Norway produces first ever halal reindeer meat

Reindeer in northern Norway

A specialist abattoir in northern Norway has slaughtered the country's first ever halal reindeer meat, with a view to selling it to top-end restaurants as far afield as Dubai.

Harry Dyrstad last week slaughtered 100 animals according to halal rules, inviting members of the Islamic Council to accompany his mobile slaughterhouse out to the herds surrounding his small meat-processing plant in Steinkjer, north of Trondheim.

 

"We had the idea one and a half years ago," Dyrstad told The Local. "We spoke to someone who had some contacts in Dubai, and he said that if you want to sell reindeer meat, it has to be halal, so we had to try." 

 

Dyrstad also aims to cure some of the meat as a halal alternative to ham, which he hopes to sell to muslims in Norway. 

 

"We got some information that we could produce some ham from the reindeer, so the children can have ham on their bread," he said. 

 

Mehtab Afsar, General Secretary of the Islamic Council of Norway and one of those who oversaw the slaughter, said he was looking forward to tasting reindeer for the first time. 

 

"This is a brand new halal product that Muslims have not had access to before. I am told that this is a very good meat, but I've never tasted it myself," he told the Adresseavisen newspaper.

 

Dyrstad's company, Vilteksperten, may however face competition from Russian reindeer producers.  

 

In 2010, the Yamal Reindeer Company, based in Russia's Arctic Yamal Nenets region, announced it had produced 1000 cans of halal reindeer meat, which the region's government planned to offer at a Russian investment conference in Qatar.

That is a very good move.

ACCIDENT: Bride And 7 Others Die In Auto Crash, Kano

A bride and 7 members of her entourage tragically died as the bride was being conveyed to her husband’s home in Azare, Bauchi south, in a Honda Civic that crashed into moving tanker.
According to the eyewitness, the accident occurred Friday night, in Gaya, 65 kilometers from Southern Kano; the driver lost control at a diversion point and crashed into the tanker.
The witness said that the crash had occurred around 7.05 pm local time and by the time they had arrived they were “confronted with lifeless bodies of 7 females and a male.”

The eyewitness also revealed that the police in Gaya conveyed the bodies to Gaya General Hospital.
The journalists report that the tragedy triggered traffic gridlock on the highways as commuters were forced to halt their journey due to pressure on the road by sympathizers who joined law enforcement agents in the recovery operation.
The case was officially confirmed by the Federal Road Safety Command, Kano, Malam Muhammad Garba.

News site slammed for Haakon divorce rumours

Prince Haakon and Princess Mette-Marit

A Norwegian news site has been slammed for publishing rumours that Norway's Crown Prince Haakon is set to divorce his wife Mette-Marit.

ABC Nyheter  reported on Thursday that Norwegians had started to ring the Royal Palace in panic after rumours of an impending divorce circulated on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook. 

 

It based its story on a recording of a call to the palace posted onto YouTube by Katrine Angelica Østlyngen, a journalism student. 

 

"We are familiar with the rumour, and it's just a rumour," a palace official told her. "You are not the first to have called and asked about it. But it's not true." 

 

Kjersti Løken Stavrum, general secretary of the Norwegian Press Association, said that the website had broken the rules of good journalism. 

 

"I think that they ended up passing on rumours, because although they themselves are not responsible for the taping that they published, they haven't really done any research themselves," she told The Local.  "I think that in principle the established media shouldn't pass on rumours. I don't think that's journalism. Journalism is fact-based reporting, based on sources that can be traced." 

 

Tor Strand, ABC Nyheter's editor, denied the charge. 

 

"We never print stories about rumours, but this is a story about people's reaction to the rumours. For me that's a big difference," he told The Local.  "This is not a story about the content of the rumours, it's a story about how Norwegian people got anxious because of the rumours." 

 

He admitted that he had received angry emails and phone calls from editors on other newspapers on Friday and over the weekend. 

 

"It's a tradition among Norwegian editors and journalists to not write about rumours whatsoever, and of course they don't agree with me in publishing that story," he said. "But the way I see it, our story is no different from the story you intend to write yourself.  We don't sas what the rumours are all about -- apart from the main conclusion that there is going to be a divorce." 

 

Stavrum argued that the biggest problem with ABC Nyheter's report was that stories about famous people's relationships, like those about their sexual orientation, are difficult for the subjects to quash. 

 

"They're the kind of rumour which are very hard to deny. For years there were rumours that Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg was gay.  It's not easy to go out there and say 'we are not going to divorce', or say 'I'm not gay'. I think they are quite similar."

The stunning Norwegian landscape in Disney's Frozen - The Walt Disney Company

Norway-inspired Disney breaks box office record

Frozen, a new Disney film heavily inspired by Norway, has set a new box office record for a debut on the US's Thanksgiving weekend, taking $66.7m between Friday and Sunday last week.

The film, which retells the story of The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen, is set in a world of icy fjords,  Norwegian stave churches, traditional costumes, the Northern Lights, gløgg, and even lutefisk. 

 

Disney sent some of its cartoonists to Norway for two weeks to soak in the local sights as they dreamt up the visual world of the film.  



"We have a partnership with Disney," says Per-Arne Tuftin at Innovation Norway told NRK. "In all their press materials they say they are inspired by Norway and they are spending millions of dollars to promote the movie." 

  Source:The Local (news@thelocal.no)

Police Arrest Woman For Stealing Gold Chain & Hiding It In Her Private Part For 3 Days!

Police detectives attached to the anti-robbery squad of the Lagos State Police Command, have arrested a woman for allegedly stealing a gold chain worth N650,000, and hiding it in her private part.
The woman, identified as Tessy Emovon, 26, allegedly stole the chain from her boyfriend, Cosmas Odijie, 26, last Sunday in a hotel located in Ikeja, after giving him a sleeping drug.
Odijie had earlier on given Tessy N3,000, to spend the night with her.
According to the police, when Odijie complained of being tired, Tessy gave him a drug called Rohypnol.
She assured him that the drug will boost his energy and sex drive, but instead,  Odijie encountered one of the less desirable effects of the drug: weakness, headache, difficulty breathing, nausea, unconsciousness, confusion, difficulty seeing clearly.
Odijie told the police in his statement that after taking the drug, he slept off and woke up around 3.30a.m. on Monday to discover that his gold chain was missing.
“After regaining consciousness, I discovered that my gold chain was missing and when I challenged Tessy, she denied stealing the chain. This led to argument and I had to inform the manager of the hotel,” he told the police.
The manager reported the incident to the police at Area ‘F’ police division, Ikeja, and Tessy was arrested and detained for two days.
She was arrested again by SARS officers as she was released from detention on the third day following a report by Martins Odijie, 33, elder brother to Cosmas, who told detectives that he actually owned the stolen gold chain.
The SARS officers took her to their office at the headquarters of the Lagos Police Command for further interrogation.
During interrogation, she confessed to the crime, adding that she had wrapped the chain in a tissue paper which she inserted in her private part.
And that the chain was still in her private part.
Some female police officers from SARS had to take her to the hotel where she removed the chain from her private part.
A police source confirmed to PMNews that she would be charged to court soon for stealing.

Adams Oshiomhole pictured with 'his widow'

Not only did he employ the woman, he also gave her N2million cash gift to set up a trade. So happy for her. Her life will never be the same again. The power of social media.

Someone wrote this on Twitter "Anybody that is blocking my Go and Die benefactor, Holy Ghost fire scatter them' lol. See more photos after the cut......

Oshiomhole with the widow and her son...

Presidential aide Reno Omokri has commended the governor over his apology and the N2million cash gift. 

 

Culled fro Linda Ikejis Blog 

Its really commendable that the Governor apologised after he messed up. No one is above mistake.

Footie wife's post-birth selfie upsets Norwegians

Norwegian über-glam WAG Caroline Berg Eriksen's decision to post a washboard perfect picture of herself four days after giving birth has added jet fuel to the fiery debate about celebrity pressure on new mothers.

Berg Eriksen, who blogs under the name "Fotballfrue" (The Footballer's Wife), posted a selfie to Instagram where she shows of her six-pack stomach muscles and slender thighs. But certain critics were less than impressed by the former model's public antics. 

Fellow blogger Suzanne Aabel took to the web pages of Dagbladet newspaper to say she was unsure that she and Berg Eriksen even "belonged to the same species".

"In my eyes, this picture is wildly provocative," Aabel wrote. "Not just because I'm the chubby girl who's envious of her petite figure, but because I began to despise my own body when I was about twelve."

Tying the pressure to be thin to Anna Nicole Smith posters that adorned advertising boards across Norway when she was a tween, Aabel went on to link the celebrity cult and its focus on being slim to her own bouts of poor self-image.

At the age of 16, Aabel spent a week unable to sleep or eat because she had gotten her hands on diet pills from the US that were laden with ephedrine. 

But on Friday, the Footballer's Wife got a defensive player on her team from none other than Gro Nylander, head of the women's clinic at the National Hospital (Rikshospitalet) who is also nicknamed the Breastfeeding Guru.

"I don't think we should bully The Footballer's Wife," Nylander told the Aftenposten newspaper. "Life is unfair, some people have flat stomachs while others have pouts." 

The doctor said new mothers had to respect that their bodies responded differently to pregnancy and birth compared with other women, but underlined that the female body was made for pregnancy and how to cope with childbirth.

"The most impotant thing is to be kind to your body. It's a positive thing to have a few extra kilos on your body after birth," Nylander added.

culled from TheLocal.no