Free Republic

A British cruise line has apologized to passengers who witnessed the slaughter of nearly 80 pilot whales in the Faroe Islands on Sunday. Ambassador Cruise Line guests arrived at the port in the capital of Torshavn, where a traditional hunt had turned the sea red. Hunters used motorboats and a helicopter to corral the whales in a beach nearby before dragging them with hooks and butchering them with knives. The British cruise line quickly issued an apology to guests who were blindsided by the graphic nature of the hunt, or Grindadráp in Faroese. "We were incredibly disappointed that this hunt...

The Faroe Islands, a North Atlantic archipelago between Norway and Iceland, were settled by Viking explorers in the mid-9th century CE. However, several indirect lines of evidence suggest earlier occupation of the Faroes by people from the British Isles. Here, we present sedimentary ancient DNA and molecular fecal biomarker evidence from a lake sediment core proximal to a prominent archaeological site in the Faroe Islands to establish the earliest date for the arrival of people in the watershed. Our results reveal an increase in fecal biomarker concentrations and the first appearance of sheep DNA at 500 CE (95% confidence interval...

A French academic, Valerie Niquet, a senior research fellow at the Foundation for Strategic Research, is being sued by Huawei France. The Chinese telecom giant has accused Niquet of libel, and, as @HuaweiFactsFR explained in a tweet on November 23 (in French): “In March 2019, #Huawei has filed three lawsuits for libel against a private individual. The complaints are against the authors of the arguments broadcast, and not the media that broadcast them. Huawei respects their independence and press freedom.” In a photographed statement in the same tweet, Huawei further explains that “The suits are only against the affirmations that...

And what a bizarre eclipse it is. Not only does this eclipse begin just 15 hours prior to the March equinox marking the beginning of astronomical spring in the northern hemisphere, but the shadow of totality also beats path through the high Arctic and ends over the North Pole. ... Already, umbraphiles — those who chase eclipses — are converging on the two small tracts of terra firma where the umbra of the Moon makes landfall: the Faroe and Svalbard islands. All of Europe, the northern swath of the African continent, north-central Asia and the Middle East will see a...

The European Union’s member states supported sanctions against the Faroe Islands, which could be an import ban or closing its ports to its boats, to protest the islands’ decision to treble the limit on herring fishing. … The move follows months of haggling after the Faroe Islands earlier this year unilaterally increased its existing quota by more than three times the allocations it would have got under EU policy, the Commission said. The Faroe Islands, a self-governed territory within the Danish Realm and not part of the European Union, says the EU rules do not give it a sufficient share...