LaNUBlog™

Police in Norway have released photos in a bid to identify a young man found in a snowdrift near Oslo in December, apparently suffering from amnesia. Police say they do not know where the man comes from but that he speaks good English with an East European accent.

Norway has suspended budget aid to Malawi, one of the poorest nations in Africa, because of alleged corruption and embezzlement, the foreign ministry said on Friday. "There are clear signs that substantial funds have been embezzled from the Malawian ministry of finance," Norway said in a statement. "We have a policy of zero-tolerance for corruption, and cannot disburse any more budget support to the Malawian authorities until this matter has been fully resolved," development Heikki Eidsvoll Holmaas said. So far this year Norway provided $41.4m worth of aid to Malawi, a fifth of which was in the form of budget support. Norway is one of the world's biggest foreign donors and expects to donate $5bn this year to dozens of developing nations. Earlier this month it decided to reduce its aid to Afghanistan, signalling to Kabul that it has not done enough to combat corruption and violence against women.

The outgoing government in Norway has buried much-vaunted plans to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground amid mounting costs and delays. The oil and energy ministry said the development of full-scale carbon dioxide capture at Mongstad oil refinery had been discontinued. It said it remained committed to research into carbon capture. When the Labour Party presented the plan in 2007, it was hailed as Norway's equivalent of a "Moon landing". Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and his allies lost a general election to conservatives and centrists this month, and are due to step down shortly. Mongstad had already run into difficulties. "At both the national and international level, the development of technologies to capture and store CO2 has taken longer, been more difficult and more costly than expected," Oil and Energy Minister Ola Borten Moe told reporters. The process was patented back in the 1930s, and it is reckoned to be one of the most important t...