Person fined after waking sleeping polar bear with ship horn

A person has been fined 50,000 kroner for disturbing a polar bear by sounding a ship’s horn to wake it, NRK reports, citing the Governor of Svalbard.

The bear was sleeping on land when the horn was used from a boat. It woke up and moved to another location. Other people aboard the vessel reported the incident to the Governor of Svalbard, who concluded that the disturbance had been deliberate.

The person accepted and paid the fine. The incident took place earlier in August in Lomfjorden, in the Hinlopen Strait on Svalbard.

Meanwhile, a strike at Tromsø Airport and seven other airports has been avoided after HK Norway and NHO Aviation reached an agreement following extended mediation, Handel and Office in Norway said.

The agreement means there will be no strike among almost 2,000 employees at eight airports, including Tromsø Airport. A conflict would also have affected airports at Gardermoen, Florø, Hovden, Mo i Rana and Torp.

The strike could have disrupted check-in, boarding, baggage handling, customer service, catering, cleaning and refuelling, affecting airlines including SAS, Norwegian and Widerøe.

Norway’s traffic police carried out mobile speed checks in different speed zones in the Alta area on Wednesday evening, the Northern Norway traffic police said on Snapchat. One driving licence was confiscated and six simplified fines were issued.

A separate laser check in an 80-kilometre-per-hour zone in Repparfjord resulted in four more speeding fines. The highest recorded speed was 107 kilometres per hour.

A reindeer-herding district will receive 8 million kroner in compensation in connection with the E45 Kløfta road project south of Alta, iFinnmark reports.

The Norwegian Public Roads Administration expropriated two areas for the new road on either side of a planned tunnel. It had reached a purchase agreement with Finnmark Estate, but not with the Beskades reindeer-herding district.

Following court proceedings, the parties agreed that the roads administration would pay 8 million kroner in compensation. It will also cover 661,350 kroner in the district’s legal costs.

“The agreement has been signed and the parties are in agreement. It worked well. It was a straightforward process,” project manager Edgar Olsen of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration told the online newspaper.

Work to upgrade the E45 at Kløfta began in January. The first section is due to be completed on 1 July next year.

A man has been charged with causing bodily harm and disturbing the peace after two incidents in Tromsø this spring.

According to the indictment, he stabbed a person in the neck with a knife at a home in March. The injury was treated at UNN hospital, where it was cleaned and stitched.

He is also charged over an incident in May in which he allegedly pushed a security guard while intoxicated in an attempt to enter a nightclub in Tromsø. After police arrested him and put him in a police car, he allegedly shouted and screamed.

The case will be heard in the North Troms and Senja District Court in early November.

A pilot project teaching students in Finnmark about war preparedness will likely be introduced for students across Norway, Nationen reports.

Knowledge Minister Kari Nessa Nordtun said she wants to introduce the programme from the next school year. Its aim is to make young people and the country better prepared for war and natural disasters. The training will be carried out in cooperation with the Norwegian Armed Forces.

SpareBank 1 Nord-Norge reported a pre-tax profit of 1.986 billion kroner in the second quarter, the bank said in a press release.

“I am very pleased with the figures we are presenting,” chief executive Hanne Karoline Kræmer said.

Salmon that died from infectious pancreatic necrosis at a Nordlaks facility outside Harstad had been bred to be more resistant to the disease, iHarstad reports.

About 105,000 fish were reported to have died from the disease. Nordlaks first reported the IPN virus to the Norwegian Food Safety Authority at the end of June.

“We are somewhat concerned that IPN may once again become a growing challenge in Norway’s aquaculture industry,” said Barbo Rimeslaatten Klakegg, head of the marine division in the authority’s aquaculture inspection department.