Outsider Jens joins EU in-crowd

Norway’s prime minister Jens Stoltenberg (left) with the president of the EU commission, José Manuel Barroso, on June 16. Stoltenberg paid a routine visit to Brussels, discussing global financial turmoil and prospects for the European economies with EU leaders. According to Stoltenberg, the financial crisis is fast becoming a debt crisis and a labor market [...]

Jens fends off critics at home

NEWS ANALYSIS: As Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg welcomed heads of state to Oslo, and got ready to host another climate conference and effort to save the world’s rain forests, he continued to face criticism from environmentalists and opposition politicians at home. Stoltenberg, it seems, has a better environmental image abroad than he does in Norway.
“There’s [...]

Stoltenberg spends 17th with troops

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg took off on a sudden and secret trip to Afghanistan during the holiday weekend, landing in Kabul Monday morning to spend Norway’s Constitution Day on the 17th of May with Norwegian soldiers on duty in the area.

In what’s becoming typical Stoltenberg style, the prime minister revealed his visit via social media, [...]

Jens postpones his ‘moon landing’

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, who famously equated his government’s carbon recapture plans at a major west coast power plant to a “moon landing,” seems to have lost contact with mission control. His government was under attack Sunday for breaking a major promise.
Stoltenberg had to go on national television Sunday evening to try to explain why [...]

Stoltenberg’s odyssey wins fame

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg seems to have won his proverbial 15 minutes of fame, after turning a harrowing journey home to Norway into an interesting experiment in political use of social media.
As Views and News has reported earlier, Stoltenberg was among the millions stranded all over the world when Iceland’s volcano first started halting air [...]

A prime minister’s odyssey

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg finally got home to Norway over the weekend, four days after he started what turned into an extremely long trans-Atlantic journey.

Stoltenberg had been in Mexico, Washington DC (photo) and finally in New York on official business when airports started closing because of a volcanic cloud moving east and south from Iceland.
Stoltenberg [...]

Norway helps fund nuclear security

Norway, known for what’s sometimes called its “checkbook diplomacy,” has once again tapped its treasury to help fund an international initiative. This time the cause is nuclear security.

As newspaper Aftenposten reports on Wednesday, Norway has neither nuclear weapons nor nuclear power plants. It has produced heavy water, though, and supports nuclear disarmament, anti-terrorism programs and [...]

Questions fly over coalition’s future

NEWS ANALYSIS: The honeymoon is definitely over for Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and the coalition government he leads. After winning re-election last year, the coalition’s three parties are now publicly disagreeing on a number of issues, and questions are flying over whether Stoltenberg can keep his team in place.
Stoltenberg flew out of Norway late last [...]

Stoltenberg on major tour

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is on a major international tour this week, first in Mexico and now in Washington, where he met US President Barack Obama and Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Ben Bernanke. The climate, the economy and nuclear weapons are all on the agenda.

Stoltenberg was invited on Monday for a meeting with the [...]

Government losing popularity

New public opinion polls are showing a major loss of voter support for the Labour Party, which leads Norway’s left-center coalition government. Labour has tumbled several points in the polls, probably because of looming budget cuts and signs of backtracking on campaign promises.
Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) reported Thursday that Labour, headed by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, [...]

Government seeks advice from public

Norway’s left-center coalition government has launched its effort to seek advice from the general public, as tipped by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg in his New Year’s address to the nation. Cabinet ministers are inviting input from students, entrepreneurs, economists and the proverbial “man and woman on the street.”

The goal, according to Stoltenberg, is to [...]

Stoltenberg and Putin meet in Helsinki

Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg sat down for talks with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during a break in a conference dealing with environmental issues in the Baltic Sea. Their topic involved jurisdiction over the Barents Sea and a longtime dispute over borders stretching to the North Pole.
It’s a sensitive issue, and Norway wants the [...]

Prime Minister seeks advice, while King Harald issued some warnings

Norway’s monarch and prime minister delivered their annual speeches over the New Year holiday, and both acknowledged that most Norwegians are quite fortunate. King Harald, however, worries that maybe some are too fortunate, while Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg intends to seek advice from ordinary citizens around the country on how to tackle remaining challenges.
Stoltenberg [...]

Stoltenberg offers own progress report

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg held a pre-Christmas press conference on Tuesday and claimed that 2010 will be a “climate year,” with real progress for the fight against climate change. Progress will come, he said, despite the watered-down deal that emerged at the UN climate conference in Copenhagen last week.
“It’s easy to point out the weaknesses [...]

Erna gets higher marks than Jens

For the first time, voters have given the head of Norway’s Conservative Party
(Høyre) higher marks than the current Labour Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. Erna Solberg also beat out the head of the more conservative Progress Party, Siv Jensen.The voter survey, carried out by research firm Respons for newspaper Aftenposten , questioned 1,003 persons [...]

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