Stockholm

Viewing and discussing art not only soothes the soul, it also helps cure ills such as high blood pressure and constipation, a Swedish researcher said on Friday. A researcher of the Ersta Skoendal University College in Stockholm had 20 women of about 80 years of age gather once a week for four months to discuss different works of art.

Leading British playwright Harold Pinter won the 2005 Nobel Literature Prize on Thursday, the Swedish Academy announced. Pinter, ”who in his plays uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms”, is the foremost representative of drama in post-war Britain, the jury said.

Robert J Aumann, an Israeli-American citizen, and American Thomas C Schelling on Monday won the 2005 Nobel Economics Prize for using game theory to explain conflict resolution. Using game theory, the laureates focused on why some people and countries manage to cooperate, while others suffer from conflict.

A Swedish couple have won the right after a court battle to name their daughter Edradour, after a Scottish whisky brand, media reported on Friday. Initially the tax office, which in Sweden registers the names for newborns, refused the name, saying it was too closely linked to an alcoholic drink.

The Nobel Literature Prize has for decades gone to fiction writers and poets, but just days before this year’s winner is revealed, some say the prestigious prize could be awarded within a different genre altogether. Despite the list of usual suspects, the Swedish Academy might just have a surprise in store this year.

Two-thirds of Swedes secretly read their partner’s cellphone SMSs, in particular when he or she nips off to the loo, a study published on Wednesday showed. Sixty-four percent of those questioned by mobile portal Halebop for Swedish operator TeliaSonera said they read their partners’ SMSs purely out of curiosity.

The Swedish government wants all of the country’s new cars to be equipped with devices that check sobriety by 2012 to prevent drunken driving, a minister said on Thursday. Buses and other heavy vehicles should be required to install the devices even earlier, Communication Minister Ulrica Messing wrote in an opinion article.

A waitress in Sweden thought her elderly customer was joking when he offered her his Porsche as a tip, but he kept his word and gave her the keys to the car, the daily Aftonbladet reported on Thursday. ”I thought at first he was joking with me,” 19-year-old Josefin Justin told the paper.

For the first time since the Cold War, global military spending exceeded -trillion in 2004 — nearly half of it by the United States, a prominent European think tank said on Tuesday. As military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on terror continue, the world spent ,035-trillion (R6,89-trillion) on defence costs during the year.

One-hundred-and-forty reindeer have plunged to their death in Lappland in northern Sweden, possibly having been chased off a cliff by a single lynx, reindeer herders said on Tuesday. "It’s a massacre. I have never seen anything like this," town spokesperson Nils Petter Pavval said.

Swedish aircraft manufacturer Saab and British-based BAE Systems exaggerated planned offset investments in order to sell their aircraft to South Africa, Swedish radio said on Monday. The public broadcaster said it had analysed the number of investments pledged by the companies, but found that most of them never came to fruition.

Swedish public television (SVT) mistakenly published an obituary for Pope John Paul II on its website, where it remained for more than five hours before it was taken down, the broadcasting company said on Friday. "This was a very unfortunate mistake," SVT spokesperson Johanna Niemi said.

A Swedish woman said on Sunday that she found a penis in a bottle of ketchup. However, Viktoria Ed said she was lucky enough to discover the organ before putting the sauce on her bread rolls, unlike her husband, Stefan, and their children, Madeleine and Simon.

The number of weddings performed at Stockholm’s Arlanda airport increased by more than 30% last year compared with 2003, an airport spokesperson said on Monday. ”It’s mostly couples on their way to their honeymoon that take the opportunity to exchange rings at the airport,” spokesperson Niclas Haerenstam said.

Swedish twin sisters Gunhild Gallstedt and Siri Ingvarsson celebrate their 100th birthday this weekend surrounded by three generations of family, Sweden’s Dagens Nyheter reported on Friday. The sisters were born in Malmo on January 30 1905 and have lived in the same apartment block in Stockholm for the past 60 years.

A Swedish man suffering from claustrophobia has been allowed to avoid jail time for perjury, prompting media speculation that his illness convinced the government to give him a pardon. The government refused to give a reason for pardoning Thomas Lundberg, who had been sentenced last year to four months behind bars for perjury.

Roland Schoeman of South Africa won the 50m freestyle on Wednesday at a short-course swimming World Cup meet, one day after setting a world record in the 100m individual medley. Schoeman won the 50 freestyle in 21,53 seconds at Eriksdalsbadet’s fast pool, beating Jason Lezak of the United States by 0,07 seconds.

Roland Schoeman of South Africa broke one world record and narrowly missed another at the short-course swimming World Cup on Tuesday. Schoeman broke German Thomas Rupprath’s world record in the 100m individual medley by ,07s, clocking 52,51s in Eriksdalsbadet’s fast short-course pool.

More than 150 000 Swedes were without power on Tuesday and police said another person was reported killed in fierce storms that struck northern Europe over the weekend, bringing the death toll to 17. Two British men swept away in northern rivers have been missing since Saturday and there has been no word about their fate.

A twin brother and a quick change of clothes helped an 18-year-old sentenced for assault and robbery escape from jail, reports said on Tuesday. The jailed brother was allowed an unsupervised visit from his twin brother. About 45 minutes later, the visitor left the jail while guards locked up what they believed to be the twin who was serving a sentence.

A giant straw goat erected by local businessmen in the town of Gavle was torched — again — in what has become a holiday tradition some would call arson. A smouldering pile of wood and metal was all that remained on Tuesday of the traditional Swedish good-luck goat that businessmen in Gavle erect annually.

Winning the Nobel Prize in literature not only ensures a writer’s legacy, it’s also a ready-made pulpit to tout ideas and opinions. But this year’s winner, Austrian Elfriede Jelinek, is absent from the annual festivities. Jelinek maintained from the day she won the prize that she had no plans to attend the award ceremony on Friday.

At these Winter Games, there are no strenuous slaloms or figure-eights. But if you can’t shimmy up a chimney or wrap a Christmas gift, forget about competing. The annual Santa Winter Olympics kick off this month with about 50 Santas from across Europe testing their holiday mettle in Sweden’s cold, northern reaches.

A Swedish hunter saved the life of his dog by killing a golden eagle that attacked it in Lapland, northern Sweden, reports said on Thursday. Stefan Stalnacke was out hunting for capercaillies (a large, turkey-like grouse) in the forests near his home in Vittangi, 150km above the Arctic Circle, when the eagle suddenly swooped down on to his dog.