A shooting at a nightclub in Norway's capital Oslo which killed two people and wounded 14 is being investigated as an act of terrorism, police say.
A gunman opened fire at about 1am local time in number of places near the London Pub, a popular gay bar and nightclub in the city centre, police said.
Those caught up in the shooting fled panicking into the streets or tried to hide.
According to public broadcaster NRK, there are at least three crime scenes.
Police said that the suspect, identified as a 42-year-old Norwegian citizen originally from Iran, was arrested in a nearby street a few minutes later.
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A spokesperson for the Oslo force said the shooting is being investigated as an act of terror.
The arrested man is not co-operating with officers but his home has been searched, NRK added.
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Officers, who recovered two weapons from the crime scene including a fully automatic gun, added that they believe he acted alone.
Journalist Olav Roenneberg, from NRK, said: "I saw a man arrive with a bag, he picked up a gun and started to shoot.
"First I thought it was an air gun, then the glass of the bar next door was shattered and I understood I had to run for cover."
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre described the attack as "a cruel and deeply shocking on innocent people".
The suspect is being held on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and terrorism, according to police lawyer Christian Hatlo, who added that the suspect's mental health was also being investigated.
The suspect was known to police, as well as Norway's security police, but not for any major violent crimes, investigators said.
His criminal record included a narcotics offence and a weapons offence for carrying a knife, Mr Hatlo said.
Image:Tore Barstad
Police to assess possible 'connection' to Pride
Oslo was due to hold its annual Pride parade later on Saturday but police spokesman Tore Barstad said it was not known whether this was connected to the shooting.
"Police are in contact with the organisers of the Pride event this Saturday," he said.
"There will be a continuous assessment of what measures police should take to protect that event and whether this incident has a connection to Pride at all."
Organisers of the Oslo Pride festival said there were cancelling a parade set to take place on Saturday, following advice from police.
In a post on the official Facebook page for the event, they wrote: "Oslo Pride therefore urges everyone who planned to participate or watch the parade to not show up.
"All events in connection with Oslo Pride are cancelled."
A shooting at a nightclub in Norway's capital Oslo which killed two people and wounded 14 is being investigated as an act of terrorism, police say.
People were shot at a number of places near the London Pub, a popular gay bar and nightclub in the city centre.
According to public broadcaster NRK, there are at least three crime scenes.
Police said that the suspect was arrested in a nearby street a few minutes later.
A spokesperson for Oslo police said the shooting is being investigated as an act of terror.
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The arrested man is not co-operating with officers but his home has been searched, the broadcaster added.
Journalist Olav Roenneberg, from NRK, said: "I saw a man arrive with a bag, he picked up a gun and started to shoot.
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"First I thought it was an air gun, then the glass of the bar next door was shattered and I understood I had to run for cover."
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre described the attack as "a cruel and deeply shocking on innocent people".
Image:Tore Barstad
Police to assess possible 'connection' to Pride
Oslo is due to hold its annual Pride parade later on Saturday but police spokesman Tore Barstad said it was not known whether this was connected to the shooting.
"Police are in contact with the organisers of the Pride event this Saturday," he said.
"There will be a continuous assessment of what measures police should take to protect that event and whether this incident has a connection to Pride at all."
Organisers of the Oslo Pride festival said there were cancelling a parade set to take place on Saturday, following advice from police.
In a post on the official Facebook page for the event, they wrote: "Oslo Pride therefore urges everyone who planned to participate or watch the parade to not show up.
"All events in connection with Oslo Pride are cancelled."
Ukraine has ordered its troops to withdraw from the embattled city of Severodonetsk, the main focus of Russia’s assault in the east of the country, after withstanding months of relentless attack and artillery bombardment.
Serhiy Hayday, regional governor of the eastern Luhansk region, said Ukrainian forces had received “a command to withdraw to new positions, to new fortified regions, and from there to conduct normal battle operations”. In televised comments on Friday, he added: “Unfortunately . . . it will be necessary to withdraw.”
Senior officials had no immediate comment on the decision to pull back from Severodonetsk, the provincial capital of Luhansk region, which is already more than 90 per cent occupied by Russian forces. Alongside the nearby town Lysychansk, it is the only remaining city in the province not yet controlled by Russian troops.
The setback contrasts with Kyiv’s progress off the battlefield. On Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy celebrated “victory” after the EU gave Ukraine membership candidate status. The US also announced another $450mm of military aid, taking its total security assistance to Ukraine this year to more than $6bn.
The fall of Severodonetsk caps months of heavy artillery-led fighting and underlines Russia’s slow but steady advance in the eastern Donbas region where Moscow has refocused its military efforts following a near routing of its troops in their attempt to take the capital in the early days of the war.
Outgunned by Russian artillery at a ratio of 10:1, according to Kyiv, Ukrainian troops in the Donbas were taking heavy casualties, with about 100 troops killed in action daily, and morale was suffering as they were encircled and pounded by Russian shells.
Still, analysts at the Institute for the Study of War commented that while the loss of Severodonetsk represented a loss of terrain for Ukraine, it was not a “major turning point in the war” nor a “decisive Russian victory”.
“Ukrainian troops have succeeded for weeks in drawing substantial quantities of Russian personnel, weapons and equipment into the area and have likely degraded Russian forces’ overall capabilities,” they said.
Russian forces, which analysts say have improved on early tactical mistakes with better combined arms operations and air defence, now control about a fifth of Ukrainian territory in total, with the Kremlin believing it can grind down the country and that western political support will also eventually fade.
Western defence officials and analysts concur, however, that Russia lacks sufficient troops to mount a sustained offensive and will soon have to pause even as Ukraine is reinforced by hefty supplies of long-range western heavy weaponry that could tilt the military balance in its favour.
Mobilising more Russian troops remains a problem, while Ukraine has also recently launched a daring series of behind-the-lines attacks on Russian infrastructure, including a drone strike this week on an oil refinery. There are also unconfirmed reports of growing activity by Ukrainian insurgents in Russian-occupied areas, such as the southern city of Kherson.
Hayday, the regional governor, did not say whether Ukrainian forces would retreat to Lysychansk, a move that has been anticipated given the city’s higher ground and the dividing Siversky Donets river. He said Russian troops were gaining territory from the south towards their positions.
“Nobody will abandon our boys. Nobody will let them get surrounded,” Hayday said.
“We now have a situation where holding on to destroyed positions for many months just to be there makes no sense. Because with each passing day, the number of deaths in unsecured positions can grow proportionally,” he added.
Describing the scene in Severodonetsk, from where most civilians have been evacuated, Hayday said more than 90 per cent of buildings had been bombed out after months of battles and “all infrastructure is completely destroyed”. Before the war, it had a population of about 100,000.
Yuriy Butusov, a reporter embedded with the Ukrainian military in the city, said the unit he was with withdrew from the industrial zone of the city on Thursday night. Most of the defenders were holed up in the Azot industrial plant.
In an intelligence update on Thursday, the UK defence ministry said Russian forces had been putting the Lysychansk-Severodonetsk pocket “under increasing pressure . . . However, its efforts to achieve a deeper encirclement to take western Donetsk Oblast remain stalled.”
The Luhansk and Donetsk regions have been fought over since 2014 when Russia fomented a proxy separatist war after occupying Crimea.
Ukrainian forces have since then battled Russia-backed separatists who controlled swaths of the region in a smouldering conflict that claimed about 14,000 lives. Ukraine continues four months into Russia’s full-scale invasion to control large cities in western regions of Donbas including Bakhmut, Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.
EU solidarity will come under severe strain this winter if Russian gas supplies are cut off, the head of German utility RWE has warned, saying there will be “chaos” across the continent unless the bloc acts now to establish rules on energy sharing.
“The real fear I have is that European solidarity will come under significant stress if we don’t sort it out before the situation happens,” Markus Krebber said. He added that countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, which will import gas via carrier ships, could be accused of hoarding the fuel if companies and households were not treated equally across member states.
“I’m not so much concerned that we cannot find agreement, but it is better to discuss emergency proceedings when you still have time and not when the house is on fire,” Krebber told the Financial Times on Wednesday.
“If you don’t operationalise it then you end up in chaos.”
Germany’s biggest power supplier has been among the utility providers hit by a drastic reduction in gas deliveries from Russia’s Gazprom, which has forced Berlin to implement an emergency plan under which mothballed coal-fired power plants will be revived to bridge the gap. RWE is currently receiving just 40 per cent of the gas it has contracted from Russia.
Krebber’s comments illustrate the fears in the EU that gas supplies may need to be rationed this winter. The International Energy Agency warned this week that Europe must prepare for a complete cessation of Russian gas as Moscow retaliates against sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine.
On Thursday Germany moved a step closer to rationing, triggering stage two of its emergency gas plan and warning it would struggle to fill storage needed to meet peak winter demand if Russian supplies are not restored.
A pan-European “solidarity plan” for gas deliveries is due to be drawn up by the European Commission, and diplomats in Brussels expect it to be ready by the end of July.
However, plans to ration gas supply to companies this winter, and to encourage households to limit their consumption, are being worked out on a national level by Germany’s Federal Network Agency.
A Europe-wide framework would need to be in place to ensure supplies reached countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary, Krebber said, while ensuring fairness over how each country defined priority customers.
“Otherwise, transmission system operators do not know on what basis to make its decision,” he added. “How much gas to keep, and how much gas to send to other countries.”
Krebber said rules needed to be formalised across EU states over what should take priority in the event of a severe gas shortage. The industry fears a political crisis if countries have different limits on heating for public buildings or criteria for prioritising gas supplies in a crisis.
“You need a unified definition of protected customers,” he said. “You need decision making procedures and it starts from information gathering. Without the relevant information you cannot make the correct decisions.”
Italy introduced caps on heating and cooling demands in April, with public buildings not allowed to be heated above 19C in winter or cooled with air conditioning below 25C in summer. The majority of EU countries are yet to introduce such restrictions, but they are seen as more likely if Russian gas supplies are completely cut off.
There have been legal battles in the past over the right of member states to define protected customers such as homes, hospitals and schools.
James Waddell, an analyst at Energy Aspects, said there was the potential for a huge political fallout if countries feel they are being treated unfairly.
“The free movement of energy is one of the key pillars of the EU,” he added. “But in a crisis the potential for the system to come under severe political strain is very real, with countries trying to prioritise their own citizens first.”
Andrei Ilaș, co-founder of Romanian energy business nrgi.ai, warned, however, against trying to create a “command and control” economy for energy supplies.
“They are afraid of chaos and political bickering, but top-down control will not work,” Ilaș said. “To effectively shut down the market would be very dangerous, as you need price signals to tell you where the energy needs to move.”
Krebber cautioned that Germany would not be able to fully replace Russian gas deliveries with alternatives such as liquefied natural gas shipments or wind and solar power generation until the winter of 2024/25.
“Probably we have a more normalised situation after the winter of 2023/24 . . . and then full replacement of the volumes one winter later.”
Krebber defended Germany’s decision to continue with the decommissioning of its last three nuclear power plants, which are due to close before the end of the year, saying the technical and safety challenges could not be overcome before this winter. He argued that the 3GW of capacity they represent was not large enough to justify the effort.
“These plants have been running for a decade, they were technically, commercially optimised until the end of this year. Refuelling takes more than three months. It takes 12 to 15 months.
“It’s not a question of does it [nuclear] help on the gas supply side — there coal does the trick.”
The US Senate has passed a rare bipartisan package of gun safety legislation, sending it to the House of Representatives for further approval.
The bill, seen as the first significant gun control legislation to pass in three decades, was passed by 65 votes to 33.
Fifteen Republican senators joined all 50 Democrats in voting for the bill.
The measures include tougher background checks for younger would-be gun owners, measures to keep guns away from more domestic violence offenders, and red flag laws that will make it easier for authorities to take weapons from people judged to be dangerous.
The $13bn package will also fund programmes about school safety, mental health, and violence prevention.
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But compromise could not be reached on broader measures, such as banning assault-style rifles or high-capacity magazines, and so these have been left out of the legislation.
They were among more than 20,800 people who have been killed in gun violence in the US this year, including through homicide and suicide, according to non-profit research group Gun Violence Archive.
Before the vote, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said: "This is not a cure-all for the ways gun violence affects our nation, but it is a long overdue step in the right direction".
The bill is expected to pass in the Democrat-controlled House, before it is signed into law by US President Joe Biden.
Mr Biden said on Thursday night: "Tonight, after 28 years of inaction, bipartisan members of Congress came together to heed the call of families across the country and passed legislation to address the scourge of gun violence in our communities.
"Families in Uvalde and Buffalo - and too many tragic shootings before - have demanded action.
"And tonight, we acted.
"This bipartisan legislation will help protect Americans. Kids in schools and communities will be safer because of it.
"The House of Representatives should promptly vote on this bipartisan bill and send it to my desk."
The court's conservative majority struck down New York state's limits on carrying concealed handguns outside the home, ruling that it violated a person's right to "keep and bear arms", under the US Constitution's Second Amendment.
Germany took a step closer to rationing gas after a drastic drop in supplies from Russia, saying Moscow’s decision to weaponise its energy exports had plunged Europe’s largest economy into a “gas crisis”.
Berlin triggered the second stage of its national gas emergency plan, nine days after Russia reduced gas supply through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline under the Baltic Sea by 60 per cent.
“We are in a gas crisis,” said Robert Habeck, economy minister. “From now on, gas is a scarce commodity.”
He said prices were already high but Germans should be prepared for further increases. “That will have an effect on industrial production and weigh heavily on consumers,” Habeck said. “It is an external shock.” Gas was, he added, being deployed “as a weapon against Germany”.
The move to the second stage of the plan signals that the authorities see a “substantial deterioration in the gas supply situation”, but one that the market can deal with without resort to “non-market based measures”.
That means the second stage of the gas plan will not lead to the rationing of gas to industrial companies or consumers, but triggering the third “emergency” level will. Habeck said rationing “shouldn’t happen”, but “of course I can’t rule it out”.
The government also said it was not going to activate a law that would have allowed energy companies to terminate their contracts with customers and demand higher prices, after pushback against the measure from industry.
Futures contracts linked to TTF, the European wholesale gas price, rose 4.7 per cent on Thursday morning to €132.25 per megawatt hour.
Habeck called on Germans to cut their gas consumption. “We will all have to make an effort — but we can do it, in solidarity with each other.” He said the government was taking emergency measures, such as bringing coal-fired power stations out of the reserve. “That’s painful because coal power stations are just poison for the climate,” said Habeck, who is a Green.
Germany’s gas storage facilities are currently 58 per cent full, higher than at this time last year, but Habeck said that if gas supplies remained at their current low level, Germany would not reach its target of getting storage up to 90 per cent capacity by December unless additional measures were taken.
Gas importers are being forced to make up for the shortfall in gas being supplied through Nord Stream 1 by buying gas on the spot market at much higher prices.
Habeck was speaking just days before Gazprom, Russia’s gas giant, is due to carry out annual maintenance on Nord Stream 1, a move that will bring supply through the pipeline to a halt.
Officials are worried that Gazprom might stop gas deliveries completely while NS1 is closed for repairs. “The supply situation is tight enough without NS1 being shut down,” said one.
Carsten Rolle of the BDI, Germany’s business confederation, said that during previous periods of scheduled maintenance on NS1 Gazprom had made up the shortfall by sending Germany more gas through Ukraine, or via the Yamal-Europe pipeline through Poland.
“But there is a concern that they will not do that this year,” he said. “Already they have cut flows through NS1 by 60 per cent and not made up for it with increased flows through other pipelines.”
Markus Krebber, chief executive of German energy company RWE, said it was “very clear” that the decision to reduce gas flows was “political”, “because it’s not only the [gas] coming via Nord Stream 1 that [is] below contracted volumes, but also via other pipelines.”
Rolle said Gazprom could also use the planned maintenance on NS1 “as a pretext to stop gas supplies for much longer, citing various technical reasons”.
“What is the guarantee that at the end of the maintenance period that you actually do get any gas coming back on?” said James Waddell, an analyst at Energy Aspects.
Russia continues to blame supply disruption on delays to the return of Siemens Energy turbines used at an NS1 pipeline compressor station. Siemens Energy says Canadian sanctions against Russia are preventing it from returning the vital technical equipment from a factory in Montreal.
“What other reasons can there be?” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday, according to Interfax. “The turbine needs to be put back in place, and they’re not doing that. Our German colleagues know the whole technological service cycle of the gas pipeline extremely well. It has been working perfectly and without fault for many years,” Peskov said.
Russia denied there were any political motives behind the breaks in supplies, he added.
So far, the reduction in flows through NS1 has had little tangible impact on Germany’s supplies because gas consumption during the summer is only a quarter or a fifth of the volume on cold winter days. But it is having a serious effect on efforts to fill gas storage facilities ahead of the winter heating season.
“If we don’t succeed in filling gas storage by the autumn, we’re going to quickly start experiencing gas shortages,” said Jörg Rothermel, head of energy at Germany’s Chemical Industry Association. “And the Bundesnetzagentur [federal energy regulator] will have to start issuing orders for companies to reduce their gas consumption or even switch off some production facilities.”
Additional reporting by David Sheppard and Joe Miller
French president Emmanuel Macron has appealed to his opponents to end the nation’s political deadlock by joining his minority government in voting through laws in parliament, though he acknowledged it was not the moment for a broad government of national unity.
“We’ll have to build compromises,” Macron said in a televised address to the nation three days after his government lost control of the National Assembly in legislative elections. “We have to learn to govern and legislate differently.”
In April, Macron became the first French president in 20 years to win a second term, but two months later his centrist political alliance fell short of a majority in two rounds of voting for the assembly. The government now faces two powerful opposition blocs led by politicians of the far left and far right.
Macron said he understood the “fractures and deep divisions” in France but hoped to be able to enact laws with the support of other parties in the coming weeks that would deal with the rising cost of living, accelerate his drive for full employment, protect the environment and help the overloaded health service.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the veteran far-left politician who forged a Red-Green alliance that became the largest opposition group in the assembly, rejected Macron’s overtures and said the only way forward was for the prime minister Élisabeth Borne to ask for a confidence vote in the assembly and step down if she failed to win it.
“The executive is weak but the National Assembly is strong,” said Mélenchon.
Since the election on Sunday, Macron has been meeting elected political leaders of all persuasions at the Elysée Palace and trying to persuade them to accept a government of national unity, a governing coalition, or at the very least a series of temporary deals to allows laws to pass.
“What’s on the table is a way of finding a majority so that we can move forward to reform and transform our country,” Olivier Véran, minister in charge of relations with the parliament, said on Wednesday.
Macron’s government was offering “all options” including a broad coalition because “we’re saying the situation is serious and we must be able to unite our forces and find areas of consensus”, Véran told BFMTV.
Without the support of some of his political opponents, including MPs from the conservative Les Républicains or the Socialist party, Macron will struggle to push through any legislation to pursue his economic reforms or tackle crises in France’s health and education systems.
Fabien Roussel, the Communist leader whose party has joined a Red-Green alliance dominated by Mélenchon, said Macron had suggested a government of national unity when he met him on Tuesday. Marine Le Pen, when asked whether Macron had made the same proposal to her as leader of the far-right Rassemblement National, said “yes.” On Wednesday night, Macron said most of the political leaders he met had ruled it out and he did not think it was justified for the time being.
Edouard Philippe, Le Havre mayor and former Macron prime minister who joined forces with the president in the legislative election campaign, described the idea as a “grand coalition”, while François Bayrou, another Macron ally who heads the centrist Modem party, said he had told the president that it was important to go as far as possible in achieving “national unity”.
Macron’s problem is that the two biggest opposition blocs in the newly elected National Assembly are Mélenchon’s New Ecological and Social People’s Union (Nupes), and Le Pen’s RN — groups dominated by hard-left and hard-right nationalist politicians whom the liberal president will find it difficult or impossible to work with.
Véran has already said the minority government does not see itself co-operating with Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (France Unbowed, the largest component of Nupes) or with the RN on the grounds that they do not have republican values. “Neither extreme left, nor extreme right,” he said.
That leaves the conservative LR and the more moderate parties in Nupes, including the Socialists and greens, but they have all so far proved reluctant to consider striking a deal with Macron except for case-by-case approvals of particular laws.
LR president Christian Jacob said he did not want to block the country’s institutions but his MPs did not want a formal coalition pact with Macron.
“It’s difficult for Macron for obvious reasons to find people to work with in the RN and in most of the Nupes coalition,” said Martin Quencez, deputy director at the Paris office of the German Marshall Fund, a think-tank. “In many cases they got elected on an anti-Macron platform.” But he added: “This is not the end of the story, this is still very much in flux.”
