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India and Norway are embroiled in a diplomatic row after Norwegian social workers took two young Indian children into care because they slept with their parents and their mother fed them with her fingers – both widespread and normal in India.

Our offspring and culture is the most successful feature of the History of Mankind. Ancient Rome and Greece have nothing on Scandinavia of today, nor what we did some centuries after Rome came down. No, I'm not a Racist - and I furthermore am more than a true friend of Italy and Greece. But I do not believe there's a point in denying the fact that Viking Culture has played a major role in shaping the World of today. Have a look at it. Britain, North America, Scandinavia, Germany, etc. in one way or another, all were formed by the...

Explanation: Have you ever seen an aurora? Auroras are occurring again with increasing frequency. With the Sun being unusually dormant over the past four years, the amount of Sun-induced auroras has been unusually low. More recently, however, our Sun has become increasingly active and exhibiting a greater abundance of sunspots, flares, and coronal mass ejections. Solar activity like this typically expels charged particles into the Solar System, some of which may trigger Earthly auroras. Two weeks ago, beyond trees and before stars, a solar storm precipitated the above timelapse displays of picturesque auroras above Ravnastua, Skoganvarre and Lakselv, Norway. Curtains...

OSLO (Reuters) - A Norwegian of Chinese Muslim origin with alleged links to al Qaeda was convicted Monday of plotting to blow up a Danish newspaper that had printed cartoons of Islam's Prophet Mohammad, and was sentenced to seven years in prison. Mikael Davud, who was accused of leading a bomb plot, had admitted he intended some day to attack Chinese interests like the Chinese embassy in Oslo but he was charged only with plotting to bomb the Danish newspaper.

Vikings - or perhaps other Europeans - may have set up housekeeping and traded with Inuit 1,000 years ago near today's community of Kimmirut. That's the picture of the past emerging from ancient artifacts found near Kimmirut, where someone collected Arctic hare fur and spun the fur into yarn and someone else carved notches into a wooden stick to record trading transactions. Dorset Inuit probably didn't make the yarn and tally sticks because yarn and wood weren't part of Inuit culture at that time, said Patricia Sutherland, an archeologist with the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Other artifacts from the area,...

DNA tests debunk blond Inuit legend Last Updated Tue, 28 Oct 2003 11:36:10 CAMBRIDGE BAY, NUNAVUT - Two Icelandic scientists have shot holes in the theory of the missing Norse tribes of the Arctic. Agnar Helgason and Gisli Palsson say their DNA tests have failed to find any evidence that Europeans mingled genetically with Inuit half a millennium ago. Agnar Helgason The scientists made the statement after a visit to Cambridge Bay last week. Rumours of blue-eyed, blond-haired Inuit have circulated through the Arctic since the turn of the century. They were thought to possibly descend from a group of...

DNA study to settle ancient mystery about mingling of Inuit, Vikings By BOB WEBER (CP) - A centuries-old Arctic mystery may be weeks away from resolution as an Icelandic anthropologist prepares to release his findings on the so-called "Blond Eskimos" of the Canadian North. "It's an old story," says Gisli Palsson of the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. "We want to try to throw new light on the history of the Inuit." Stories about Inuit with distinct European features - blue eyes, fair hair, beards - living in the central Arctic have their roots in ancient tales of Norse settlements...

There are many stories of ‘Qavlunaat,’ white-skinned strangers who were encountered in Inuit-occupied lands in times of old. Stories of contact between these foreign people and Inuit were passed down the generations and used mostly to scare children to behave “or the Qavlunaat will get them.” This sparked my curiosity to explore both sides of the encounters from written records and Inuit oral legends to see if some of these events can be correlated. One must recall that these legends were passed down orally in the Inupiaq language. Inuit myths and legends of contact with other people were passed from...

Patricia Sutherland, a Canadian archaeologist, announced that she had found a 10 foot strand of ancient yarn in a collection of Dorset artifacts from Northern Baffin Island that were lying uncataloged here at the Canadian Museum of Civilization, where she is a curator. Since the Dorset, forerunners of today's Inuit inhabitants of northern Canada, at the time dressed only in cut and stitched skins, the yarn implied contact with the Norse. Now, as she studies of Canadian collections of native artifacts, she says, "I am finding new Norse materials every couple of weeks. It suggests there was a significant...

Norwegian Air has signed deals valued at $21.5 billion for 222 Boeing Co. and Airbus single-aisle aircraft, the carrier said Wednesday. The carrier ordered 100 of Boeing's new 737 MAX jets and 22 of Boeing's existing 737 aircraft. Its Boeing's largest order ever from a European airline, Boeing said. The Boeing order is valued at $11.4 billion at list prices, though airlines negotiate discounts, especially on large orders like this one.

Explanation: What's that in the sky? An aurora. A large coronal mass ejection occurred on our Sun five days ago, throwing a cloud of fast moving electrons, protons, and ions toward the Earth. Although most of this cloud passed above the Earth, some of it impacted our Earth's magnetosphere and resulted in spectacular auroras being seen at high northern latitudes. Pictured above is a particularly photogenic auroral corona captured last night above Grotfjord, Norway. To some, this shimmering green glow of recombining atmospheric oxygen might appear as a large eagle, but feel free to share what it looks like to...

This is astonishing beauty. One has to believe in God when seeing such splendor! Here's another time-lapse video of the aurora borealis from tonight in Norway: Aurora Time lapse from Kattfjorden (Norway) Here is the photographer who got these beautiful shots: Helge Mortensen Tromsø, Norway arcticshooter.blogspot.com/ I mostly shoot the aurora borealis/Northern lights in the winter season. In the summer I really enjoy the midnight sun and the incredible light you get. I take all kind of pictures but my sweet spot is landscapes that includes the ocean. I do bracketed shots if it benefits the image. But I...

Black metal band notorious for lyrics attacking Muslims nominated for Norwegian answer to the Grammys Controversial nomination … Norwegian band Taake have lyrics attacking Muslims A notoriously "anti-Islamic" band has been nominated for Norway's top metal prize. Taake are one of six nominees for a prestigious Spellemann award, despite a song that declares: "To hell with Muhammad and the Muhammadans!" "Norway will soon awaken!" read the lyrics to Orkan (Hurricane), on Taake's album Noregs Vaapen. The Spellemanns are Norway's equivalent of the Brits or the Grammys, and Noregs Vaapen is nominated for best metal album. Elsewhere on Orkan, singer Ørjan...

Norway’s Statoil has made a second big oil discovery in the Barents Sea in less than a year and predicted more discoveries to come in the region. The new oil find, called Havis, may hold between 200 million and 300 million barrels of oil equivalent (BOE). The new find combined with the previous and nearby discovery, Skrugard, could provide between 400 million and 600 million BOE, Statoil said yesterday (9 January). "This is extremely positive," said John Olaisen, an analyst at the Carnegie investment banking firm in Oslo. "This is an important strategic asset in a new oil region, so...

SNIPPET: "OSLO, Norway, Jan. 5 (UPI) -- A Muslim extremist leader facing terrorism charges from his Norwegian hosts said this week he's planning on leaving for his native Kurdistan. Najmaddin Faraj, who goes by the name Mullah Krekar, in the 1990s was one of the co-founders of the Kurdish extremist group Ansar al-Islam, which Western officials say has links to al-Qaida." SNIPPET: "Krekar is due in Oslo District Court next month to face terrorism charges, the news agency said. Should he instead return to Kurdistan, he won't be facing any charges from the PUK, a party lawyer told Rudaw."

Explanation: Higher than the highest building, higher than the highest mountain, higher than the highest airplane, lies the realm of the aurora. Auroras rarely reach below 60 kilometers, and can range up to 1000 kilometers. Aurora light results from energetic electrons and protons striking molecules in the Earth's atmosphere. Frequently, when viewed from space, a complete aurora will appear as a circle around one of the Earth's magnetic poles. The above wide angle image, horizontally compressed, captured an unexpected auroral display that stretched across the sky one month ago over eastern Norway.

A Norwegian girl was brutally attacked by her boyfriend as she refused to marry him. Twenty four year old Sulvy Leopreez Sakkur was severely beaten by her Egyptian millionaire boyfriend. The lady confirmed the news in an interview with Al Wafd newspaper. She identified her boyfriend as Ahmed AL Ajati, the son of Egyptian millionaire Yahiya Al Ajati. She said, “The reason behind this was because I refused to marry him and asked him to end our relationship". Sulvy said she feared to speak up about her ordeal for fear of being punished more by the businessman and his son.

A Swedish professor suggested Israel was behind the bloody terror attacks committed by Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik this past July, stirring up controversy in the country. Research professor Ola Tunander of the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) published an article in the Norwegian academic journal Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift in which he called to further examine Brevik's motives. According to Tunander, it is possible that some country was behind the terror attacks, hinting that Israel might be that country.

An acute butter shortage in Norway, one of the world's richest countries, has left people worrying how to bake their Christmas goodies with store shelves emptied and prices through the roof. The shortfall, expected to last into January, amounts to between 500 and 1,000 tonnes, said Tine, Norway's main dairy company, while online sellers have offered 500-gramme packs for up to 350 euros ($465)... Last Friday, customs officers stopped a Russian at the Norwegian-Swedish border and seized 90 kilos (198 pounds) of butter stashed in his car.

Norway’s Progress Party has called for the immediate arrest of Mullah Krekar after the firebrand jihadist spoke of the need for renewed terrorist attacks on the United States. The Norway-based extremist made the comments in an interview with Finland’s MTV3. He also claimed that Islam “will control the entire world” within the next 20 years. More than a decade on from the devastating terrorist attacks in the United States that left almost 3,000 people dead, Krekar said: “They have learned nothing from the 9/11 attacks. That’s why they need two more attacks. It’s the only way the Americans will understand...

While Norway is reeling from a severe butter shortage, causing some to try to smuggle the stuff in across the border and others make a killing on the black market, Swedes can relax in the knowledge that their Christmas baking is safe. Many Norwegians who live close to Sweden do their grocery shopping across the border where prices are lower, but to import butter has proven more difficult. "They (Norway) have, as we see it, very restrictive trading politics, borderline protectionist," Jonas Carlberg at the Swedish Dairy Association (Svensk Mjölk) told daily Dagens Nyheter, adding that the high custom duty...

45 of 48 rapes in Norway's capital recently were by Muslim immigrants. Norway is suffering from an unprecedented wave of rapes that are largely being perpetrated by Muslim immigrants against local women ... the "politically correct rot" prevents the rape wave by Muslims from being reported. "They are called 'non-western,' 'dark skinned,' 'Middle Eastern' et cetera."

Explanation: It was one of the most memorable auroras of the season. There was green light, red light, and sometimes a mixture of the two. There were multiple rays, distinct curtains, and even an auroral corona. It took up so much of the sky. In the background were stars too numerous to count, in the foreground a friend trying to image the same sight. The scene was captured with a fisheye lens around and above Tromsø, Norway, last month. With the Sun becoming more active, next year might bring even more spectacular aurora.

Psychiatrists assessing self-confessed Norwegian mass killer Anders Behring Breivik have concluded that he is suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. They believe he was in a psychotic state both during and after the twin attacks on 22 July that led to the deaths of 77 people and injured 151. Their report must still be reviewed by a panel of forensic psychiatrists. Breivik will still be tried in April but it seems likely he will be placed in psychiatric care rather than prison. Breivik admits carrying out the attacks but has pleaded not guilty to charges, arguing that that the attacks were atrocious...

The man accused of killing 77 people in a terrorist rampage that shook Norway last summer is insane and cannot be sentenced to prison or preventive detention, but can be confined to a mental hospital for the rest of his life, police said Tuesday. Anders Behring Breivik suffers "grandiose delusions" and "believes he is chosen to decide who is to live and who is to die," Prosecutor Svein Holden announced. Police said psychiatrists had determined that the 32-year-old man was psychotic at the time of the attacks and during 13 interviews experts conducted with him afterward. The doctors also found...

Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik is insane and should not be punished, an official report has recommended. The 243-page psychiatric report says the 32-year-old was mentally ill and therefore not responsible for his actions when he killed a total of 77 people. It says he has developed paranoid schizophrenia and should be detained indefinitely at a psychiatric hospital. Public prosecutor Svein Holden told a packed press conference that experts had "described a person who lives in his own delusional universe". He said the report concluded: "He believes he is chosen to decide who is to live and who is...

More boat trouble for Norway Navy The Norwegian military’s new MTBs have been banned from sailing for safety reasons. KNM Storm during gun exercise, Bergen Photo: Forsvarets mediearkiv Reports suggest the Mandal-produced Motor Torpedo Boats’ hydraulic systems cannot handle temperatures when at high speed. The latest episode is just one of several in a series of incidents that have beset the project. It was first discovered the vessels were not able to sail at top speed of 60 knots, parts have worn out quicker than anticipated because of gas turbine vibration problems, and there was a change in operational requirements....

A political row has broken out in Norway after a secondary school segregated students with ethnic backgrounds in classes away from white Norwegians. Bjerke Upper Secondary School in Oslo filled one of the three general studies sets solely with pupils with immigrant parents, after many white Norwegians from last year's intake changed schools. The controversy over the decision has highlighted the unease in Norway over how to integrate the 420,000 "non-Nordic" citizens who immigrated between 1990 and 2009, and who make up 28 per cent of Oslo's population. "This is the first time I've heard about this, and it is...

The aurora borealis, also known as the northern lights, normally inspires awe in those who are lucky enough to see it. But in Norway and Finland, the spectacular celestial phenomenon -- which is caused by charged particles entering the Earth's atmosphere -- is currently provoking mainly envy and resentment. A recent attempt by the Finnish Tourist Board to use the aurora in a marketing campaign has sparked concerns among Norwegians, who like to think that the northern lights are associated first and foremost with their country, that the Finns may be looking to muscle in on their territory. The tension...

Anders Behring Breivik, the self-confessed killer who massacred 77 people in bomb and gun attacks in Norway earlier this year, has claimed to be the commander of a Norwegian "resistance movement reivik's first public hearing before a packed Oslo court was the first time victims and family and friends of the dead had seen the 32-year old since he killed eight in the Norwegian capital with a bomb before shooting 69 people dead at a youth camp on the island of Utoya back in July. Anne Leer, a journalist in court, said Breivik looked his victims straight in the eye...

Why are cities like Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm so expensive? Simple answer: - Why are you so poor? To a 20 year old office secretary who works there, Stockholm is not expensive. She can easily afford a 79 SEK sushi lunch and then do some shopping before it's back to work again. She owns a chic French car and a €200 000 apartment and her dad probably owns two homes and a nice leisure boat as well as a summer house in the magnificent archipelago of that Nordic city. There is nothing wrong with Scandinavian price levels.

Once again, the real news in France is conveniently not being reported as it should. To give you an idea of what’s going on in France where there are now between 5 and 6 million Muslims and about 600,000 Jews, here is an email that came from a Jew living in France. Will the world say nothing – again – as it did in Hitler’s time? “I am a Jew — therefore I am forwarding this to everyone on all my e-mail lists. I will not sit back and do nothing. Nowhere have the flames of anti-Semitism burned more furiously...

Norway's capital Oslo has seen a sharp increase in cases of outdoor rape, with the number of attacks in 2011 already double the total for the previous year, according to figures compiled by newspaper Aftenposten. Police in Oslo registered 24 such cases in 2010 compared to 48 so far this year, Aftenposten said. Opposition politicians are again raising the alarm and making connections to “the porno generation”. An alert has been put out for a “non-Western-looking” suspect after the most recent attack. “It can not be denied that many of the culprits have an ethnic background with a critical view...

Can not excerpt or re-post Bloomberg. Text at link.

A reconstruction based on the skull of Norway’s best-preserved Stone Age skeleton makes it possible to study the features of a boy who lived outside Stavanger 7 500 years ago.“It is hoped that this reconstruction is a good likeness and that, if someone who knew him in life had been presented with this restoration, they would hopefully have recognised the face”, says Jenny Barber, an MSc student at the University of Dundee in Scotland. She has scientifically rebuilt the face of the strong and stocky Viste Boy, who lived in the Vistehola cave near Stavanger, so that people can now...

Ever been to Norway? We visited it this summer. Clean cities and towns, lots of hills and fjords, very green foliage, a really pretty place. Summertime temperatures were just perfect (winters hit 35 below). As "nanny states" go, Norway is just about the top of the heap. Supposedly, Norwegians are some of the happiest people on earth. They seem to just send most if not all their money to the government and they are taken care of pretty much cradle to grave. We did notice some things about Norway, though, that don't immediately meet the eye; that's because they aren't...

Chasing Norway’s New Stealth Cruise Missile By Andrew Tarantola on September 27, 2011 at 7:20 am This is the Naval Strike Missile, Kongsberg’s latest and greatest cruise missile, as it skims over the Pacific Ocean before tearing into its target on the far side of an island. The testing for this next-generation anti-ship missile took place off Point Mugu, California, in June of this year. According to Konsgberg, the NSM had only 1.5 seconds to acquire and positively ID the ship as its target before striking. The state-of-the-art missile weighs about 400kg and has a range of 100 nautical miles,...

A team of Norwegian scientists claimed that an explosive chemical reaction may have been responsible for collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11. They said molten aluminium from the aircraft flown by the terrorists combined with water from fire sprinklers and caused a powerful explosion. Explanation? A team of Swedish scientists are providing a new theory into what caused the World Trade Center towers to collapse on 9/11 The 9/11 Commission - the official probe into the outrage - concluded that the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001 because the planes flown by terrorists caused 'Total Progressive Collapse' in...

Two people were killed and at least nine injured on Thursday in a fire on a cruise liner operating on a popular route along Norway's craggy coast, officials said. Police said they received information that an additional four people were missing, but could not immediately confirm it. Nine people were taken to the hospital, two with serious burns and smoke injuries. The MS Nordlys, with 262 people on board, was evacuated after it caught fire at 9:20 a.m. (0720 GMT) before arriving in Alesund, 230 miles (375 kilometers) northwest of Oslo. More than 100 passengers were evacuated into lifeboats before...

Norway's Conservative and Labour parties came out on top in local elections that saw the populist anti-immigration party lose ground in the aftermath of the July attacks, near-definitive results showed on Tuesday. Jens Stoltenberg's Labour party, the primary target of the July attacks, received a wave of public sympathy immediately after the killings Voter turnout stood at 62.5 per cent compared to 61.2 per cent in 2007, in the first elections since the massacre committed by Anders Behring Breivik. Norwegian politicians had urged the electorate to come out en masse to show their disdain for the anti-immigration extremist's views. The...

Not long ago, I received a letter from Norway’s minister of education. She told me to be calm, honest, and to “listen to my child’s thoughts.” The letter was sent by way of the preschool where my 1-year-old daughter is about to start. In gentle tones, the minister advised me on “how to talk with the smallest ones” about what recently befell us. Throughout my life, calamity in Norway has been weather-related. An oil rig tipped over in the ’80s; a ferry sank in the ’90s; rivers flooded valleys; tempests hurled people into the sea. On the eve of July...

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer offers the second part of his series of essays on the Left in Norway. In this installment, he examines the left-wing community in Norway and its sympathy for various terrorist organizations. Part 1 is available here. The terrorist supporters of the Left by The Observer This is the second essay in a three-part series in which I take a look at left-wing media bias in Norway, the Norwegian Left’s fraternizing with militant organizations abroad, and undemocratic elements within the Muslim community in Norway. In the first instalment, ‘Left-wing media bias in Norway’, I looked at...

Police are to interrogate Anders Behring Breivik in more detail about his manifesto following this week’s interviews of English Defence League blogger Paul Ray. Breivik’s manifesto contains codes, believed to be coordinates of several key European cities. Ray landed in Norway on Wednesday from Malta for voluntary questioning, distancing himself from any involvement to the massacres on July 22. “He [Ray] has been questioned for a total of 15 hours. The topics have been his knowledge of the accused, other people, the manifesto and the coordinates, Knights Templar, and English Defence League,” said police attorney Pål-Fredrik Hjort Kraby to Dagbladet....

Qaddafi was pretty good to Russia. With Anglo-American oil majors barred from Libya by economic sanctions, the colonel ceded multi-billion dollar drilling contracts to state-connected Russian oil companies like Gazprom Neft and Tatneft. The Kremlin repaid him with dogged support when civil war broke out in his country this spring. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin compared the North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces supporting the anti-Qaddafi rebels to medieval Christian crusaders. Russian state TV reverted to full Orwell mode, portraying the bloody Libyan tyrant as a plucky patriot besieged by the heartless minions of imperialism. Now Russian commerce looks set to pay...

OSLO, Norway -- It's been almost a month since innocent Norwegians were killed by a lunatic obsessed with the threat of Islam. But the terrible tragedy has not stopped civil debate in Norway over the impact of Muslim immigration. Several weeks before the massacre in Norway, CBN News travelled to Oslo to investigate reports that that nation's experiment with Muslim immigration and multiculturalism had gone terribly wrong, that Muslim radicalism was growing along with violence and intimidation against non-Muslims. Islamists Target Women In the wake of the killings, some on Norway's political left call the fear of Islamization a "conspiracy...

Carl I Hagen, the former high-profile head of Norway’s most conservative political party, officially retired two years ago but quickly admitted that he missed politics and the public spotlight. He’s been making a comeback as a candidate for mayor of Oslo for Fremskrittspartiet, Frp (the Progress Party), and he just as quickly set off a storm of controversy when he could finally hit the campaign trail over the weekend. Carl I Hagen's own photo of himself on a social media page. His party isn't offering any fresh photos of their mayoral candidate on the party's own websites. Hagen and other...

Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik who shot and killed 69 youths during his massacre on the island of Utoya was attacked by a group of teenagers during his rampage. A report in Norway has revealed the Breivik killed one of the youngsters, with the two others fleeing after they had managed to hit him on the head. Breivik is believed to have sworn at the youths and aimed fire at them but thankfully for Movsar Zyamaev, 17, and Rustam Daudov, 16, they managed to escape his firing range. The report added that the group had initially thought the attack was...

In the wake of Anders Breivik's massacre of his fellow Norwegians, I was amazed at the speed with which the leftist media throughout the US and Europe used his crime as a means of criminalizing their ideological opponents on the Right. Just hours after Breivik's identity was reported, leftist media outlets and blogs were filled with attempts to blame Breivik's crime on conservative public intellectuals whose ideas he cited in a 1,500 page online manifesto. My revulsion at this bald attempt to use Breivik's crime to attack freedom of speech propelled me to write my July 29 column, "Breivik and...

A maniac disguised as a policeman went on a bombing and shooting spree in Norway, unopposed by responding law enforcement for a full 90 minutes. At this writing, eight people were killed by a car bomb explosion in Oslo, and less than two hours later, 69 people were shot and killed at a youth camp on Utoya Island. Per Radar Online, it was “the deadliest attack by a single gunman in history.” As expected, the anti-gunners went into full blood-dance mode. The Brady Campaign used the situation to accuse US-recognized firearms freedoms of being responsible for more carnage—citing several examples...

Rather than see it preserved in a Norwegian museum, a committee in Cambridge Bay, Nunavut would rather see the Maud end its days on the bottom of the Arctic Ocean. Maud Returns Home, a salvage group backed by Norwegian investors, is planning a multi-million dollar expedition to restore the Maud, a 1918 polar exploration vessel once commanded by legendary Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. The group aims to raise the wreck with special balloons, mount it on a barge and tow it through the Northwest Passage back to Norway, where it would be preserved in a museum outside Oslo. “This initiative...