Thursday, November 13, 2025
Economics

New regulation on requirements for residential mortgage loans

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

The Ministry of Finance has adopted a new regulation on requirements for new residential mortgage loans.

The new regulation replaces the current regulation, which is set to expire at the end of June 2018. The new regulation takes effect from 1 July 2018 and will be in force until 31 December 2019.

The cap on a borrower’s total debt (debt-to-income, DTI) remains at five times the borrower’s gross annual income in the new regulation. Furthermore, the caps on the loan-to-value (LTV) ratio on residential mortgage loans and home equity credit lines remain at 85 and 60 per cent respectively. The amortization requirement for loans with a LTV-ratio above 60 per cent, and the provision that lenders should make allowance for an interest rate increase of 5 percentage points when assessing a borrower’s debt-servicing ability, both remain unchanged in the new regulation.

The regulation allows a certain amount of a lender’s approved loans to deviate from the requirements in the regulation. In the new regulation, this quota remains at 10 per cent of the volume of a lender’s approved loans outside Oslo.

When the current regulation was adopted in December 2016, the Ministry of Finance introduced requirements in the regulation specific to Oslo. In Oslo, the quota for loans that do not meet all requirements in the regulation was reduced to 8 per cent. In addition, the cap on the LTV-ratio on secondary homes in Oslo was reduced to 60 per cent. Both requirements have been retained in the new regulation.

In the new regulation, equity credit release agreements are exempted from the amortization requirement, the DTI-limit and the debt-servicing ability requirement.

Background
In June 2015, the Ministry of Finance adopted a regulation on requirements for new residential mortgage loans. The regulation was based on existing mortgage lending guidelines from the Financial Services Authority. The regulation took effect from 1 July 2015 and expired 31 December 2016. The Ministry of Finance extended and amended the regulation on 14 December 2016. The new regulation took effect 1 January 2017 and will be in force until 30 June 2018.

On 28 February 2018, the Ministry of Finance issued a public consultation on a recommendation from the Financial Services Authority to extend the mortgage regulation with some adjustments. The public consultation ended on 11 April 2018.

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Diplomatic relations

Norway seeking seat on UN Security Council in 2021-2022

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

Many of the challenges the world is now facing can only be addressed through cooperation with other countries. The UN is the most important forum for international cooperation. Norway has been a strong supporter, both financially and politically, of the UN’s work to promote peace, development and human rights since the organisation was established in the aftermath of the Second World War.

The UN Security Council is the only body with responsibility for maintaining international peace and security that has a mandate to make decisions that are binding under international law. For a country like Norway, which has a broad-based international engagement, it is natural to want to take our share of the responsibility. This is part of a long-term policy to promote international peace and conflict resolution. As a small country with an open economy, Norway has a fundamental interest in supporting the UN and international cooperation and in promoting respect for international law and a rules-based world order based on the UN Charter.

Norway has been a member of the Security Council four times in the past, most recently in 2001-2002.

Norway is now launching its campaign for a seat on the Security Council in 2021-2022.

(MFA)

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Media Freedom

U.S. drops to 45th in list of best and worst countries to be a reporter

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

Norwegian Finance Minister Siv Jensen, leader of the rightwing Progress Party, speaks to media at the Norwegian Parliament in Oslo, Norway March 19, 2018. REUTERS/Joachim Dagenborg – RC1804495D10

Norway is the best place to be a reporter, placing first for the second year in a row, while North Korea remains last, according to the Reporters Without Borders’ 2018 World Press Freedom Indexreleased Wednesday.

The United States fell two notches to come in 45th in the report that tracks media freedom and harassment in 180 countries.

President Donald Trump has continually railed against the “fake news,” calling journalists “enemy of the American people.” But he is not alone in vilifying the media. Czech Republic President Milos Zeman has called journalists “hyenas,” and President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has said reporters “are not exempted from assassination.”

“It means that we are not setting the example that we want to from home,” and encourages other world leaders to shun or degrade reporters in their countries, said Margaux Ewen, North American executive director of Reporters Without Borders. “We need citizens to stand up for the rights of reporters because it protects their right to know.”

Ewen’s comments were part of a conversation held by The Washington Post and Reporters Without Borders on freedom of the press around the world. The event included a presentation of the index.

The index takes into account the number of reporters who were injured, killed and jailed for their work, along with looking at the broader media environment, including self-censorship, legislation and transparency.

For example, Cambodia has closed dozens of media outlets, Vietnam jails bloggers for up to 15 years for their reporting, and in Malta, an investigative reporter was killed in a car bombing. Syria still ranks the deadliest country for reporters because of the ongoing civil war, and it is where American journalist Austin Tice is still being held, Ewen said.

On the promising side, Ecuador, Gambia and South Korea experienced regime change over the past year, which has eased tensions between journalists and governments, she said.

Reporters Without Borders has published the index every year since 2002.

(pbs)

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Africa and Norway

Sudan: The Troika Condemns Continued Clashes in Jebel Marra, Darfur

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

The so-called troika in Sudan (USA, UK and Norway) has delivered a joint  statement on the ongoing clashes in the Jebel Marra region of Darfur.

The text of the following statement was issued jointly by the Governments of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, and Norway.

The Troika (Norway, the United Kingdom and the United States) condemns the ongoing clashes between the Sudan Liberation Army-Abdel Wahid (SLA-AW) and Government of Sudan forces as well as inter-tribal violence in the Jebel Marra region of Darfur. The civilian population continues to bear the brunt of this unnecessary violence, which has led to the burning down of villages, causing high numbers of civilian injury and death, and the displacement of nearly 9,000 people.

It is unacceptable that the Government of Sudan has repeatedly prevented the African Union/United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and humanitarian actors from accessing the areas of conflict and displaced populations. The Troika strongly urges the Government of Sudan to immediately provide unfettered access to both UNAMID and humanitarian actors.

The SLA-AW leadership’s refusal to engage with the peace process obstructs the achievement of sustainable peace in Darfur and unnecessarily prolongs civilian suffering. The Government’s actions in military operations and its inaction in stopping the violence undermine efforts to achieve a peaceful solution to the conflict. There can be no military solution to the conflict in Darfur and the international community should consider imposing sanctions against those who continue to act as spoilers.

The Troika calls on all parties to the conflict to immediately cease all military engagement and hostilities, allow unfettered humanitarian access, and to meaningfully engage with the African Union High Level Implementation Panel (AUHIP) led peace process in order to reach a permanent ceasefire.

(MFA)

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Srilanka and Norway

Norwegians pledge cooperation to address environmental challenges

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

The government of Sri Lanka distributed drinking water at a very low price and giave priority to the investments made with the participation of government and private sector, SL Minister Rauff Hakeem said.

Minister Hakeem made these observations during a discussion with Norwegian delegation led by Norwegian State Minister Jency Frolin who called on City planning, Water Supply Minister and Sri Lanka Muslim Congress Leader Rauff  Hakeem at his office in Parliament.

During the discussion Minister Hakeem added that he paid much attention to protect the river basins and to identify new springs and get maximum benefit from them by developing them.

“Special plans are being drafted to keep the underground water clean and to purify the sea water as drinking water. As well as funds are pumped towards free education and health service, we also allocate funds to eliminate poverty”, the Minister added.

Minister Hakeem brought to the attention of Norwegian delegation that while earning foreign exchange through tourism industry, handloom textile industry and fish export, the present Government had implemented various projects to achieve economic development.

Norwegian Ambassador in Sri Lanka Thorbrorn Gawustadset said that the Norwegian Government will pave opportunities through the tour of Norwegian State Minister for the Norwegian bilateral cooperation between Sri Lanka and Norway, to address the environmental challenges and to promote the marine industry.

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Diplomatic relations

Norwegian Diplomat Kai Eide: Kosovo deserves more from the EU

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

Norwegian diplomat and former UN’s special envoy to Kosovo, Kai Eide, has slammed the EU for non-liberalization of visas with Kosovo.

 

According Eide Kosovo deserves more from the EU. He also says that it is hard to understand why countries such as Ukraine, or Colombia, have better deals on visas comparing with Kosovo. Eide asked the EU to have a more forward-leaning policy towards the Westenr Balkans, focusing on Kosovo. “Kosovo deserves more from the EU. Hard to understand why Ukraine, Moldova and Colombia have better deals.

EU needs a more forward-leaning policy towards the Western Balkans – and certainly towards Kosovo,” Eide wrote in his Twitter. He made the statement during an exchange with former deputy minister of Foreign Affairs of Kosovo, Petrit Selimi, who said that Kosovo had most conditions from all when it comes to visa liberalization.

“Important to be fair. As EU has liberalized visa regime with countries from Ukraine to Colombia, now is the time to deliver on promises to those that fulfill conditions. Kosovo had most conditions from all.  Visa liberalization is not a gift for us. It’s a sign that EU is fair and strict,” Selimi tweeted.

(gazetaexpress)

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Srilanka and Norway

Nansen will address 38-year gap in marine surveys in Sri Lanka

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

The long-awaited Norwegian research vessel, RV Dr Fridtjof Nansen, which sails around the globe helping developing countries set up ecosystem-based fishery management, will reach Colombo on June 22.

The Nansen, regarded as the world’s most advanced marine research vessel, will sail around Sri Lanka for 26 days, surveying oceanic conditions and fish stocks.

The ship is named after Norwegian scientist, explorer, diplomat, humanitarian and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930), who became famous for his North Pole expeditions. The Nansen Research Programme commenced in 1974.

This is the third consecutive research vessel dedicated to surveying marine resources in developing countries. The ships have made the equivalent of 60 voyages around the globe since the programme’s inception.

The first Nansen vessel surveyed Sri Lankan waters in 1978 and 1980. Since then, no such comprehensive survey on Sri Lanka’s marine environment has taken place.

In the last decades, depletion of marine fish stocks has been rampant. A major aim of the Nansen Programme is to help scientists understand the reasons for such depletion and provide data to help to lessen pressure on fishing.

“Most of the data about fisheries are extractions based on catches by fishermen. An independent study is required to assess depleting fisheries stocks and find out new fishing grounds. There can also be under-utilised fish stocks that can be harvested successfully, and research would help us to identify such opportunities,” said National Aquatic Resource Research Development Agency (NARA) Deputy Director-General Dr. Palitha Kithsiri.

While sailing on a pre-defined path around the Sri Lankan coast, the Nansen will lay nets and carry out experimental trawling at various points. The fish and other creatures caught in the nets will be analysed for detailed information on species, sizes, and catch quantity. As well, acoustic methods will be used to estimate the quantity of fish found in those waters.

Sampling will be undertaken on plankton, fish egg and larvae, jellyfish, top predators and marine life in the main oceanic zones: demersal (bottom-feeding fish in deep waters and on the seabed), mesopelagic (fish found in the intermediate ocean layer, 200-1000m deep) and pelagic (fish that swim largely in open water away from the seabed).

The onboard researchers will collect data on water parameters, sea temperature, and salinity, and will map the sea bed using powerful eco-sonars.
“So, in a nutshell, the research will collect data that will help to implement an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries (EAF), which is more than simply assessing fish stocks,” Dr. Kithsiri said.

The Nansen Programme is executed by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in close collaboration with the Institute of Marine Research (IMR) of Bergen, Norway, and is funded through the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD).

The Nansen’s 2018 research campaign began in January in Durban and, after taking in Sri Lanka, is expected to end in mid-October in Thailand, FAO program officer Roshini Gunaratne said.

“The overall objective of the programme is to strengthen regional and country-specific efforts to reduce poverty, create optimum conditions for achieving food security and nutrition through the development of sustainable fisheries management systems” Norwegian Ambassador Thorbjorn Gaustadsaether said.

“Norway, as a maritime nation, believes in sustainable development and plays a leading role in battling marine litter,“ the ambassador added. Plastic pollution of the oceans has become a huge problem: plastic and plastic microfibre being ingested by fish is killing them and has the potential to enter the human food chain through the fish we consume.

Global warming will change the dynamics of the ocean but we know very little about such changes. One obvious example of climate change is the coral bleaching caused by ocean warming.

While sea temperature fluctuations disrupt oceanic currents, excess carbon dioxide, believed to be the triggering fact of global warming, could create acidification by dissolving additional carbon dioxide in seawater from the atmosphere.

Fish species are particularly sensitive to these parameters, so it is expected that changes in acid levels in the seas would change fish movement patterns.

Changing temperatures in the seas could make migratory fish such as tuna, sardines and squid could shift their paths of migration and this would affect fishing catches.

Capacity-building is central to all the activities of the Nansen programme. Twenty Sri Lankan scientists active in the fisheries sector will gain the opportunity to be part of the Nansen programme according to NARA’s Dr. Prabath Jayasinghe, who has been nominated the local cruise leader of the Nansen.

A conference on sustainable development goals linked to the oceans will also take place as part of the visit of the Nansen.

Even fish favourites threatened with extinction
When we visit the market to buy fish from the “malu lella” we seldom think about how these fish that are free-living creatures can face extinction if we continue to catch them without set limits.Some fish, such as sharks, are slow breeders that cannot stand over-fishing. The increasing price of some fish varieties is an indication that they are becoming rarer.Sri Lanka’s favourite fish, the yellow-fin tuna (kelawalla) and seer fish (thora) are categorised as “Near-threatened” on the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Fauna – only two steps away from the more dire “Endangered” category.Some coral-inhabiting fish such as the hump-head wrasse are “Endangered”, along with elephants and leopards – but fish rarely gain the attention its terrestrial counterparts attract in conservation.

The ocean has different zones based on depths and particular fish inhabit each regions. NARA’s Dr. Palitha Kithsiri said the Nansen’s research will focus on studying the mesopelagic (200m-1000m deep) region, which is currently not much targeted in fisheries.
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Srilanka and Norway

Norway, Sri Lanka discuss promotion of ocean-based industries

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

The State Minister of the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Jens Frølich Holte will visit Sri Lanka this week during which he will discuss promotion of ocean-based industries.

Holte’s visit during 20th – 23rd June coincides with the arrival of the Norwegian research vessel Dr. Fridtjof Nansen to Sri Lanka, a Norwegian embassy statement said.

The research vessel will arrive in Colombo on the 21st of June followed by a 26 days research journey around the island.

“The research vessel will assist Sri Lanka in mapping her marine resources.”

Holte will meet senior politicians, ministers and members of civil society in Sri Lanka.

“This visit will provide an opportunity to discuss issues of mutual benefit and interest, including bilateral cooperation, environmental challenges and promotion of ocean-based industries,” said Norwegian Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Thorbjørn Gaustadsæther.

Norway has a long history as a marine nation, and there are considerable opportunities for sustainable growth in ocean-based industries in the future, the statement said.

Holte will speak at the opening of a regional symposium organized by the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development of Sri Lanka in co-operation with the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries and the Norwegian Embassy in Colombo about “SDG 14 – Life Below Water”.

Participants from countries from the Bay of Bengal and other stakeholders will discuss challenges and opportunities for sustainable use of the ocean.

The State Minister will also pay a short visit to Jaffna to learn about the outcomes of the long-term Norwegian support to sustainable livelihood activities in the resettled areas.

Before ending his visit, Holte will open a Business Conference on Blue Economy organized by the Norwegian Embassy, with participants from the maritime, marine and aquaculture sectors in both Norway and Sri Lanka.

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Srilanka and Norway

Lanka welcomes Norwegian research vessel

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

After about 40 years, the world’s most advanced Norwegian marine research vessel, RV DR. FRIDTJOF NANSEN, arrived in Colombo to survey Sri Lanka’s territorial waters.

Welcoming the research vessel to Sri Lanka at the Colombo Port, Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development Minister Vijith Wijayamuni Zoysa said the first Nansen vessel surveyed Sri Lankan waters in 1978 and 1980. Since then, no such comprehensive survey on Sri Lanka’s marine environment had taken place.

Explaining the importance of this survey to Sri Lanka and for the sustainable utilization of marine resources, Minister Zoysa noted that the survey would help to gather information about the fish as well as other marine resources and to form a basis for knowledge based sustainable management of the country’s marine environment and resources.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the research work in 2018 by the Nansen vessel started in January in Durban and was expected to end mid- October in Thailand. The ship would sail around Sri Lanka for 26 days, surveying oceanic conditions and fish stocks.

During the observation tour of the Nansen vessel, Research Group Fisheries Dynamics Senior Engineer Tom Williams told the media that the Nansen would lay nets and carry out experimental trawling at various points. The fish and other creatures caught in the nets would be analysed for detailed information on species, sizes, and catch quantity. Acoustic methods would be used to estimate the quantity of fish found in those waters while sailing on a pre-defined path around the Sri Lankan coast.

The on-board researchers would collect data on water parameters, sea temperature, and salinity, and would map the sea bed using powerful eco-sonars, Senior Engineer Williams said.

Meanwhile the FAO elaborates that the programme seeks to address the multiple impacts of human activities, including overfishing, climate change and effect of pollution on fish stocks in particular and the marine environment in general to preserve the productivity of the oceans.

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NATO and Norway

Is NATO Pushing Russia Towards Retaliation?

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

The United States and its NATO allies continue to find ways to antagonize Russia. The latest provocation is a request from Norway to more than double the number of U.S. troops stationed on its territory and deploy them even closer to the border with Russia. Granted, the numbers involved are not large. There are currently 330 American military personnel in the country on a “rotational” basis. Oslo’s new request would increase the number to seven hundred. If the Norwegian government gets its way, the new troops would be stationed in the far north, barely 260 miles from Russia, in contrast to the existing unit in central Norway, several hundred miles from Russian territory.

The rotational aspect theoretically complies with Norway’s pledge to Moscow in 1949 when it joined NATO that Oslo would not allow U.S. bases on its territory. Indeed, Foreign Minister Ine Marie Eriksen Soriede reiterated that assurance in connection with the new troop request, contending that there would be “no American bases on Norwegian soil.” Making their official status rotational supposedly means that the troops are there only on a temporary basis. It is a cynical dodge that fools no one—least of all Vladimir Putin and his colleagues in the Kremlin.

In addition to the move to increase the number of U.S. troops in Norway, major NATO military exercises (war games), code-named Trident Juncture 18, are scheduled for October. The focus of those exercises will be central and northern Norway, and they will involve thirty-five thousand troops, seventy ships, and 130 aircraft. Nevertheless, Soriede insisted that she couldn’t see “any serious reason why Russia should react” to Oslo’s proposal for an enhanced U.S. military presence.

She should perhaps receive credit for being able to make such a statement with a straight face. But such transparent dishonesty is a longstanding feature of NATO’s behavior toward Moscow. Even during the Cold War, Western officials routinely insisted that the Alliance was not directed against the Soviet Union. In their more candid moments, though, they conceded the obvious—that NATO was a military mechanism to contain Soviet power. Granted, it was not the sole purpose. Lord Hastings Ismay, NATO’s first secretary general, stated that NATO was created to “keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” The first objective, though, seemed to be the most important.

Containment of the Soviet Union made sense to keep democratic Europe out of Moscow’s geopolitical orbit, and NATO was an important component of that strategy. But Western leaders continued to apply that model to a noncommunist Russia once the Cold War ended. Indeed, they intensified the containment rationale by adding new members throughout Eastern Europe and expanding the Alliance to Russia’s border. Those actions were taken despite verbal assurances from Secretary of State James Baker and West German foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher at the time of German reunification that NATO would not expand beyond Germany’s eastern border.

Throughout the Alliance’s inexorable move eastward, Western officials and pundits insisted that NATO enlargement was not directed against Russia. Indeed, some members of the Western foreign-policy community argued that the move would benefit Russia by erasing Cold War dividing lines and increasing Eastern Europe’s political and economic stability. One wonders whether Westerners thought that the Russians were gullible enough to believe such absurd arguments, or the proponents actually believed their own propaganda.

NATO leaders continue to insist that the Alliance has no offensive intent against Russia or that the Alliance seeks to undermine Moscow’s interests. But NATO’s behavior belies such assurances. The interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo that weakened and eventually truncated Serbia, a longstanding Russian ally, was certainly not a friendly act. Stationing Alliance (most notably U.S.) forces and weapons systems in NATO’s easternmost members, (a process that has accelerated markedly since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014) likewise is provocative.

Yet Western leaders and publics act as through Russia has no legitimate reason to react negatively to such moves, as Soriede stated explicitly regarding the proposed increase in the U.S. troop presence in her country. NATO has conducted several large-scale military exercises in Poland and other member states, as well as naval maneuvers in the Black Sea near Russia’s important naval base at Sevastopol. Again, the Russians apparently are wrong to regard such actions as provocative and threatening.

U.S. and NATO leaders need to adopt a much more realistic attitude. Any nation would regard NATO’s behavior as decidedly unfriendly, and even menacing, if conducted on its frontiers. Continuing such actions while cynically denying their hostile intent could easily lead to miscalculation and a catastrophic confrontation. As a first step toward mending ties with Moscow, the Trump administration should summarily reject Norway’s unnecessary request for more U.S. troops.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign-policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at the National Interest, is the author or contributing editor of twenty books on international affairs, including five books on NATO.

(nationalinterest)

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Environment

Oslo’s got a new urban experiment in the works: “Airport City”

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

Imagine an airport you never want to leave. Architects are at work at making the wildest dreams of a captive audience of travelers into reality as part of an effort to boost Oslo’s international profile and local economy.

Plans for the 43 million-square-foot city adjacent to Oslo Airport Gardermoen were recently revealed by Haptic Architects and the Nordic Office of Architecture, according to Travel + Leisure. The vision for the 260-acre site includes about 11 million square feet of new buildings spanning the range of industries from hotels to cultural facilities, and amenities like swimming arenas, facilities for meetings and other business-related services, rock climbing walls, a scenic cycling path, and parachute rides — all no more than a short train ride away from the airport.

But the new Oslo Airport City is not just meant for those flying in and out — there will be homes and schools included in the scheme too. The airport’s surrounding municipality, Ullensaker, is one of the fastest growing areas in Norway and the government is looking to develop infrastructure and a strong local travel-reliant economy for residents.

“What we’re doing is creating an airport city with urban qualities that include streets, squares, and walkable spaces not blocked off by cars, in addition to building on the various sport and leisure qualities Norwegians are quite into,” said Haptic’s director Tomas Stokke to the publication.

Inspired by the government’s plan to begin flying electric planes by 2030 at the latest on commercial routes, the new airport city will incorporate a number of “smart” and sustainable features, including driverless cars — no other vehicles will be allowed in the mostly pedestrian city — and be powered by solely renewable energy sources.

The entire project is expected to take 30 years to build with the first phase of buildings scheduled to be completed in 2022. [Travel + Leisure] — Erin Hudson

(therealdeal)

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Nobel Peace Prize

Nobel Committee member: Trump is no longer ‘moral leader of his country or the world’

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

A member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee is condemning President Trump for the “zero tolerance” immigration policy that has resulted in separated families, saying that the president is “no longer the moral leader of his country or the world.”

“What is happening at the border where he is separating children from their parents is a sign that he is no longer the moral leader of his country or the world,” Thorbjorn Jagland, who is also the secretary general of a human rights watchdog, Council of Europe, said, according to Agence France-Press.

“He cannot speak on behalf of the so-called free world,” he added.

Many lawmakers previously supported the idea of Trump being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in convening a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un earlier this month. But Jagland and many other heads of human rights groups have spoken out against Trump this week for his immigration policy.

Trump is facing outrage from Democratic and Republican lawmakers over the policy, which led to the separation of approximately 2,000 children from their families from mid-April to the end of May, according to The Associated Press.

The House and Senate are both moving forward with legislation that would end Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, though it remains unclear when it may emerge through Congress.

Jagland also said that the decision to withdraw the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council on Tuesday is another example that shows Trump “does not want to be part of international treaties or international cooperation-based organizations.”

(thehill)

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Srilanka and Norway

Norway surveying fisheries resources and marine ecosystem

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

Advanced Norwegian research vessel, Dr Fridtjof Nansen will commence a three-week survey on fisheries resources and the marine ecosystem of Sri Lankan waters from tomorrow. It will cover the continental shelf and upper slope of Sri Lanka.

The last visit of a Nansen research vessel to Sri Lanka was in 1979 -1980.

The following is the text of the statement issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN yesterday: “The Nansen Programme is implemented by the FAO. The research vessel Dr Fridtjof Nansen is owned by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) and is jointly operated by the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research (IMR), and FAO. The research vessel that will be conducting surveys in Sri Lanka is the third state-of-the-art marine research vessel that has set sail under the Nansen Programme, which has been implemented since 1975. As the only research ship flying the UN flag, the new Nansen vessel investigates oceans, using cutting-edge technology and sophisticated equipment to help countries assemble scientific data critical to sustainable fisheries management and study how a changing climate is affecting our oceans.

The new Dr Fridtjof Nansen vessel, which began its voyage from Durban, South Africa in March this year, is conducting research. The findings are expected to be used to provide fisheries management advice to decision-makers, taking into account climate impact and pollution. It seeks to address the multiple impacts of human activities, including overfishing, climate change and pollution on fish stocks in particular and the marine environment in general in order to preserve the productivity of the oceans also for the benefit of future generations.

A team of twenty Sri Lankans, including seventeen scientists from the National Aquatic Resources Research and Development Agency (NARA), officials from the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development, and hydrographic researchers from the Sri Lanka Navy will be attending the survey in Sri Lanka. Some of them will also participate in the second phase of the survey in the national waters of Bangladesh. Since 2007, more than 360 researchers from participating countries have taken part in the ecosystem studies on-board the Nansen research vessel. This has provided local scientists and technicians with valuable experience in data collection and other sampling methods. In many countries, the Nansen surveys offer the only credible source of fishery-independent data for assessment.  The results of the analysis of the information collected are used to formulate regulatory and fisheries management measures.

In Sri Lanka, sampling using the full complement of technologies of the research vessel will facilitate the investigations on the hydrographic conditions (physical and chemical), plankton, egg and larvae, jellyfish, demersal, pelagic and mesopelagic resources, and bottom sediment. Opportunistic sampling for pollution (microplastics and food safety) will also be undertaken throughout the survey.

After completion of the survey in Sri Lanka the Dr Fridtjof Nansen vessel will move northwards to complete oceanographic sampling in the international waters of the Bay of Bengal including in Bangladesh and Myanmar before concluding its expedition in mid-October in Thailand.

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Environment

Norway’s energy minister to hold floating wind meeting – report

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

The energy minister of Norway will discuss the topic of floating offshore wind development off the country’s coasts at a meeting with companies on Wednesday, Reuters reports.

The regulatory framework needed to spur the sector is among the topics for the meeting. Minister Terje Soeviknes told the news agency he hopes to have a proposal ready in the autumn.

In December 2017, the Norwegian government unveiled plans to open one or two sites for the development of floating offshore wind projects.

The global offshore wind capacity surpassed 18.8 GW at end-2017, with just 2 MW in Norway, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. Floating wind is still in its infancy, but the technology is crucial for tapping the huge offshore wind potential in deep waters.

The world’s first floating wind farm, the 30-MW Hywind Scotland park off Aberdeenshire, Scotland, achieved an average capacity factor of about 65% during November, December and January. Norwegian oil and gas group Equinor (OSE:EQNR), former Statoil, operates the wind farm together with partner Masdar.

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Defence

Norway-US Defence Relations in Historical Naval Perspective

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

In the second week of 2018, Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg and Minister of Foreign Affairs Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide visited Washington, D.C., to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. In an era where the U.S. president has been reluctant to endorse NATO’s Article 5 commitment, the visit by Norway’s top civilian leadership in foreign affairs and national security (Søreide had also served as Minister of Defence before her current posting) demonstrates Norway’s top priority vis-à-vis the United States: alliance maintenance. By all accounts, the meetings went smoothly, without any of the gaffs that some observers had feared in the lead-up to the trip. Given the two governments’ drastically different attitudes towards domestic and international politics, this may seem unexpected. However, the Norwegian delegation chose their topics of discussion carefully: by keeping the focus predominantly on issues of defence and security, it appears they were able to align their views with the Trump Administration’s myopic obsession with NATO members’ defence spending.

This alignment should not come as a surprise. Within the long span of Norwegian defence and security policy, what occurred in January 2018 is entirely consistent with the country’s relationship with the United States – one with a distinctly naval character. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Norway realized neutrality no longer sufficed as a defence policy. Fueled by the belief that it could have held off the German invasion if only it had more time to prepare and receive reinforcements, Norway became convinced that its territory could be defended against a major power so long as it was in an alliance.[1] In early post-war years, it proposed a Scandinavian defence union, which was also supported by Sweden. However, whereas Sweden wanted this union to be completely neutral, Norway was convinced it had to be aligned in some manner with the Western powers – for arms and materiel, if nothing else.[2] This difference perhaps stemmed from the two countries’ differing experiences in the war, through which Sweden managed to navigate without invasion and emerge as the Baltic Sea’s greatest naval power.[3] When the United States extended an invitation to Norway to become a founding member of NATO in 1949, Oslo abandoned the Scandinavian solution, seeing a trans-Atlantic bond with the “arsenal of democracy” as a more reliable guarantor of its national security.

For the next several decades, Norwegian national security policy therefore hinged upon maintaining positive relations with NATO’s leading member. From the perspective of the United States, Norway provided NATO with a unique presence on the frontlines as the only member state bordering the Soviet Union in the High North. The strategic significance of Norway to NATO’s “northern flank” would only increase with time: first with the growing strength of the Soviet Northern Fleet based out of Murmansk through the 1950s and 1960s, then with the introduction of Soviet intercontinental-range submarine-launched ballistic missiles.

It is this latter development that most cements Norway’s role in NATO. Although the USSR had submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) by the mid-1960s, these, like their American counterparts, were relatively short-ranged. In order to strike targets on the American homeland, early Soviet missile submarines—both nuclear-powered (SSBN) and conventional (SSB) ballistic missile submarines—would have to run a gauntlet of NATO anti-submarine forces spanning the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom (GIUK) gap on their way from Murmansk to the North Atlantic. In this setting, Norway’s main value to NATO was mainly limited to that of a forward base for alliance intelligence-gathering assets, such as American U-2 spy planes.[4] But with the advent of longer-ranged SLBMs in the 1970s, Soviet missile submarines no longer had to make the risky run to the North Atlantic: they merely had to stay in the Arctic Ocean, where the ice-covered waters created a ‘bastion’ that prevented NATO surface ships and aircraft from detecting them. NATO nuclear-powered attack submarines would ideally follow Soviet SSBNs as they entered the bastion and, if necessary, sink them before they could unleash their deadly cargo.

This post-Vietnam period, however, also saw a relative increase in the number and quality of Soviet warships versus the West. Faced with the task of tracking and attacking Soviet SSBNs and the increased threat of Soviet warships interdicting the vital North Atlantic supply routes, NATO and the US simultaneously developed a new, more aggressive, strategy. NATO believed their best chance of reducing, if not eliminating, the SSBN threat would be to attack them as soon as possible before they could reach the relative safety of the ice cap. At the same time, this effort would also preoccupy the Soviet Northern Fleet, forcing it to focus on defending its SSBNs rather than attacking NATO forces elsewhere. This became embodied in NATO’s Forward Maritime Strategy and the US Maritime Strategy, the latter publicly unveiled in 1986.[5]

Knowing full well the enormous quantitative advantage the Soviets possessed on the Kola Peninsula—“one of the most heavily militarized regions of the world”[6]—the Americans and British proposed the counter-intuitive tactic of moving their aircraft carriers even closer to the Soviet bases: right into the Norwegian fjords themselves. The rationale for this was the expectation that the mountains and cliffs of the fjords would provide significant concealment for the carriers from the radars and sensors of Soviet aircraft and missiles. At the same time, the confined waterways would create natural chokepoints, making it easier for the carriers’ defence screen to detect any Soviet submarines trying to attack the carriers. Unexpectedly, this idea was put into combat use during the Falklands War, which saw Royal Navy vessels take refuge amongst the Falklands themselves.[7] In a way, this approach was NATO’s version of the ‘bastion’ concept.

From a naval perspective, a secure Norwegian coast was essential to NATO’s plan for reducing the Soviet military installations on the Kola Peninsula, and for countering the new Soviet bastion strategy. Thankfully, this bold tactic of placing enormous aircraft carriers (which need to be constantly moving in order to launch and recover their strike fighters) in relatively narrow fjords never had to be put to the test against a real enemy. Still, illustrating the seriousness of the concept, it became the centrepiece of the 1986 NATO exercise Northern Wedding and the 1987 Ocean Safari; the nuclear-powered carrier USS Nimitz operated in Vestfjord in northern Norway in the former, and the conventionally-powered carrier USS Forrestal went as far north as Andfjord during the latter, well within the Arctic Circle.[8]

And so, the final decade of the Cold War saw Norway fully and comfortably ensconced within NATO and American doctrine. The security guarantee it sought at the end of the Second World War had been achieved, embodied in the sight of massive haze grey carrier hulls sailing between the snow-capped mountains within Norwegian territorial waters, all the while flying the American flag.

But as the Berlin Wall came down a few short years later, American and NATO attention shifted away from Norway and the North. Unlike some other NATO members such as Denmark, Norway was reluctant to transform its defence policy and military forces to fit NATO’s post-Cold War focus on expeditionary operations in areas outside its borders.[9] A number of factors – including continual concern over potential Russian resurgence and domestic political parties’ disagreement over the role of the armed forces – saw Norway maintain a defence posture that became increasingly viewed as an anachronistic relic from a bygone age.[10]

But recent calls for reviewing NATO’s adequacy for countering potential Russian aggression along the ‘northern flank’ have put Norway’s strategic concerns into sharp relief. The Royal Norwegian Navy’s decision to procure the fast and stealthy Skjold class missile boats in the 1990s-2000s appears, in hindsight, a wise decision. Although only six in number, their ability to rapidly reposition and fight amongst the islands and fjords plays a unique role in denying attackers access to the Norwegian coast – hopefully, long enough to allow NATO and American reinforcements to arrive in classic Cold War style. According to one Norwegian officer with whom I spoke, two of these were able to disable a NATO naval task force using only their 76mm guns (despite the Skjolds’ primary armament being eight anti-ship missiles), illustrating just how tactically powerful these vessels are.

But the advanced warfighting capabilities of the Skjolds come at a high cost. Their speed puts high maintenance demands on their powerplants, drastically driving up their operational costs. At the same time, Norway’s decision to procure the F-35 stealth fighter—closely tied with their American-centric defence policy—has strained its military budget. As a result, 2016 saw the announcement that the Skjolds will be phased out in 2025 well before the end of their 40-year lifespan, with a rationale that the F-35s can perform the same anti-ship mission as the Skjolds.

Having invested so much treasure into an American-dependent force structure in the understanding that the US would come to its aid in a worst-case scenario, it is understandable why President Trump’s position regarding Article 5 would cause so much concern on the part of the Norwegians. Over a half-century’s diplomatic and military effort had been focused on securing and ensuring American assistance in the event of a major crisis. Having this cast into doubt in the face of a resurgent Russia meant Norway had to emphasis the single most important aspect of its trans-Atlantic relationship, even at the cost of sacrificing a chance to promote the liberal internationalist values for which Norway is known.

[1] Håkon Lunde Saxi, Norwegian and Danish defence policy: A comparative study in the post-Cold War era (Oslo: Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, 2010), 20.

[2] Eric S. Einhorn, “The Reluctant Ally: Danish Security Policy 1945-49,” Journal of Contemporary History 10, no. 3 (1975): 503.

[3] Eric J. Grove, “The Superpowers and Secondary navies in Northern Waters during the Cold War,” in Navies in Northern Waters: 1721-2000, ed. Rolf Hobson and Tom Kristiansen (London: Frank Cass, 2004), 212-213.

[4]  Magnus Petersson (2006) The Scandinavian Triangle: Danish-Norwegian-Swedish military intelligence cooperation and Swedish security policy during the first part of the Cold War, Journal of Strategic Studies, 29:4, 619; Central Intelligence Agency, “VIII. US Interests”, in Norway Handbook, No. 0625, May 1972.

[5] Eric Grove, Battle for the Fiørds: NATO’s Forward Maritime Strategy in Action (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991), 21-24.

[6] Geir Hønneland, “Cross-Border Cooperation in the North: The Case of Northwest Russia,” in Russia and the North, ed. Elana Wilson Rowe (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2010), 35.

[7] Grove, Battle for the Fiørds, 25.

[8] Ibid., 26.

[9] Saxi, Norwegian and Danish defence policy.

[10] Magnus Petersson and Håkon Lunde Saxi, “Shifted Roles: Explaining Danish and Norwegian Strategy 1949-2009,” Journal of Strategic Studies 36, no. 6 (2013): 777-781.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR ():

Timothy Choi is a PhD candidate at the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies. He is currently at Yale University as the Smith Richardson Predoctoral Fellow in Naval, Maritime, and Strategic Studies. His dissertation examines the influence of international law on the maritime strategies of smaller navies – specifically, Norway, Denmark, and Canada. He can also be reached on Twitter at @TimmyC62.

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Asia and Norway

Norwegian FM: Oslo backing JCPOA

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

The Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soreide said Oslo backs endeavors by the European Union to maintain landmark Iran nuclear deal. In a meeting with Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Ali Akbar Salehi, Soreide noted that Norway would back JCPOA seriously.

The Norwegian foreign minister expressed hope that safeguarding the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) could facilitate the way for settlement of regional crisis.

She noted that the withdrawal from JCPOA would bring about negative consequences for the region’s peace and tranquility, Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and would discredit the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Salehi, for his part, hailed Norway’s supports from JCPOA, calling for expansion of all-out ties between the two countries.

He also stressed the significance of EU’s political and economic supports from JCPOA aimed at gaining tangible benefits from the deal.

Criticizing the hasty reactions of some European companies to the US exit from the JCPOA, Salehi underlined that Washington’s policies are doomed to failure.

Salehi underlined that the collapse of the JCPOA would bring about irreparable harms to the global community.

Salehi is currently in Norway at the head of a delegation to attend Oslo Forum.

Oslo Forum brings together officials from 100 countries to discuss major international implications as well as ways of working for international peace.

Oslo Forum is a series of retreats for international conflict mediators, high-level decision-makers, and other peace process actors.

It provides a discreet and informal space to reflect on current mediation practice, collaborate across institutional and conceptual divides and advance negotiations.

From a modest gathering of mediators in 2003, the Oslo Forum has grown to become the pre-eminent retreat in the field of international peacemaking.

(irna)

 

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Srilanka and Norway

Norway commends SL’s commitment to promote HR

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

Visiting Norwegian State Secretary for Development Cooperation, Jens Frolich Holte today appreciated the continued commitment of the Sri Lankan Unity Government to strengthen democracy and promote and uphold human rights.

Mr. Holte expressed these views when he called on State Minister of Foreign Affairs Vasantha Senanayake at the Foreign Ministry.

In a statement, the State Minister’s media division said the bilateral discussions broadly focused on the sustainable use of oceans and management of marine litter, a shared interest between Sri Lanka and Norway.

The importance of maritime security in the context of piracy, poaching and drug trafficking was also discussed.

State Minister Senanayake recalled the important contributions made by Norway as a longstanding development partner to Sri Lanka’s economic and social development.

Norwegian assistance for upgrading Sri Lanka’s fisheries sector was especially commended. He also provided an overview of the progress being made by Sri Lanka in the reconciliation process.

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Politics

UN chief: Highest number of conflicts globally in 30 years

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

The number of countries involved in “violent conflicts” is the highest in 30 years, while the number of people killed in conflicts has risen tenfold since 2005, the U.N. secretary-general said Tuesday.

Antonio Guterres added that the number of “violent situations” classifiable as wars, based on the number of casualties, has tripled since 2007.

He also told reporters in Oslo, Norway, that “low-intensity conflicts” rose by 60 percent since 2007. Guterres gave no specific figures.

“Prevention is more necessary than ever,” Guterres said, adding “mediation becomes an absolutely fundamental instrument in our action.”

Guterres, who was attending a meeting on peacemaking, said that on top of regional conflicts, global terrorism was a new type of struggle that “can strike anywhere at any time.”

The annual Oslo Forum panel discussion on peacemaking also was attended by leaders from Somalia, Algeria, Jordan, Oman and Tanzania. The White House envoy for the war against the Islamic State also attended.

The U.N. refugee agency said nearly 69 million people fleeing war, violence and persecution were forcibly displaced last year, a record number.

In its annual Global Trends Report published Tuesday, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said the continued crises in places like South Sudan and Congo, as well as the exodus of Muslim Rohingya from Myanmar that started last year, raised the overall figure of forced displacements in 2017 to 68.5 million.

Later Tuesday, Guterres met with Erna Solberg, prime minister of Norway. The country is lobbying for a seat on the U.N. Security Council for the period 2021-2022.

Among the topics they discussed was the state of the oceans, which Guterres described as “a mess.”

At a news conference with Solberg, Guterres said 80 million tons of plastic were being dumped into the oceans every year.

He said the U.N. would come up with a “battle plan” in September for the oceans, saying there is a “collective responsibility” to do something.

The oceans face threats from plastic garbage, illegal and excessive fishing, rising sea levels that could wipe out small islands, and increasing acidity of ocean water, which is killing marine life.

  • abcnews – By JAN M. OLSEN, ASSOCIATED PRESS
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Srilanka and Norway

Norwegian Foreign Affairs State Minister visits Sri Lanka

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

The State Minister’s visit coincides with the arrival of the Norwegian research vessel Dr. Fridtjof Nansen to  Sri Lanka. The research vessel will arrive in Colombo on the 21st of June followed by a 26 days research journey around the island. The research vessel will assist Sri Lanka in mapping her marine resources.

The State Minister will also meet senior politicians, ministers and members of civil society in Sri Lanka. This visit will provide an opportunity to discuss issues of mutual benefit and interest, including bilateral cooperation, environmental challenges and promotion of oceanbased industries, says the Norwegian Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Mr. ThorbjørnGaustadsæther.

The oceans offer huge potential for human development globally. Norway has a long history as a marine nation, and there are considerable opportunities for sustainable growth in ocean-based industries in the future.

The State Minister will speak at the opening of a regional symposium organized by the Ministry of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Development of Sri Lanka in co-operation with the Norwegian Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries and the Norwegian Embassy in Colombo about “SDG 14 – Life Below Water”. Participants from countries from the Bay of Bengal and other stakeholders will discuss challenges and opportunities for sustainable use of the ocean.

The State Minister will also pay a short visit to Jaffna, where he will learn more about the outcomes of the long-term Norwegian support to sustainable livelihood activities in the resettled areas. While in Jaffna, the State Minister will open a fruit and vegetable packing center to the Palali East Cooperative and join beach cleaning in Gurunagar with local fishermen and their families. Before ending his visit, the State Minister will open a Business Conference on Blue Economy organized by the Norwegian Embassy, with participants from the maritime, marine and aquaculture sectors in both Norway and Sri Lanka. This conference will help to build new partnerships within the blue economy sectors.

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Media Freedom

Norwegian rights group expresses solidarity with jailed Turkish journalist

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

A letter written by Marina Nemat, a Canadian rights activist, writer and chair of the Oslo-based Vigdis Freedom Foundation (VFF) to Turkish journalist Ayşenur Parıldak, who is serving a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence on charges of membership in a “terrorist” organization, was released by the foundation on Friday.

“Please know that we love you, think of you, and do our best to make sure the world knows you. You are not alone. Don’t let darkness steal away all light from you. I pray and hope that your light overcomes. Take care of yourself,” Nemat said in the letter.

VFF is a “woman-to-woman solidarity” group that promises “legal support and counsel to women human rights defenders who have been wrongfully accused and imprisoned and are therefore prisoners of conscience.”

The VFF gave journalist Parıldak its inaugural Shahnoush Courage Award in September 2017.

Parıldak, also a law student at Ankara University’s faculty of law, was detained while taking exams on Aug. 11, 2016. She was released by the court on May 2, 2017 but was later rearrested by the same court before being freed after a prosecutor objected to the initial ruling.

During her trial, she told the judges that she had thought of committing suicide several times while in prison. Behind bars since the summer of 2016, Parıldak faces 15 years in jail under Turkey’s broad anti-terror laws based on her tweets and alleged use of the ByLock mobile phone messaging application, believed by Turkish authorities to be a communication tool among alleged followers of the Gülen movement, which is accused by the government of orchestrating a failed coup on July 15, 2016.

The group denies any involvement in the putsch.

Turkey has suspended or dismissed more than 150,000 judges, teachers, police and civil servants since July 2016. On December 13, 2017 the Justice Ministry announced that 169,013 people have been the subject of legal proceedings on coup charges since the failed coup.

Turkish Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu announced on April 18, 2018 that the Turkish government had jailed 77,081 people between July 15, 2016 and April 11, 2018 over alleged links to the Gülen movement.

The full text of Nemat’s letter:

“Dear Aysenur Parıldak;

You don’t know me, but I’ve heard a lot about you. My name is Marina Nemat. I live in Canada now, but I was born in Iran in 1965 and spent 2 years, 2 months, and 12 days as a political prisoner when I was a high school student. I now teach at University of Toronto and work with a few human rights organizations. One of them is the Vigdis Freedom Foundation that gave you the Shahnoush Award last year, in 2017. This award is named after a friend of mine who was executed in Evin prison in Tehran in 1981. But I survived, and so did many of my cellmates. Now, we live all over the world and work to make sure that the world knows the terrible things that happened and are still happening in prisons in Iran and other countries.

I want you to know that you are not forgotten. When I was in prison, it felt like the world had forgotten my friends and me, and this thought sometimes made us lose hope. People ask me how I survived Evin. I tell them that I survived because of my friends who gave me hope; they made sure that I knew I was loved, despite all the darkness and evil in the world.

Please know that we love you, think of you, and do our best to make sure the world knows you. You are not alone. Don’t let darkness steal away all light from you. I pray and hope that your light overcomes. Take care of yourself.

With love,

Marina Nemat
Author
Board Member, Vigdis Freedom Foundation”

(Stockholm Center for Freedom [SCF] with Turkish Minute)

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Srilanka and Norway

UN chief admits UN was not equipped to deal with Sri Lanka war

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has admitted that the UN was not equipped to deal with the Sri Lanka war.

Guterres told reporters at a press conference in Norway that there were many aspects in which the UN had failed.

Responding to a question posed by Norway based Sri Lankan journalist Nadarajah Sethurupan, Guterres said that countries were responsible for what happens in their own countries and so Sri Lankans are responsible for what happened in Sri Lanka.

“It its necessary to recognise that,” he said. The UN had come under fire in the past for failing to stop the war in 2009 or ensure post war accountability.

Guterres said that while the shortcomings have been identified and changes have been made to the UN system now, yet the system cannot ensure perfect accountability for war crimes or crimes against humanity or genocide.

 

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Media Freedom

Norway’s Newest Billionaire Is Also One of The World’s Most Adventurous

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

When news broke in the Norwegian press in December identifying the buyer of one of Oslo’s most iconic buildings, journalists began calling. They were desperately trying to get a comment from Ivar Tollefsen, the buyer of the building, which was the former U.S. embassy, designed by the same architect who did the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. But he couldn’t be reached that day, nor for the next week. According to a spokesperson, Tollefsen was stuck in bad weather on a mountain face off Gessner Peak in Antarctica, where temperatures drop as low as -22 °F.

“It’s insanely cold, especially as you only move up about 50 meters a day, so you’re not very active,” Tollefsen later says about the experience.

Norway is long on colorful billionaires. The three youngest in the world with three-comma fortunes are all Norwegians.  Former fisherman Kjell Inge Rokke recently placed an order for what will become the world’s largest yacht. Hotel conglomerate owner and triathlon athlete Petter Stordalen performs Houdini-like escapes from water tanks in front of his employees.

But Tollefsen, a self-made billionaire who joins the ranks of the World’s Richest for the first time this year, already stands out thanks to his passion for adventure. He set the world record for fastest crossing of Greenland on skis in 1991. After his time was bested, he was determined to do better. Setting out to reclaim his title in 2016, at the age of 55, he raced across the icy landscape in just 6 days and 20 hours, beating the record by 14 hours.

He also competed in the 2009 Dakar rally, a grueling 6,000-mile race that is one of the world’s most popular and dangerous; several drivers were injured and one driver died in the 2009 race. Tollefsen finished fourth, still the best result ever for an amateur driver.

Tollefsen, now 56, grew up in a row house in Asker, on the outskirts of Oslo. The oldest of three siblings and the son of parents who had no formal education, he started a paper route at age 12. Two years later, he would wake up at 3:30 a.m. six days a week to deliver his papers on his then four routes. With the money he pocketed, he bought a stereo system and started DJing at neighborhood school parties. Before long Tollefsen was touring Norway as a DJ and making enough money that he decided to skip high school and put all his energy into his party business.

“I wasn’t a great DJ, but I was good at organizing others,” he says.

The company, called Tollefsen Enterprises, soon morphed into a party consultant and supply business that designed clubs and leased DJ-services and equipment. He caught the eye of investment firm Vest Invest which in 1985, when Tollefsen was 23, bought the company in a stock deal worth millions (Tollefsen says he doesn’t remember what the deal was worth, but that his shares at one point were worth NOK 20 million, or $2.8 million). The value of the stake evaporated just three years later when Vest Invest went belly up.

He was back to zero but not out of ideas. Tollefsen had for years been an active polar explorer, and in 1993, he says that he led some of the first expeditions to climb mountains in Antarctica. Intent to capitalize on his outdoor achievements, he published three books about the topic between 1992 and 1997, coupled with well-attended book talks.

In 1994, with $120,000 (NOK 900,000) he mustered from book sales, he purchased his first piece of property. His timing was good: real estate values in Norway had plummeted following the banking crisis of the early 90’s.

With the NOK 900,000 in equity, he applied for a loan and bought a building, with 20-apartments, in central Oslo for $820,000 million (NOK 6.15 million). Tollefsen estimates that it’s now worth about 13 times what he paid for it. As he built equity, he borrowed more and purchased more buildings.

Today his Fredensborg AS, together with subsidiary Heimstaden AB, is one of the largest owners of rental housing in Scandinavia. It rents out 27,000 apartments across Norway, Sweden and Denmark. One of his 2-room apartments in Oslo typically rents for $1,500 a month.

The property markets in Scandinavia are booming, especially in Sweden. Tollefsen is just the latest real estate developer in the region to reach billionaire status. Erik Paulsson and Erik Selin joined the FORBES billionaires’ ranks in 2017 and 2016, respectively. Both built fortunes in Swedish real estate.

The hot market has led to concerns about how Swedes and others are financing their purchases. Both households and many real estate firms have taken on a lot of debt, worrying experts of what will happen if property prices go down. For someone like Tollefsen, who owns solely rentals, a market downturn would severely affect his business — and his net worth.

Tollefsen is hesitant to make any predictions but says he thinks his company Fredensborg is well positioned, owning housing that will always be in demand. Plus, he says, it’s a solid industry in which to invest. “Unlike many other industries, housing will not be digitalized. People will always be in need of a physical home,” he says.

Time will tell if real estate valuations in Scandinavia are a bubble that will pop or if Tollefsen indeed has the ability to ride it out. But if his adventurous expeditions are any indication of entrepreneurial character (and Tollefsen says that it is), then he has shown he is capable of some impressive achievements. Polar expeditions, Tollefsen explains, require tremendous preparation and planning, risk calculation and a great deal of adaptability and determination. Same as with business.

“Climbing a mountain is all about moving fast and safe up a dangerous terrain,” says the man with most of his wealth tied up in an industry that is worrying investors all over Europe.

( Follow Max on Twitter at @Maxjedeur or email him at mpalmgren@forbes.com.)

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Spy War

US Marines are stationed in Norway to help deter Russia, and Norway may ask them to stay longer

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

Norway’s government may ask the US to extend a Marine Corps deployment in the country, Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide told Reuters.

“We are currently in a phase where we are discussing different options, but I think from our point of view it has been very useful and very successful,” she said.

Contingents of about 300 Marines from various units have been stationed in Norway for six-month deployments. The first rotational force arrived at Vaernes in central Norway in January 2017 — the first time a foreign force was stationed on Norwegian soil since World War II (though Norway and the Marine Corps have managed weapons and equipment stored in caves there since the Cold War).

The deployment has already been extended, with the initial rotational force being replaced by another in August 2017. The roughly 330 Marines in the country are now scheduled to stay until the end of the year.

Marines in Norway have focused on cold-weather training, doing exercises with Norwegians and other partner forces. Some of those exercises have taken place near Norway’s border with Russia, which has criticized the Marines’ presence in Norway. Russia’s embassy in Norway told Reuters that extending the Marines’ presence would worsen Norway’s relations with Moscow and could raise tensions on NATO’s northern boundary.

“The Americans have been very happy with how things have played out,” Soereide said. “They do see after many years where they had a lack of winter training and expertise of wintry conditions … they are now, to a larger extent, able to deal with the cold.”

Norwegian Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen said in March that the US was interested in continuing the deployment and that his government hoped to make a decision on it in the coming months.

The Pentagon “would like to extend the [deployment] and they would like to see whether we could increase,” he told Defense News during a visit to Washington. “We will look into it and give them an answer in, before the summer … that’s my ambition.”

The Norway deployments are part of efforts across the US military to increase training for cold-weather operations.

Marine Corps Commandant Gen. Robert B. Neller said in January that US forces “haven’t been in the cold-weather business for a while.”

“Some of the risks and threats there,” he said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “There is a possibility we are going to be there.”

During a visit with Marines stationed in Norway at the end of 2017, Neller was more blunt in his assessment.

Telling Marines in the country to remain ready to fight at all times, he said he foresaw a “big-ass fight” on the horizon, according to Military.com. “I hope I’m wrong, but there’s a war coming,” Neller said. “You’re in a fight here, an informational fight, a political fight, by your presence.”

Neller added that he believed the US military’s focus would shift away from the Middle East in the coming years, with the Marines in particular focusing on the Pacific and Russia.

Norway is one of many countries that have expressed concern about an increasingly assertive Russia, especially in the years since the Russian occupation of Crimea.

Norwegian military officials have publicly discussed ways to counter Russian armor — apparently “breaking a taboo among Western military officials” by doing so. And Oslo has sought to boost its military spending.

In 2017, Norway decided to buy five P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft, bringing it closer to the US and the UK, with whom it maintained a surveillance network over the North Atlantic during the Cold War. Norway has also teamed up with Germany to buy new submarines. In November, Oslo accepted three F-35 fighters, the first to be permanently stationed there.

Concerns about Russia military action as well as the potential for US retreat from the NATO alliance have boosted political support for Norway’s increased defense spending, but opposition leaders have still criticized the way it’s been financed and questioned what role US troops will have.

“There has been no real debate about the role of US forces. There is concern that we may be looking at a significant shift in Norwegian defense policy without an informed debate,” Audun Lysbakken, leader of the Socialist Left party, said in late 2017.

Soereide, Norway’s foreign minister, told Reuters that Oslo did not see Russia as a military threat and that the risk of war in the Arctic was “low.” But she did say her government saw challenges poised by Russia actions, particularly in the area of civil society, rule of law, and democracy.

(uk.businessinsider)

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A new era of supersonic flight is almost here. But nobody can agree on the right speed

by Nadarajah Sethurupan
written by Nadarajah Sethurupan

On January 15 a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner flying from New York’s JFK airport to London Gatwick set a new journey speed record. The aircraft, owned by budget airline Norwegian, completed its 3,470 mile journey in five hours and 13 minutes. In doing so, it became the fastest subsonic plane to travel across the Atlantic.

The Dreamliner beat the previous record, held by a British Airways plane, by three minutes. But the speed boost wasn’t down to technological or engineering advancements – it was down to tailwinds. So strong was the speed boost that the Norwegian flight hit a top ground speed of 779mph. But while that’s faster than the speed of sound, the flight didn’t break the sound barrier as its speed through the air was every so slightly slower.

“Most aircraft we have today are in fact slightly slower than they were in the 1960s,” says Phil Atcliffe, a senior lecturer in aerodynamics and aircraft performance at the University of Salford. Performance has largely stagnated, he says. “They’re more efficient, they don’t burn as much fuel, they carry more people, they even fly longer distances but in performance terms they’re pretty much the same speed.”

Norwegian Air’s close call with supersonic flight was a reminder of how much air travel has slowed down in recent years. At present the sound barrier (Mach 1, 767mph) is reserved for military aircraft. Concorde was retired from flight in 2003 – three years after the crash of Air France Flight 4590, which killed 113 people – and supersonic flight hasn’t returned to the masses since. But a glut of companies are working on bringing back supersonic travel and they’re getting closer to making it a reality.

There are two approaches to developing the next generation of supersonic planes: creating private supersonic jets and trying to make supersonic planes for larger groups. Aerion Supersonicand Spike Aerospace are developing private jets for the wealthy and Boom Supersonic is creating plane for less well-monied flyers. The goal? To reduce the time spent on long haul flights and make them commercially successful.

All the next generation supersonic planes being developed use slightly different technologies, vary in size and are aimed at different markets. And to add to the confusion none of the companies involved can agree on what speeds they should be travelling at.

Spike’s S-512 plane, a windowless business jet, is planned to reach speeds of Mach 1.6 (1,227mph). Aerion’s AS2 business jet will have a top cruise speed of Mach 1.4 (1,074mph). And Boom has set its sights on even faster travel: Mach 2.2 (1,687mph). Boom’s offering is the only one in the same league as Concorde, which had a maximum speed of Mach 2.04 (1,565mph).

These speed differences make a big difference when applied to real-world flights. Boom says New York to London will be possible in 3 hours 15 minutes, with Aerion’s plane it will take 4.5 hours and Spike claims potential flight times of 3.3 hours for the same journey.

“Everyone else is thinking slower,” Scholl says. “If you go faster – and I think you need to go at least Mach 2.0 for this to work – you’re not just saving a couple of hours with the way the flights are scheduled, you’re going to save people whole days.”

But there’s also another hurdle – it’s one that may derail supersonic planes all together. Red tape. The sonic boom from airplanes hasn’t been completely eradicated and it’s illegal to fly at supersonic speeds above US soil. Concorde’s popularity – and what routes it was able to fly – wasn’t helped by its supersonic boom. So the latest iterations of supersonic technology are aiming to get around this.

“The AS2 has the ability to fly up to Mach 1.2 without a boom reaching the ground,” Barents says. “We term this Boomless Cruise, known technically as Mach cut-off speed. That is about 50 per cent faster than today’s airliners.” Boom says it expects its supersonic boom will be “at least 30 times quieter than Concorde’s”. Spike says it has patent-pending “Quiet Supersonic Flight Technology” that will top a sonic boom reaching the ground.

But these are yet to be fully proven in real-world testing. There may be some respite though as US air traffic officials are looking at rewriting supersonic flight rules. In the future, supersonic planes may need to have their noise certified before they can fly.

There’s one thing the supersonic firms can all agree on: the demand exists. “People are looking for a market,” Atcliffe says. “They know that travelling in Concorde was popular so they’re looking for a way that is close to it, a way to get something better than the standard subsonic airline travel we have today.” But this isn’t just about dreaming up a revamped Concorde – it’s rethinking supersonic passenger flight (and its business model) from the ground up.

“Airlines are flying basically the same jets between the same airports with more or less the same cabin experience,” says Blake Scholl, the founder and CEO of supersonic plane company Boom Supersonic. “It’s why they all have these frequent flyer programmes to try and lock us in – without those there’s no reason to not switch airlines all the time.”

At present, all three are working on prototypes. Spike Aerospace says it tested an unmanned, subscale version of its S-512 plane (dubbed the SX-1.2) on seven short test flights in October 2017; Boom will fly a one-third scale plane in 2019 and Aerion Supersonic also wants to test next year. If all goes well, and that’s a big if, passenger flights could take place towards the mid-2020s.

That might sound a long way off, but the race to go supersonic again finally has some momentum behind it. “There are really three big areas that have changed since Concorde was designed: aerodynamics, materials and engines,” explains Scholl. Wind tunnels can now be replaced by computer simulations, carbon fibre composites are lighter than the materials Concorde was made of and engines no longer require afterburners, he says.

“They add up to enough of an efficiency gain where you can today build a supersonic aircraft that is 75 per cent more efficient to operate than Concorde,” Scholl explains. “That means it can be a lot more affordable to passengers”. Scholl says Boom started with the economics of flight and then worked back towards and aircraft.

Boom’s approach to supersonic travel is to create a 55-seater commercial airliner, which will fly at Mach 2.2 and have seats priced around $5,000 for transatlantic flights (in 1981, a round-trip ticket to London or Paris from New York, about a three-and-a-half hour flight at 1,350 miles an hour, cost about $3,000). Scholl’s gamble is simple: he believes Boom can always fill a 55-seater plane, as opposed to Concorde, which had to fill more than 100 seats per flight.

Scholl says Boom’s XB-1 demonstrator plane, which will fly next year, is currently being manufactured. The engines have arrived in Boom’s hangars and the company is in the process of building the tail and wings. Currently, Boom has 76 orders from five airlines – including Richard Branson’s Virgin Group – and despite being smaller the plane looks similar to Concorde. “It’s an evolutionary design, rather than a revolutionary design as we already had the revolutionary design in Concorde,” Atcliffe says of Boom’s aircraft.

As far back as 2015, Aerion agreed a deal to sell 20 of its jets to airline charter service Flexjet. The AS2 plane will be able to carry eight to 12 passengers and is firmly focussed on business uses. “We project a market for 300 AS2s over the first 10 years of production,” Brian Barents, the CEO of Aerion says. “We think a business jet is the right place to relaunch supersonic flight, and expect that airline aircraft will follow as we prove the market for efficient supersonic travel.”

Aerion has been developing its supersonic technology since 2003, when Concorde stopped its service. In December 2017, Aerion started working with Lockheed Martin, the developer of supersonic fighter planes, on its AS2 plane. “The Aerion AS2 concept warrants the further investment of our time and resources,” Orlando Carvalho, an executive vice president, at Lockheed said in a statement at the time.

Nasa has also been working on supersonic flight with its X-planes and Virgin Galactic’s long-running attempts to create commercial space travel has seen its VSS Unity pass supersonic speed.

But, despite all the hype supersonic flights are still some years away from reality. And that’s if everything goes smoothly. “People have always been interested in supersonic travel,” Atcliffe says. There was excitement around travelling at the speed of sound before Concorde was developed, during its operation and long since it went out of service. Much of this has led to no real developments.

This time around though, things may be different. “It’s actually beginning to look like it might be converted into hardware,” Atcliffe says. “There are lots of indications that it should start happening very soon.”

(wired)

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