Oslo - Russia has decided to freeze and cancel all military cooperation with Norway and other NATO members, the online edition of Oslo daily Aftenposetn reported Wednesday.

Oslo - Swiss-based Stadler Rail Group was selected Tuesday to deliver new regional trains worth 4 billion kroner (739 million dollars), Norwegian train operator NSB said.

"This is NSB's largest single contract to date and a historic deal," NSB chief executive Einar Enger said in a statement.

The Norwegian train operator was to buy 50 trains consisting of five cars each from the Swiss group, and had an option for a further 100 trains known as Flirt (Fast, Light, Innovative, Regional Train).

Oslo  - British director Peter Brook was Monday named winner of the International Ibsen Award, the jury headed by Norwegian actress and director Liv Ullmann said.

The new prize, worth 2.5 million kroner (460,000 dollars), was in recognition of Brook's "successful demonstration that all significant theatre has a unique ability to bring people together."

Brook, 83, has directed numerous stage productions and worked with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House in London. He has also been involved with film and television work.

Oslo  - The illegal release of fish in a Norwegian lake has caused a Nepalese graduate student a severe headache and angered biologists, reports said Thursday.

Bishnu Regmi, who is studying insects in waters with and without predator fish for a doctoral dissertation, has to his dismay discovered that perch have been released illegally into the Myravann lake.

"This is really bad. I only get a study grant for three years," Regmi told the Bergens Tidende newspaper, saying that his 18 months of work may have been in vain.

Oslo - The remains of a Norwegian climber who was killed on the K2 mountain in the Himalayas should stay on the mountain slopes, his father said in an interview published Monday.

Rolf Bae's family said it was "difficult" to know that his remains would stay on the mountain but said they did not want other people to risk their lives to find the body.

"We have talked a lot about this. We don't want other people to put themselves in danger to try to find him. Rolf is gone, no matter what we do," Jakob Bae told the Stavanger Aftenbladet newspaper.

Oslo/Stockholm - Nordic countries Wednesday expressed disappointment over the collapse of the World Trade Organization (WTO) talks over farm import rules.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store, who attended the nine-day talks in Geneva and was also assigned to help broker some issues on patent matters by WTO Director General Pascal Lamy, said he was "disappointed over the failure to reach an agreement."

"We came a long way towards a new agreement. But on critical issues the gaps between the key nations was too big," Store added.