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Mette-Marit apologises for ‘poor judgment’ as documents reportedly include scores of email exchanges with child sex offender

Norway’s crown princess has become embroiled in another scandal after newly unsealed files appeared to show her years of extensive contact with the late child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

The latest tranche of Epstein files, released on Friday by the US justice department, appear to include nearly 1,000 mentions of the crown princess, Mette-Marit.

The files include scores of emails traded between the two, suggesting they were in contact from 2011 to 2014, the Norwegian daily VG reported. Mette-Marit married the future king of Norway in 2001.

The revelations come at a sensitive time for the royal family. The trial of Mette-Marit’s son, Marius Borg Høiby forremoved is due to begin on Tuesday. He was born from a relationship before she married Crown Prince Haakon

Høiby is facing 38 charges, including the allegedremoved of four women as well as alleged assault and drug offences. If convicted he could face up to 16 years in prison. Høiby has denied the most serious charges, including those of sexual abuse.

On Saturday, Mette-Marit addressed her relationship with Epstein, who killed himself in jail in 2019 as he awaited trial for sex crimes against minors.

“I showed poor judgment and I deeply regret having had any contact with Epstein. It is simply embarrassing,” she said in a statement issued by the royal palace.

The Norwegian media’s attention was this weekend focused on the many emails that the princess exchanged with Epstein, years after he pleaded guilty to charges that included soliciting prostitution from a minor in Florida.

The emails contained in the files suggested the two were close, with Mette-Marit telling Epstein that “you tickle my brain” in one message and calling him “soft hearted” and “such a sweetheart” in others.

In 2012, Mette-Marit told Epstein he was “very charming” and asked if it was “inappropriate for a mother to suggest two naked women carrying a surfboard for my 15 yr old sons wallpaper?”

Weeks earlier she and Epstein had traded emails about him being on a “wife hunt” in Paris. She replied that the French capital was “good for adultery” and added that “Scandis (are) better wife material”.

In another, she thanked Epstein for flowers he had sent when she was feeling unwell, signing off with “Love, Mm.”

The exchanges regularly made mention of plans to get together, while files indicate she also stayed at his house in Palm Beach, Florida, for four days in 2013 when Epstein was not there.

Inclusion in the files does not imply wrongdoing.

In her statement on Saturday, Mette-Marit, 52, expressed her “deep sympathy and solidarity” with Epstein’s victims and said she was responsible “for not having checked Epstein’s background more closely and not understanding quickly enough what kind of person he was”.

The files, however, include a 2011 exchange in which Mette-Marit told Epstein that she had “Googled” him, adding “it didn’t look too good” along with a smiling emoji. The email did not specify what she had found during her online search.

The palace said Mette-Marit had ended written contact with Epstein in 2014 as she felt he was “trying to use his relationship with the crown princess as leverage with other people”.

As the seven-week trial of her son gets under way in Oslo, the royal couple are not expected to attend. Haakon has told reporters that Mette-Marit would be away on a private trip during that period.

Høiby does not have a royal title and is outside the line of royal succession. Earlier this year, the Norwegian royal court addressed the trial in a statement, saying: “It is for the courts to consider this matter and reach a decision. We have no further comment.”

At the diplomatic and rhetorical levels, support has been received from many countries, for Cuba, “but behind those speeches there is more, things that we also cannot openly explain because the enemy is pursuing every avenue that Cuba might open up for them.” “I can assure you, with the utmost responsibility, that Cuba is not alone.”

“Right now there are people, governments, countries, institutions, and companies that are willing to work with Cuba, and that have already shared with us ways, mechanisms, and intentions of how we can do so”

“The energy persecution, the financial persecution, the intensification of the blockade with these coercive measures is such that we know we have to do a very strong, very creative, very intelligent job to overcome all these obstacles”

“Not allowing a single drop of fuel to enter our country will affect transportation, food production, tourism, children's education, and the healthcare system.”

“They are waging psychological warfare against Cuba to fracture the unity of the Cuban people and generate uncertainty,”

“I am not an idealist. I know that we are going to live through difficult times, but we will overcome them together, with creative resistance and the contribution of the majority of Cubans."

“The country must be able to sustain itself with its own energy sources: our own oil, our own gas, biomass, solar energy…”

“By the end of February, we will have added another 98 MW from renewable sources; by the end of March, we will have added another 58 MW, on the path to energy independence.”

“The way the US energy blockade has been implemented reinforces our commitment to the renewable energy strategy.”

“Even with an energy blockade, we will not give up on receiving fuel in our country.”

“I always say that all generations of Cubans, from those born in the early years of the Revolution to the most recent, our grandchildren, our children, were born and lived under a blockade and were born under the signs of this economic suffocation.”

“Cuba does not have a relationship of dependency with Venezuela, but rather a relationship of exchange between sister nations within an integration project.”

Economic and commercial relations, as well as significant collaborative projects in energy and medical services, were formed between Cuba and Venezuela, some of which were offset by fuel payments.

“At one time, they did cover all of our country's fuel needs, but not recently, because we must remember that Venezuela has been subjected to sanctions, coercive measures, and pressures that have affected this exchange”

He added that once the energy and naval blockade against Venezuela began, it prevented ships from Venezuela, and even from other nations carrying Venezuelan fuel, from reaching Cuba.

“The situation is further aggravated by the executive order recently signed by the United States government, which uses threats of tariffs to manipulate countries that supply oil to Cuba. Under this pretext, they have practically imposed an energy blockade on our country.”

“It’s our sovereign duty, in the face of a period of aggression, to prepare for an attack.”

“All the country's territorial defense systems are being prepared and their plans updated.”

“Cuba is a peaceful country; we are not a threat to the US,” but we have the right to defend ourselves.

“We know that terrorists are being financed and are preparing in Miami to carry out attacks in Cuba, and we will denounce them at the appropriate time.”

“Surrender is not an option in this country.”

“Trump, with his statements, acknowledges that there is no failed state, but rather a state that has had to confront the aggressions and sanctions of the most powerful empire in the world, when he says that there is no other pressure to apply to Cuba than to destroy and devastate it.”

“Cuba is willing to engage in dialogue with the US, dialogue on any issue, but without pressure, without preconditions, on equal footing, with respect for our sovereignty and self-determination, in a civilized dialogue that can build a relationship between neighbors that benefits both countries.”

A massive Navy contract vehicle, once valued at $10 billion, has ballooned to a staggering $55 billion ceiling to expedite President Donald Trump’s “mass deportation” agenda.

This $45 billion increase, published just weeks ago, converts the U.S. into a “geographic region” for expeditionary military-style detention. It signals a massive, long-term escalation in the government’s capacity to pay for detention and deportation logistics. In the world of federal contracting, it is the difference between a temporary surge and a permanent infrastructure.

Task orders allow DHS to bypass the months-long public bidding process for every new facility. When the contract says task orders are issued when "specific dates and locations are identified," it means the infrastructure is currently a "ghost" network that can be materialized anywhere in the U.S. the moment a site is picked.

MY TAKE: If Congress does nothing, DHS will continue to thrive. With three more years pre-funded, plus a U.S. Navy as a benefactor, Secretary Kristi Noem–or any potential successor–has the legal and financial runway to keep the business of creating ICE concentration camps overnight in American communities running long after any news cycle fades.

While Kennedy predicts a "long, long shutdown" for DHS, this contract vehicle suggests the department has already secured the "ceiling" it needs to operate at a massive scale regardless of the immediate budget battles in the House.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel announced on Thursday the implementation of a series of government measures, including restrictions on consumption, to address a complex energy situation exacerbated by coercive measures from the United States

During a press conference, the head of state explained that since December, no fuel has been received due to the strengthening of the blockade against Venezuela, which affects electricity generation and basic economic and social activities.

"We have problems with fuel availability to guarantee not only electricity generation, but also basic activities that directly affect the population," he stated.

The president reported that the Council of Ministers met to approve directives, updated based on the instructions of the historical leader of the Revolution, Fidel Castro, during the "special period," with the aim of addressing the shortages.

"Even with the energy blockade, we will not give up on receiving fuel in our country. That is a right we have, and we are taking all necessary steps to ensure the country can have a supply again," he asserted.

Díaz-Canel described as "condemnable" and "criminal" the policy of a powerful nation seeking to suffocate a small country, asking: "What right does a nation have to prevent fuel from reaching another country?"

As part of the strategy to counteract the effects of the blockade, the president detailed several actions underway, such as increasing national production.

The president specified that the extraction of oil and associated gas will be promoted, and this year it is expected that 20,000 new Havana consumers will be connected to the manufactured gas network.

He also noted that Cuban scientists are working on projects to refine domestic crude oil and obtain derivatives such as gasoline and diesel, following a successful test at the end of last year.

Progress is also being made in the recovery and construction of new fuel storage capacity, lost after the Matanzas fire, in order to receive larger volumes.

"Let's see it as an opportunity to develop, to have sustainable development, to be more energy sovereign and less dependent," the president stressed.

The president acknowledged that the measures, some of them restrictive, "will demand effort" and "sacrifice" from the population, but emphasized that surrender is not an option for Cuba.

Russia has repeatedly supplied oil to Cuba in recent years, and will continue to do so, Russian Ambassador to Cuba Viktor Coronelli said in an interview.

:"We assume that this practice will continue," he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday said the United States had begun talks with "the highest people in Cuba," days after declaring Cuba "an unusual and extraordinary threat" to U.S. national security and threatening tariffs on the U.S.-bound exports of any nation that sends oil to the island.

The U.S. has moved to block all oil from reaching Cuba, including that from ally Venezuela, pushing up prices for food and transportation and prompting severe fuel shortages and hours of blackouts, even in the capital Havana.

The G.I Era

Since the 1950s, Thailand has been a safe Western ally, developed into an anti-communist bulwark for attacks on revolutionary movements in China & Indochina. During America’s war on Vietnam, academics were also shipped to Bangkok by the US to develop experimental counterinsurgency projects. As detailed in Anthropology Goes to War, one academic said, “Working in Thailand is like working in Vietnam, except no one is shooting at us”.

G.I Era Bangkok was a hub from which the region was pimped out to grotesque paternalist Western interests and desires: Political capital, bars, drugs and women. It was a place of both soft and hard power- as researcher Cynthia Enloe chronicled, detailing the use of Asian women by Western men as objects of political and economic capital. Today this relationship still functionally exists, as western journalists do overpriced lines of cocaine in Ari bars with their local girlfriends patiently waiting out front.

Institutions like The Foreign Correspondents Clubin Bangkok (which Jonathan Head chaired) still play a vital soft power role for the Bangkok elite and Western powers. Within these walls, Western and elite Thai journalists rub shoulders, speak English, develop their consensus and amplify their echo chamber.

Censorship


Without learning the language and history, Thailand is a difficult country to cover. State censorship has been constant since the 1950s; books have been burnt and writers of critical histories disappeared. English sources on anti-communist state mass-killings during the 1960s-70s are predominantly written by the American academics who took part in the acts. The most basic sources like Wikipedia and Reddit are compromised by Thai state agencies like the Cyberscouts, who use them promote pro-monarchy content and censor critiques. While professionals wouldn’t admit it, these basic sources are often the jumping-off point when beginning research into any subject, the first results in a Google Search, thus it bleeds into both not only into journalism but academia. Critique of the monarchy is banned and punishable by lengthy jail sentences; critical international publications find staff work visas revoked. Ironically, the UK tabloids have been one of most staunch reporters on the Thai monarchy, as they rely on freelancers rather than permanent Southeast Asia correspondents.

This dynamic directly consequences reporting. The country’s deep economic disparities, felt most acutely outside the capital, are covered sporadically, if at all. Chronic oppression and struggle are reduced to simplified narratives of protest and crackdown, missing any underlying social and economic conflicts or political agency- particularly as it pertains to the peasant classes. This is how English-language narratives of class conflict are flattened into interpersonal elite disputes.

Even for those who can speak Thai, the censorship still applies. Critical records are hard to come by in public. One must be embedded in communities outside Bangkok to hear histories first or second hand. This is why someone like Jit Phumisak, the radical historian killed in the 1960s, is so celebrated as one of the rare voices able to break the elite consensus. Despite his popularity domestically, little of his work is translated or accessible. Furthermore, the few Thai writers who have left, outside the reach of censors, have inevitably passed through Western academia and NGO’s, or are dependent on their funding, further compromising their critique.

A Flat Narrative

This insulated model benefits Thailand’s elite power holders; the political, monarchic, military, and business elite in Bangkok. They provide reliable access in English, framing events to emphasise simplicity, stability and legitimacy. By interacting only with this primary group, the media adopts its framing. A political crisis is presented as a temporary disturbance, whilst deeply rooted structural class antagonisms are downplayed as routine challenges of development. English language reportage of the country and the wider region thus has a persistent pro-Bangkok bias, whether the writers know it or not.

The outcome is a soft power advantage for the status quo. The elite secures favourable international portrayal, while journalism’s supposed critical function is inverted. The press and academy, focused on maintaining access and visas, fail to interrogate the forces engaging in the nation. The number of English language writers who critically cover the Kingdom is countable on one hand; the names Tyrell Haberkorn and Claudio Sopranzetti come to mind.

So much of Thai history is open-secrets known by the majority of the population, which is still the rural poor, but remains inaccessible to those at the Foreign Correspondents Club. To learn them, you must speak Thai, leave Bangkok, understand the local dialect, be in the villages, learn the meta-language of state repression, learn to read the room and gain its confidence.

Even then, censorship remains, and a small clutch of Western writers like Andrew MacGregor Marshall and Paul M. Handley have faced severe backlash for their reporting. Largely, this is a risk most would rather not run, when they could instead wake up in their Ari condo, attend a Correspondents Club talk, eat street food with their local girlfriend, go to a Thonglor bar, and order pizza delivery for when they get home to their 30,000b condo- feeling very worldly in the process. Bangkok’s allure is undeniable, so too is its effectiveness in shaping the English-language consensus on the kingdom: a flat, muddled image of the country, rife with generalisation, where class struggle and the aspirations of the poor do not exist.

Caracas, Feb 3 (Prensa Latina) The son of Venezuela's constitutional president, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, sent an emotional message to his father, Nicolás Maduro, today, marking one month since his kidnapping along with the First Lady on January 3.

“One month without your advice, your quick response, your wisdom, your ability to always have solutions. One month without hearing from you or seeing you directly,” the National Assembly (parliament) deputy wrote on his Telegram account.

The young Venezuelan said that it has been very hard and yet, "it is a month of certainty for the people, of feeling prepared by you to face this challenge" and of feeling sad but strengthened by you, your serenity, your peace that you transmit to us at this moment.

“Here we are, Dad, with the homeland and the people united and firm,” he affirmed.

The member of the Permanent Commission on Economy, Finance and National Development of the parliament stated that when he sees his father again, “we will hug and continue the path of Bolívar and Chávez.”

So that the Venezuelan family, he said, can have a dignified, happy, full, and developed life in all fields and dimensions.

Let's go forward with strength, together with your team, together with the people and for the homeland, to continue building the dream of sovereignty and dignity, in total peace, with dialogue, inclusion and diplomacy, he expressed.

“Dad, we continue to win in the name of God and you will be among us sooner rather than later,” he assured.

Long live Venezuela! Long live the homeland! Long live Nicolás Maduro Moros and Cilia Flores! NEMG (Nicolás Ernesto Maduro Guerra) concluded the message.

On January 3, the presidential couple was kidnapped amid a US military aggression against four territories of the country, which left more than a hundred Venezuelan civilians and military personnel dead, and 32 Cuban combatants who were protecting the constitutional president.

1 No one in the community or local firearms communities knows anyone associated with this group. They activated their website ACATUSA on January 10th.

2 Their domain: ACATUSA, has, since the early 2000s, linked directly to the FBI .gov website, and previously presented itself as Armed Citizens Against Terrorism, which also had links for FBI tiplines.

3 Public and private requests for clarity on who this organization is and where they came from have been met with opaque, repetitive responses.

4 Organizations across the political spectrum, from the SRA, Atlas Defense, and the MN Gun Owners Caucus, have all warned against participation in the event.

Do Not Engage with this march. They are requesting people with Permits To Carry identify themselves to the group and march with unloaded firearms *while also stating they will allow “former” law enforcement/military to march with loaded firearms. They are also requesting unarmed people follow and march with them, as well as volunteers to help marchers check in.

Sergey Lavrov condemns Washington’s measures in call with Cuban FM Rodriguez.

During a phone call on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reaffirmed to Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez his country’s full support for Cuba in the face of new aggressions by Washington.

Lavrov stressed that the measures threaten to worsen the humanitarian situation for the Cuban people and expressed Russia’s firm willingness to provide political and material support needed to counter the economic siege. Both diplomats discussed priority issues on the bilateral agenda and coordinated the schedule for upcoming high-level contacts between the two countries.

The call came in direct response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order threatening additional tariffs on any country that supplies oil to Cuba, on the grounds that the island poses a threat to U.S. national security.

Lavrov said Moscow will not allow extreme living conditions to be imposed on Cuba through financial coercion, reinforcing the strategic alliance between Russia and the Caribbean nation in defense of sovereignty.

For his part, Rodriguez denounced U.S. actions as a brutal act of aggression that intensifies the longest-running economic blockade in history, in place for more than 65 years.

He thanked Russia for its solidarity at a critical moment, saying Washington is using tariff blackmail in an attempt to break the will of a free people.

Earlier, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova strongly rejected Washington’s new measures against Cuba, describing them as a deliberate attempt at economic strangulation.

Russia said the unilateral sanctions are categorically unacceptable because they were adopted outside the framework of the United Nations and violate international law.

Zakharova said the latest episode of “maximum pressure” seeks to suffocate Cuba’s economy, but she added that the Caribbean nation will continue to maintain effective foreign economic ties despite illegitimate obstacles imposed by the Trump administration.

Zakharova also mentioned that a White House document labels Russia a “hostile and malicious state” because of its relationship with Havana, a characterization that hampers any bilateral dialogue and discredits U.S. mediation efforts in other regions.

She insisted that comprehensive cooperation between Moscow and Cuba has deep roots and solid sociopolitical backing and is not directed against third countries.

In response to Trump’s threats of possible intervention to destroy the island, Russia reaffirmed that its special historical ties with the Cuban people are unbreakable and will not be affected by tariff blackmail or diplomatic coercion.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said Cuba is a free nation that does not attack others but has been attacked for 66 years. The White House’s new threats follow the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, which signals an escalation of U.S. hostility in the region.

Against this backdrop, the Cuban government said it is prepared to defend the homeland to the last drop of blood, with the backing of strategic allies that reject Washington’s hegemony and interventionism.