World Economic Forum: 81 percent of Danes feel the EU pays off for Denmark

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January 4, 2018

NordenBladet – 81 percent of Danes feel the EU pays off for Denmark – the sixth highest approval rate among the 28 member nations. According to a new report from the World Economic Forum, the vast majority of Danes believe their country benefits from being a member of the EU.

The figures showed that 81 percent of Danes found the EU beneficial to Denmark, ranking the Danes among the populations with the highest regard for what the EU brings their country.

Across the Øresund Sound, the view changed drastically, with only 62 percent of Swedes feeling that the EU was a benefit to Sweden. The Finns found the EU’s contribution equally dubious at 66 percent.

Ireland topped the charts with 90 percent, followed by Malta (89), Lithuania (88), Luxembourg (86) and Poland (84).

The countries with the most scepticism were Italy (39 percent), Cyprus (45) and Greece (48).

Other notables included Germany (77), the Netherlands (76), Spain (70), France (58) and the soon-to-exit UK, which chimed in with 55 percent, almost 7 percentage points more than the 48.11 percent who voted to remain in the EU in June 2016.

Popular tourist destinations in Norway are now available on Google Street View Nature

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Helena-Reet Ennet

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January 4, 2018

NordenBladet – Popular tourist destinations in Norway are now available on Google Street View Nature. This feature can be used by tourist who are planning on visiting these destinations so that they can better idea of what the terrain is like. Google Norway believes that this will make hiking safer and decrease the amount of rescues on hiking trails.

Anybody can apply to use Google Norway’s Street view equipment to help them on their mission of recording all of the trails in Norway. The equipment consists of a backpack with 15 cameras that weighs about 20 kilograms. It takes pictures every couple of seconds, which are later put together to create a 360 degree panorama that can be viewed in Google Maps.

“We receive far more application than we have the capacity to accommodate,” Press Manager Helle Skjervold told NRK.

Director of Culture for the Municipality of Odda, Lage Thune Myrberget is excited about the project and believes that it will help prevent dangerous situations that occur when tourists aren’t prepared.

“Consider tourists in Australia, China, USA, Canada that want to come here. This gives them a totally unique opportunity to experience the trip as they plan it. They can see how challenging the first kilometer is,” Myrberget tells NRK.

He hopes that if prospective tourists make use of this new feature, then there will be fewer occurrences of people needing to be saved from the trails due to lack of preparation.

Photo: Trolltunga or “Troll Tongue” in Odda, Hordaland County, Norway (NordenBladet)

24-year-old is Norway’s richest with a capital of NOK 11.1 billion

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Helena-Reet Ennet

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January 4, 2018

NordenBladet – The 24-year-old Gustav Magnar Witzøe is Norway’s richest person with a capital of NOK 11.1 billion. He is shareholder of his father’s marine business. According the tax list, The 24-year-old Gustav Magnar Witzøe has the most wealth and paid the highest tax in Norway last year.

Towards the end of 2011 Witzøe has taken over all shares from his father’s company Kverva, which at that time made him Norway’s youngest billionaire.

After five years, he has now been listed with a capital of NOK 11.14 billion as the richest person in Norway. This is an increase of NOK 1.3 billion from the previous year.

The country’s second richest is the businessman in fishing industry, Kjell Inge Røkke with a capital of over NOK 11 billion.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BdQghxGnOED/?taken-by=guswitzoe

Photo: Gustav Magnar Witzøe (Instagram/@guswitzoe)

Young Norwegians with immigrant background receive less social assistance

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Helena-Reet Ennet

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January 4, 2018

NordenBladet – A recent report from Proba samfunnsanalyse confirms that young Norwegians with immigrant background benefit from social assistance less than ethnic Norwegian youths. While 1.2 per cent of this group receives social assistance, the figure is 1.6 per cent for Norwegians without immigrant background.

“This is interesting but not surprising finding,” says Minister of Labor and Social Affairs Anniken Hauglie (H) to NRK. The motivation for seeking jobs among young immigrant background Norwegians is influenced by the public perception about immigration and unemployment, according to NRK.

“Because we do not want anyone to think we came here just to get social assistance, but we want to work,” 20-year-old Tasbih Hindi says to NRK.

The report “Social Assistance Expenses – Driving Power and Measures” is commissioned by The Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities (KS).

Municipalities, want to reduce the costs of social assistance, which is increasing every year. There has been a sharp increase of 38 per cent in social assistance expenses from 2012 to 2016.

General immigrant population makes up a large part of the social beneficiaries.

Norway to build world’s tallest timber building – Mjøstårnet

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Helena-Reet Ennet

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January 4, 2018

NordenBladet – “Mjøstårnet” will be more than 80 metres tall and stand 30 metres higher than what is today considered the world’s tallest timber building. “Mjøstårnet sets new standards for timber constructions. The building is the closest we come to a skyscraper in timber,” says investor and contracting client, Arthur Buchardt.

Mjøstårnet, named after its neighbour and Norway’s largest lake, Mjøsa. The record-breaking construction will sit on the edge of the north-eastern tip of the lake in the small town of Brumunddal, an hour and a half’s drive north of Oslo.

Spanning over 18 floors, the building will reach 80 metres high, and include apartments, an indoor swimming pool, hotel, offices, restaurant and communal areas. Construction is scheduled to be completed in December 2018. Moelven, a Mjøsa-local Scandinavian industrial group, will supply the timber constructions from local spruce forests required to construct the tower and the swimming pool area.

“The assembly and construction of the Mjøstårnet is nothing short of world-class engineering, and will be managed without external scaffolding, despite the complexity of working at heights. We are primarily using cranes and supplementing with lifts as needed. We have reached 33 metres to date, meaning we have 50 metres to go,” says Buchardt.

Source: tnp.no

Norway´s Prime Minister Erna Solberg will visit President Donald Trump in the White House on January 10th

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Helena-Reet Ennet

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January 4, 2018

NordenBladet – The White House confirms the visit in a press release. Solberg and Trump have encountered earlier during international meetings, but it will be the first proper meeting between Solberg and Trump.

“The United States is important for Norway for security and commerce. Such a meeting gives us the opportunity to promote our view of open world trade and the importance of working together internationally to solve climate challenges,” says Prime Minister Erna Solberg.

“President Trump looks forward to exchanging views on the bilateral ties between the United States and Norway, and how jointly to advance regional and global security, and economic prosperity. The President and Prime Minister will discuss shared defense and security goals within NATO and the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS, as well as trade and investment between the United States and Norway,” writes The White House.

Four Norwegian musicians – Kygo, Alan Walker, Sigrid and Aurora – to Coachella Music Festival

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Helena-Reet Ennet

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January 4, 2018

NordenBladet – Sigrid, Kygo, Aurora and Alan Walker will take the stage in one of the biggest music festivals in the world, the Coachella in April. Coachella is considered one of the largest and most important music festivals in the United States and will be held on April 13 this year.

This year , the organizers have invited four Norwegian artists- Kygo, Alan Walker, Sigrid and Aurora to the festival.

The Norwegian artists will be on the stage together with big names like Beyoncé, The Weeknd and Eminem.

The first Norwegian artists who debuted at the prestigious festival were Turboneger, 120 Days and Datarock in 2008.

Source: tnp.no

Tourist influx triggers food-delivery boom in Finnish Lapland

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Helena-Reet Ennet

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January 4, 2018

NordenBladet – The busy tourist season is boosting food deliveries, with an international clientele demanding dishes familiar from home. The rapid growth of tourism in Finnish Lapland and the culinary tastes of international visitors have led to a spike in food deliveries on northern roads. The volume of wholesale deliveries has risen by a third over the past year.

This winter some 600 charter flights are bringing guests to Finnish Lapland and nearby Kuusamo from various European airports. At Kuusamo airport, the number of incoming leisure flights nearly doubled in December compared to a year earlier.

Some locals find it odd that tourists come from Britain and Asia all the way to Lapland, but prefer to eat their own familiar cuisine rather than Lapland’s own signature dishes, says Soile Lehtilahti, regional sales director for wholesaler Metro-tukku. However shops on Spain’s Costa del Sol, cater to Finnish tourists by selling imported rye bread and liquorice, for instance.

Metro-tukku delivers food, alcoholic beverages and cigarettes to Lapland’s tourist resorts from its main warehouse in Helsinki, with northerly terminals in Kemi and Rovaniemi. It is just one of many such firms servicing the ski centres of Finnish Lapland.

Lehtilahti explains that tour operators set the menus for foreign groups. Lapland’s restaurants strictly follow these as they place their wholesale orders. British tourists are served British dishes, while Asians are served their own.

These menus are critical to the pricing of group tours. Operators can keep package rates low by serving familiar, middle-of-the-road foods to each group rather than exotic Nordic offerings such as salmon, reindeer or bear.

Source: finland.fi

Esko Repo from the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri): Finland raises asylum approval rate after court setbacks

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Helena-Reet Ennet

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January 4, 2018

NordenBladet – Finland made positive decisions on 40 percent of all asylum applicants in 2017, up from 27 percent in 2016. According to preliminary figures from the Finnish Immigration Service (Migri), 40 percent of the processed applications for asylum last year were positive, compared with 27 percent in 2016.

Decisions by Finland’s administrative courts on the security situation in Baghdad and Mogadishu, for example, have had an impact on the application outcome.

“They have had an effect on how our decisions change,” says Esko Repo from Migri.

However there are other reasons for the increase, Repo adds. In 2016, Migri mostly processed quick and easy applications, many of which were rejected as the applicants had no grounds for protection. Only in 2017 did Migri move on to the more challenging applications, where the decisions more often turned out to be positive, he explains.

Finally, Migri’s own evaluation about the security situation in different countries has caused an uptick. “For instance, there are more areas in Afghanistan where the conditions have deteriorated”, Repo says. The number of applications that Migri dealt with in 2016 totalled 28,000, falling to 9,400 last year.

The number of new applications Migri received each year amounted to about 5,000, with the most coming from Iraqis. Applications from Russians increased from the previous year, Repo says.

Source: finland.fi

Swedish Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson: It’s important to prepare for the risk of hard Brexit

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Helena-Reet Ennet

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January 4, 2018

NordenBladet – We must be prepared for the risk of a hard Brexit, Swedish Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson has said. The Social Democrat minister was quizzed on a number of issues in an interview with Swedish news agency TT released on Thursday, including talks following Britain’s decision to leave the European Union.

“I really hope that these negotiations move forward fast, that would be very good and important,” she said. “But at the same time it is important to prepare for the possibility of ending up in a situation where there is a hard Brexit, if you do not agree and move forward. It’s important that everyone is prepared for that risk.”

Fellow non-euro country Sweden has long seen Britain as one of its closest partners in the union, and concerns have been raised that pressure for Sweden to join will increase when its ally leaves the EU.