分类： politics

On Monday, a Norwegian district court will deliver its long-awaited verdict and sentence in the high-profile criminal trial of Marius Borg Høiby, the 29-year-old eldest son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit, wrapping up a legal proceeding that has captured public attention across the Scandinavian nation and drawn widespread international scrutiny.

Høiby, who was born from Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s pre-marital relationship with a commoner and grew up in the royal household alongside heir to the throne Crown Prince Haakon, but holds no official royal title or ceremonial duties, faces a total of 40 separate criminal charges. The most serious accusations against him include four counts of rape, alongside additional allegations of violence, threats, and abusive behavior spanning from 2018 to 2024. Prosecutors allege that in each of the four rape cases, the accusers were either asleep or severely incapacitated and unable to consent at the time of the alleged incidents.

Høiby has issued a full denial of all four rape charges and pushed back on key details of many other allegations against him. He has only admitted to a series of less severe offenses, including drug-related violations, traffic misdemeanors, and violating the terms of a previously issued restraining order. Prosecutors have formally requested that Oslo District Court hand down a seven-year and seven-month prison sentence, while Høiby’s defense team has argued for the dismissal of all rape charges, and asked that any sentence for the crimes their client has admitted to not exceed 18 months of incarceration.

The six-week trial concluded back in March after testimony from four separate accusers, alongside the submission of extensive evidence, including digital communications, images and video files recovered from Høiby’s personal cellphone. In the weeks leading up to Monday’s ruling, public interest has been further amplified by the declining health of Høiby’s mother, Crown Princess Mette-Marit, who lives with pulmonary fibrosis and is currently waiting for a life-saving lung transplant. Legal debates unfolded over whether Høiby should be granted temporary release from pre-verdict custody to see his mother, but appeals courts ultimately ruled that he must remain detained through the conclusion of the case. Legal analysts broadly note that regardless of how the court rules on the most severe rape charges, Høiby is still widely expected to receive a prison sentence for the lesser offenses he has already admitted.

The case has gained outsized attention both domestically and globally due to Høiby’s direct ties to Norway’s royal family, and it comes at a time when the monarchy is already facing increased public scrutiny. Recently, public disclosures revealed that Crown Princess Mette-Marit maintained past social contacts with Jeffrey Epstein, the deceased American financier and convicted sex offender. The crown princess has publicly apologized for the connection, acknowledged that she exercised poor judgment in continuing her relationship with Epstein, and has not been accused of any criminal wrongdoing in connection with the Epstein disclosures.

Editor’s note: This report includes discussion of sexual violence. For individuals in the U.S. seeking support for sexual assault experiences, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. For survivors based in Norway, the national sexual abuse victim helpline can be reached at +47 800 57 000.

In the hours ahead of his departure for the annual Group of Seven summit in the French Alpine resort of Evian-les-Bains, U.S. President Donald Trump announced a landmark tentative agreement that he says will bring an end to the 15-week U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran – a deal that reshapes the dynamics of this year’s gathering of world leaders even as it draws immediate skepticism from political opponents and key U.S. allies alike.

For days, both Trump’s team and Iranian officials signaled steady progress toward a negotiated ceasefire. But the road to the announcement remained rocky as recently as Sunday, when fresh cross-border strikes erupted between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah militants along the Lebanese border. Key details of the agreement remain tightly held: neither the White House nor Iranian authorities have released the full text of the deal, and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi clarified Sunday that Tehran will continue its closure of the Strait of Hormuz until the agreement is formally signed. Pakistan, which served as the primary mediator for the indirect negotiations, confirmed that preliminary pre-implementation talks will kick off this week, setting the stage for 60 days of technical negotiations focused on Iran’s nuclear program.

The last-minute deal hands Trump a key political win as he sits down with G7 leaders, many of whom have openly criticized his handling of the conflict that sent global energy prices soaring over the past three months. Polls show a majority of American voters disapprove of Trump’s management of the war, and Republican lawmakers have openly worried about the damage it could do to the party’s prospects in the upcoming November midterm elections. Friction has already been simmering for months between Trump and the four leading European G7 members – French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Starmer, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni – over Trump’s decision to launch the conflict without consulting NATO allies. In turn, Trump has pushed back against the leaders, accusing them of failing to offer sufficient U.S. backing during the conflict. The tentative deal is expected to shift the tone of this week’s talks, with demining the Strait of Hormuz already set as a top agenda item. Roughly 20% of the world’s global crude oil supplies pass through the strategic waterway, and mining fears have brought nearly all commercial tanker traffic to a halt since the conflict began. Both Britain and France have already signaled they are willing to assist with clearing operations once a ceasefire takes effect, a step seen as critical to restoring global shipping confidence and easing energy market volatility.

Macron, this year’s G7 host, has structured the summit to center heavily on the Middle East following the deal announcement. He extended invitations to the leaders of Egypt, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates – three non-G7 nations with deep stakes in the region – for a dedicated Tuesday session focused on the implications of the new agreement. In a Sunday social media video, Macron outlined the session’s goals: assessing the agreement’s impact, extending support to Lebanon, planning for the long-term reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and advancing negotiations toward a final deal on Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

A core point of controversy already emerging around the deal centers on its lack of transparency, particularly regarding nuclear safeguards and proposed economic incentives for Tehran. Trump famously pulled the U.S. out of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the multilateral nuclear agreement negotiated by former President Barack Obama, arguing that the deal failed to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon and funneled billions of dollars in sanctions relief to the Islamic Republic. But Trump has yet to release key details of his new framework, including who will verify Iranian compliance, and how the deal will address the 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium buried at nuclear sites damaged by U.S. strikes last summer. Senior White House officials have confirmed the deal includes sanctions relief and economic incentives for Iran tied to compliance benchmarks, echoing the core structure of the Obama-era deal Trump once condemned.

Critics from both parties have already seized on the lack of transparency. Senate Intelligence Committee top Democrat Mark Warner noted Sunday on CBS’ *Face the Nation* that Trump’s unilateral framework lacks the multilateral oversight and allied buy-in that defined the JCPOA. “For all his critique of JCPOA, we had international observers, we actually had an alliance there that included the Europeans, and Russia and China were all signatories,” Warner said. “Now it is America going alone or going with Israel only, and that does not make us safer.” Even prominent Trump ally and Iran hawk Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has voiced skepticism, noting that key discrepancies already exist between U.S. and Iranian descriptions of the agreement. Graham added that any final nuclear deal with Iran requires congressional review and approval, and said he expects Vice President JD Vance, described by Graham as “the architect of the deal,” to present the full framework to lawmakers soon.

Beyond Iran, the G7 summit will also address the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, which has been largely overshadowed by the 15-week Iran conflict. Macron invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to attend a working session on the war Tuesday, though no one-on-one meeting between Zelenskyy and Trump is currently scheduled. On Sunday, a day before the summit kicked off, Trump held separate phone calls with both Zelenskyy and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters the call with Putin lasted nearly an hour, with Trump emphasizing his commitment to ending hostilities and stating he would push European allies and Kyiv toward a negotiated settlement during his G7 appearances. Ushakov also noted Trump told Putin recent strikes on Russian civilian targets have complicated peace efforts. The White House has not issued any comment on the call, and Ushakov added that Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner are expected to travel to Russia for follow-up talks in the near future. In a Telegram statement, Zelenskyy said he updated Trump on recent improvements to Ukraine’s defensive positions along the eastern front, and the two agreed to hold further discussions in person during the summit. The two last met in December at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Since returning to the White House, Trump’s focus on delivering a quick end to the war in Ukraine – a core promise of his 2024 presidential campaign – has been sidelined by the outbreak of the conflict with Iran and the subsequent global energy disruptions.

WESTPORT, Ireland — On the eve of the G7 leaders’ gathering in Evian-les-Bains, France, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has issued a stark warning about the systemic risks of overreliance on a small cohort of American artificial intelligence developers, following new U.S. export restrictions that forced AI firm Anthropic to pull its most advanced models offline.

The controversy began Friday when San Francisco-based Anthropic confirmed it had taken its two cutting-edge AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, offline to comply with a Trump administration directive barring access to the systems by foreign nationals. This move marks the most sweeping restriction the U.S. government has imposed to date on access to state-of-the-art AI technology.

Anthropic had only just publicly released a limited version of Fable 5 earlier that same week. The more capable Mythos 5 model, first announced by the company on April 7, had already been restricted to a small pool of pre-vetted customers over serious cybersecurity concerns: Anthropic itself has acknowledged Mythos 5 is so “strikingly capable” that it can outperform experienced human cybersecurity experts at identifying and exploiting software vulnerabilities, making unregulated access a major global security risk.

Speaking to reporters during a visit to Ireland on Sunday, Carney framed the shutdown as a cautionary tale for nations around the world. “The situation we’re in collectively right now with Mythos and Fable is exactly the kind of disruption that can happen when you overrely on a narrow set of providers from a single country,” Carney said. He emphasized no party involved acted improperly in this instance, but argued that global powers would be making a critical mistake if they failed to learn from the event: “We will have done something wrong if we just accept this, don’t take the lesson, don’t build out and diversify our own AI ecosystems.”

“It is never a good idea to have only one option,” Carney repeated, doubling down on his call for global diversification in AI development and supply chains.

The Prime Minister noted that AI policy will top the agenda for Monday night’s working sessions at the G7 summit, adding that he held a 45-minute bilateral discussion on AI governance and strategy with French President Emmanuel Macron Friday evening. Carney cautioned against expecting sweeping, final agreements from this gathering, noting the complexity of AI regulation and cross-border coordination means there will be no “mission accomplished” moment after the summit.

Carney connected the AI export restrictions to Canada’s broader long-term strategy to diversify its trade and technology partnerships, a policy push he has championed amid ongoing trade tensions with the U.S. More than 70% of Canada’s total exports currently flow to the United States, and Carney has set an ambitious national goal to double the volume of Canadian exports to non-U.S. markets over the next 10 years. The Trump administration’s ongoing trade war has already created significant uncertainty that has cooled cross-border investment in Canada, he added.

On another key bilateral topic, Carney confirmed he does not have a formal one-on-one meeting scheduled with U.S. President Donald Trump at the G7, even as the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) approaches its mandatory renewal. Instead, negotiations at this stage will be led by senior trade officials: Canada’s Minister responsible for U.S. Trade Dominic LeBlanc and chief negotiator Janice Charette will meet with U.S. Trade Ambassador Jamieson Greer and U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on the sidelines of the Evian summit. “The right way to do it at this stage will be between the principal negotiators, which is going to happen in Evian,” Carney explained.

Sunday’s appearance in Ireland came after Carney visited his family’s ancestral village of Aghagower in County Mayo earlier in the day. Both of his grandparents, Robert Carney and Nora Moran, were born in the town before immigrating to Canada in the 1920s. Local resident Owen Morgan, who brought his 17-month-old son Malachy — dressed in a Montreal Canadiens hockey jersey — to meet the Prime Minister, said locals in County Mayo take great pride in Carney’s career. “People are very impressed,” Morgan said. “He’s very much standing up for Canadians and I think that’s very much admired.”

YEREVAN, Armenia — Armenia’s Central Electoral Commission has formally validated the results of the country’s June 7 general election, confirming that Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s ruling Civil Contract Party secured a decisive victory in a poll widely framed as a defining vote on the nation’s geopolitical alignment and a major test of Russian influence in the South Caucasus. Final vote tallies show Civil Contract captured 49.7% of the popular vote, a result that grants the party an outright majority of 64 seats in the 101-seat National Assembly, clearing the way for Pashinyan to form a new government independent of coalition negotiations.

This election unfolded against an unprecedented backdrop of geopolitical tension, as Pashinyan’s administration has openly pursued deeper economic and political integration with the European Union and the United States, breaking with Armenia’s decades-long close alignment with Moscow — a shift that Pashinyan’s pro-Russian opposition has centered its campaign against. The main opposition bloc, pro-Russian Strong Armenia, led by Russian-based billionaire Samvel Karapetyan, secured 29.2% of the vote for 29 assembly seats, while former President Robert Kocharyan’s Armenia Alliance took 12 seats. As commission officials met to finalize the results Sunday, Strong Armenia and allied opposition groups held a protest rally outside the commission headquarters, submitting a formal appeal to annul the vote over unsubstantiated claims of widespread electoral violations.

The post-preliminary result period, which stretched from the June 8 preliminary announcement to the final Sunday confirmation, was designed to give all political parties time to file complaints over perceived irregularities. Leading up to election day, Armenian law enforcement issued six arrest warrants for Strong Armenia members on vote-buying charges, and Karapetyan himself remains under house arrest, accused of inciting the overthrow of Pashinyan’s government — a charge he denies, framing it as a politically motivated fabrication.

International monitors from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) concluded that the election offered Armenian voters a genuine competitive choice, but noted the contest was marred by highly confrontational, divisive political rhetoric and unequal access to campaign resources for competing parties. Crucially, monitors also explicitly labeled pre-election trade restrictions imposed by Moscow as “direct pressure” on the Armenian electorate.

In the weeks before voting, Russia implemented sweeping import bans on a range of Armenian goods, including cut flowers, premium cognac, wine, eggplant, potatoes, dried fruit, and fish. Moscow has claimed the restrictions were rooted in agricultural safety violations, but European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen condemned the move as “economic coercion” that weaponized trade for political gain, announcing a €50 million ($58 million) EU support package for Armenia to offset economic losses from the bans.

Geopolitical orientation dominated campaign discourse from start to finish. Casting his ballot on election day, Pashinyan reaffirmed his government’s commitment to Western integration, stating: “The European Union is our main partner in democratic reform implementation, and we will continue that path.” Last year, Armenia formally submitted its EU membership candidacy, a historic step that has drawn sharp pushback from the Kremlin. Russia, which maintains a permanent military base on Armenian territory, has repeatedly warned that a Western turn would carry severe political and economic consequences, with President Vladimir Putin drawing explicit parallels between Armenia’s current trajectory and Ukraine’s pre-2022 EU alignment bid.

The growing rift between Yerevan and Moscow stems largely from the 2023 Azerbaijani recapture of the Nagorno-Karabakh region, a territory controlled by ethnic Armenian separatists backed by Yerevan for three decades. Pashinyan’s government has publicly accused Russian peacekeepers deployed to the region of failing to intervene to stop Azerbaijan’s military offensive, a criticism Moscow has rejected amid its own preoccupation with the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Over the past two years, Pashinyan has steadily reduced Armenia’s reliance on Moscow: in 2023, Yerevan joined the International Criminal Court (which has issued an arrest warrant for Putin), and in 2024 it suspended its membership in the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization, a post-Soviet military bloc. Earlier this year, Armenia hosted the European Political Community summit and its first standalone high-level summit with the EU in Yerevan, and in August 2025 U.S. President Donald Trump mediated a landmark peace deal between Pashinyan and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev to end the decades-long Karabakh conflict, including provisions for a new transit corridor connecting Azerbaijan to its Nakhchivan exclave.

Near the Vatican, in a crowded Rome auditorium, former Italian army commander Roberto Vannacci—dubbed “Il Generale” by his loyal base—stood before supporters of his newly launched political project to declare his challenge to the existing right-wing order and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. What began as a fringe political ambition has quickly grown into a major disruption for Meloni’s ruling conservative coalition, injecting unanticipated volatility into Italian politics years ahead of the 2027 national general election.

Political analysts across the country now agree that Vannacci’s influence on the upcoming electoral cycle is no longer a question of if, but how much. He has carved out a solid niche to the far right of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, forcing the prime minister to confront an uncomfortable dilemma: can she contain, co-opt, or outmaneuver the rising challenger before his movement irreparably splits the conservative vote?

Vannacci’s rapid ascent is not an isolated Italian political anomaly; it aligns with a broader continental trend of far-right, nationalist movements gaining traction across Europe, reshaping the entire continent’s political landscape by centering polarizing issues of migration, national security, and cultural identity.

At his party’s founding assembly over the weekend, Vannacci positioned his Futuro Nazionale (National Future) movement as the “authentic right” of Italy. “With us, Italy will once again be the home of Italians,” he told the gathered crowd. “Everyone must feel safe in their own home.” He proudly refers to his core group of lawmakers as the “dirty dozen,” leaning hard into his self-styled image as an anti-establishment outsider rejecting the compromised norms of mainstream Italian politics.

The 57-year-old first entered the public consciousness as a political figure in 2023, when he self-published his controversial book *The World Upside Down*, which drew widespread backlash for its vicious attacks on LGBTQ+ people, migrants, and other marginalized groups. A year later, he launched his political career as a member of Matteo Salvini’s anti-migration League party, winning more than 530,000 individual preference votes in the 2024 European Parliament elections. He split from the League this past February to launch Futuro Nazionale, a move Salvini publicly labeled a “betrayal.”

Since his break from the League, Vannacci has rapidly consolidated support. Futuro Nazionale claims to have already topped 100,000 registered members, and currently holds eight seats in Italy’s lower parliamentary chamber—several of which were filled by defectors from the League and the coalition’s centrist partner Forza Italia, a clear sign of simmering discontent within Meloni’s ruling bloc.

Vannacci rejects the traditional “far-right” label, insisting his movement represents the only true conservative voice in Italy. He has openly criticized Meloni for failing to deliver on the shared right-wing policy priorities she campaigned on, and has so far ruled out any formal electoral alliance with the prime minister’s bloc. His policy platform centers on hard-line nationalist positions: aggressive security and migration restrictions, including explicit calls for the “remigration” of foreign-born residents he deems not integrated; staunch opposition to EU policy initiatives like the European Green Deal; and public criticism of Western economic sanctions on Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Political analysts frame Vannacci’s rise as a reflection of a broader shifting political and cultural mood within Italy. “He is leading a sort of political raid for hard-right voters within the main parties of the current ruling coalition,” explained Massimiliano Panarari, a politics professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. “Meloni’s core political strategy was to leave no viable space to her right. Now that space is occupied.”

Panarari describes Vannacci as “an entrepreneur of fear,” whose rhetoric amplifies polarizing, divisive positions—including open anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-feminist views—that Meloni can no longer publicly embrace now that she is serving as prime minister and leading a national government.

Lorenzo Pregliasco, a political analyst and leading polling expert at Italian analytics firm YouTrend, notes that Vannacci’s movement introduces a dynamic never seen before in current Italian politics: an organized opposition to Meloni’s government coming from the right, rather than the left. “Now there is a force outside the governing majority that challenges it on the most electorally popular issues: migration, security, and the global culture wars,” Pregliasco said.

This shift carries substantial electoral weight. Recent public polling puts support for Futuro Nazionale at between 4% and nearly 5% of the national vote—a share that could prove decisive in a close election, where Italy’s main center-right and center-left blocs consistently run neck and neck. “They could easily be the difference between finishing ahead or behind,” Pregliasco said, labeling Vannacci a potential “wild card” capable of upending the entire electoral result.

For Meloni, the dilemma is fundamentally a strategic one. “In terms of political debate, he introduces instability across the entire right wing,” Pregliasco explained. “She and her allies have to decide whether to absorb him and his movement into the ruling coalition—but that would create significant political problems for her, both domestically and with European partners.”

Speaking to Italian parliament earlier this week, Meloni accused lawmakers aligned with Vannacci of actively undermining her government and inadvertently boosting the political fortunes of the center-left opposition. Her Brothers of Italy party and the coalition’s centrist allies have already publicly ruled out any formal electoral agreements with Futuro Nazionale.

For now, Meloni has opted to avoid direct public confrontation with Vannacci, a strategy political observers see as a calculated bet that his momentum will fade over time. “The core issue is what to do with this loose cannon of Vannacci, which could drag the entire Italian right back toward overt far-right extremism,” Panarari noted. “I’m not sure it would benefit Meloni to shift further to the right ahead of general elections. Her approach will likely be marked by ambiguity and ambivalence, for as long as that strategy remains possible.”