Norway mourns the passing of King Harald, revered for modernizing the monarchy while deftly stepping out of the shadow left by his charismatic and outgoing father. The influential monarch, who graced the throne for over 30 years, passed away at the age of 89, as announced by the royal palace amid a tumultuous period for the Norwegian royal family.

“King Harald departed peacefully at Oslo University Hospital on the morning of August 28 at 0635 local time (0435 GMT),” shared the royal palace in an official statement on its website.

As the longest-reigning monarch in Europe, King Harald was hospitalized on August 17 due to a blood infection, as reported by the palace.

Back in 2024, during a holiday in Malaysia, he faced another health scare from an infection that led to his temporary hospitalization. The Norwegian armed forces facilitated his return, after which he received a permanent pacemaker.

Despite health challenges in 2024, King Harald, Norway’s ceremonial leader since 1991, expressed his intent to limit official duties yet firmly ruled out stepping down, emphasizing that his commitment as king was lifelong.

MULTIPLE CHALLENGES

Harald’s death comes at a tumultuous time for the royal family.

Crown Princess Mette-Marit, married to Harald’s son Crown Prince Haakon, is facing intense scrutiny for her friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a relationship for which she has apologized.

Her son Marius Hoiby, born from a relationship predating her marriage to Haakon, was found guilty in June of ​two out of four counts of rape and one count of domestic violence and sentenced to four years in prison after a seven-week trial. Both he and the prosecution have appealed the sentence.

Two days after Marius was convicted, the palace said Mette-Marit had undergone a successful lung transplant, without specifying when the procedure took place.

After several weeks of recovery in hospital, she returned home and celebrated her silver wedding anniversary with Haakon in August.

Support for the monarchy dropped to 60% in February 2026, from 70% the previous month, according to a Norstat poll published by public broadcaster NRK, rising slightly to 64% in May.

Harald had constantly remained popular with Norwegians. According to the February poll, he was the royal who best represented the Norwegian royal family, with a note of 9.2, on a scale of 1 to 10.

A DESCENDANT OF QUEEN VICTORIA

A great-great-grandchild of Britain’s Queen Victoria, Harald acceded to the throne in 1991 and slowly introduced modern touches that brought a ceremonial post seen mainly as a symbol of national independence into the 21st century.

The popular king played a crucial role comforting the nation in times of mourning.

When far-right, anti-Islam fanatic Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people in 2011 in Oslo and on Utoeya island, the king consoled the nation with a powerful televised speech. His voice trembling with emotion, he said that “freedom is stronger than fear.”

After floods, storms and other disasters, he would travel to the scene wearing rubber boots and a well-worn jacket to meet those who had lost homes or loved ones.

Late in life he spoke up for tolerance, declaring in a 2016 speech that Norwegians could have many backgrounds, beliefs and sexual orientations.

In November 2005, Harald and his wife, Sonja Haraldsen, invited 550 Norwegians to a ball to celebrate the centenary of the country’s independence from Sweden.

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Harald said in an interview at the time that Europe’s royal families should not be tempted to reverse moves towards openness and retreat to their palace towers.

“If you’ve opened the gate it’s very difficult to close it again,” he told Reuters. “I’m not sure I’d want to close it. So far so good, as far as I’m concerned.”

Like his father Olav, Harald was a sports and automotive enthusiast and often drove his own car, particularly to informal events.

A sailor, he captained his boat to win a world championship title and competed in several Olympics, but failed to repeat his father’s feat of winning Olympic gold.

Harald also took a great interest in the preservation of nature.

He realized a lifelong dream when, aged 76, he spent four days deep in the Amazon jungle of Brazil, living with the Yanomami people and sleeping in a hammock.

BIRTH AND REIGN

Harald’s birth on February 21, 1937, was cause for national celebration – he was the first royal heir to be born in Norway in almost 570 years.

Danish and Swedish monarchs had ruled over the Scandinavian nation for centuries, until 1905.

Just three years after Harald was born, Nazi Germany invaded the country.

King Haakon and then-Crown Prince Olav fled to Britain, where they led Norway’s government-in-exile, while the 3-year-old Harald went with his mother, Crown Princess Märtha, to neutral Sweden, then to the United States.

After living briefly at the White House, and then for five years in Bethesda, Maryland, Harald, his older sisters Ragnhild and Astrid and their mother met frequently with US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Harald years later described as like a grandfather.

When he returned to Norway after the war ended in 1945, Harald attended state schools rather than the private lessons his father had received.

His marriage in 1968 to a commoner broke with tradition and followed a nine-year stand-off with his father that ended only after Harald threatened never to marry rather than give up Sonja.

LATER YEARS

In 1998, the king faced an unprecedented wave of public criticism over press reports that he had accepted a 4-million-crown ($400,000) yacht from a group of industrialists as a birthday present, and that palace repairs had cost the government 500 million crowns.

Around the same time, his former deputy private secretary suggested that Harald should abdicate at the egalitarian country’s normal retirement age of 67.

Opinion polls gave the king firm backing to stay on for life, however, and the criticism subsided. A year later, in another Reuters interview, Harald joked that he would remain on the throne for life unless he went mad.

“There is no tradition in Norway for that (abdication). But you never know. If you go completely bonkers,” he said. Queen Sonja laughed and said: “But who will ever tell you that?”

Harald’s son Haakon, 53, will be Norway’s fourth king since the country gained independence from Sweden in 1905, with Mette-Marit, also aged 53, as his queen.

This is a developing story

In a courtroom twist echoing past cases, the judge overseeing Lindsay Clancy’s high-profile murder trial is no stranger to notorious cases involving mothers accused of killing their children. A prior decision by this seasoned judge to exclude key medical evidence once led to a dramatic retrial in a similar case.

Judge William F. Sullivan, at 69 years of age, is at the helm of Clancy’s trial, where she faces accusations of deliberately ending the lives of her three young children. Prosecutors argue that the former nurse carried out these tragic acts with premeditated intent.

Sullivan, whose judicial journey began with an appointment by then-Governor Deval Patrick in 2014, has a history of grappling with similarly harrowing cases. Just four years ago, he handled a case with haunting similarities to Clancy’s that resurfaced in the courts due to a retrial.

Back in 2022, Judge Sullivan was at the center of the murder trial of Latarsha Sanders, another Massachusetts mother accused of heinous acts. Sanders faced charges for the murder of her two sons under circumstances that shocked the community.

A jury in December 2022 found Sanders guilty, persuaded by the prosecution’s case that she had brutally stabbed her sons—eight-year-old Edson Brito nearly 80 times and five-year-old La’Son Brito more than 20 times—in a macabre ritual she described as rooted in Voodoo practices.

The jury deliberated for around four hours, and found the mother guilty. Sullivan sentenced Sanders to two mandatory life terms without the possibility of parole.

However, Massachusetts’s highest court, the Supreme Judicial Court, unanimously vacated Sanders’s conviction on August 6 of this year in a stunning U-turn.

The top court stated that Judge Sullivan was wrong to exclude relevant medical records at the 2022 trial, which showed Sanders’s psychosis and ill mental state.

Sanders was granted a new murder trial this year. 

Justice Frank M. Graziano wrote: ‘We hold that the exclusion of the defendant’s relevant medical records relating to the diagnoses or treatment of mental illness constituted prejudicial error, and as a result, the defendant is entitled to a new trial. 

Sanders admitted to murdering her children in February 2018, and during the first trial, her attorney argued an insanity defense – the same assertion Lindsay Clancy’s attorney has made in her triple filicide trial.

Like Clancy, they claimed Sanders was in the throes of a psychotic episode during the murders, therefore meaning she lacked criminal responsibility. 

During her trial in 2022, Sanders’s defense attorney tried to present medical records that showed she was diagnosed with schizophrenia psychosis after the killings.

Clinical neuropsychologist Dr. Thomas Deters had conducted interviews with Sanders lasting nine hours in total, as well as seven hours of neuropsychological testing.

The doctor had concluded that Sanders was ‘grossly psychotic’ at the time she killed her children, suffering ‘hallucinations’ that had been untreated for decades. Sanders had ‘schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders,’ his diagnosis stated.

The doctor’s findings were detailed in thousands of pages of medical records, but just as Deters was about to take the stand, the prosecution objected.

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They claimed the medical records were irrelevant, and demanded they’d be blocked from being presented in front of the jury as evidence.

Judge Sullivan agreed – preventing the potential evidence from being used in the trial.

Now that Sullivan has been called out by the Supreme Judicial Court for his erroneous decision, Sanders will stand trial once more.   

Her new trial will take place in Massachusetts Superior Court, and her defense is likely to argue insanity again. 

It is unclear which judge will oversee her new trial. 

Some activists in Boston have highlighted the relative lack of coverage of Sanders’s case and sympathy for the killer mother compared to Clancy. They have questioned whether this was due to Sanders being black and poor. 

Sullivan, who is a married father-of-three who lives in his $905,700 home in Canton with his wife, Mary Lou, will also determine Clancy’s fate at sentencing.

Sullivan earned his law degree from Boston College Law School in 1982 and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar that same year.

Prior to joining the bench, Sullivan worked as an assistant district attorney in the Norfolk County District Attorney’s office in the early 1980s, according to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly.

He also worked as a special assistant to the Quincy city solicitor from 2006 to 2008. 

Additionally, he worked as a defense attorney with the practice Sullivan and Sweeney before he was appointed judge.

Clancy, 36, is accused of murdering her three children, Cora, five, Dawson, three, and eight-month-old Callan, at her home in Duxbury, Massachusetts , in 2023.

She strangled her children with exercise bands and then allegedly attempted to kill herself, but her efforts failed and left her paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair for life.

Clancy has admitted to killing her children but pleaded not guilty to murder by reason of insanity, citing postpartum psychosis, and is seeking to be committed to a state mental health facility rather than face a prison sentence.

A simmering rivalry between two Ohio families erupted into chaos at a wedding, resulting in a widespread brawl that left several guests injured, prompted a multi-department police response, and led to the arrest of three participants.

Cleveland’s FOX 8 reported that on August 21, Ali Wahdan, 47, Raed Mahmoud Sulaiman, 46, and Abdallah Wahdan, 48, were apprehended following a fight at the La Centre Banquet Facility in Westlake.

Raed Mahmoud Sulaiman, hailing from Dearborn Heights, Michigan, faced charges for assault, inducing panic, and tampering with evidence. Authorities alleged that he brandished a butter knife at guests, discarding it when police arrived.

Ali Wahdan faced charges for breaching a temporary protection order, while Abdallah Wahdan of Westlake was charged with aggravated menacing, accused of threatening other attendees.

News Media obtained 911 calls, body camera footage and other video showing how the fight unfolded, beginning inside the banquet hall before spilling into the parking lot.

“There’s a fight at our venue,” the banquet hall’s general manager told a 911 operator, describing “a bunch of people” fighting inside and outside.

“Someone’s bleeding,” he added, telling the operator that one man with a head injury was in a bathroom as the fight continued.

When asked what was behind the brawl, the manager said it involved relatives.

Another 911 call captured shouting in the background, while a separate caller pleaded for police and said he had been attacked.

“Somebody started beating me,” the caller said.

Dashcam footage from the night of Aug. 21 shows an officer arriving at the venue to find a crowded parking lot filled with vehicles and people dressed for the wedding. As the response grew, Westlake police called for additional officers and requested help from neighboring departments.

Body camera footage shows officers moving through the crowd and trying to keep groups separated as guests poured out of the venue.

One man approached an officer to make a police report and said his group had been attacked while dancing.

“We were dancing, and four brothers jumped on us,” he told police during the encounter captured on the officer’s body camera.

Cellphone video from inside the ballroom captured another part of the brawl as screams broke out among guests. A man in a suit, identified by police as Sulaiman, held what appeared to be a butter knife as several men rushed toward him and struggled to restrain him.

Chairs were knocked over as nearby guests moved away from the confrontation.

Paramedics were called to treat injured guests as officers worked to bring the scene under control.

Police Capt. Jerry Vogel told FOX 8 that officers knew people had already been injured but did not initially know whether anyone had a weapon.

Once the groups were separated, investigators began piecing together what sparked the fight. Police said alcohol was not a factor and instead pointed to longstanding bad blood between the two families.

Investigators said Ali Wahdan was subject to a temporary protection order involving members of a family at the wedding and was required to leave when he encountered them.

“Under the law, if you see this person, even if you’re there accidentally at the same time, you have to leave,” Vogel said. “It is your responsibility to leave.”

Police said Wahdan instead remained at the venue, allegedly helping set the confrontation in motion.

Despite the brawl, injuries and three arrests, the wedding was not over. Once officers restored order, the celebration resumed without further trouble.

The charges against the three men were filed in Rocky River Municipal Court.

Sabrina Ionescu faced significant challenges in the Liberty’s disappointing 79-60 defeat at the hands of the Valkyries, which took place at Barclays Center.

Ionescu had a tough night, connecting on only 2 of her 12 shots, including just 1 of 9 attempts from beyond the arc, ending the game with seven points.

She wasn’t alone in her struggles; the Liberty as a whole found it difficult to overcome the Valkyries’ relentless defense.

Leonie Fiebich managed just 1 of 6 from three-point territory, while Rebecca Allen’s performance was similarly challenging, shooting 1-for-4.

In total, the team recorded their lowest shooting percentage of the season at 30.2 percent, including just 7 successful shots out of 31 attempts from three-point range.

But this isn’t just a bad night for Ionescu. She has had a troublesome three-plus weeks as she has been stuck in a slump.

Over the Liberty’s past seven games, Ionescu’s attempted a team-high 50 shots from behind the arc, despite missing one game because of a foot injury.

Yet, she’s fourth in made 3s as she’s drained only eight of those attempts.

Ionescu wasn’t asked specifically about her slump after the Liberty’s loss. Though Allen said she felt disappointed by Thursday’s showing, Ionescu said she wasn’t “personally disappointed.”

“I think we got really good looks,” she said. “We just didn’t make them.”

Ionescu has dealt with her fair share of injuries this season. Most recently, she missed the Liberty’s Aug. 15 game in Connecticut with a left foot injury.

It’s unclear whether a nagging injury could be impacting Ionescu.

Nevertheless, she seems like she could use a break.

After Saturday against Natasha Cloud and the Chicago Sky, the Liberty temporarily breaks up for the FIBA World Cup. The WNBA season resumes Sept. 17.

Ionescu, who was left off the U.S. roster, plans to use that time to train and “continue to get really healthy, take care of my body, feel good.”

“Hopefully, can have really fresh legs, can feel really good and in rhythm come the last four games of the regular season,” she said. “And then start the playoffs feeling good.”

The eight playoff teams already have been decided. The next question is what the bracket will look like as teams are still fighting for seeding.

With Thursday’s loss, the Liberty dropped to eighth, which would put them in line to face the top-seeded Minnesota Lynx in the best-of-three first-round series.

Ionescu said she isn’t watching the standings because it’s out of their control. But the clean slate that comes with the playoffs seems to be something she’s looking forward to.

“We’ve never talked about it as a team, where we fall,” she said. “We understand we got to be peaking at the right time and playing our style of basketball and feeling really good, and I think knowing you can kind of have a fresh start when the playoffs come and put everything behind you in the regular season.”

CHICAGO (WLS) — Amid the ongoing conflict with Iran, now stretching into its sixth month, a thought-provoking art installation has opened in Chicago’s vibrant Pilsen neighborhood. This exhibit invites visitors to explore the war’s impact through the powerful lens of Iranian photographers while honoring the young lives lost in its early days.

Titled “Through Iranian Eyes,” the exhibit poignantly highlights the tragic deaths of children when, as Iran reports, a U.S. bomb struck the Minab School in southern Iran during the initial phase of the conflict. The display underscores the ongoing investigation by U.S. armed forces as efforts toward resolving the war continue.

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The creative mind behind this evocative display is Teerdad Amir Normandi, an artist and U.S. citizen well-known as the founder and coordinator of the Chicago Nowruz Parade. Normandi’s exhibit features heart-rending images and narratives about the children who perished when a missile reportedly targeted the Minab School, possibly situated near an Iranian military installation.

By shifting the focus from topics like rising gas prices and international tensions, the installation seeks to illuminate the human cost of war and spark dialogue about U.S. objectives in Iran. The exhibit points out that, despite significant setbacks to Iran’s military and leadership, U.S. ambitions for a nuclear agreement have been met with staunch resistance.

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“They are a proud nation with a proud history, and even when they have disagreements with their own government, they won’t surrender and come with their arms raised,” Normandi, committed to human rights advocacy, expressed. “No, they will not give up—they hold on to their dignity and honor.”

The exhibit will remain on display for an unspecified period as activists work to remind people of the injuries, death and destruction experienced by people on all sides of the war.

In the wake of his sister’s tragic death in a brutal highway collision, Jesse Mallen clung to cherished family photos, seeking comfort in the memories of those he’d lost.

However, the situation took a distressing turn when one of those poignant photographs unexpectedly appeared on television, not as a loving tribute but as ammunition in a ruthless political smear campaign.

Captured in the image are Jesse’s sister, Lynnea Soposki, her husband Luke, and their vibrant red-haired toddler, Logan, all smiling blissfully.

The devastating incident occurred on April 11, when a semi-truck collided violently with their pickup on a highway north of Columbus. The impact triggered a nine-vehicle chain-reaction crash, engulfing their truck in flames and claiming the lives of all three family members.

As the family braces for the criminal trial of the truck driver, their deeply personal tragedy has been dragged into the public arena, becoming a tool in one of Ohio’s most heated political controversies.

The ad, titled ‘Dangerous for Ohio,’ was sponsored by the National Republican Senatorial Committee and authorized by the campaign of Republican Senator Jon Husted, who is running against former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown.

‘Sherrod Brown opened our borders to dangerous illegals – the consequences were deadly,’ the narrator declares, before showing the truck driver, the Soposki family and harrowing footage of the crash.

For Mallen, the sight was unbearable. ‘Our grief is not raw material for a campaign,’ he wrote after the commercial began appearing repeatedly across Ohio.

Mallen, 40, said in an interview that he contacted the Husted campaign by email and certified mail last week, pleading with officials to stop using his family’s photograph.

He said no one had sought permission from the family – and that, had they been asked, they would have refused.

‘What we all want is to be able to grieve in peace and privacy,’ Mallen said. ‘For our family to be used in such a classless way by a politician, especially without being consulted.’

Now the man accused of causing the crash, 50-year-old Modou Ngom, is awaiting trial in September.

He has pleaded not guilty to three counts of aggravated vehicular homicide and four counts of vehicular assault involving survivors of the pileup.

He is being held in Delaware County jail.

The Soposki estate has also filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Ngom and his trucking company.

But the case has become entangled in a much larger political fight over immigration.

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The Ohio Department of Public Safety said shortly after the crash that Ngom entered the United States in the 1990s and later used multiple names and dates of birth to obtain state and federal identification. The state referred its investigation to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

However Ngom has not been charged with an immigration-related crime. 

The Department of Homeland Security has said Ngom became a naturalized US citizen in 2015. 

His attorney has argued that public statements about his immigration history could prejudice his right to a fair trial. 

Yet for Mallen, the issue is not partisan.

He said he has supported Democrats in the past but insisted that politics had nothing to do with his objection. His sister, he believes, would never have wanted her image used to endorse or attack any political cause.

After receiving no response from the Husted campaign for a week, the family went public.

Mallen began posting about the advertisement on Facebook and Reddit, where his message quickly spread. By then, the commercial had reportedly run for at least 16 days, with an estimated $1 million spent on the campaign.

The ad has since apparently been replaced, but footage remains online and has been viewed more then 5 million times.

The Republican Senatorial Committee defended the campaign, saying Brown supported policies that had put Ohioans at risk and that Republicans would continue holding him accountable.

Brown’s campaign declined to comment directly, instead pointing to an analysis finding no evidence connecting Brown’s votes to the crash.

Meanwhile, the Soposki family has been forced to watch strangers relive their darkest day between television programs.

Friends and relatives say they have been flooded with messages from Ohioans who repeatedly encounter the commercial.

‘Just unbelievable what these politicians will do,’ Luke’s father, Joseph Soposki, wrote after learning about it. ‘Absolutely no compassion for the family.’