Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg is struggling to steer Norway through its deepest trauma since World War II as the Nordic bastion of equality comes to grips with last week’s mass killings by a right-wing extremist.More at the link above.
Sixty-eight people were gunned down on July 22 at a Labor Party youth camp on the island of Utoeya, northwest of Oslo. Stoltenberg, who leads the Labor Party, said that the “paradise island of my youth” had been “transformed into hell.” The killer, 32-year-old Norwegian national Anders Behring Breivik, confessed to the shooting and a separate bombing that killed eight people. Police today revised down an earlier estimate of 93 casualties.
Norway, the world’s second-richest nation per capita after Luxembourg, is reeling from Europe’s worst attack since the 2004 school massacre in Beslan, Russia, claimed about 350 lives. Home to Europe’s lowest jobless rate and biggest budget surplus, Norway must now come to terms with a threat of violence normally associated with less stable societies, the prime minister said.
See also The New Jersey Star-Ledger, "07-25-11: Photos of the Day."