Mayors demand independent hospital audit

The Sørlandet / Agder news of 9 and 10 October 2026 is marked by the demand from mayors in the Kristiansand region for an independent review of the Sørlandet hospital structure; they met the leadership of Helse Sør-Øst in Oslo on Friday. On Thursday, a Telenor network outage prevented calls to emergency numbers and halted trains across the country, before being resolved in the evening. In Kristiansand, folkehøyskole students are following the government's plan to cut their stipend.

Sørlandet / Agder news: mayors call for a hospital audit

Mayors in the Kristiansand region want an independent review of the Sørlandet hospital structure. On Friday, they met the leadership of Helse Sør-Øst in Oslo to put forward this demand (NRK Sørlandet / Agder).

According to the public broadcaster, the elected officials are pushing this file despite resistance within their own party. The demand concerns the organisation of hospitals in Agder county. The question of maintaining and distributing hospital services in Sørlandet is therefore still being raised by municipalities in the Kristiansand region with the regional health authority.

Telenor outage: Nkom opens a new investigation

On Thursday, Telenor customers were unable to reach emergency numbers and trains were halted across the country. Telenor confirmed at the end of the day that the problems had been resolved: calls between Telenor customers, calls to and from other operators, SMS and mobile data are working normally, said head of information Vetle Andersen to NRK (NRK Sørlandet / Agder). The company is still looking for the cause of the outage. No sign of sabotage has been found.

Bane Nor reported at 19:30 that the communication system outage had been resolved, noting that delays and cancellations were still to be expected, although morning trains should run on time (NRK Sørlandet / Agder). Among the services affected were calls to and from Telenor customers, contact with rescue services and as calls to the legevakter, the out-of-hours medical services.

The Nasjonal kommunikasjonsmyndighet (Nkom) is opening a new investigation into Telenor. "It shows the vulnerability we have and our dependence on the mobile network. We cannot do without it," says director John-Eivind Velure to NRK. Almost exactly two years earlier, the same type of incident had occurred: errors at Telenor had hit mobile and internet services and prevented several million customers from reaching emergency numbers. The digitalisation minister at the time, Karianne Tung, had called the outage "totally unacceptable". Asked about the fact that this is happening again, Velure says work must be done so that it does not happen again, while adding that it is impossible to fully protect against errors. Nkom had then imposed a fine of 50 million kroner on the operator.

Folkehøyskole stipend: 40,000 kroner at stake in Kristiansand

The government is proposing to sharply cut the stipend for folkehøyskole students. The measure is included in the draft budget presented on Wednesday. Today, a student who completes a year can see 40% of their loan converted into a grant; the government proposes to reduce this share to 15% (NRK Sørlandet / Agder). The same proposal had been made last year, before being dropped in the revised budget.

At Kristiansand Folkehøyskole, Maja Waage Imset (21), a student on the "dyr og natur" programme, says: "If the stipend is cut, only those who can afford it will be able to go to folkehøyskole. That's a shame." Her classmate Roma Paulsen (18) believes she would have given up folkehøyskole if she had lost around 40,000 kroner in grant: "Then I would probably have done something else" (NRK Sørlandet / Agder).

📌 Local briefs

In Kristiansand, four young people are linked to 282 entries in the police log and 82 criminal cases between June and September; local elected officials were briefed on Wednesday, and mayor Mathias Bernander (H) is calling for a discussion on places in secure institutions for children covered by child protection (NRK Sørlandet / Agder).

MDG wants the red-green parties to sign an "anti-waste contract" against the waste of money and nature; this would involve stopping the construction of the motorway between Oslo and Stavanger (NRK Sørlandet / Agder).

Fædrelandsvennen reports on Friday evening new discrepancies with an amount mentioned at "four or five million" (09/10, 20:00), a road closed by settling snow (09/10, 17:00) and concerns linked to staff cuts (09/10, 16:00). The paper also reports the sale of a property after a bidding war (09/10, 15:00).

Sources: NRK Sørlandet / Agder, Fædrelandsvennen, The Local Norway — Period: 09 October 2026 and 10 October 2026