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MISSING NORWEGIAN PLANE

NORWAY

Bad weather slows hunt for lost Hercules plane

Harsh weather conditions complicated search and rescue efforts underway Thursday night to locate a Norwegian Hercules military transport plane which is feared to have crashed in the mountains of northwestern Sweden.

Bad weather slows hunt for lost Hercules plane

Strong winds and heavy cloud cover forced helicopters to break off their overnight search for the plane, which was carrying five Norwegian crew members when it lost radio and radar contact around 2.40pm on Thursday afternoon.

However helicopters were back in the air by Friday morning, concentrating their search in three areas around Mount Kebnekaise, Sweden’s tallest peak.

“These are the areas that are most likely [for the plane to be located] based on the last radar signal we have and a spot which a heat sensing camera from a Norwegian surveillance aircraft picked up last night,” rescue operations leader Jonas Sundin of the Swedish sea and air rescue services told the TT news agency.

Map: Rescuers believe the plane crashed at Drakryggen, near Mount Kebnekaise, Sweden’s highest peak.

In addition to the difficult weather conditions, avalanche concerns complicated ground-based rescue efforts.

“There are a few ground patrols out and driving around on snowmobiles, but there is a great risk for avalanches. We have a lot of manpower at the ready, but we’re limited by the avalanche danger,” said rescue operations leader Bengt-Olov Hammarlöf to TT.

“It’s only the most experienced [rescuers] who can go into these areas when it’s dark.”

So far, no emergency signals from the missing plane have been detected.

“For some reason, it hasn’t been set off. Either the crash was so violent or so terrible that it was knocked out of operations by the impact, but there is also an emergency signal transmitter in the life vests but those must be switched on by hand and for that, you have to be conscious,” said Hammarlöf.

The aircraft went missing when it was on its way from Evenes in northern Norway to Kiruna in the far north of Sweden.

At the time, the Hercules was was participating in the Cold Response military training exercise taking place over northern Norway which was scheduled to run from March 12th to March 21st and included 16,000 soldiers from 15 countries.

“There was a crew of four on board as well as an extra officer. Their mission was to fly from Evenes to Kiruna to pick up materiel and personnel and fly back to Norway,” Harald Sunde, head of the Norwegian Armed Forces told Norwegian news agency NTB.

He added that the officers on board the Hercules aircraft were among the “most experienced” in the Norwegian military and that there were no clues regarding what may have happened.

“We have nothing that points us in any particular direction. This is a very robust and new aircraft, one of the best there is. It’s been hard to have bad luck with this type of aircraft,” said Sunde.

The missing aircraft is a C-130 J “Super” Hercules transport plane manufactured by Lockheed Martin in the United States.

The plane is one of four C-130 Js ordered by the Norwegian air force in 2007, the first of which was delivered in November 2008.

TT/The Local/dl

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NORWAY

Norway to send 200,000 AstraZeneca doses to Sweden and Iceland

Norway, which has suspended the use of AstraZeneca's Covid vaccine until further notice, will send 216,000 doses to Sweden and Iceland at their request, the Norwegian health ministry said Thursday.

Norway to send 200,000 AstraZeneca doses to Sweden and Iceland
Empty vials of the AstraZeneca vaccine. (Photo by GABRIEL BOUYS / AFP)

“I’m happy that the vaccines we have in stock can be put to use even if the AstraZeneca vaccine has been paused in Norway,” Health Minister Bent Høie said in a statement.

The 216,000 doses, which are currently stored in Norwegian fridges, have to be used before their expiry dates in June and July.

Sweden will receive 200,000 shots and Iceland 16,000 under the expectation they will return the favour at some point. 

“If we do resume the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine, we will get the doses back as soon as we ask,” Høie said.

Like neighbouring Denmark, Norway suspended the use of the AstraZeneca jab on March 11 in order to examine rare but potentially severe side effects, including blood clots.

Among the 134,000 AstraZeneca shots administered in Norway before the suspension, five cases of severe thrombosis, including three fatal ones, had been registered among relatively young people in otherwise good health. One other person died of a brain haemorrhage.

On April 15, Norway’s government ignored a recommendation from the Institute of Public Health to drop the AstraZeneca jab for good, saying it wanted more time to decide.

READ MORE: Norway delays final decision on withdrawal of AstraZeneca vaccine 

The government has therefore set up a committee of Norwegian and international experts tasked with studying all of the risks linked to the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, which is also suspected of causing blood clots.

Both are both based on adenovirus vector technology. Denmark is the only European country to have dropped the AstraZeneca
vaccine from its vaccination campaign, and said on Tuesday it would “lend” 55,000 doses to the neighbouring German state of Schleswig-Holstein.

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