Oslo - Norwegian parliament speaker Thorbjorn Jagland said Tuesday he was to leave Norwegian politics, opting to stand as a candidate for secretary general of the Council of Europe.

The veteran Social Democrat, who has also held the posts of prime minister and foreign minister, hoped to succeed Terry Davis of Britain who was slated to step down next year.

Jagland, 58, said the Council of Europe was a key part of the European political and security system along with the European Union, NATO and the Organization of Cooperation and Security (OSCE).

Oslo  - The gap between supporters and opponents of Norway joining the European Union remains wide, according to a new opinion poll published Monday.

While 54.4 per cent were opposed to joining the 27-nation bloc, 36.1 per cent favoured joining the EU, the poll by research institute Sentio said.

Some 9.5 per cent of those people polled on September 2-7 were undecided, Sentio said, adding that the margin of error was 3 percentage points.

The sample was based on 904 people. Only people over 18, and therefore eligible to vote, were included in the survey, Sentio said.

Newspapers Nationen and Klassekampen commissioned the monthly poll.

Oslo - Norway on Friday approved emergency funds to Zimbabwe totalling 40 million kroner (6.8 million dollars), Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Store said.

"While we are monitoring the political events in Zimbabwe, we should not forget the acute needs of the hard suffering people," Store said in a statement.

The Norwegian funds were to be channelled via the United Nations and humanitarian agencies, the foreign minister said.

Oslo - Petrol stations operated by Norwegian energy group Statoil Hydro were to keep their original name Statoil, the group's chairman said Thursday, indicating it meant massive savings.

Statoil operates some 2,000 petrol stations in eight countries.

Retaining the Statoil name for the petrol stations was believed to save huge sums. Oslo-based consulting firm Det Norske Veritas (DNV) had estimated that rebranding the stations and creating a new logo would cost 1.9 billion kroner (325 million dollars).

Oslo - The Norwegian tax authority was red-faced Wednesday amid reports it had sent sensitive information about millions of Norwegian taxpayers to several news media outlets.

The tax authority mistakenly included personal identity numbers - which are confidential - on lists of taxpayers it distributed to the media, public broadcaster NRK reported.

Almost 4 million taxpayers were included on the lists, NRK reported and the tax authority has since Tuesday tried to contain the damage.

The error was disclosed by NRK's current affairs programme Brennpunkt.

Oslo  - US cultural theorist Fredric R Jameson was Tuesday named winner of the 2008 Holberg International Memorial Prize.

Worth 4.5 million kroner (785,000 dollars), the prize is awarded "for outstanding scholarly work in the academic fields of the arts and humanities, social science, law and theology."

Jameson, 74, a professor at Duke University in North Carolina, was cited for "outstanding contributions to the understanding of the relation between social formations and cultural forms."

He has written on a wide range of topics, including classical European literary tradition, film in Europe, North America and Asia, science fiction and architecture as well as music.