Tag Archives: Norway

Spain, Ireland, and Norway to back Palestinian State as ICC pursues arrest of Netanyahu

Emily-Hand-8-year-old-Irish-Israeli-girl-kidnapped-by-Hamas

Important Takeaways:

  • Norway, Ireland, Spain to Recognize Palestinian State; Israel Fights Efforts to Handcuff Jewish State
  • From the International Criminal Court at The Hague to the frontlines at Rafah, Israel is fighting battles on multiple fronts as nations take sides on the ICC’s decision to push for the arrest of Israeli leaders and three countries decide to recognize a Palestinian state.
  • Norway, Ireland, and Spain all announced Wednesday that they would give recognition to a Palestinian state, even as Israel is fighting to destroy the fighting capability of Hamas in Gaza.
  • Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris stated, “Each of us will now undertake whatever national steps are necessary to give effect to that decision. In the lead-up to today’s announcement, I’ve spoken with a number of other leaders and counterparts, and I’m confident that further countries will join us in taking this important step in the coming weeks.”
  • The announcement comes after this week’s decision by the ICC to consider arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
  • Norway’s government declared Tuesday that if warrants are issued, they would enforce them.

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Joining forces as a single fleet Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark to deter Moscow

Norwegian F-35 fighter

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark struck a deal to run their 200+ advanced fighter jets as a single fleet, creating a new headache for Russia
  • The four Nordic countries agreed to operate their roughly 250 fighter jets in one fleet.
  • Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark, have modern air forces that include F-35s.
  • They joined forces hoping to deter Russia.
  • “The ultimate goal is to be able to operate seamlessly together as one force by developing a Nordic concept for joint air operations based on already known NATO methodology,” Denmark’s air force said in a statement, per Bloomberg.
  • “Our combined fleet can be compared to a large European country,” commander of the Danish air force, Major General Jan Dam, told Reuters.

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Satellites detect Russian Bombers 20 miles from Norway border

Revelations 6:3-4 “when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • STRIKE FORCE Putin deploys 11 nuclear bombers just 20 miles from Nato border as Russia warns of apocalyptic World War 3
  • American satellite operator Planet Labs detected “an increased presence” of Russian TU-160 and TU-95 strategic bombers less than 20 miles from the border with Norway.
  • A satellite image taken on October 7 shows seven Tu-160 strategic bombers and four Tu-95 aircraft at the Russian airbase Olenya on the Kolskyi Peninsula, reported Faktisk.
  • And two days later, another image shows one of the Tu-160 bombers ready to take off on the runway.
  • Tu-160 jets, the largest and heaviest Mach 2 warplanes ever made, are capable of flying 7,500 miles non-stop, without refueling.
  • The strategic bombers can carry up to 12 short-range nuclear missiles

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NATO war games in Norway begin in show of strength between alliance members

Revelations 6:3-4 “ when he opened the second seal, I heard the second living creature say, “Come!” 4 And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth, so that people should slay one another, and he was given a great sword.

Important Takeaways:

  • BATTLEFRONT NATO masses 30,000 troops & 50 warships for huge war games on Russia’s border risking Putin’s ‘roid rage’ wrath
  • The drill, named Cold Response, has kicked off today in Norway amid escalating tensions between Russia and the West over the invasion of Ukraine.
  • The exercise includes 30,000 troops from more than 25 countries from Europe and North America, 200 aircraft, and 50 vessels.
  • The aim of the drill is to test how Norway and Alliance members would work together on land, in the air, and at sea in line with Article 5 of NATO’s charter
  • “Even if just a single toecap of a Russian soldier steps into NATO territory, then it will be war with Russia and NATO would respond.
  • “That hasn’t changed throughout this conflict and there would be a significant response from NATO if there was any kind of attack from Russia

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Man kills several people in Norway in bow and arrow attacks, police say

OSLO (Reuters) -A man using a bow and arrow killed several people and wounded others in attacks in the Norwegian town of Kongsberg on Wednesday, local police said.

“The man has been apprehended … from the information we now have, this person carried out these actions alone,” police chief Oeyvind Aas told reporters.

“Several people have been injured and several are dead,” Aas said. He declined to comment on the number of casualties.

The attacks took place over “a large area” of Kongsberg, a municipality of about 28,000 people in southeastern Norway, 68 km (42 miles) from the capital, Oslo.

Following the attacks, the police directorate said it had immediately ordered officers nationwide to carry firearms. Norwegian police are normally unarmed but officers have access to guns and rifles when needed.

“This is an extra precaution. The police have no indication so far that there is a change in the national threat level,” the directorate said in a statement.

Norway’s minister of justice and public security, Monica Maeland, has received updates on the attacks and was closely monitoring the situation, the ministry said.

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Peter Cooney)

Denmark and Norway to shut embassies in Afghanistan, evacuate staff

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) -Denmark and Norway are closing their embassies in Kabul for now and evacuating their staff as the security situation worsens in Afghanistan, the Nordic countries said on Friday.

The Taliban tightened their grip on Afghanistan on Friday, wresting control of its second and third biggest cities while Western embassies prepared to send in troops to help evacuate staff from the capital.

“We have decided to temporarily close our embassy in Kabul,” Danish Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod told journalists, adding that the evacuation would be closely coordinated with Norway, with which it shares a compound.

Norway’s Foreign Minister Ine Soreide later said it would also shut its embassy and evacuate Norwegian diplomats, local employees and their close relatives.

Finland will organize a charter flight to evacuate 130 Afghans, including staff who had worked for Finland, the European Union or NATO and their close relatives, Finnish Foreign Minister Pekka Haavisto said in a statement.

The Finnish embassy in Kabul would remain open for now.

The defeats have fueled concern that Afghanistan’s U.S.-backed government could fall to the insurgents within weeks as international forces complete their withdrawal after 20 years of war.

(Reporting by Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen and Gwladys Fouche in Oslo; Editing by Kevin Liffey, Jonathan Oatis and Richard Chang)

Denmark, Norway temporarily suspend AstraZeneca COVID shots after blood clot reports

By Nikolaj Skydsgaard and Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Health authorities in Denmark and Norway said on Thursday they had temporarily suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine shots after reports of the formation of blood clots in some who have been vaccinated.

The move comes after Austria stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca shots while investigating a death from coagulation disorders and an illness from a pulmonary embolism.

Danish health authorities said the country’s decision to suspend the shots for two weeks came after a 60-year old woman in Denmark, who was given an AstraZeneca shot from the same batch that was used in Austria, formed a blood clot and died.

Danish authorities said they had responded “to reports of possible serious side effects, both from Denmark and other European countries.”

“It is currently not possible to conclude whether there is a link. We are acting early, it needs to be thoroughly investigated,” Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said on Twitter.

The vaccine would be suspended for 14 days in Denmark.

“This is a cautionary decision,” Geir Bukholm, director of infection prevention and control at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (FHI), told a news conference.

FHI did not say how long the suspension would last.

“We … await information to see if there is a link between the vaccination and this case with a blood clot,” Bukholm said.

Also on Thursday, Italy said it would suspend use of an AstraZeneca batch that was different to the one used in Austria.

Some health experts said there was little evidence to suggest the AstraZeneca vaccine should not be administered and that the cases of blood clots corresponded with the rate of such cases in the general population.

“This is a super-cautious approach based on some isolated reports in Europe,” Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told Reuters.

“The problem with spontaneous reports of suspected adverse reactions to a vaccine are the enormous difficulty of distinguishing a causal effect from a coincidence,” he said, adding that the COVID-19 disease was very strongly associated with blood clotting.

AstraZeneca on Thursday told Reuters in a written statement the safety of its vaccine had been extensively studied in human trials and peer-reviewed data had confirmed the vaccine was generally well tolerated.

The drugmaker said earlier this week its shots were subject to strict and rigorous quality controls and that there had been “no confirmed serious adverse events associated with the vaccine.” It said it was in contact with Austrian authorities and would fully support their investigation.

The European Union’s drug regulator, the European Medicines Agency (EMA), said on Wednesday there was no evidence so far linking AstraZeneca to the two cases in Austria.

It said the number of thromboembolic events – marked by the formation of blood clots – in people who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine is no higher than that seen in the general population, with 22 cases of such events being reported among the 3 million people who have received it as of March 9.

EMA was not immediately available for comment on Thursday.

Four other countries – Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Latvia – have stopped inoculations from the batch while investigations continue, the EMA said.

The batch of 1 million doses went to 17 EU countries.

Swedish authorities said they did not find sufficient evidence to stop vaccination with AstraZeneca’s vaccine. Sweden has found two cases of “thromboembolic events” in connection with AstraZeneca’s vaccine and about ten for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

“We see no reason to revise our recommendation,” Veronica Arthurson, head of drug safety at the Swedish Medical Products Agency, told a news conference. “There is nothing to indicate that the vaccine causes this type of blood clots.”

Spain on Thursday said it had not registered any cases of blood clots related to AstraZeneca’s vaccine so far and would continue administering the shots.

(Additional reporting by Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt, Johan Ahlander in Stockholm, Victoria Klesty in Oslo and Kate Kelland in London. Editing by Alex Richardson, Nick Macfie and Bernadette Baum)

Norway to close borders to all but essential visits, says PM

OSLO (Reuters) – Norway will close its borders to all but essential visitors, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said on Wednesday, tightening further some of the toughest travel restrictions in Europe.

“In practice, the border will be closed to anyone not living in Norway,” Solberg told a news conference.

While exceptions will apply to a few groups, including health workers from some countries, most migrant labor will be prevented from coming, she said.

“What we see is that the mutated virus has spread significantly in many countries that do not monitor the extent of mutations in the same way as Norway, Denmark and Britain do,” said Solberg of the reasons why the latest measures were introduced.

The non-EU country on Saturday announced a lockdown of its capital region after an outbreak of a more contagious coronavirus variant, first identified in Britain.

Among the measures introduced on Jan 23., non-essential stores in and around Oslo are currently closed for the first time in the pandemic.

Norway is seeing declining levels of infections by the coronavirus however, said Solberg. The county’s reproduction rate, which indicates how many people on average an infected person transmits the virus to, stands at 0.6, she added.

Norway has one of the lowest rates of new infections in Europe per 100,000 inhabitants, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.

While sailors on merchant ships are still permitted to travel, the Norwegian Shipowners’ Association (NSA) questioned the prime minister’s plan.

“This will be very challenging,” NSA Chief Executive Harald Solberg said.

“We need rapid decisions on, and improvements to, compensations for all those who will now face the consequences,” he said.

(Reporting by Gwladys Fouche and Terje Solsvik; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

Missing people presumed dead after Norway landslide, police chief says

OSLO (Reuters) – Norwegian rescue workers gave up hope on Tuesday of finding more survivors from a Dec. 30 landslide that swept away a dozen buildings but vowed to continue the search for three people who are still missing.

Seven men, women and children have so far been found dead after a landslide struck a residential area in the municipality of Gjerdrum, some 30 km (19 miles) north of the capital, Oslo.

“While we no longer have hope of finding survivors, we’re not ending the search,” police chief Ida Melbo Oeystese told a news conference.

Police and other rescue workers used dogs, drones and helicopters, including heat-seeking equipment, to search for survivors in the debris.

The landslide and the rescue effort have gripped the Nordic nation of 5.4 million, but with temperatures well below freezing, the hope of finding anyone alive had rapidly faded.

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

WHO’s Tedros says ‘vaccine nationalism’ would prolong pandemic

By Stephanie Nebehay and Emma Farge

GENEVA (Reuters) – WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Friday that “vaccine nationalism” would only slow the effort to quash the pandemic and called for vaccines to be used fairly and effectively.

Tedros said 78 high-income countries had now joined the “COVAX” global vaccine allocation plan, bringing the total to 170 countries, and the “number is growing”. He urged others to join by the Sept. 18 deadline for binding commitments.

Joining the plan guaranteed those countries access to the world’s largest portfolio of vaccines, with nine candidates currently in the pipeline, he said, adding that a further four were “promising”.

The WHO and the GAVI vaccine alliance are leading the COVAX facility, aimed at helping buy and distribute vaccination shots fairly around the world.

But some countries that have secured their own supplies through bilateral deals, including the United States, have said they will not join COVAX.

“Vaccine nationalism will prolong the pandemic, not shorten it,” Tedros told a WHO briefing in Geneva, without mentioning any specific countries.

“If and when we have an effective vaccine, we must also use it effectively … In other words, the first priority must be to vaccinate some people in all countries, rather than all people in some countries,” he said, adding that priority should be given to healthcare workers, the elderly and those with underlying conditions.

Tedros thanked Germany, Japan, Norway and the European Commission for joining COVAX during the last week.

“Certainly by the middle of 2021 we should start to see some vaccines actually moving into countries and populations,” said WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan, reiterating earlier comments.

Noting that there were 13 experimental vaccines currently in clinical trails, Swaminathan called it an “optimistic scenario” since the typical success rate of 10% could mean several vaccines are approved.

But Swaminathan said that no vaccine should be approved for a worldwide rollout until it had undergone sufficient scrutiny.

“No vaccine is going to be mass-deployed until regulators are confident, governments are confident, and the WHO is confident it has met the minimum standard of safety and efficacy,” she said.

Results were expected from some of the candidates already in phase 3 trials, each involving thousands of participants, by the end of the year or early 2021, Swaminathan said.

“We are not going to have enough for the whole world right at the beginning,” she said adding that scaling up of manufacturing would take time.

“Eventually there will be enough for everyone but it will mean prioritization,” she said.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Emma Farge; Editing by Alison Williams and Giles Elgood)