King Harald V of Norway died at 06:35 on Friday morning at hospital in Oslo, aged 89, the palace said. He had been admitted on 17 August with haemolytic anaemia — a condition in which the body destroys its own red blood cells abnormally fast — which The Guardian names and BBC leaves as a rare blood condition. Flags went to half-mast, church bells rang at midday, and a period of national mourning runs to the funeral.
He had been head of state since 1991, thirty-five years, and was Europe's oldest reigning monarch. He was also the first king born in Norway since the fourteenth century. Born near Oslo in February 1937, he was three when Germany invaded; his mother took the children over the border into Sweden and on to the United States at President Roosevelt's invitation. He came back at the end of the war, did his military service, became crown prince in 1957 and read social science, history and economics at Oxford. He met Sonja Haraldsen, a businessman's daughter and not royal, at a party, and waited nine years for permission to marry her — telling his father in the end that if he could not marry her he would not marry. They were married for almost 58 years.
He is succeeded by his son Haakon, 53. BBC leaves the name at that; The Guardian styles him King Haakon VIII.
Where the two accounts genuinely diverge is in what they put first. BBC's headline calls him a beloved monarch buffeted by family crises, and its piece runs on the tributes: King Charles on his "dear cousin", the King of Sweden on a good friend, royal correspondents calling him the people's king and "one of us". It recalls him asking Norwegians to support each other and not let fear take over after the 2011 attacks in Oslo and on Utøya.
The Guardian's headline leads with the succession being stormy. Its third paragraph is about the crown princess, Mette-Marit: documents published in the United States in January showed she corresponded with Jeffrey Epstein between 2011 and 2014, years after his conviction, with almost a thousand mentions of her in the files, and the prime minister publicly called it poor judgement. BBC carries the same material, and the conviction of her son Marius Borg Høiby for rape, further down.
Norway's prime minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, said a whole nation was in mourning and that for more than three decades Harald had shown an unwavering faith in the Norwegian people. He is survived by Queen Sonja, Princess Märtha Louise, the new king, and six grandchildren.
Why it is on the board
Top of BBC's most-read list when we collected, and nineteenth on The Guardian's.
This is the first item to reach the British board since the 25th. Until today our replacement rule had no time in it, so a board that had collected high scores could not take anything new — BBC's number one sat outside it. The rule now discounts a board article by its age, and this is what came in first.
확인: BBC · The Guardian