Icesave costs Iceland less than expected

A draft of an agreement between Icelandic, British and Dutch authorities on the dispute regarding Landsbanki’s Icesave deposits payback scheme has been completed and presented to parties of interest.

Vilhjálmur Egilsson, managing director of the Confederation of Icelandic Employer (SA), said the draft indicates that the Icelandic state will contribute much less to Icesave than originally expected, possibly ISK 60 billion (USD 532 million, EUR 391 million).

Iceland Review

Love you forever confidentially

Former Prime Minister of Iceland Davíd Oddsson and Foreign Minister Halldór Ásgrímsson were unaware as to the purpose of the list of the “coalition of the willing”—nations supporting the US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. The publication of the list came as a surprise; they thought it would be confidential.

Oddsson and Ásgrímsson decided to place Iceland’s name on the list two days before the invasion began. Tómas Heidar, an international law specialist at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs considered the invasion illegal and notified the ministers of his opinion the day the invasion began, Fréttabladid reports.

Light is shed on the events leading up to Iceland’s declaration of support in 67 documents, almost 300 pages, made public by the Foreign Ministry yesterday.

The documents confirm that the decision was made by two persons, Oddsson and Ásgrímsson. The decision was made without consultancy with the Althingi parliament or the parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee.

Iceland Review

Alien Landscape Alien People

The Icelandic Alien Society felt compelled to issue a statement after the interview with Mayor of Reykjavík Jón Gnarr on RÚV’s news magazine Kastljós on Monday that he is not an alien, contrary to his claims.

The statement reads that although some of the mayor’s behavioral patterns and his physical appearance might indicate that he is from outer space, the society’s closer investigation into the matter has concluded that he is, in fact, an earthly creature.

The society concluded that Gnarr has both a social security number and human parents and a well-known, albeit dubious, history. Gnarr appears to have “simply the same political sloppiness syndrome as most other third-class politicians who cannot do much else than to go back on their promises.”

“These factors do not characterize most of the aliens who have visited the earth, whom we know only by their good deeds,” the society’s statement reads.

Iceland Review

Icelands fishermen face net ban

Iceland’s Minister for Fisheries has decided to change the country’s new rules on mackerel fishing, banning fishing nets altogether.

Iceland’s three thousand tonne quota has been given to small and medium sized boats and can only be fished with lines, hand reels and traps, Visir.is reports. The Minister, Jon Bjarnason, came to his decision after the National Union of Fishers pointed out that mackerel nets could also catch salmon as by-catch. Salmon is not allowed to be targeted by ocean fishermen around Iceland.

http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2010/04/19/iceland-mackerel-fishermen-face-net-ban

[Sounds like a responsible decision to me]