Norway Princess to marry California 6th generation shaman

 

Norway’s Princess Martha Louise to wed U.S. shaman amid years of controversy

By Jan M. Olsen and Stefanie Dazio  The Associated Press

Posted August 30, 2024 11:47 am

 Updated August 30, 2024 11:48 am

 4 min read

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Norway's Princess Martha Louise and Durek Verret arrive at the boats that will transport them to Geiranger for their wedding celebration on Saturday. Heiko Junge/NTB via APThe Norwegian king’s eldest child, Princess Märtha Louise, will marry American self-professed shaman Durek Verret on Saturday in a picturesque corner of southern Norway.

The wedding comes amid widespread criticism of the couple’s actions and waning support for the Scandinavian royals, who have been plagued by negative reports about an unruly family member who faces preliminary domestic violence charges.

Märtha Louise, 52, and Verret, who claims to be a sixth-generation shaman from California, have attracted headlines with their alternative beliefs. She is fourth in line to the Norwegian throne but said in 2022 that she’ll no longer officially represent the Norwegian royal house in order to work closer with her American fiancé.

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Norway’s Princess Martha Louise and her fiance Durek Verrett arrive at the government’s party event in connection with Princess Ingrid Alexandra’s 18th birthday, which is held at Deichman Bjoervika, Oslo’s main library, Thursday June 16, 2022. Hakon Mosvold Larsen/NTB via AP

The princess — she has retained the title — has said she can talk with angels, while Verret, 49, claims that he communicates with a broad range of spirits and has a medallion which helps ward off spells and cure diseases.

They became engaged in 2022. Once married, Verret will not have royal titles or official duties.

In a 2019 deal, Märtha Louise and Verret agreed not to use her connection to the royal house or her title for commercial purposes.

But earlier this year Märtha Louise labeled bottles of gin with her title and launched the brand in time for the wedding, defying King Harald V’s directive that she should not profit from her royal status. The label was eventually changed.

The couple also sold their wedding photo rights to a British celebrity magazine and the film rights to Netflix. The deals prompted protests from Norwegian media, which says it goes against local practices. The couple has often lashed out against the press while promoting themselves on social media.

Meanwhile Marius Borg Høiby, the eldest son of Norway’s Crown Princess Mette-Marit and Crown Prince Haakon’s stepson, is suspected of causing bodily harm and criminal damage. He has confessed that he was intoxicated and was taking cocaine when he was briefly arrested Aug. 6 in Oslo. Borg Høiby, who is the son of Mette-Marit from a previous relationship, has no royal titles or official duties.

Haakon has called it “a serious matter.”

The scandal, along with the upcoming royal wedding, have seriously eroded support for the Norwegian monarchy. King Harald has remained silent about the issues.

A Norwegian political party known for its anti-royalist stance is using the recent scandals to campaign for a proposal to change the Constitution and abolish the monarchy.

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“These cases show some of the fundamental challenges with the monarchy,” Andreas Sjalg Unneland, a lawmaker of the Socialist Left Party, told The Associated Press in reference to the royal wedding and the Borg Høiby case.

“Do we have to wait for a scandal that is so big that we abolish the monarchy, or can we give it a dignified ending?” Sjalg Unneland asked, adding that the nation should hold a referendum on the issue.

The proposal, expected to be tabled next month, is not likely to gain support from other lawmakers.

Saturday’s wedding will be officiated following the Norwegian Church’s wedding liturgy. While it is labeled a private event and no guest list has been made public, the royal household in Oslo says Harald, Queen Sonja, the heir to the throne Haakon and Crown Princess Mette-Marit will attend. Norway’s future king and queen will be joined by their children. Borg Høiby will not attend.

The Norwegian Church will officiate this marriage to a shaman who talks to spirits? OMG!

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Norway’s King Harald and Queen Sonja on board the Royal Yacht wave to the boats carrying wedding guests from Alesund to Geiranger, Norway, Friday Aug. 30, 2024, for the wedding celebration of Princess Martha Louise and Durek Verret on Saturday. Heiko Junge/NTB via AP

Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria and her husband Prince Daniel also are reportedly attending the ceremony in Geiranger, 265 kilometres north of Bergen, Norway’s second-largest city. Denmark’s King Frederik and his Australian-born wife Queen Mary, however, will not attend.

Reality stars, media influencers and TV personalities will round out the ceremony’s guests in the scenic town of Geiranger, which sits on the shores of its eponymous fjord designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

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Norway’s Crown Prince Haakon, 2nd right, and Crown Princess Mette-Marit, right, and their children Prince Sverre Magnus, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, center, arrive at the boats in Alesund, Norway, Friday Aug. 30, 2024, that will transport them to Geiranger for the wedding celebration of Princess Martha Louise and Durek Verret on Saturday. Heiko Junge/NTB via AP

The Norwegian royal yacht, Norge, has anchored there, surrounded by mountains and rivers. The ship will serve as the dwelling of the king and queen, the royal household in Oslo said.

Märtha Louise has three children from her previous marriage with Ari Behn, whom she divorced in 2017 after 14 years of marriage.

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Although she is the first child of the 87-year-old Harald, her brother, who is two years younger than her, will succeed their father as king.

The Norwegian Constitution was altered in 1990 to allow the firstborn, regardless of gender, to take precedence in the line of succession. The change does not apply retroactively and Haakon remains first in line to the throne. His oldest child, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, will one day ascend the Norwegian throne.

That is, if there is still a throne to ascend to.

Bits and Bites from Around the World > Another Siberian Shaman Arrested; Woman Diagnosed with 'Climate Change'; Truth or Dare - Life Sentence; Assange Gets Married

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Russian ‘shaman’ detained by cops after pledge to

‘save humanity from satanist pedophiles’

8 Nov, 2021 09:13 

Screenshots © YouTube / ДЫЛЫК ХААН Дылыков

A man from Russia’s remote Far East purporting to be a traditional spiritual leader has been detained by authorities after blogging his colossal journey across Siberia on foot as part of a self-declared mission to save the world.

On Sunday, law enforcement officials in the Urals city of Ekaterinburg confirmed to local media that Nikolay Dylykov, who goes by the name Dylyk Khan, had been taken into custody as a potential risk to himself and others.

Within the past year, the self-declared spiritual leader had filmed himself on a marathon walk across the vast expanse of eastern Russia, pledging to reach the city, Russia's fourth largest. Local media reports that he had announced he was on a mission “to save humanity from satanist pedophiles.”

He is said to have introduced himself to police as Alexander Gabyshev, a different self-declared shaman who was detained in 2019 after declaring an intention to march thousands of kilometres to Moscow, from remote Yakutia, supposedly to exorcise the soul of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“The police weren’t looking for Gabyshev,” a law enforcement source told Moscow’s Kommersant. It later emerged that the detainee was actually Dylykov, who is reportedly registered with the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a vulnerable person who potentially poses a threat to others.

After an international media storm, a court in the East Siberian city of Yakutsk placed Gabyshev into a secure facility in July after he reportedly threatened to stab a public safety official with a homemade sword. He is now serving his time in the specialist institution for an indefinite period.

In an original plan disclosed to investigators, he claimed he would walk the 7,500 kilometer distance from his native Yakutia to Moscow’s iconic Red Square, where he would light a ritual bonfire of fermented dairy products and horsehair. After uttering a shamanic prayer, Putin would calmly resign, Gabyshev said at the time.

Doctor diagnoses elderly woman with a case of ‘CLIMATE CHANGE’

9 Nov, 2021 16:43

FILE PHOTO: Water droppers battle an out of control forest fire in Prince Albert, Canada, May 18, 2021

© Reuters / David Stobbe

A Canadian doctor got the media’s attention by diagnosing an elderly asthma patient as suffering from “climate change.” However, his headline-grabbing diagnosis may be missing a simpler explanation.

When a woman in her 70s showed up with breathing difficulties at Kootenay Lake Hospital in Nelson, British Columbia, this summer, Dr. Kyle Merritt decided to diagnose her as suffering from a condition not taught in medical school textbooks: “climate change.”

Though the woman had a litany of health problems to begin with – “She has diabetes. She has some heart failure… She lives in a trailer, no air conditioning,” Merritt determined that smoke from wildfires, caused by an historic heatwave that left nearly 600 dead in the Canadian province during July and August, worsened her asthma. He told the Times Colonist that based on this chain of events, he picked up the woman’s chart and wrote in the words “climate change.”

Merritt’s diagnosis did not change how the woman was treated, and could be seen by skeptics as a political statement, especially since he followed it up by banding together with 40 other doctors at his hospital to form an activist group called Doctors and Nurses for Planetary Health. However, he stands by his move.

“If we’re not looking at the underlying cause, and we’re just treating the symptoms, we’re just gonna keep falling further and further behind,” he told Glacier Media.

Merritt’s story made waves in the Canadian media, at a time when world leaders, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, are gathering in Glasgow to hash out environmental policies at the UN’s COP26 climate conference. However, while the doctor was confident enough to draw a line connecting climate change to wildfires to his elderly patient’s asthma, forestry experts say the problem is more complex.

“Even if we were able to turn back the dial on climate change we would still have wildfires that are severe and would burn people’s houses down,” Jesse Zeman of the BC Wildlife Federation told the National Post in July. A month earlier, researchers at the University of British Columbia found that by refusing to periodically burn off dead vegetation from the province’s forests, authorities are allowing dry fuel to pile up and ensuring that wildfires are now “much more severe” when they do strike.

While a warmer climate makes fires more likely, humans could better control the blazes by cleaning up the forest floors and getting more comfortable with controlled burning, the Globe and Mail’s editorial board argued in July. “Canada’s massive wildfires are the result of decades of bad decisions,” they wrote. “But tools are available to mitigate and contain the damage.”

The question is, were these bad decisions a result of stupidity or were they intentional?

Granny killer jailed for life after revelation during ‘truth or dare’ game

12 Nov, 2021 14:03

© Getty Images / kali9

A student who revealed in a game of ‘truth or dare’ that he had killed his grandmother has been imprisoned for life, with a minimum jail time of 15 years, for starting a fire at the 94-year-old’s bungalow.

Tiernan Darnton, 21, was jailed for life on Friday for killing his step-grandmother, which was initially ruled to have been an accident.

Mary Gregory, aged 94, was discovered cowering under a table in her bungalow, which was engulfed with smoke in Lancashire, England, in the early hours of the morning in late May 2018. She passed away just four days later.

An investigation conducted at the time by the local fire service eliminated the possibility of foul play from a third party, concluding that the inferno likely started from a discarded cigarette. Based on this evidence, a coroner ruled the death as accidental three years ago.

But police reopened the case in May 2019, a year after the bungalow blaze, following a revelation made by Darnton during his counselling session.

Darnton told his counsellor that during a game of ‘truth or dare’ he had disclosed to his friend that he committed a murder and that this pal’s knowledge could land him in prison. 

“I have a secret I haven't told anyone. I may have killed someone,” the young man said when revealing his “darkest secret” to his two friends just weeks after the 94-year old’s death.

At his trial, Darnton said his remarks to his counsellor were “attention-seeking” and rebuffed any wrongdoing. He also said he wanted to impress his friends in the game.

But after being arrested at his family home in May 2019, investigations into his internet history unearthed disturbing searches, including “urge to kill again.” Just a month before the deadly fire, he had also googled “under 18 murder.”

Drawings of Mrs Gregory’s bungalow were also found at Darnton’s family home that outlined a “good hiding place” and “quick exit.” Attempts to hinder the pensioner’s attempts to escape were discovered, including a tampered smoke alarm.

Explaining the motive behind starting the fire, Darnton told the court that he did not want his step-grandmother to suffer from dementia any longer. 

Lancashire, UK

UK caves, allows Assange to get married in jail

There should be something funny about this - the old ball and chain, the institution, etc., but it's disgraceful that Assange is still in prison. Being persecuted by 3 different American Presidents says much more about America than it does about Assange. It's time to drop the persecution and accept that you just can't get away with spying on anyone and everyone as you please.

12 Nov, 2021 00:29 

FILE PHOTO: Julian Assange and partner Stella Moris are seen in an undated photo shared by Moris on social media November 11, 2021. ©  Twitter / @StellaMoris1 / screenshot

Imprisoned WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange will tie the knot with the mother of his children at a maximum security UK prison, after Stella Moris sued the “creepy” British government for denying them the right to marry.

“Julian and I now have permission to marry in Belmarsh prison,” Moris tweeted on Thursday evening, explaining that the UK government had “backed down” 24 hours before a legal deadline.

“I am relieved but still angry that legal action was necessary to put a stop to the illegal interference with our basic right to marry,” she added.

Moris, who has two sons with Assange, filed a lawsuit against Justice Secretary Dominic Raab and Belmarsh Governor Jenny Louis on Friday, arguing that “creepy elements of the UK government” engaged in “unfair, irrational and sinister” behaviour to illegitimately interfere in their plans.

Assange and Moris have been engaged for five years, and have been asking officials at the maximum-security prison for permission to arrange a wedding since May. When they finally received a reply, they were told the matter had been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

As the CPS represents the US government in the extradition proceedings against the Australian-born publisher, putting them in charge of the marriage basically gives Washington veto powers, which is “completely outrageous,” Moris told Democracy Now.

Speaking with The Independent, Moris said the interference with the marriage request was a bid to “break [Assange] psychologically” and that there were no legitimate reasons for it.

“It’s a really basic, essential thing, a human thing, and it’s not for the intelligence services, our politicians or anyone else,” she said.