Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the fundamental principle that communication and expression through various media, including printed and electronic media, especially published materials, should be considered a right to be exercised freely. Such freedom implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state; its preservation may be sought through a constitution or other legal protection and security. It is in opposition to paid press, where communities, police organizations, and governments are paid for their copyrights.
Sør-Varanger is a municipality in Finnmark county, Norway. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Kirkenes. Other settlements in the municipality include the villages of Bjørnevatn, Bugøynes, Elvenes, Grense Jakobselv, Hesseng, Jakobsnes, Neiden, and Sandnes. Located west of the Norway–Russia border, Sør-Varanger is the only Norwegian municipality that shares a land border with Russia, with the only legal border crossing at Storskog.
The Barents Region is a name given, by advocates of establishing international cooperation after the fall of the Soviet Union, to the land along the coast of the Barents Sea, from Nordland in Norway to the Kola Peninsula in Russia and beyond all the way to the Ural Mountains and Novaya Zemlya, and south to the Gulf of Bothnia of the Baltic Sea and the great lakes Ladoga and Onega. Among the projects is the Barents Road from Bodø in Norway through Haparanda in Sweden and Finland to Murmansk in Russia. The region has six million inhabitants on 1.75 million km2; three quarters of both belong to Russia.
Kirkenes, Girkonjárga (Northern Sami; pronounced[ˈkir̥ː.ko.ˌɲaːrːka], or Kirkkoniemi is a town in Sør-Varanger Municipality in Finnmark county, in the far northeastern part of Norway. The town lies on a peninsula along the Bøkfjorden, an arm of the large Varangerfjorden, and is located just a few kilometres from the Norway–Russia border.
Dagen is a Norwegian Christian newspaper established in 1919, and published in Bergen. The average circulation in 2004 was 5,307 copies. The ideological goal of the newspaper was "to influence society from a revival Christian point of view". On 1 January 2008 the newspaper merged with another Christian newspaper, Magazinet, and was renamed to DagenMagazinet. On 1 April 2011 DagenMagazinet was renamed to Dagen. The current chief editor of Dagen as of 2010 is Vebjørn Selbekk, former editor of Magazinet.
The Norwegian News Agency is a Norwegian press agency and wire service that serves most of the largest Norwegian media outlets. The agency is located in Oslo and has bureaus in Brussels in Belgium and Tromsø in northern Norway. NTB operates 24 hours a day, with the night service handled from a bureau in Sydney, Australia since 2015. The photo agency Scanpix is a wholly owned subsidiary of NTB.
The Red Party is a socialist political party in Norway. It was founded in March 2007 by a merger of the Red Electoral Alliance and the Workers' Communist Party. A Marxist party, it has been described as left-wing and far-left on the political spectrum. In its political programme, the Red Party sets the creation of a classless society to be its ultimate goal, which the party says is "what Karl Marx called communism". The party's other goals are replacing capitalism with socialism, an expansive public sector and nationalisation of large enterprises. It strongly opposes Norway becoming a member of the European Union.
Norway–Russia relations are the bilateral foreign relations between the two countries, Norway and Russia. The establishment of diplomatic relationships between the two countries happened on October 30, 1905, four days after the establishment of Norway's independence. Russia has an embassy in Oslo and consulates in Barentsburg and Kirkenes, and Norway has an embassy in Moscow, and consulates in Murmansk and Saint Petersburg. The countries are neighboring each other along a 195.7 km long border. Norway is on Russia's Unfriendly Countries List.
Universitas is a weekly newspaper edited and written by students in Oslo, Norway. It has its editorial offices at the University of Oslo and has been published every week since 1946. With a weekly circulation of 17,000 and 30 publications a year, as well as around 30,000 page viewings a week, Universitas is one of the largest student papers in Europe. It is distributed every Thursday morning on 28 places of higher learning in Oslo.
Sara Mats Azmeh Rasmussen is a Syrian-Norwegian author, freelance writer, lecturer and human rights activist. She was born in 1973 and grew up in Damascus, Syria, in a Sunni Muslim family with deep roots in the capital. In 1995 she immigrated alone to Norway, and in 1997 she was granted political asylum. She was later granted Swedish citizenship.
The border between Norway and Russia consists of a 195.7-kilometer (121.6 mi) land border between Sør-Varanger Municipality, Norway, and Pechengsky District, Russia, and a 23.2-kilometer (14.4 mi) marine border in the Varangerfjord. It further consists of a border between the two countries' exclusive economic zones (EEZ) in the Barents Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Between 1944 and 1991 the border was between Norway and the Soviet Union. There is a single border crossing, on E105, located at Storskog in Norway and Borisoglebsky in Russia. The Norwegian side is patrolled by the Garrison of Sør-Varanger and is under the jurisdiction of the Norwegian Border Commissioner, while the Russian side is patrolled by the Border Guard Service of Russia. Two-thirds of the border follows two rivers, the Pasvikelva and Jakobselva.
The Norwegian Barents Secretariat aims at developing the Norwegian-Russian relations in the north by promoting and funding Norwegian-Russian cooperation projects. As of 2022, the organisation has 11 employees in Kirkenes; its offices are in Arkhangelsk, Murmansk, the Nenets Region and Kirkenes.
Thomas Nilsen is a Norwegian journalist who has extensively covered oil drilling in the Arctic region. He was editor of the BarentsObserver, a Norwegian Arctic online newspaper based in Kirkenes, for six years before he was sacked in 2015. Norway’s public service broadcaster, NRK, claim Nilsen was sacked at the behest of the Russian intelligence service, the FSB.
FS Marjata is a Norwegian purpose-built electronic intelligence collection vessel (ELINT), which was ordered by the parliament in 2010. It was baptized on 6 December 2014 by Prime Minister Erna Solberg. The ship is crewed by the Norwegian Intelligence Service.
The Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC) is the official body for inter-governmental co-operation in the Barents Region. It seeks solutions wherever and whenever the countries can achieve more together than by working on their own. Cooperation in the Barents Euro-Arctic Region was launched in 1993 on two levels: intergovernmental Barents Euro-Arctic Council (BEAC) and interregional Barents Regional Council (BRC). The overall objective of Barents cooperation has been sustainable development.
The Arctic Railway is a planned railway line linking the Norwegian Arctic port of Kirkenes with the Finnish railway network.
Sápmi Pride is a pride festival with Sápmi focus arranged annually since 2014.
Valentina Vyacheslavovna Sovkina is a Russian-Sami politician and chair of the Kola Sámi Assembly.
Bjarne Store-Jakobsen is a Norwegian politician, activist, and journalist. In 2005, he was elected to the Sámi Parliament of Norway as a member of the Labour Party. He was selected by the Sámi parliament to serve as a representative for the Sami People of Norway at the Working Group on Indigenous Peoples at the Barents Euro-Arctic Council, where he would serve as leader. He served as an advisor for the President of the Sámi Parliament Egil Olli until his dismissal in 2011. He would later leave the Labour Party and serve as the leader of the Sámi People's Party.
