Stockholm

"Ho ho ho!" may become "Ouch ouch ouch!" for Santa Claus impersonators seeking to wing it with a fake beard, Swedish experts have warned. Sweden’s national testing institute tested six models of beard and found that two of them turned into a raging inferno when coming into contact with a naked flame.

Sweet-toothed Swedes who have spent hours constructing edible Christmas gingerbread houses are seeing their creations collapse in the Scandinavian country’s unusually damp winter, suppliers said on Monday. ”The damp weather spells immediate devastation for gingerbread houses,” a gingerbread wholesaler’s spokesperson said.

Helsingborg striker Henrik Larsson is to join Manchester United on loan, the Swedish club’s chairperson Sten-Inge Fredrin said on Friday. Larsson (35), who won the Champions League with Barcelona in May, will play for the English Premier League leaders from January 1 to March 12, the local daily Helsingborgs Dagblad reported.

Television viewers marvelled on Friday at the world’s tallest living man, Bao Xishun from China, on a brief visit to Sweden. At 2,36m, the 55-year-old from Inner Mongolia has been recognised as the world’s tallest by the Guinness World Records book.

Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s best-known novelist and incendiary social commentator, won the 2006 Nobel prize for Literature on Thursday. In its citation for the 10-million Swedish crown (,36-million) prize, the Swedish Academy said: ”In the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city, [Pamuk] has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures.”

United States economist Edmund S Phelps won the 2006 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for work on trade-offs in macroeconomic policy, the Nobel jury said, noting that his work had improved understanding of how policy affected welfare for present and future generations.

American John Mather credited a team of hundreds of scientists and engineers for helping him and George Smoot do the research that won them the 2006 Nobel Prize for physics on Tuesday. Mather and Smoot won the prize for their work with a satellite that provided increased support for the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.

Two United States scientists, Andrew Fire and Craig Mello, were on Monday awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine for their pioneering work in molecular biology and genetic information, the Nobel jury said. ”This year’s Nobel laureates have discovered a fundamental mechanism for controlling the flow of genetic information,” the jury said.

Swedish tennis great Bjorn Borg, winner of five consecutive Wimbledon titles, rated himself among the world’s top four players ever. In an exclusive interview with Stockholm daily Expressen, Borg was asked to rate the world’s top five players ever. He came up with four names: Rod Laver, Pete Sampras, Roger Federer and himself, adding it was impossible to compare the quartet.

A small earthquake caused panic in Stockholm on Wednesday night when inhabitants mistook a loud bang for an explosion, police said. Hundreds of Stockholm residents alerted police and abandoned their homes when they heard the noise, fearing a bomb had gone off.

Two Swedish TV producers who went missing in the Kalahari turned up safe and sound after fleeing a car seconds before it exploded and wandering for days in the desert, an executive from their station said on Thursday. ”They are very relieved and happy. They are very well,” said Helga Baagoe, news director at Sweden’s SVT public television station.

The letter "W" has finally been added to the definitive dictionary of the Swedish language, in the latest edition compiled by the Swedish Academy, it said on its website on Friday. Words spelled with the letter "W" are rare in Swedish, with the exception of words borrowed from other languages.

Current England coach Sven-Goran Eriksson is said to be interested in taking over the vacant South African coaching job, Swedish media reported on Wednesday. Eriksson’s long-time assistant, Tord Grip, confirmed in Aftonbladet that Eriksson has been approached by South African football officials.

Sweden’s acting foreign minister, Carin Jamtin, has been barred from visiting Sudan’s western region of Darfur, Swedish media reported on Wednesday. Jamtin said she was notified of the decision on her arrival to Sudan late on Tuesday, and was told that the decision was linked to security concerns over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

While organic food and ”green” products are gradually catching on among wealthier, educated people around the globe, natural living has long been the norm across Europe’s Nordic region. ”The Nordic countries tend to have a broader, more general consciousness of environmental issues than in other European countries,” says Stockholm University researcher Hans Raemoe.

A spider that nested in the ear of a Swedish woman was discovered and removed alive after 27 days, Swedish tabloid Expressen reported on Wednesday. The black spider, ”the size of a thumbnail”, crept into the woman’s ear while she was sleeping and went undiscovered for almost a month, the paper said.

Postal services around the world are gearing up for their most frantic period of the year — ensuring wishful letters from millions of children get through to the jolly fat man running the North Pole toy factory. But in reindeer-dotted Sweden, the post office is ready to go just a little bit further in the spirit of Christmas.

Former Abba group member Agnetha Faltskog has again been targeted by a stalker, a former boyfriend described as being obsessed with the 55-year-old singer, Stockholm newspaper Expressen reported on Monday. Faltskog has for years avoided the limelight, but last year released the album My Colouring Book.

A 57-year-old Somali man was arrested in Sweden early on Monday suspected of genocide in Somalia, a country splintered by clan warfare since the early 1990s, justice officials said. ”The man was arrested in [the southern Swedish city of] Lund and immediately transferred to Gothenburg,” said a police spokesperson.

James Blake won his second title this season with a defeat of 2002 champion Paradorn Srichaphan 6-1, 7-6 (8/6) at the €680 250 Stockholm Open to stretch a late-season surge of form. The American, who missed much of last year through injury and the death of his father, added this title to the one at New Haven last August.