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As Oslo District Court prepares to deliver a highly anticipated verdict on Monday morning, Norway stands at the intersection of a high-profile criminal case and an unprecedented crisis gripping its royal household. Three judges in Courtroom 250 will reveal the length of the sentence for 29-year-old Marius Borg Høiby, the son of Crown Princess Mette-Marit, who faces a total of 40 criminal charges including four counts of rape. Due to unspecified health reasons, Høiby will not appear in person for the ruling, instead joining the court session remotely via video link, nearly three months after his trial concluded.

Høiby has maintained his innocence on all the most serious sexual offense charges, but has taken responsibility for a series of lesser offenses, including drug possession and trafficking, as well as multiple traffic violations. The gulf between the two sides’ sentencing requests is stark: state prosecutors have pushed for a combined prison term of seven years and seven months, while Høiby’s defense team has argued that a 18-month custodial sentence is appropriate. Høiby has remained in custody since early February, after police took him into custody shortly before the trial opened on additional suspicion of assault and violating a restraining order related to a former romantic partner. All repeated applications for his release filed by his legal team have been rejected by Norwegian courts.

The criminal case has unfolded against a devastating backdrop of personal and family crisis for the Norwegian royal family. Just over a week ago, Crown Princess Mette-Marit — Høiby’s mother, who married into the royal family when Høiby was four years old — was placed on a national lung transplant waiting list, with her medical team confirming that the placement reflects a prognosis that she has approximately one year left to live without a transplant. Last week, an appellate court turned down a desperate request to allow Høiby temporary release from prison to be with his ailing mother, who has been visited in her hospital stay by Høiby and her husband, Crown Prince Haakon, who has stepped back from all public royal duties to care for her. The crown princess, who has suspended all public engagements and now requires a nasal breathing tube, retains broad public sympathy, a shift from earlier in the proceedings when public anger flared over revelations of her three-year friendship with deceased disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein between 2011 and 2014.

While Høiby has never formally held a place in the line of royal succession or been an official working member of the royal family, he grew up alongside his and Mette-Marit’s royal children, and any lengthy custodial sentence is expected to cast a long shadow of public scrutiny over the entire Norwegian monarchy, which has already been grappling with overlapping crises for months. At 89 years old, popular reigning King Harald and 88-year-old Queen Sonja have very limited public options to address the unfolding controversy, according to royal observers.

Throughout the trial, Crown Prince Haakon, who is set to become Norway’s next king, has walked a careful line between maintaining quiet support for Høiby and acknowledging the gravity of the allegations from the four women who have accused him of rape. All four accusers have been granted anonymity by the court, which also banned publication of any photos of the women or the defendant. The only exception was high-profile influencer Nora Haukland, a former girlfriend of Høiby, who alleges he assaulted, hit, and choked her — claims Høiby denies. Footage of Haukland leaving the court after giving testimony dominated front-page coverage across Norway, as one of the few public, identifiable faces in a trial otherwise documented only by courtroom sketches.

Prosecutors detail that the four alleged rapes occurred when the victims were either asleep or incapacitated after consensual sexual activity with Høiby, who continues to deny all four charges. Prosecutors have requested conviction on 39 of the 40 total charges, which also include multiple counts of physical and psychological abuse against former romantic partners. One woman, referred to publicly as the “Frogner woman” after the upscale Oslo neighborhood where she lives, is linked to multiple charges; Høiby has partially admitted charges of serious bodily harm and abuse against her, but denies non-consensual sexually explicit filming of her or any other woman. The charges Høiby has admitted to include trafficking 3.5 kilograms of marijuana, driving without a valid license, reckless driving, and one count of violating a restraining order. A few days ahead of the verdict, Høiby was transferred to Ila Prison and Detention Centre, located on the outskirts of Oslo.

Early in the trial, Høiby broke down in tears while addressing the court, attributing his harmful behavior to an “extreme need for affirmation” and his long-held public reputation as “mamma’s son.” That level of public drama will not be repeated on Monday: his video reaction to the verdict will only be visible to those present in the main courtroom and two designated overflow viewing rooms.

Monday’s verdict will close a legal process that began with Høiby’s initial arrest in August 2024, but it will not resolve long-simmering questions about the future of the Norwegian monarchy, concerns that were first raised publicly more than two decades ago. In a television interview, King Harald’s late elder sister Princess Ragnhild noted that when Haakon and Mette-Marit had their first biological child, young Marius would be left in an ambiguous position with no formal royal role — a prediction that many royal commentators argue has been borne out by the current crisis.

Reputation and public relations specialist Peggy Simcic Brønn, professor emerita at BI Norwegian Business School, describes the situation as an institutional crisis and a major collapse of public trust in the monarchy. “Things cannot go on as they are, they just can’t. This is an institutional crisis, and it’s a huge crisis of trust,” she said, warning that international scrutiny will surge in the coming week, and that the royal family’s failure to address the controversy openly will only worsen damage to its reputation.

With Mette-Marit’s health rapidly declining, crafting a coherent public response has become even more challenging. Mette-Marit addressed public pressure over her Epstein friendship in a March television interview, saying she “didn’t know he was a sex offender or a predator,” but many commentators argued the interview left more questions unanswered than it resolved. The royal household has announced no further joint public interviews will be held in the near term, and the planned celebration of Haakon and Mette-Marit’s silver wedding anniversary in August has been canceled. The palace says it will not issue any further public updates on Mette-Marit’s condition until after a lung transplant is completed.

Many Norwegians have looked to Crown Prince Haakon to provide leadership through the overlapping crises, but he has stepped back from all official duties to care for his wife. He recently canceled a trip to Stockholm to attend the Swedish royal family’s golden wedding anniversary, and missed a regular weekly cabinet meeting with King Harald the previous week. For now, any effort to repair the royal family’s damaged reputation will have to wait.

ROME — Italy’s capital became the stage for two massive dueling demonstrations on Saturday, as a far-right grassroots initiative pushing hardline anti-migration policies crossed the threshold to force parliamentary consideration, catapulting the once-marginal idea of “remigration” into the center of national political discourse. The initiative, branded “Remigration and Reconquest,” collected the 50,000 certified signatures required to trigger a parliamentary discussion on its proposal, though no voting timeline has been set to date.

The proposal, advanced by a coalition of right-wing extremist groups, outlines sweeping measures targeting non-Italians that include forced deportations, state-funded incentives for voluntary departure, and broad policy language that critics warn could be extended to target even legal residents and naturalized citizens. On Saturday, several thousand anti-migration demonstrators traveled from across the country to Rome to rally in support of the plan. Video and on-the-ground reports show crowd members singing the Italian national anthem, and multiple instances of demonstrators raising their arms in the fascist salute while chanting “Duce! Duce!” — the infamous honorific for Benito Mussolini, the fascist dictator who ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943.

Countering that demonstration, tens of thousands of pro-migration protesters gathered in a separate district of Rome Saturday evening. The pro-migration rally drew support from a broad coalition of left-wing political parties, major national trade unions, and immigration advocacy groups, with many attendees also waving Palestinian flags in a show of solidarity amid the ongoing Gaza conflict.

Italian authorities deployed thousands of police officers across the city to keep the two opposing protest groups separated, a precaution that prevented violent clashes. Officials confirmed no incidents of violence were reported by the end of the day.

The heated national debate over the proposal presents a delicate political tightrope for Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s ruling right-wing coalition. While the anti-immigration League party has thrown its support behind opening parliamentary debate, Meloni’s own Brothers of Italy party and its centrist coalition partners have been far more cautious about backing a plan tied to extremist circles. Leaders have raised concerns about potential legal challenges to the proposal and the risk of deepening internal rifts within the governing alliance.

Opposition parties and legal scholars have repeatedly warned that the plan violates both Italy’s constitution and international anti-discrimination law, as it explicitly targets people on the basis of ethnic origin — a classification that would include naturalized Italian citizens and even their Italian-born descendants.

Notably, the controversy over the “remigration” proposal comes as Meloni’s government is simultaneously pursuing an expansion of legal migration to solve pressing labor gaps. Last year, the administration approved a multi-year plan that will allow hundreds of thousands of non-European Union workers to enter Italy legally to fill shortages in key sectors including agriculture, manufacturing, and care work.

Saturday’s protests also came 24 hours after a landmark new European Union migration policy went into force across all 27 member states. The EU Migration and Asylum Pact represents the culmination of years of fractious, deadlocked negotiations to replace the bloc’s previous migration framework, which was widely discredited as a dysfunctional failure. That old system’s collapse opened political space for far-right parties across the continent to weaponize public anxiety over migration to gain electoral support.

As leaders of the world’s major industrialized economies prepare to gather in southern France for next week’s G7 summit, new details have emerged about the packed diplomatic agenda awaiting former U.S. President Donald Trump, including a high-profile celebratory dinner with French President Emmanuel Macron at the iconic Palace of Versailles.

Senior White House administration officials, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity under the White House’s established press ground rules, confirmed Saturday that the summit will bring a full slate of one-on-one bilateral meetings for Trump, who has publicly stated he is working to finalize a new Iran nuclear agreement in the coming days. Trump is set to depart Washington D.C. on Sunday evening immediately after marking his 80th birthday with a primetime mixed martial arts event hosted on the White House South Lawn, and will arrive in France for the summit on Monday afternoon.

Following the conclusion of the main G7 gathering in the scenic Alpine lakeside town of Evian-les-Bains, Macron will host Trump for a private dinner at Versailles, the opulent former royal residence just outside Paris that has long stood as a symbol of Franco-American diplomatic ties. According to the Élysée Palace, the dinner will also commemorate the 240th anniversary of U.S. independence, an occasion chosen to highlight the deep historical friendship between the two nations.

Versailles, which served as the official seat of the French monarchy from the reign of Louis XIV through Louis XVI, is a regular venue for state visits and meetings with visiting global leaders. In 2021, Macron welcomed Britain’s King Charles III and Queen Camilla to the palace for its 400th-anniversary celebrations, hosting a state dinner in the palace’s famous Hall of Mirrors, one of the most famous spaces among the sprawling estate’s 2,300 rooms. Prior to that, in 2017 shortly after his first election to the presidency, Macron welcomed Russian President Vladimir Putin to Versailles, a meeting that took place before relations between Paris and Moscow collapsed entirely following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Beyond his scheduled meeting with Macron, Trump is also set to hold separate bilateral talks with the leaders of Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, and India. All four nations have been invited to participate in this year’s summit as guest countries at Macron’s request.

The 2025 G7 summit, which brings together leaders from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan, will cover a wide range of pressing global policy topics. Officials confirm the agenda includes discussions on sustainable global economic growth, securing resilient supply chains for critical minerals needed for the energy transition, addressing irregular cross-border migration, and establishing global guardrails for artificial intelligence development.

Two ongoing conflicts are expected to dominate much of the off-agenda and bilateral conversation: the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and escalating tensions around Iran. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is confirmed to attend the summit to meet with G7 leaders, but administration officials noted that no formal bilateral meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy has been added to the U.S. president’s official schedule as of Saturday. The pair could still hold an informal meeting on the summit sidelines, officials added.

The report was compiled from contributions by AP correspondent Petrequin, reporting from London, and fellow AP writer Aamer Madhani.