OSLO (Reuters) – More penalties on greenhouse gas emissions could help raise $100 billion a year from 2020 to enable poor nations to slow global warming, despite austerity in many rich countries, Norway’s prime minister said.

Jens Stoltenberg, who will co-chair a U.N. advisory group about climate financing in Addis Ababa on Tuesday, said raising $100 billion a year was “feasible” but one of the hardest issues in talks on a new U.N. climate deal.

OSLO/BEIJING (Reuters) – Jailed Chinese democracy activist Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for two decades of non-violent struggle for human rights, infuriating China, which called the award “an obscenity”.

The prize shines a spotlight on human rights in China at a time when it is starting to play a leading role on the global stage as a result of its growing economic might.

OSLO (Reuters) – Jailed Chinese pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for decades of non-violent struggle for human rights, an award that Beijing had anticipated and bitterly criticised.

The prize puts China’s human rights record in the spotlight at a time when it is starting to play a bigger role on the global stage as a result of its growing economic might.

OSLO (Reuters) – Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is the leading candidate to win the Nobel Peace Prize with the European Union and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl also among the contenders, Norway’s main television networks said on Thursday.

The broadcasters, NRK and TV2, have a history of naming the eventual laureate in their main news programmes the night before the announcement, which comes at 0900 GMT (5 a.m. EDT) on Friday.

OSLO (Reuters) – Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo is the leading candidate to win the Nobel Peace Prize with the European Union and former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl also among the contenders, Norway’s main television networks said on Thursday.

The broadcasters, NRK and TV2, have a history of naming the eventual laureate in their main news programmes the night before the announcement, which comes at 0900 GMT on Friday.

OSLO (Reuters) – Norwegian oil and gas producer Statoil ASA said its filling station network IPO would raise up to $844 million as it joined a growing rush of companies pushing flotations to cash in on recent stock market strength.

Statoil said on Thursday it will sell up to 40 percent in Statoil Fuel & Retail (SFR) later this month, the first IPO of this size on the oil stock-heavy Oslo bourse since the onset of the financial crisis.

OSLO, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Norway’s central bank on Wednesday
announced plans to increase money market efficiency by curbing
risk premiums that boost lenders’ financing costs and limit the
redistribution of liquidity within the banking system.

“Risk premiums in money markets have generally been higher
in Norway than in other countries, also in the post-crisis
period,” Norges Bank Governor Svein Gjedrem said in a statement.

OSLO (Reuters) – A Chinese dissident and an Afghan women’s campaigner lead candidates for the 2010 Nobel Peace prize as the Nobel Committee seeks a more traditional candidate after criticism of the 2009 choice of President Barack Obama.

The row triggered by the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s award to Obama less than nine months into his term is likely to push the secretive panel to select a laureate with a longer record of accomplishment this year, Nobel watchers said.

OSLO (Reuters) – Norway’s Renewable Energy Corp. ASA is more upbeat about solar energy component prices than a month or two ago, Chief Executive Ole Enger said.

“If you had asked me a month ago, I would have said that there was likely to be a considerable price decline (in 2011),” Enger told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

OSLO (Reuters) – Norway favors more international action to slow deforestation in developing nations as the quickest and cheapest way to fight global warming, Prime Minister Jen Stoltenberg said on Friday.

He also told Reuters that Norway, the world’s number five oil exporter, was on target to over-achieve its national goal for cutting greenhouse gas emissions until 2012 under the U.N.’s Kyoto Protocol.