Free Republic

I confess that I halfway looked forward to George Tsunis being confirmed as ambassador to Norway.  He could have made for a highly amusing storyline on Season 3 of Lilyhammer, the hilarious Netflix Original series that satirizes political correctness in Norway and the clash of cultures between American Mafiosi and Scandinavian self-righteous niceness.  But when Harry Reid failed to shove him through Senate confirmation in the back-door deal last weekend, the handwriting was on the wall for the spectacularly unqualified nominee.  No way would a GOP majority next year confirm such an ignorant putz. David Matosko of the U.K....

Dozens of new oil projects in the North Sea and Europe could be shelved as falling prices force international oil companies to tear up their investment plans. Global energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie has said that 32 potential European oil field developments containing 4.9bn barrels of oil equivalent are waiting for approval on more than $87bn (£55bn) of funding. These could be at risk should oil prices fall below $60 per barrel. “Major projects and investment in the UK and across Continental and Mediterranean Europe could be at risk if prices stay below $80 per barrel, as over 70pc of the...

The world is changing and becoming even more dangerous — in a way we’ve seen before. In the decade before World War I, the near-100-year European peace that had followed the fall of Napoleon was taken for granted. Yet it abruptly imploded in 1914. Prior little wars in the Balkans had seemed to predict a much larger one on the horizon — and were ignored. The exhausted Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires were spent forces unable to control nationalist movements in their provinces. The British Empire was fading. Imperial Germany was rising. Czarist Russia was beset with revolutionary rebellion. As power...

Technology is cheaper and West doesn’t use oil to fund a welfare state Give Saudi Arabia credit: Whoever sets oil-production policy for the desert kingdom has guts. Unfortunately, the sheiks have made what’s likely to become a sucker’s bet.You know this part already, but the 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries last week declined to cut production, sending Brent crude oil futures tumbling to their cheapest point since 2009. The Saudis appear to be spoiling for a fight, trying to find out exactly how cheap oil must be to force surging U.S. shale-oil production to seize up like an...

A giant fossil sea monster found in the Arctic had a bite that would have been able to crush a 4x4 car, according to its discoverers. Researchers say the marine reptile, which measured an impressive 15m (50ft) long, had a bite force of about 45 tonnes (33,000lbs) per square inch. The creature's partial skull was dug up last summer in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard by a Norwegian-led team. Dubbed "Predator X", it patrolled the oceans some 147 million years ago. Its jaws may have been more powerful than those of a Tyrannosaurus rex, though estimates of the dinosaur's bite...

A recent study published by Swiss Credit shows that the Scandinavian countries are the countries of Europe where most social inequality is determined. The increase in inequality is one of 15 worldwide major risks identified during the last forum of Davos. Henry Milner is researcher invited to the department of political sciences has the university of Montreal, where he is linked to the research pulpit of the canada in electoral studies. In 2004-2005, i ran the pulpit in Canadian studies to the Sorbonne. He is notably admitted for his expertise on the Scandinavian countries and runs a summer school on...

The Norwegian paper The Local reported in September that asylum seekers and illegal immigrants (euphemistically called "persons living in Norway without papers") are over-represented in the country's crime statistics: Asylum seekers and visa-less immigrants in Norway are charged with twice as many crimes per head of population as Norwegians, but still account for a very small proportion of overall criminality, a new report has said. [Emphasis added] The authors of the report from the Norwegian Directorate of Immigration (UDI), in the typical, apologetic style of officialdom, felt compelled to add: "This is so little that it has minimal significance...

Outside Nato’s headquarters in Brussels, the national flags of 28 member states fly in a proud circle. Even after decades of defence cuts, these countries still account for 58 per cent of global military spending, giving Nato more firepower than any other alliance on Earth. Yet if Nato is a giant, it has often seemed a sleeping one - at least since the Cold War ended in a bloodless victory over two decades ago. With Russian troops on the march in Ukraine, however, the task of reawakening the Nato giant to face a new crisis has fallen to Jens Stoltenberg,...

A Norwegian director filming in Malta says he created scenes of a young boy dodging bullets to rescue a girl to start a discussion about children in conflict zones.

Millions of YouTube viewers have been captivated by the 'Syrian hero boy' who manages to rescue a little girl while under gunfire. Now a group of Norwegian filmmakers have told BBC Trending they are behind it. They say it was filmed on location in Malta this summer with the intention of being presented as real. Lars Klevberg, a 34-year-old film director based in Oslo, wrote a script after watching news coverage of the conflict in Syria. He says he deliberately presented the film as reality in order to generate a discussion about children in conflict zones.

A Norwegian doctor has been permanently banned from entering the Gaza Strip by the Israeli government. Dr. Mads Gilbert says he was stopped trying to cross into Gaza in October. He called the move “totally unacceptable”. Israel cited security reasons for imposing the ban. […] An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Emmanuel Nahshon, described Dr. Gilbert as a “Jekyll and Hyde” figure, hiding behind a cloak of being a humanitarian doctor. […] In July, Dr. Gilbert was one of the co-signatories in a strongly-worded letter denouncing Israeli action in Gaza, published in the medical journal, the Lancet. …

As military tensions with Russia continue to run high, northern European nations pledged to boost cooperation against Moscow. Defense ministers from 8 countries met in Oslo for talks. Norwegen Russland Kampfflugzeug Su-34 Eight northern European nations have pledged closer cooperation in an effort to counter a recent increase in Russian military activity in the region. The defense ministers from the Baltic and Nordic states, as well as Britain are holding military talks in the Norwegian capital of Oslo Thursday and Friday. They agreed to improve intelligence sharing and broaden cross-border air force training in the Nordic territories. The meeting comes...

Anti-racism activists in Norway have refused to participate in a Holocaust commemoration because members of the Jewish community were also invited to it, according to a Norwegian blog cited by the International Business Times (IBT). According to blog “Norway, Israel and the Jews,” Norwegian organization New SOS Racisme – which claims to act against racism – demanded that the "Zionist Jews of Bergen" be banned from attending the Kristallnacht memorial event held earlier this week. They "refused to participate in the Kristallnacht commemoration since a representative from the Mosaic Congregation [a conservative Jewish Congregation ] was invited. Yes, they balked...

The top secret Armata tank, which will be presented to the general public on the Victory Day anniversary parade in 2015, may be deployed in the Arctic. Yevgeny Chistyakov, representative of the Scientific Research Institute of Steel, a developer of the advanced material, said at the Interpolitech 2014 exhibition in Moscow that the new 44S-SV-SH steel armour does not lose its qualities and can be operated at Arctic temperatures. The Arctic may become a bone of contention between the major powers over energy resources located under the melting ice. Russia is already claiming its rights for a significant share of...

U.S. officials report that more than 1,000 foreign fighters are streaming into Syria each month as a United Nations report says that the terrorist influx has reached an "unprecedented scale." According to the new U.N. report, a lot more terrorist boots are on the ground these days as an "unbelievably small" — to use Secretary of State John Kerry's phrase — air campaign, which has taken months to do what should have been done in a day, has failed to achieve the administration's proclaimed goal: to "degrade and destroy" the Islamic State. More than 15,000 foreign fighters from as many...

Explanation: Raise your arms if you see an aurora. With those instructions, two nights went by with, well, clouds -- mostly. On the third night of returning to same peaks, though, the sky not only cleared up but lit up with a spectacular auroral display. Arms went high in the air, patience and experience paid off, and the amazing featured image was captured. The setting is a summit of the Austnesfjorden fjord close to the town of Svolvear on the Lofoten islands in northern Norway. The time was early March. Our Sun has been producing an abundance of picturesque aurora...

A Bahamas-registered cruise liner that ran aground in northern Norway a few months ago did it again on Saturday, in sight of the pier where it was to be moored. The Norwegian rescue services say passengers had been allowed to leave the "Marco Polo" cruise ship, which was carrying more than a thousand people when it ran aground in the Lofoten archipelago early Saturday. Rescues services said they were hoping to pull the 176-meter (580-foot) "Marco Polo" free at high tide late Saturday. Tugboats and a coast guard vessel had tried in vain to free the vessel by pushing it...

GAZA, Feb 6 (Reuters) - When entrepreneur Ahmed Abu Dayya first heard that Danish caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad were being reprinted across Europe, he knew exactly what his customers in Gaza would want: flags to burn. Abu Dayya ordered 100 hard-to-find Danish and Norwegian flags for his Gaza City shop and has been doing a swift trade. "I do not take political stands. It is all business," he said in an interview. "But this time I was offended by the assault on the Prophet Mohammad." A wave of anger has swept the Muslim world over the publication of the...

Witnesses say masked Fatah gunmen have taken over the EU office in Gaza City. More as we get it.

After World War II, the Marshall Plan helped rebuild a devastated Europe. The key word in that sentence is "after. Last weekend at a conference of donor nations held in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss rebuilding Gaza, following the latest exchange of rockets between Hamas and Israel, Secretary of State John Kerry pledged an additional $212 million in U.S. aid for the project, nearly doubling the total U.S. commitment (so far). The Palestinian Authority claims rebuilding could cost $4 billion. The aid is promised before the terrorist war against Israel is over and without a promise by Hamas or the Palestinian...