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TODAY IN NORWAY

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

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

Today in Norway: A roundup of the latest news on Monday
The sun rising over a camping trip in Hennigsvær. Photo by Daan Weijers on Unsplash

Hunt for meteorite seen over Eastern Norway 

Experts are on the hunt for a meteorite seen over Eastern Norway on Saturday morning, which is believed to have landed in nature reserve Finnemarka, Viken, South-East Norway. 

In the early hours of Sunday morning, a meteorite whizzed over Norway, with many residents of Oslo and the surrounding areas reporting bright flashes of light in the night sky and loud bangs like thunder. 

The Norwegian Meteor Network said the fireball was travelling at about 16.3km/s per second (nearly 58,000 km/h), and the meteor could be seen over large parts of southern Scandinavia.

Morten Bilet, from the Norwegian Meteor network, told newspaper VG that they are working on calculations and video footage to try and identify the part of Finnemarka where the meteorite could have landed. 

He also added that the group would work on finding the meteorite, believed to weigh about ten kilograms, until the autumn. 

Norway celebrates first ever triathlon gold at Olympics 

Kristian Blummenfelt has swept home to gold, Norway’s first in this summer’s Olympics and Norway’s first-ever gold in the triathlon, in the early hours of Monday morning. 

He won the race after it had to be restarted due to a boat at the starting line blocking some competitors from jumping in the water. 

READ ALSO: Norwegians give short shrift to fine for women’s handball team

The 27-year-old from Bergen crossed the line in a time of 1 hour and 45 minutes. 

Municipalities in Northern Norway tighten Covid measures 

Five municipalities in Nordland and Troms and Finnmark are introducing a number of new coronavirus measures to cut down on the number of infections in the area. 

The municipalities of Lødingen, Evenes, Theldsund, Kvæfjord and Harstad have all joined forces to introduce regional measures that come into effect from Monday. 

The new rules are being introduced following a rise of infections in the area, including outbreaks of the more contagious Delta Covid variant, first identified in India. 

The measures include an alcohol stop at midnight, reducing the number of guests allowed at home, new infection control measures at home and new recommendations for facemasks. You can take a look at the new measures here

136 new Covid-19 cases 

On Sunday, 136 new cases of coronavirus were recorded across Norway. This is 65 fewer cases than the average for the previous seven days.

In Oslo, 20 new Covid-19 infections were registered. Over the past two weeks, Oslo has averaged 23 cases per day. 

Cases tend to be lower on weekends when fewer people get tested, and fewer samples are processed. 

Total number of reported Covid-19 cases. 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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