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TODAY IN NORWAY

Today in Norway: A roundup of the latest news on Friday 

Find out what’s going on in Norway on Friday with The Local’s short roundup of important news. 

Today in Norway: A roundup of the latest news on Friday 
Gudvangen, Norway. Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash

Man sentenced to 12 years for terror offences 

A 25-year-old man from Skien, South-East Norway, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for terrorism offences. 

The man was charged with three counts of complicity in terrorist attacks and having participated in Isis. 

The man, who has not been named, was an admin in jihadist group chats and shared bomb recipes and propaganda for Isis. 

The prosecution service had wanted the man to be sentenced to 15 years in prison. 

The lawyer for the defendant, Brynjar Meling, has said that they plan to appeal the verdict.

Majority in favour of alcohol limit for electric scooters

Almost seven out of ten are in favour of introducing a blood alcohol limit for electric scooters, according to a new survey conducted by YouGov on behalf of Trygg Trafikk. 

Authorities and rental companies have been under a lot of pressure to tighten the rules following a surge in accidents, and 69 percent of people said they want a blood alcohol limit for the devices.

On Tuesday, Oslo Municipality announced that rental scooters would be subject to a curfew in the city. Users would no longer be able to rent the devices between 11 pm and 5 am when hospitals say the most accidents have happened. 

REVEALED: How Oslo will crack down on electric scooters

Currently, there is no alcohol limit for scooter users. Instead, whether they are fit to ride one of the devices is down to their judgment. 

Just under 20 percent said they were was no need for alcohol limits. 

Large Covid Delta variant outbreak at Wedding

Almost a third of the guests that attended a wedding in Lillestrøm, South-East Norway, have subsequently tested positive for Covid-19. 

So far, 29 of the 100 guests at the ceremony have been confirmed to have coronavirus, among those cases of the Delta Variant, first identified in India, have been sequenced. 

READ ALSO: One-third of Norway’s Covid cases linked to Delta variant

All the guests from the wedding party are now in quarantine. 

Norwegian Directorate of Police want joint police station with Sweden

The Norwegian Police Directorate wants closer co-operation with Swedish police on cross border crime and intends to establish a combined police station with Sweden. 

Swedish police are open to the idea, and there is already one joint police station established along the border between the two countries. 

156 New Covid cases in Norway 

On Thursday, 156 new Covid-19 cases were registered, eight cases less than the seven-day rolling average. 

In Oslo, 23 new coronavirus infections were recorded, one less than the seven-day average.

Total number of Covid-19 cases in Norway. Source: NIPH.

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TODAY IN NORWAY

Today in Norway: A roundup of the latest news on Monday

Earthquake near Bergen, perpetrators of Oslo shooting still at large, retail industry strike looms, and other news from Norway on Monday.

Today in Norway: A roundup of the latest news on Monday

Mini-earthquake rattles Voss, outside Bergen 

An earthquake with a magnitude of 3.3 on the Richter scale rattled the municipality of Voss early on Monday morning, waking up many residents but appearing to do no actual damage. 

“We first received a message at 4.22am from a man in Vaksdal who had felt the earthquake. He described it as a clear shaking in the house and as a kind of rumbling,” Berit Marie Storheim, senior engineer at the Department of Geosciences at Bergen University, told the NTB newswire, adding that “3.3 is a small earthquake in the global context and it is not unusual in Norway.” 

She said that she and her colleagues did not expect any damage to buildings or other infrastructure but called on anyone who had felt the quake to register it at skelv.no. 

Norwegian vocabulary: jordskjelv – earthquake  

Perpetrators of shooting at Oslo’s Beirut Kebab still at large 

Oslo police said on Sunday that they were still looking for the men who shot and injured a man in his twenties at the Beirut Kebab kebab restaurant in the Grønland district of Oslo on Saturday night.

“We are investigating broadly, looking at several milieu, and we know that there is more than one perpetrator,” Maria Huseby Fossen, a police lawyer, told public broadcaster NRK.

The victim of the shooting has yet to be interviewed as he is till being treated for his injuries, but police have already interviewed several other witnesses and are seeking to obtain footage from security cameras.

Norwegian vocabulary: ingen pågrepet – no one arrested

Dury free shops may close if retail sector employees strike  

Thousands of members of the Handel og Kontor (HK), Parat and Negotia unions may go on strike from Tuesday if mediation launched on Sunday morning with the Federation of Norwegian Enterprise (Virke), one of Norway’s leading employer groups, is not successful.

The union’s deadline for progress in the talks is midnight on Tuesday night, after which they may mount strikes at building materials stores, grocery stores and duty-free shops, as well as shops run by Norgesgruppen and Coop.

Handel og Kontor has claimed that the strike could see duty free shops at Norwegian airports forced to closed, something the shops’ owners, the Travel Retail Norway joint venture, has denied. 

Norwegian vocabulary: mekling – mediation

Norway calls on West to support Arab peace plan in Gaza 

Norway’s foreign minister Espen Barth Eide on Sunday evening called for EU countries and the US to support a Gaza peace plan drawn up by Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, as representatives from Arab and Western countries meet in Riyadh on the sidelines of the regional meeting of the World Economic Forum. 

“The closest we have to a comprehensive peace plan is the one Arab countries are currently working on. It is important that we support this. It is simply better to have one plan than no plan,” Eide told Norway’s NTB newsire. “Recognition of a Palestinian state is not an end in itself, but a tool we can use once. When a country like Norway uses it, we must know that it can have an effect.” 

EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell, British foreign minister David Cameron, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, Egyptian foreign minister Sameh Shoukry, Jordanian foreign minister Umin Safadi and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas are in in Riyadh for the meeting, along with Eide. 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in Riyadh, but will not attend the meeting. 

Eide said that the idea that countries such as the US or Norway could somehow lead peace efforts in Israel and Palestine was past. 

“A country from the West cannot travel down and ‘make peace’, as we maybe let ourselves believe. It needs to be anchored in the region,” he told NRK. 

Norwegian vocabulary: forankrast – anchored

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