ALERT – ALL SCHOOLS/KINDERGARTENS IN NORWAY CLOSED: Prime Minister Erna Solberg announces ‘strongest and most radical measures we have had in peacetime,’ details at 2 p.m.

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All schools, universities and kindergartens in Norway are being closed due to the coronavirus threat, Prime Minister Era Solberg announced Thursday. She told Norwegian media “we must be prepared that today we are coming up with the strongest and most radical measures we have had in peacetime in Norway.”

The announcement comes only hours after Longyearbyen School Headmaster Frode Westby Thorstad told Svalbardposten “we are not taking any major, major measures yet. The school is still open, but closing is certainly a scenario we must face. In that case, it will not be a decision we make on our own.”

Thorstad said an important reason why the school is not closed is the need to keep important social functions running.

“If we had only thought about public health, we would have closed the school,” he told the newspaper. “But closing the school will have social consequences for Longyearbyen. This is a trade-off we have had to take.”

The school and two kindergartens in Longyearbyen have a total enrollment of a few hundred youths. The closure will also affect the school in Barentsburg.

(This is breaking story in progress, with details being added.)

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Mark Sabbatini

I'm a professional transient living on a tiny Norwegian island next door to the North Pole, where once a week (or thereabouts) I pollute our extreme and pristine environment with paper fishwrappers decorated with seemingly random letters that would cause a thousand monkeys with a thousand typewriters to die of humiliation. Such is the wisdom one acquires after more than 25 years in the world's second-least-respected occupation, much of it roaming the seven continents in search of jazz, unrecognizable street food and escorts I f****d with by insisting they give me the platonic tours of their cities promised in their ads. But it turns out this tiny group of islands known as Svalbard is my True Love and, generous contributions from you willing, I'll keep littering until they dig my body out when my climate-change-deformed apartment collapses or they exile my penniless ass because I'm not even worthy of washing your dirty dishes.

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