Rescue crews have been working to stabilize a cruise ship in Norway after a below-deck fire that left two cruise ship workers dead and resulted in the successful evacuation of more than 200 people.

A Dutch team has managed to get three pumps into the vessel to try to right it, but Police Chief Jon Steven Hasseldal said the MS Nordlys is tilting at 21.7 degrees, over the mark of 20 degrees that is considered “critical.” Of the rescue efforts so far, Hasseldal said:

“At the moment it looks promising. It’s still a serious situation … but now there is a bit more stability in the ship.”

Around 260 people in total were evacuated from the MS Nordlys Thursday morning after an engine room fire. Reports specify that two of the crew were “found dead” after the fire, and that another nine were hospitalized with injuries including burns and smoke inhalation. Two of the injured are said to be critically hurt. The ship was slated to dock in Aalesund, 230 miles northwest of Norwegian capital Oslo.

Evacuation of the vessel went well, passengers report, and one told press:

“It was a well-organized evacuation… The crew did a really good job. Everything was calm and went smoothly. There was no panic.”

Hurtigruten, the cruise ship company that owns the endangered ship, says that it is working hard to secure emergency passports and other necessities for people who had to leave essential belongings behind in haste to depart the damaged vessel. Parts of Aalesund were evacuated ahead of the ship’s arrival, as it came into port billowing black smoke and listing.

Police say nothing about the fire “indicates sabotage or points to terror.”

Cruise Ship Tilting in Norway, 2 Dead in Fire is a post from: The Inquisitr

The image above it that of the world’s newest mass murderer - Anders Behring Breivik.

That is the man who is responsible for the bombing and the massacre at a summer camp this past week in Oslo Norway.

The 32-year-old man is described as a gun-loving, religious Norwegian who believed that his country was being destroyed by the country’s policy on multiculturalism and the increasing Muslim immigration.

Police in Oslo believe that the massive car bomb that destroyed downtown Oslo, and where police are still finding unexploded munitions, was a diversion tactic and that the massacre at the political summer camp on Utoya Island. It was here where Breivik took approximated 90 minutes to calmly shoot and kill at least 85 people, some of them as young as 16.

As soon as the shooting started, they said, people panicked, running in all directions, tumbling down the island’s rocky hill in an attempt to reach the sea. Even after many made it into the water, the gunman calmly and methodically shot at those who were swimming.

“People right behind me were shot,” said Helen Andreassen, 21, a political adviser for the Labor Party’s youth wing, which runs the camp each year. “I heard shots right behind me. He was standing just by the water, using his rifle, just taking his time, aiming and shooting. It was a slaughter of young children.”

Wearing a police uniform, the gunman at one point emerged from the forest and persuaded several youths who had sought refuge on the shore to come to him, said Stine Renate Haheim, 27, a Labor Party member of Parliament, who was also among those hiding.

Then he opened fire.

“He shot a boy in the back,” Ms. Haheim said. “I saw that some people were falling, and we turned around and ran. At that point I didn’t look back.”

via The New York Times

Here is the video of the police taking Breivik into custody on Utoya Island.

The person behind the deaths in Norway now has a face is a post from: The Inquisitr

While they still are trying to figure out who was behind the bombing and subsequent shooting at a children’s center the horror of what has happen is spreading around the world as you can see in the following videos.

This first one is just raw video of someone wandering through the rubble and aftermath and is probably the most haunting of them all.

Our thoughts and prays go out to everyone in Oslo as they come to grips with this horrific incident.

The horror of Oslo Norway following the bombing as seen in video is a post from: The Inquisitr

Lately, or at least since the Blair Witch Project, there has been some fascination with what is being called found film as the basis to create a movie around much like J.J. Abrams super secret Super * movie coming out soon.

While some might attribute that format to this great looking film from Norway about a group of student out hunting for the elusive troll, no not the Internet kind – they are even worse, I would like the style of filming to television shows like Ghosthunters, Destination Truth et al.

Regardless this is looking to be a pretty cool looking film and we know have a trailer being released for it in the U.S. so you can decide for yourself.

via FirstShowing.net

The truth about Trolls [Movie Trailer] is a post from: The Inquisitr

We all know how tired one gets after a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner and the first thing we want to do is head for the couch. Well here is a beautiful timelapse video of the Aurora Borealis over Tromsø in Norway. The video music is by Per Wollen and adds a certain beauty of its own to the video.

via io9

Something soothing and beautiful for after Thanksgiving Dinner is a post from: The Inquisitr

As we reported earlier today, footage of what’s been called the Norway Spiral has spread across the world, prompting some to suggest that we may have made first contact with an alien race.

Whether it’s a UFO or not we don’t know, and the alternative explanation is that the Norway Spiral was a Russian Rocket spinning out of control in the sky.

The Russians are denying launching a rocket the night the Norway Spiral was spotted, which they might very well do. But here’s the part that doesn’t make sense on the rocket theory: if the Russians did launch a rocket, it wouldn’t have gone unnoticed by the Americans, or other NATO allies in Europe who monitor for these things. Rocket launches have been monitored by either side since the Cold War, so if Russia were lying about a rocket launch, another country should have called them out on it.

What ever it is, the Norway Spiral video footage is fascinating. We’ve dug through YouTube for some more Norway Spiral video goodness.

More Video Of The Norway Spiral is a post from: The Inquisitr

Blogs are buzzing today about the odd, suspiciously perfect spiral shape seen in the night sky over Norway on December 8th-9th.

Although many people cried “shopped!” almost immediately, the image was carried across the Norwegian news from several different sources and appears to at least be an accurate version of what appeared in the sky- although what may have caused it is up for debate. A blog on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer quotes an astronomer who believes the phenomenon may have been caused by a rocket launch:

…(Phil) Plait said: “A rocket got out of control, perhaps losing a stabilizer, and started to spiral. The two spirals, different in shape, size, and color, indicate something happened in the middle of all this (the rocket second stage fired while still spinning, or something else started leaking out), changing the rocket’s direction. Then, when the fuel or whatever ran out, the white spiral began to disappear from the inside out as the material expanded in space.”

The blog goes on to posit that the most likely suspects in such a scenario are the Russians, but that they’re denying it. Wired guessed it was viral marketing for the newish show V. The Daily Mail thinks a missile/rocket is likely too, but isn’t discounting UFOs as a cause for the light show.

Check out video below of the incident- what’s your theory?

Norway Spiral- was it due to a rocket launch? is a post from: The Inquisitr

It is re-assuring in a point in time where entertainment industry trade groups, like the RIAA, are pressuring governments and ISP by either suing them or helping them write legislation that there are some countries – well one anyway – that isn’t buckling under. At the forefront of putting its citizen’s rights and privacy ahead of those of groups like the RIAA is Norway.

Back on June 10, 2009 the Norwegian agency in charge of data protection instructed two ISP – Tele2 and Lyse Tele – to delete all IP related personal information in their logs that is older than 3 weeks. In addition this instruction will also be applied against the rest of the ISPs in the country.

The fact that data can only be held for just 21 days will see the immediate deletion of IP information held on around 1.6 million subscribers by these Norwegian ISPs. However, the decision flies in the face of European Union rules which say that this type of data must be held for at least 6 months – right now in Norway, data retention can be anything from a few days to five months.

The process of monitoring file-sharers, gathering evidence and then collating it all into an acceptable format can be time consuming. Add this to the time taken to get into the system to obtain a court order from a judge to force the ISPs to hand over data on their customers, and you end up with a period longer than 21 days. By which time the data has gone and the evidence becomes useless, since it’s impossible to identity the alleged infringer.

Source: TorrentFreak

Now add to this the news out today that the law firm who had been granted a temporary license to monitor the countries ISPs in order to track down alleged pirates and collect their IPs won’t have that license renewed. The law firm of Simonsen used that data collected to gather the IP addresses of alleged pirates and then sue them.

Simonsen lawyer Espen Tøndel told Dagbladet that he was very unhappy with developments. “We believe that the decision is politically justified,” he said, noting that there should be no reason why the license shouldn’t be extended.

Tøndel further said that his law firm will object against the non-renewal of their license but if they fail, he fears that copyright holders will be completely powerless to stop illegal file-sharing.

Source: TorrentFreak

It’s good to see a country that actually really cares about its citizens rights in this stupid power play. I wonder if they would have room for a cranky old fart of a blogger?

Norway: It’s nice to see a country who cares about citizen privacy is a post from: The Inquisitr

A 13 year old Norwegin girl is alive but in hospital in serious condition after being dragged 4 kilometers under a car in a bizarre automobile accident.

According to friends she was riding her bike with, the girl was hit by a truck that kept going, but when they went looking to see if the girl was hurt, all they could find was her bike and one of her shoes on the side of the road. it wasn’t until some time after that a motorist who was following the truck in her car pulled into a parking lot about 4 kilometers away and discovered the girl underneath her car, still conscious.

The girl was rushed to a hospital in Oslo, Norway, with serious injuries to her head, chest and abdomen, but is expected to survive.

Police have not had a chance to question the girl yet because of her emotional and physical trauma, but believe that she was first hit by the truck then immediately run over by the car, getting tangled in it’s chassis and dragged under it.

No word as to why the driver of the car didn’t see the accident between the truck and girl, or why she drove such a long distance without hearing or feeling something wasn’t right with her vehicle.

Girl, 13, Dragged 4km Under Car in Bizarre Auto Accident is a post from: The Inquisitr