Statoil sells shares Mozambique Japanese Inpex

Norwegian oil group Statoil said on Tuesday it had sold a 25 percent stake in an exploration licence off the coast of Mozambique to Japanese group Inpex.

The financial details were not disclosed, but Statoil said it will retain a 40 percent stake in the licence, which concerns two blocks in the Rovuma basin and for which it will remain the operator.
In addition to Statoil and Inpex, the partners in the licence are Britain's Tullow, with 25 percent, and the Mozambican state-owned company Empresa Nacional de Hidrocarbonetos, with 10 percent.
The licence covers more than 8,000 square kilometres (3,088 square miles) in waters where the depth varies from 300 to 2,500 metres (980 to 8,200 feet).
"Large gas discoveries have recently been made north of the acreage and the prospectivity for hydrocarbons in the Statoil-operated blocks is promising," a Statoil senior vice president, Nick Maden, said in a statement.
The southeast African country has become an important player in the global energy market, home to more than 40 percent of gas discoveries made worldwide last year.
The first of two exploratory wells will be drilled in the second quarter, Statoil said.
The sale to Inpex requires the approval of the Mozambican government.

AFP

rider doping sanctions Kjaergaard Escape

A former team-mate of shamed cyclist Lance Armstrong, Norway's Steffen Kjaergaard, will escape sanctions despite having admitted doping, the country's anti-doping agency announced on Monday.

Kjaergaard, who competed in the 2000 and 2001 Tour de France on Armstrong's US Postal Service team, admitted in October last year that he took the banned blooster erythropoetin (EPO).
His admission came just before the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) published its devastating report that placed Armstrong at the heart of what it said was the biggest doping network in sporting history.
But the Norwegian anti-doping agency said in a statement that the Scandinavian rider would escape punishment as the time limit for bringing a prosecution had lapsed.
The facts of the case dated back to a period between 1998 and early 2003 -- in other words, outside the eight-year statute of limitations, the body added.
Armstrong was banned from cycling for life and stripped of his record seven Tour de France wins in the wake of the USADA report which rocked the sport.
He subsequently admitted taking a cocktail of banned substances in a television interview with the US chat show host Oprah Winfrey.

AFP

Savings bank refunds for bad transactions DNB

Norway's biggest bank DNB said Wednesday it would compensate hundreds or even thousands of savers after the Supreme Court ruled it misinformed its customers about some of its products.

The move could cost the bank several hundreds of millions of kroner (tens of millions of euros or dollars), at a time when the bank is striving to increase its core capital and has announced cuts across the board.
"We are now going to clean things up and follow the instructions outlined in the ruling," DNB chief executive Rune Bjerke said in a statement.
On March 22nd, Norway's Supreme Court ordered DNB to reimburse 230,000 kroner ($40,000), plus interest and court costs, to a plaintiff who accused the bank of losing his investment of that amount some 10 years ago by selling him products described as "guaranteed".
But the information the bank provided him was partially incorrect.
The case was seen as a test run for thousands of similar cases.
The Norwegian Financial Services Complaints Board has asked DNB and other financial institutions to re-examine each individual complaint in light of the Supreme Court ruling.
On Wednesday, Bjerke said DNB would immediately compensate around 300 people who had invested in similar products and who had also reported their cases to the Complaints Board. That was expected to cost the bank around 60 million kroner.
DNB said it would also try to track down savers who bought the products but did not report their losses to the Complaints Board. They could number in the thousands.
"It'll come down to several hundred millions of kroner," a bank spokesman, Thomas Midteide, told business daily Dagens Naeringsliv.
DNB's share price was down by 0.40 percent in mid-afternoon trading on the

Russian military aircraft activity in Norway

Norway said on Wednesday it had observed an increasing number of Russian military jets near its airspace last year, amid President Vladimir Putin's massive rearmament plan.


The Scandinavian country scrambled fighter jets on 41 occasions to inspect Russian military aircraft flying past its airspace although the planes always stayed in international territory, the Norwegian air force said in its annual report.
A total of 71 Russian military planes were identified during the sorties, the highest since 2009, it said.
"It's important to note that none of these planes were intercepted" in Norwegian air space, said the head of the Norwegian military, Harald Sunde.
The two countries share a 196-kilometre (122-mile) border in the far north, where Russia has large military bases in the Murmansk region. Putin, who returned to the Kremlin in May, has announced an "unprecedented" Russian rearmament, vowing to pump more than 550 billion euros ($705 billion) into the defence industry over the next ten years.

AFP

Delay testing in schools Bieber fever Norway

Norwegian schools have moved exams that clashed with Justin Bieber's concerts in the country, fearing some fans would rather cut class than miss out on an evening with the Canadian heart throb.

We find it regrettable, but we preferred to move forward the Norwegian exams to avoid problems," Roar Aasen, the headmaster of an upper secondary school in Aalesund on Norway's west coast, told AFP.
In total, five schools in the town -- more than a seven hours' drive from Oslo -- decided not to hold exams on April 16th and 17th since they coincided with two of Bieber's three gigs in the Norwegian capital.
The tests, which would have been taken by around 500 pupils, will now be held on April 10th and 11th.
"We took this decision three or four months ago when we found out many students had already bought their tickets, because it didn't pose any organisational problems for us," said Aasen.
But the school is not setting "a precedent" for future concerts, he added.
Bieber, who is 19, sparked chaos in Oslo in May last year when dozens of teenagers chased the singer's car in the hope of following him to a free concert at a location that was only revealed at the last minute.

AFP

Father of mental health-related behavior of the child

AN expectant father’s psychological distress may be linked to his toddler’s emotional and behavioral development. The finding came from new research published in the journal Pediatrics which analyzed over 31,000 Norwegian kids and their parents. Several previous studies have shown that the mental health of a mother, during and after her pregnancy, may have an effect on the health of the child. One study showed that children’s early experiences with a mother suffering from a severe mental illness can influence their long-term health and development. Anne Lise Kvalevaag, leading researcher and a doctoral candidate in psychology at the University of Bergen in Norway, said:“The results of this study point to the fact that the father’s mental health represents a risk factor for child development, whereas the traditional view has been that this risk in large is represented by the mother. The father’s mental health should therefore be addressed both in research and clinical practice.”

The team of experts interrogated the dads when the moms were 4 to 5 months pregnant. They were asked about their mental health, for instance, whether they felt depressed or afraid. Rather than looking at particular diagnoses in kids, the scientists collected information on whether they had experienced frequent mood shifts, got into fights, or had feelings of anxiety, explained Kvalevaag. High levels of psychological distress were reported by 3% of the dads. The team discovered a link between the mental health of the father and the development of a child.

The children who had the most emotional issues at age 3 were the ones whose dads were the most distressed. The researchers pointed out that this study did not demonstrate a direct cause-and-effect association.

The authors explained that there are various possible means that may account for the relationship. For example, Kvalevaag explained, the fathers may be passing on a genetic risk to the child. The mental health of the soon-to-be mom could also be influenced by the dad’s depression, therefore, causing an effect on the unborn baby, suggested another scientist.

“If a father is highly distressed, that could affect the mom’s secretion of hormones during pregnancy, it could affect her sleep, her own mental status,” said Daniel Armstrong, professor of pediatrics and director of the Mailman Center for Child Development at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

“The prenatal mental state of the father is likely to predict the postnatal mental health of the father and this may also account for some of the associations found,” Kvalevaag revealed.

Norwegian speed skating great Andersen, etc..

Norwegian speed skate great Hjalmar Andersen, who won three gold medals at the 1952 Oslo Winter Olympics, has died at the age of 90, local media reported on Wednesday.

Andersen, who swept the board in Oslo over 1,500m, 5000m and 10,000m to become that Games most successful athlete, was also a triple world champion between 1950 and 1952.
"A legend" was how he was described by Norway's minister for Culture and Sports, Hadia Tajik.
He set four world records during his career, including setting the first sub-17 minute 10,000m world record in 1949.

AFP

Close fixed on the priest 'exclusion' Church

Norway's first woman pastor to enter into a same-sex civil union will quit her ministry to protest against the discrimination gays and lesbians face within the Lutheran Church, she said in an interview published Wednesday.

"It has become untenable for me to represent a Church where parts of it are still quite exclusionary," Hilde Raastad told the daily Aftenposten.
In 1997, she became the first woman pastor in Norway to tie the knot in a civil partnership with another woman.
Ten years later, the church officially authorized the ordination of gays, but gave bishops and clerical authorities in charge of recruitment the right to refuse a ministry to a person living in a same-sex civil union.
Raastad said she had been refused several positions even though she was sometimes the only candidate, and said she had sent a letter to Oslo Bishop Ole Christian Kvarme asking him to annul her ordination.
"I consider homophobia a sin," she told Aftenposten.
"A local church can't pick people by the colour of their skin or their ethnicity. In the same way it can't exclude or judge people by their sexual orientation," she said.
"It has been a burden to feel the disapproval of my superiors, to see that they consider my love a theological problem and that I live a life that would lead to sin and perdition," she added.
Questioned by the paper, the bishop, a conservative who is known for his opposition to the employment of homosexuals in the Church, refused to comment on the contents of the letter which he said he had yet to read.
He said he would likely meet with Raastad in person to discuss her complaints.
Norway has allowed gays to marry in church since 2009. Church and state were officially separated last year.

AFP