Joe O'Connor of the National Post reveals that the Norwegian king is spending his time in Toronto, on the Lake Ontario shorefront.

His Majesty King Harald V of Norway was sitting at the back of his sailboat, munching on a green apple, reflecting upon the day of sailing that had just been. A day that was not “good,” according to the king. It was ( Read more... )

• blogTO notes the 1970s, when Yonge around Queen was under reconstruction.
• The Broadside Blog's Caitlin Kelly talks about her writing life in New York City.
• The Crux considers: Neandertal or Neanderthal?
• Dangerous Minds notes the new Laibach app.
• The Dragon's Gaze looks at evaporating hot Jupiter HD 209458b.

• The Big Picture looks at flooding in West Virginia.
• Centauri Dreams considers how to develop a deep-space infrastructure.
• Crooked Timber considers Boris Johnson and looks at the Norway option.
• Dangerous Minds praises Laura Nyro.
• The Dragon's Tales reports on Martian agriculture.

• Bloomberg looks at Argentina's push for renewable energy, reports on Rosatom's interest in developing South Africa as an entry into the African nuclear market, writes about China's opposition to anything remotely like separatism in Hong Kong, and looks at Poland's demand for an apology for Bill Clinton critical of the new government.
• Bloomberg View ( Read more... )

• Bloomberg looks at the restarting of northern Alberta oil, looks at the deterioration in Sino-Taiwanese relations, reports on how Norway is using oil money to buffer its economic shocks, and suggests low ECB rates might contribute to a property boom in Germany.
• Bloomberg View notes the idea of a third party in the US, one on the right to counter ( Read more... )

National Geographic's Scott Wallace writes about how the Sami of northern Norway are threatened by the steady encroachment upon their traditional lands.

Troms County is a sprawling region of broken coastline, labyrinthine fiords, and rugged alpine forests, situated some 700 miles (1,150 km) north of Oslo. This is the heart of Sami country, where ( Read more... )

Bloomberg's Saleha Mohsin describes how some Norwegians want to take advantage of the United Kingdom's Brexit referendum to renegotiate their relationship with the European Union.

The case [of Norway] illustrates how hard it will be for the U.K. to escape the bloc’s influence even if it decides to head for the exit. While voters have twice ( Read more... )

The Arctic route described last month by the Associated Press' Matti Huuhtanen is more of a novelty than a common route.

As Europe grapples with record-breaking numbers of migrants, a trickle of asylum seekers from Syria and the Mediterranean region have found an unlikely route: Through Russia to a remote Arctic border post in Norway, partly on ( Read more... )

Friday in The Globe and Mail, Brian Milner and Jeff Lewis compared the differing strategies of Norway and the Canadian province of Alberta to their oil windfalls. Norway banks it, Alberta spends it. Why? They do a good job contrasting and comparing.

Faced with the steepest decline in oil and gas spending in a decade and a half and the biggest job ( Read more... )

I have a post up at Demography matters inspired by a posting on Reddit. Through that site's Unresolved Mysteries forum, I came across an English-language article in Norway's Dagbladet, "The Wetsuitman". Written by Anders Fjellberg and featuring photos by Tomm W. Christiansen and Hampus Lundgren, it's a superb if very sad piece of investigative ( Read more... )