(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Wind power municipalities want economic headwinds
Inspired by the financial security hydroelectric power has given many power municipalities, the wind power municipalities will demand tax and tax schemes that give them money in the municipal treasury, reports Stavanger Aftenblad.
Leader of the National Association of Norwegian Wind Power Municipalities (LNVK), Iver Nordseth, makes it clear that the goal of LNVK is to put in place some of the same schemes that have given many Norwegian hydropower municipalities more than salt in the ditch.
- At the same time, it is crucial that wind power first becomes profitable. This means in the first instance that a green certificate scheme must replace direct government grants, says Nordseth, to Stavanger Aftenblad.
The government plans to introduce a green certificate market during 2006.
LNVK will fight to introduce a natural resource tax on wind, similar to what hydropower developers pay to their host municipalities. At present, this tax amounts to SEK 1,1 per kilowatt hour to the municipalities. A resource tax on a wind turbine the size of the project at Høg-Jæren (260 million kilowatt hours) will correspond to almost NOK 2,9 million based on the current rate for hydropower plants. In the case of Høg-Jæren, such tax revenue must be divided into two municipalities.
Explosive Danish exports to the Eastern EU
Danish farmers are rubbing their hands after the EU was expanded with ten new member states, reports Jyllands-Posten. New figures show that Danish agricultural exports to EU countries in Eastern Europe are growing explosively. Many decades of fighting against customs walls and bureaucracy disappeared overnight, and now there is only cheer in the Danish barns. The recent figures show that Danish farmers and food producers have increased their exports to the ten new EU countries by 57 per cent since May 1 this year.
For the Danish exporters, it was a huge relief when the customs walls were gone on 1 May this year. Previously, a cargo of pork could stand for days on the border of eastern European countries while papers had to be filled in before the cars could continue their journey towards the destination in the east. But now the paper mill has been shattered, and the goods transport is flowing without stopping at the borders.
Want Jen's home
A majority of Danes want the Danish soldiers – in the popular Jensene – home from Iraq, if the planned election in January does not lead to a transition to a democratic government, Berlingske Tidende reports. Experts believe that Denmark should have its soldiers in Iraq beyond January 2005, while the people are far more skeptical about participation. In a Gallup poll, 54 percent of Danes say that Denmark should withdraw its troops from Iraq, if the planned election in January 2005 is not successful from a democratic point of view. 41 percent of the respondents believe that the Danish soldiers should stay
Foreign policy spokesman in the Left Party, Troels Lund Poulsen, says the signal is quite clear, but that Denmark owes the Iraqis to wait and see what the elections will mean for the future Iraq.
Vietnam photographer death
American photojournalist Eddie Adams, best known for his historical image of a South Vietnamese general shooting a prisoner through the head, died Sunday at the age of 71, reports NTB.Adams took his famous photo on February 1, 1968, and thus succeeded in capturing the brutal Vietnam War cruelty within a fraction of a second. A few hours later, the picture went around the world, contributing greatly to the growing war resistance in the United States. Adams, who worked for the Associated Press, was later rewarded with the high-hanging Pulitzer Prize for the image of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a suspected Vietcong leader through the head of an open street in Saigon. He himself had no idea what was about to happen when, in pure reflex, he lifted the camera while the general lifted the revolver. Later, Adams gained a rather strained relationship with the historical picture, and also garnered criticism from some colleagues who thought he should have tried to prevent the general from firing.
