Two hundred kilometres above the Arctic Circle hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers are finding a new life in northern Norway, but recently the doors have been shutting on those desperate to start fresh in the High North.
“Most worrying,” says head of the Norwegian Barents Secretariat Rune Rafaelsen commenting on the Russian State Duma’s approval of the new law forcing NGOs to label themselves as “foreign agents” if receiving grants from abroad.
Nikolai Alekseyev, founder of Russia’s gay pride movement, files a lawsuit with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) contesting Arkhangelsk’s new law banning homo-propaganda.
The Dutch explorer Willem Barentsz wanted to find the Northern Sea Route. He found Spitsbergen and got an ocean named after him, but his dream of finding a new route to Asia ended on the eastern shores of Novaya Zemlya.
From July 1. Russia introduces several amendments to the law on production and sale of alcohol. The new laws first of all concerns beer, which from that date will be affected by the same laws as other alcoholic beverages.
Yandex, Russia’s biggest search engine, saw more daily visitors last month than the number of any television channel’s viewers, with a record 19 million visitors each day.
