Foreign citizens who moved to Iceland in 2012 totaled 3,920 while 2,350 moved abroad meaning that 1,500 more foreigners live in Iceland now than in January one year ago. At the same time, 3,150 Icelanders emigrated from Iceland, most of them to Norway and Denmark. Almost the same number, or 3,110, of Icelanders moved back home including 1,000 from Denmark and 680 from Norway, mbl.is reports. …

Susanna Jensen was surprised to find a baby seal floundering amongst the trees while she was out walking her dog on a forest trail in Moss, south of Oslo, on Tuesday afternoon. The seal had somehow been separated from its parents and trapped behind a local marina, its way back to the sea blocked by lines of boats on the shore. “It looked like it was happy to see me because it was coming towards me, but it also looked tired.” …

The National Tropical Botanical Garden has announced it is bringing together a host of top musicians from Hawaii with a Grammy-winning artist in celebration of the Garden’s 50th anniversary.Tickets to the Saturday, April 5 “Musical Legends in the Garden” are now on sale for the four-hour concert set in NTBG’s open-air Southshore Visitors Center in Poipu. …

Journalist Kate Baklitskaya today begins an epic 3 month tour of some of Siberia’s most iconic places.Her aim? To show Siberia as it is today, and to look beyond the stereotypes of this magnificent and mysterious Russian region. Kate’s ‘Go East’ route resembles a crown perched on the top of Russia, and will include many jewels on the way, starting in Tobolsk, the original Russian settlement west of the Urals in Siberia, founded in 1586 by Yermak’s Cossacks. …

Italy’s cultural police, who have taken a leading role in the fight against the smuggling of antiquities, put on show a trove of recovered stolen art in Rome from Etruscan funerary urns to Renaissance paintings. …

The amount of radioactive cesium that flowed into the sea through a river running across central Fukushima Prefecture when a powerful typhoon hit in September 2011 totaled 6.2 trillion becquerels, about 60 percent of the total for a 12-month period, researchers say. …

The Finnish government held on to its triple-A credit rating for long term debt, according to the rating agency Moody’s.In confirming the triple-A credit rating Moody’s said that Finland’s credit rating outlook is stable.Other ratings agencies, Fitch Rating and Standard and Poor’s have also rubber-stamped the highest possible rating for the Finnish government. …

YLE

HeyJude

Three cheers for the woman who rescued the baby seal….and I don’t believe for one minute that large amounts of cesium will have NO impact on marine life. Give it time…..:-(