Current ads
Jobs
Tenders
Notices
General

Click below

February 18, 2005

Home Rule wants good life for Greenlanders

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS

Inuuneritta or “Let’s have a good life” is a new Home Rule government project to make Greenlanders more healthy and live longer.

“Our lifestyle and the way we live impacts on our state of health and controls which illnesses we, as a population, develop,” said Asii Chemnitz Narup, the government’s minister for health and family.

Life expectancy in Greenland is 65 years — ten years less than in Denmark.

February 18, 2005

2005 to be warmest yet?

Greenhouse gases that accelerate global warming could make 2005 the warmest year since records started being kept in the late 1800s, says NASA.

“There has been a strong warming trend over the past 30 years, a trend that has been shown to be due primarily to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” said James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

The warmest year on record was 1998, with 2002 and 2003 coming in second and third. Last year was the fourth-warmest recorded, with a global mean temperature of 14°C.

Average temperatures taken from land and surfaces of the oceans show 2004 was .48 C. above the average temperature recorded from 1951 to 1980.

February 18, 2005

Pickled testicles headline festival

Icelanders are sampling traditional foods in February, during the month-long festival of Thorrablot.

Vikings used to celebrate during February with feasts, dancing and singing because it was the fourth month of winter and this meant spring would be returning soon.

Some of the traditional foods eaten during Thorrablot include fermented shark, seal flippers, boiled lamb’s head, and sheep’s blood pudding rolled in lard and sewn up in the stomach.

Icelanders’ top five favourite foods for Thorrablot included pickled ram’s testicles, sheep brain jelly, a sausage of fermented stomach parts, fermented whale blubber and blood pudding.

February 18, 2005

Vandals hit Nuuk school

Vandalism is on the rise in Nuuk and it now involves younger and younger kids, say police.

Two weeks ago, a group of young kids wreaked havoc on a recreation center at Ukaliusaq School in downtown Nuuk.

Teachers at the school say they have never seen such extensive damage before — although it’s common for windows to be broken on a daily basis.

“We should be using our money to buy materials for kids, like new books, supplies and computers, but instead we have to spend this money to pay for damages,” said Ukaliusaq’s vice-principal, Bodil Kreutzmann.

Vandalism occurs more frequently in Nuuk compared to other places in Greenland, and it’s often linked to paydays, when money flows into families. In the past, incidents of vandalism mainly involved 14 to 16 year-olds.

Police and social services in Nuuk say they know who is responsible for the recent havoc at the school, but they’re faced with a difficult situation: the behaviour of the kids is so out-of-control that institutions and foster homes don’t want them.

This means social services are considering family treatment programs for the young offenders, which are not yet widely available in Nuuk.

February 18, 2005

Finnish Saami celebrate national day

Finnish Saami, who number about 5,000 in the northern portion of the country, celebrated their second official national day on Feb. 6.

The Saami chose that date because on Feb. 6, 1917, the first Nordic Saami convention was held in Trondheim, Norway where Saami from Norway and Sweden discussed reindeer husbandry, education, and relations to the majority population.

The Saami National Day was added to the official Finnish almanac for the first time last year.

However, the occasion has been celebrated unofficially since 1992.

February 11, 2005

Greenland returns MPs to Danish Parliament

On Tuesday, Greenland went to the polls to elect the two members of Parliament who will sit in the Danish Parliament in Copenhagen.

Lars Emil Johansen from the Siumut Party and Kuupik Kleist from the Inuit Ataqatigiit beat 14 other candidates. Many say the win shows support for their personal efforts to gain more autonomy for Greenland.

“Kuupik and I have been co-operating on self-government issues, so we’re getting closer to achieving more independence,” Johansen told KNR-TV in Greenland late Tuesday night.

Per Berthelsen, the leading candidate for the Democratic Party, came third in the election. According to political observers in Greenland, his campaign was hurt by the Demokrats’ close identification with the right-wing Danish People’s Party that has introduced anti-immigration policies into Denmark. Berthelsen, who also intends to run for mayor in Nuuk’s upcoming municipal elections, also hurt his chances to win by saying he would quit as MP if elected as mayor.

In Denmark, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen became the first Liberal leader to win two consecutive terms in office. Overall, Liberals, Conservatives and the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party ended up with 96 seats in the 179-seat parliament.

February 11, 2005

Saami market turns 400

Last week marked the 400th anniversary of the traditional Saami winter market in Jokkmokk, Sweden, an event that has continued on a yearly basis despite storms and war in the region.

The market generally takes place for three days during the first week of February, but this year, the market lasted an entire week, drawing 45,000 visitors, including many Saami from throughout northern Europe and King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

The market was set up in the middle of Jokkmokk — in the same location it’s been in since the 1600s — where about 500 booths sold everything from knives to animal skins.

A full schedule of cultural events went on in a snow arena, which was built on the ice of a nearby lake. Seating was provided on reindeer hides, which were auctioned off on the last day of the market.

February 11, 2005

Iceland’s president opens sustainable development meeting

Iceland’s president Olafur Ragnur Grimsson gave the opening speech of last week’s Sustainable Development Summit in India. Citing recent findings by the Arctic Council’s Arctic Climate Impact Assessment report, Grimsson challenged those who don’t take action to limit climate change.

“Join me on a journey to the North, to the Arctic regions,” he suggested. “The evidence from the Arctic is indeed convincing and the consequences of the developments up north will affect the entire world, primarily through rising sea levels all over the globe and through dramatic changes in the conveyor belt of ocean currents which ranges from the North Atlantic to the Indian Ocean and onwards to the Pacific.”

Grimsson’s speech included a veiled jab at U.S. President George W. Bush, who has not supported the Kyoto Accord, an international agreement to cut the production of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

“If the doubting crowd in the debate on global warming, those who criticize all warnings of climatic change, would accept my invitation to travel north they would be able to witness dramatic changes: the melting of glaciers throughout the Arctic, both in my own country and in Alaska, the state which again strongly voted George W. Bush into office...”

The Sustainable Development Summit continued until Feb 5, and featured speakers from the United Nations and presentations from environmental ministers. For more information, consult www.teriin.org/dsds/2005/.

February 4, 2005

Iceland considers sanctuary for chess master

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS

The Icelandic Parliament is debating whether to offer former world chess master Bobby Fischer Icelandic citizenship. Fischer was the first American to win the World Championship of chess in 1972 in Reykjavík.

Fischer is wanted in the United States for violating United Nations sanctions by playing a chess match in Yugoslavia in 1992.

Fischer has never returned to Iceland, but he recently had a telephone interview with the Icelandic television station Stöd 2, in which he stated that he was being poisoned by a leaking nuclear reactor.

Asked if he wanted to move to Iceland he stated, "I want to get out of this fucking Japland." He is currently in custody in Japan.

He also explained that if deported to the U.S., he will be murdered for beating Jews in chess, as "the country is full of Jews."

Iceland is the nation with the greatest number of chess players per capita in the world.

Febuary 4, 2005

Climate change news grim

New research from Oxford University says greenhouse emissions could cause temperatures to rise by double the estimates of two to seven degrees Celsius that models have produced so far.

The Oxford research project is called "climateprediction.net" and it involves volunteers who run climate simulation on their computers over days and weeks. The volunteers have generated four million model years so far with free software material and instructions that can be downloaded at www.climate prediction.net.

By 2026, the earth could be an average 3.6 C warmer than it was in 1750, according to another research report, which was released this week by World Wildlife Federation.

The area covered by summer sea ice in the Arctic is decreasing by 9.2 per cent per decade and "will disappear entirely by the end of the century" unless the situation changes, the WWF says.

Yet another recent international taskforce report called "Meeting the climate change challenge," prepared by several policy thinktanks, says any increase beyond 2 C will cause significant risk to human societies and ecosystems.

Febuary 4, 2005

Canadian company gets Greenland oil exploration rights

Greenland's home rule government has granted ocean oil-drilling rights to the Canadian company EnCana and Nunaoil.

EnCana Corporation and Nunaoil, Greenland's national oil company, received oil-drilling rights in Greenlandic waters, 250 kilometers west of Nuuk in an ocean area of 2,897 square kilometers, which has never been drilled before.

"It's an interesting area with enormous structures and we already know about some oil seepage in Western Greenland," EnCana's director John K. Brannan said. "My estimation is that there is a five to 10 percent chance of finding oil, but it's hard to tell at this point."

Brannan said the drilling was a high-risk financial venture and that more companies would be invited to join EnCana if it found good indicators of oil.

EnCana Corporation holds 87.5 percent of the drilling license and will serve as operator, while Nunaoil has the other 12.5 percent. Nunaoil is owned by Greenland's Home Rule Government and the Danish Oil and Natural Gas company.

Febuary 4, 2005

Relocation in store for Alaskan village

SIKU CIRCUMPOLAR NEWS

It could cost about $180 million to move the Bering Strait village of Shishmaref to solid ground, says the Anchorage Daily News. That's nearly twice the price of relocating the 600 residents to Nome.

Almost 90 percent of Alaska's 213 native villages are affected by floods or erosion. Four of them, including Shishmaref, are in danger.

The most expensive option is moving Shishmaref to the mainland. The $179 million cost includes nearly $20 million to move the community's 150 homes, $26 million to move or build public facilities, such as a new school, health clinic, fire hall and city office, $23 million for roads and $25 million for an airport. Water treatment, sewage and solid waste facilities would cost another $25 million. Included in the total is $36 million for contingencies.

The least expensive option is moving Shishmaref's population to Nome, which would cost $93 million, a recent engineering study found. New homes account for a quarter of the cost, but Nome would need nearly $35 million worth of roads, buildings and water and sewer facilities to handle the added population.

TOP

Advertising
Specs, rates,
& maps
Multi-paper
buying services
About the market
E-mail ad dept

More Information