Several attempts have been made to correct the unusual vibration in one of the Rolls Royce engines aboard Þór. Engineers from Rolls Royce have been working on the ship in Iceland to rectify the problem without success.

It now seems likely the ship will have to go to Norway for repairs, according to a recent statement on the Icelandic Coastguard’s website.

It first came to light in December that vibration from one of the ship’s main engines was at a higher level than Rolls Royce recommends. The engines are still under manufacturer’s guarantee, as Þór was only handed over to the Icelandic Coastguard last autumn. Attempts to correct the problem in Iceland have so far failed.

If Þór is sent to Norway for repairs, the ship can expect to be absent for several weeks.

Café Teatret has used Breivik’s so-called ‘extremist manifesto’, published online shortly before he killed 77 people in Norway on 22nd July last year, as the inspiration for their drama Manifesto 2083.

The play, directed by Christian Lollike, will see the right-wing extremist’s views performed as a monologue, with Christian Lollike playing the lead role. The announcement has however attracted heavy criticism, as the car bombing in Oslo and the massacre on Utøya Island still sits fresh in the minds of survivors and victims’ families six months on.

Entitled ‘2083: A European Declaration of Independence’, Brievik’s manifesto praised Denmark for being “the only Scandinavian country with some spine left”, regarding the “ideological war” against Islam. Many felt that such comments referred to the right-wing Dansk Folkeparti’s (DF) attacks against multiculturalism.

However, Pia Kjærsgaard, leader of DF, was one of the first to speak out against the new production. Writing on her Facebook profile, she said, “I find it deeply embarrassing, distasteful and shameful. Personally, I would be ashamed to go in and see the show. [Breivik] can sit back and rub his hands together because he gets all the publicity he longs for.”

Also offended by the offering are some of the families and friends of Breivik’s many victims. Ragnar Eikeland, who lost his son at Utøya, said it is, “so offensive that I really have no words”.

“It will be an extra burden for [the victims’ families] to know that it will be performed while the court case is underway,” he told Norway’s NTB news bureau. “No-one should do something that spreads Breivik’s opinions.”

In a written submission to Politiken however, Lollike defended his artistic decision.

“Is it not precisely the task of art to help understand how something so terrible could happen?” he wrote. “Where do we go with our anger, our pain, our frustration and the big ‘why’? How could this happen? What kind of mindset and view of humanity has he filled his mind with, and where does it come from?

“Writers, journalists and analysts have sought to answer these questions based on the manifesto. They have a right to. Doesn’t theatre – based on Breivik’s manifesto and with the critical and analytical resources of the performing arts – have the right to examine these same questions?” Lollike wrote.

Jarle Andhøy, 34, has apparently set out again, despite his last mission, which was branded foolhardy by many sailing experts, resulting in the presumed deaths of three crew members.

New Zealand authorities are looking for the 54-foot Nilaya yacht which sailed though Auckland last week. Samuel Massie, an 18 year-old survivor of last year’s tragedy, is also thought to be onboard, along with a photographer.

According to Radio New Zealand, New Zealand Customs Services are conducting a search for the yacht, while Maritime New Zealand officials have asked locals to keep a look out.

Berserk sank without a trace last year, with South African Leonard Banks and Norwegians Tom Gisle Bellika and Robert Skaanes never having been found. Jarle Andhøy, who describes himself as a Viking, was fined SEK 25,000 (EUR 2,804) for breaking the Antarctic Treaty by sailing without insurance.

The trawler was called Hallgrímur SI-77 and was en-route for scrapping in Norway when it sank in severe weather. The rescued sailor is in good physical health, but says he had to watch helplessly as two of his friends disappeared into the sea.

Watch and extended emotional interview with the survivor, Eiríkur Ingi Jóhannesson, with English subtitles, here.

The search for the missing three men was called off in bad weather and the three lost men, all in their fifties, are presumed dead.

The rescued man, in his thirties, probably survived because of his floatation suit, Vísir.is reports. One of his crew mates also put on a floatation suit; but that suit leaked and the four men slowly drifted apart.

Jan Lillebø, who was in charge of the rescue operation, told NTB that the search was called off due to the weather. There were hurricane force winds at the location and 15 metre high waves.

Two of the lost three men, who have been named as Gísli Garðarsson, Einar G. Gunnarsson and Magnús Þórarin Daníelsson, come from the Suðurnes region of southwest Iceland.

(Photo: Jón Sigurður Eyjólfsson // from Vísir.is)

Mikael Davud, a Norwegian from China’s ethnic Uighur minority, was jailed for seven years, while Shawan Sadek Saeed Bujak, an Iraqi Kurd, was given a three-and-a-half year sentence. A third man, David Jakobsen, was cleared of terrorism charges.

Davud conspired with al-Qaeda to attack the offices of Jyllands-Posten newspaper after it published controversial cartoons depicting Prophet Mohammed in 2005. Prosecutors said he was taught about explosives at an al-Qaeda training camp in Pakistan before plotting with Bujak to launch an attack.

Although Davud admitted to planning hits against Chinese interests in Norway in retaliation to their treatment of the Uighur minority, he and all the other defendants denied that Jyllands-Posten was a target. The men were also accused of plotting to kill one of the cartoonists, Kurt Westergaard, but said they had only spoken about punishing him and had not taken any further action.

Jakobesen was cleared of terror charges but found guilty of helping the others secure explosives, even though he alerted the police after buying the chemical hydrogen peroxide in 2009. He has been freed after already serving a four-month sentence.

The convictions of Davud and Bujak are the first to be brought under Norway’s anti-terrorism legislation.

A deal has been signed for Statoil to acquire a 30.6 percent stake in one of the British explorer’s Greenland licenses, showing interest in the Arctic remains strong despite recent high-profile failures.

“The exact financial terms of the agreement are confidential,” Cairn said, according to a Reuters report. It added, however, that the Norwegian company would be paying some of the past and future exploration costs and a bonus on signing the deal.

Cairn has spent USD 1.2 billion on projects in the Arctic over the last two years, but has so far failed to get any conclusive shows. It is believed that the company hoped to get funding for all future drilling costs, but their lack of success so far has forced them to offer “attractive” partnership terms to investors.

“Arctic specialist Statoil’s early entry into a part of Cairn’s Greenland acreage, on attractive terms, validates the industry’s and Cairn’s long-held belief in the region’s multi-billion barrel exploration potential,” Morgan Stanley analysts said in a note.

Environmental groups have attempted to disrupt Cairn’s activities in the Arctic several times, pointing out than an oil spill in the pristine region would be detrimental to wildlife and almost impossible to clean up. It is thought, however, that Greenland could hold as many as 20 billion barrels of oil, making the semi-autonomous Danish island one the world’s biggest producers.

(Photos: Anders Peter Amsnæs)

The list is compiled each year by a committee of around 130 broadcast and press journalists. In 2010 Iceland was ranked second, after Finland — but this year the country has fallen to sixth on the list. It shares the position with Luxembourg. No explanation has been given for Iceland’s slight fall; but court cases against journalists last year are likely reasons, Vísir.is reported.

In the years 2007 and 2008, before the financial crisis, Iceland was ranked as having the freest press in the world.

Finland keeps the top spot this year and shares it with Norway. Estonia, Austria and the Netherlands are all ahead of Iceland on this year’s list.

Countries including North Korea, Syria and Iran come bottom in the Index.

The fact that both the USA and the UK have dropped down the list has caused raised eyebrows in those countries. The USA dropped from 20th to 47th and Britain fell from 19th to 28th. The harsh measures taken against the Occupy movement in the USA and the UK’s phone tapping scandal are thought to be the main reasons.

The Indian children, aged one and three, were put in foster care last May because Norway’s Child Welfare group deemed that their parents were not taking “adequate responsibility”.

The couple, Anurup and Sagarika Bhattacharya, say they are “devastated” and that the decision was based on cultural differences such as sleeping in the same bed as the children and feeding them when they cry rather than at set meal times.

Anurup Bhattacharya, who has worked as a geo-scientist in Stavanger since 2007, told the BBC, “We have been honest and perfect parents. There could be upbringing issues because of cultural differences.” He added, “They asked the mother to breast feed baby Aishwariya at scheduled times as a routine instead of feeding her when she cried as is the practice in India.”

Barnevarne, the Norwegian Child Welfare Services, however, claims the couple were emotionally disconnected.

The controversial decision has caused the Indian government to seek an “amicable” solution. It is believed that SM Krishna, the Indian Foreign Minister, is hoping to meet with Jonas Gahr Støre, his Norwegian counterpart, to arrange the release of Abhigyan Bhattacharya and his younger sister Aishwarya.

“We are in touch with the Norwegian government and we are hopeful that an amicable settlement of this question could be arrived at,” Mr Krishna told reporters. “Whatever support is needed under the circumstances will be provided to the Indian couple,” he added.

Head of Child Welfare services in Stavanger, Gunnar Toresen, said the group has “a responsibility to intervene if measures at the home are not sufficient to meet a child’s needs. Examples are when there is every probability that the child’s health or development may be seriously harmed because the parents are incapable of taking adequate responsibility for their child,” he said.

The Indian embassy is calling for the children to be returned to India to live with extended family, where it says they will benefit from being in familiar surroundings with their own linguistic and cultural heritage.

The man, who has converted from Catholicism to Islam, was tracked down in Skien on Wednesday 18th January, just a day after publishing the film.

As well as showing photographs of Crown Prince Haakon, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg and Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre with text urging Allah to “destroy them” with painful deaths, the video also promoted a protest in Oslo on Friday. ‘Demonstration: Norwegian troops out of Afghanistan’, however, only attracted a crowd of 40 – far short of the 500 to 700 people the Islamic organisers were expecting.

The film itself received much more attention and media coverage, with Stoltenberg claiming the threat was “different” to other he has received because it could be widely distributed. “The video confirms, unfortunately, what we’ve seen in recent years, that there are more people with extreme views who express them,” Stoltenberg said.

A local court in Telemark County, where the man was born, has agreed to let prosecutors keep the defendant in custody without media or personal communication for two more weeks. The 21 year-old, however, claims the posting was not meant as a threat and that he was only expressing his opposition to Norway’s activities in Afghanistan.

Speaking to NRK, defence solicitor John Christian Elden called his client’s situation “absurd”. “He maintains he was simply exercising his democratic right to freedom of expression,” Elden said.

In a sadly ironic twist, the trip to Norway was to have been the trawler’s last, because it was on its way to a Norwegian breakers yard when it hit bad weather and sank.

The name of the trawler has not been made public because one of the four crew members’ next-of-kin has yet to be reached by authorities. It has, however, been confirmed that the ship comes from Siglufjörður. Norwegian media believe all four crew are Icelandic.

The Icelandic and Norwegian coastguards received an emergency call from the ship at 13.30 yesterday, Icelandic time and two Norwegian helicopters were scrambled to the scene; but the long distance from shore and bad weather meant that they needed to stop and re-fuel. It was not until around 17.00 that one crew member was plucked from the cold sea and taken safely to land.

Three others are still missing at the time of writing and the area is said to be experiencing 15 metre waves and high winds.

The Norwegian coastguard says that debris from the ship is visible in the area. A Norwegian military Orion aeroplane arrived at the scene in the evening. The aircraft is equipped with thermal imaging cameras and high-tech radar equipment. A coastguard ship was also on its way.

2nd February update: The survivor has given an extended interview to Icelandic television. See the video with English subtitles, here.