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/ 12 December 2007

World’s first ‘newspaper’ phone launched

Sweden’s <i>Dagens Nyheter</i> said on Wednesday it had launched the world’s first "newspaper" telephone: a cellphone offering the daily’s subscribers direct and free access to its website. "We want our readers to be able to follow the news," Thorbjoern Larsson, <i>Dagens Nyheter</i> editor-in-chief and publisher, said.

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/ 5 December 2007

Take a chance on ABBA at new museum

Fans of legendary Swedish disco group ABBA can dance down memory lane when the world’s first ABBA museum opens in Stockholm in 2009, featuring the quartet’s costumes, instruments and rare memorabilia. ”It will be an international museum with a lot of technological and multimedia aspects,” the project mastermind said.

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/ 29 November 2007

Coming soon: Sweden’s giant moose

With little to attract tourists, a region in northern Sweden is pinning hope on a truly gargantuan wooden moose. When completed, the 45m-tall, 47m-long moose will have a restaurant in its belly, as well as a concert hall, conference rooms and a shop, project coordinator and local tourism promoter Thorbjorn Holmlund said on Thursday.

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/ 15 October 2007

American trio wins 2007 Nobel Economics Prize

American economists Leonid Hurwicz, Eric Maskin and Roger Myerson won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Economics on Monday for laying the foundations of an economic theory that determines when markets are working effectively. Hurwicz, Russian-born but an American citizen, is 90 years old and is the oldest-ever recipient of a Nobel Prize.

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/ 11 October 2007

Doris Lessing wins Nobel Literature Prize

British writer Doris Lessing on Thursday won the Nobel Prize for Literature for five decades of epic novels that have covered feminism, politics as well her youth in Africa. Lessing, who will be 88 next week, is only the 11th woman to have won the prize since it was first awarded in 1901 and only the third since 1996.

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/ 10 October 2007

Happy Birthday, here’s your Nobel Prize

Gerhard Ertl of Germany won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry on Wednesday, his 71st birthday, for pioneering work in surface chemistry that has become invaluable to industry, from fertilizers to cleaner cars. ”This science is important for the chemical industry,” the jury said in its citation.

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/ 18 September 2007

MP3 players could replace stethoscopes

MP3 players/recorders detect some respiratory sounds better than traditional stethoscopes and could prove handy replacements in the future, two researchers told an international conference on respiratory diseases. By pressing a microphone directly to the chest, the researchers were able to record a whole range of respiratory sounds with different patterns.

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/ 17 September 2007

Ambassador condemns Muslim cartoon bounty

Algeria’s ambassador to Sweden on Monday condemned death threats from al-Qaeda in Iraq against a Swedish artist who drew a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammad and a newspaper editor who published it. ”I vehemently condemn this kind of practice … Islam has nothing to do with this, by any means,” Merzak Bedjaoui said.

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/ 30 July 2007

Legendary filmmaker Bergman dies aged 89

Ingmar Bergman, one of the most influential film directors of the 20th century, died on July 30 at his home on the Swedish island of Fårö, his sister Eva told the TT news agency. He was 89. Bergman was widely acclaimed for films such as The Seventh Seal (1957) and Fanny and Alexander (1982), which won four Oscars.

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/ 3 July 2007

Dead camel found on the roadside … in Sweden

Motorists in Sweden are accustomed to seeing elks along the roadside, but the discovery of a dead camel on the shoulder of the E22 autoroute left more than a few eyebrows raised, media reported on Monday. "But as the police patrol arrived at the scene it turned out to be completely true," police officer Lars Lindwall told Swedish news agency TT.

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/ 7 May 2007

Tehran’s ‘red line is suspension’

Iran will not freeze uranium enrichment to reach a truce with the United Nations over its nuclear programme, the Islamic republic’s Foreign Minister said Monday. Manouchehr Mottaki insisted Iran has a legal right to pursue nuclear technology and would spurn a Swiss initiative that calls for a freeze of Iranian atomic activities.

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/ 19 April 2007

Abbas: BBC reporter kidnapped in Gaza is alive

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said on Thursday his intelligence officials had information that BBC journalist Alan Johnston, kidnapped more than a month ago in Gaza, was ”still alive”. ”I believe he is still alive. Our intelligence services have confirmed to me that he is alive,” Abbas told reporters during a visit to Stockholm, saying he had received the information ”in the last three days”.