 05 November 2012 00:38
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Bente Mikkelsen, who’s been at the center of a storm of criticism over health care in southeastern Norway, quit her top bureaucratic post Thursday night, a week after finally admitting to poor planning in the opening of Akershus University Hospital.
Mikkelsen insisted on Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK)’s nightly news program Dagsrevyen Thursday that she chose to resign after being offered a new post at the UN’s World Health
Organisation in Geneva.
She claimed she was not asked to give up her post as chief executive of Helse Sør-Øst, the state agency in charge of hospitals and health care in the area around Oslo.
“I received a very exciting offer within global health that I didn’t want to turn down,” Mikkelsen claimed on NRK’s nationwide nightly news program. “I was not asked to leave.”
Also appearing on the program was Norway’s new Health Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who was transferred from his highly respected role as foreign minister last month to take over the severely troubled health ministry. Støre had been expected to quickly fire Mikkelsen after years of complaints and criticism especially from doctors and nurses about her leadership.
Instead he claimed Mikkelsen merely wanted a new job after “seven demanding years” in the state health bureaucracy.
He also claimed she was “not asked to go,” rather that he was “made aware that she wanted to do other things after seven years in a very demanding position. We are now glad to be able to offer her that, and at the same time offer her position to a very good health leader.”
Mikkelsen will be succeeded by Peder Olsen, a former chairman of several divisions of Helse Sør-Øst whom Støre had removed just last month. His appointment is temporary, pending a search for a new Helse Sør-Øst boss.
While Støre and Mikkelsen tried to put the best possible spin on her immediate resignation Thursday night, few were sorry to see her go. Mikkelsen has been a hotly disputed leader and widely blamed for much of the trauma around massive hospital reorganization in Oslo in recent years.
The situation at the still-new Akershus University Hospital in Lørenskog has been critical since it took responsibility for 160,000 people that it couldn’t accommodate because of inadequate staffing. Several patient deaths have been linked to inadequate staffing and competence at the new hospital.
Mikkelsen finally apologized for the poor planning last week, and said she was sorry the hospital employees have had to bear the burden of it. The board of Helse Sør-Øst then claimed it still had confidence in her, as did Støre.
Health care professionals clearly did not. A representative for many doctors in the university hospital system in Oslo, Dr Christian Grimsgaard, told NRK he thought Mikkelsen’s departure came too late. He’s also skeptical about her replacement.
“She sat in the job too long,” Grimsgaard told NRK. “They (the health ministry officials ultimately in charge) have been too slow in taking our warnings seriously. That has led to problems at the hospitals and affected care for patients, especially in Oslo.”
He said it’s critical that more changes be made within hospital management. “It’s very important with change at Helse Sør-Øst now,” Grimsgaard said. “Mikkelsen couldn’t lead us out of the hard going she led us into. It was expected that changes would be made, but I’m surprised it took such a long time.
“The most important thing now is to get management who can rebuild confidence between Helse Sør-Øst and the employees.”
Prosecutors seek four-year prison term for mayor
- Sunday, 04 November 2012 06:09
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State prosecutors declared in a court in Lillehammer on Thursday that the popular mayor of a small mountain community should spend four years in jail for repeatedly assaulting a young teenage girl.
The mayor, who has had close ties to the highest ranks of the Labour Party, has admitted to being “shameful” but continues to deny the assault charges against him.
Rune Øygard, who is on fully paid leave from the mayor’s post that he’s held in Vågå since 1995, is charged with having sex with a minor over a period of two years and allegedly assaulting her as many as 50 times.
The minimum jail term for those found guilty on such charges is two years, the maximum 10 years if he’s found guilty of assault while she was still 13 years old.
‘High degree of exploitation’
Prosecutor Thorbjørn Klundseter wants to double the minimum term. “I believe we must raise the minimum term,” Klundseter said as Øygard’s four-week trial drew to a close this week.
“We’re talking about 40 to 50 assaults … the degree of exploitation here is high.” Klundseter also is demanding the Øygard pay all court costs on the grounds that he has “good personal economy.”
The trial has been full of lurid details about what many seemed to think was simply an unusually close relationship between Øygard and the now 17-year-old girl. It allegedly began when she was 13 and she stayed at Øygard’s home and cabin, often with his wife present and traveled extensively with the mayor.
Øygard admitted they shared a double bed in hotel rooms, but only because the girl was insecure about sleeping alone.
Klundseter scoffed at that, claiming that Øygard took advantage of his powerful political position and connections within the Labour Party, along with the fact that the girl was having trouble at home.
“It made it worse that he exploited a fascination she had for him, she was in love with him,” the prosecutor charged.
‘Unnatural’ relationship
He also doesn’t believe Øygard’s claims that there were no physical sexual relations between the two, although he admitted shame over evidence of sexually charged conversation.
“Is there anyone who believes he kept his hands off the platter, when he is alone in the same bed with this girl?” Klundseter asked rhetorically in court.
“How could he have spoken with her in that manner? He has had contact with her that confirms a romantic relationship between them.”
The prosecutor called evidence of text messages, Skype conversations and other contact between the two as “unnatural.”
Øygard’s defense attorney, meanwhile, repeated her claims that her client should be acquitted. She noted there is no physical evidence of physical sexual contact between the two, that the assaults described by the girl in court are “improbable” and that the prosecutor’s jail term proposal is “much too strict.”
Øygard has refused to resign his post as mayor despite requests from Labour Party officials that he do so. Under Norwegian law, elected officials can’t be forced out of office unless convicted. It’s unclear when the court will make a ruling in the case, which has embarrassed Labour and raised serious questions of political judgment by Øygard and others around him.
(Views and News from Norway)
Workers safely rescue after high tension tragedy
- Wednesday, 12 September 2012 16:20
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Two electricity workers in Norway were rescued on Tuesday after spending more than 24 hours stuck on a high-tension power line 85 meters above a fjord.
Six months for sex : Woman indulge with Pupil
- Thursday, 06 September 2012 11:44
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A teacher at a school in south-eastern Norway was sentenced on Wednesday to six months in prison after she admitted having sex with a 16-year-old pupil on a school trip.
Artic Islands rocked by major Earthquake in Norway's North
- Thursday, 30 August 2012 18:08
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A powerful 6.6 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Norway’s Jan Mayen island in the Arctic Ocean on Thursday afternoon.
Court asked teacher to pay compensation for sexual abuse
- Tuesday, 28 August 2012 11:06
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A teacher from Halden in south-eastern Norway has admitted to having abused her position to convince a 16-year-old pupil to have sex with her.
‘Too many fish’ in Finnmark lakes
- Sunday, 19 August 2012 22:56
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Many freshwater lakes in Norway’s northernmost county of Finnmark have a problem that likely would be considered a luxury most other places: They’re so full of fish that local officials worry they’re becoming “overpopulated.” There just aren’t enough people out fishing.
Calls have thus gone out for both residents and tourists to grab their poles and go fishing. The situation is so serious that local newspaper Finnmark Dagblad recently devoted a full front page to the issue, with a large headline reading "Struggling with FULL LAKES".
“We’re not seeing a lack of interest in fishing, but the quantity that’s being caught (in lakes) is lower,” Jørgen Eira Solbakke of the public property regulatory agency in Finnmark, FeFo (Finnmarkseiendommen), told Finnmark Dagblad.
FeFo manages outdoor resources like fishing on public lands in Finnmark, covering around 96 percent of the vast area.
Solbakke noted that fewer residents need to fish “to get food on the table,” and he’s also registered changes among sports fishing enthusiasts. “Now they’re out for the experience,” Solbakke said.
“They used to be out to get food, so we’re seeing the use of different equipment, different methods and different quantities.”
The trend away from fishing for the purpose of securing food means that too few fish are being caught in general, said Solbakke, who’s based in Karasjok. That in turn results in “overpopulation” of the lakes, he said, and leads to smaller fish as they compete against one another for food themselves.
In addition to urging more folks to go fishing, Solbakke and his colleagues are talking with local government officials in the hopes of easing rules that govern the use of nets on inland lakes. FeFo, Solbakke noted, is the official landowner on behalf of the public and wants “the highest possible degree” of fishing and hunting in Finnmark.
Local officials in Alta, Solbakke said, have modified their regulations governing use of fish nets in relation to the size of fishing stocks, and he views that as positive. “We’re in favour of measures that will encourage more folks to begin to fish, so that the lakes don’t get overpopulted,” Solbakke told Finnmark Dagblad.
Source: Views and news from Norway
Cow attacked Pensioner dies of wonds
- Thursday, 16 August 2012 10:09
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An 87-year-old man in eastern Norway has died after he was attacked by a cow last weekend. The accident happened on Saturday as Rolf Rudsengen tried to chase away two cows that had stepped onto his land near Trevatna Lake, newspaper Nationen reports.
Norwegian
