It stood for 350 years, bearing fruit for a dozen generations, but strong winds finally brought down what is believed to be the oldest pear tree in Scandinavia. Ever since the mid-1600s, the massive pear tree had helped feed the people outside Enkoeping, an hour’s drive west of Stockholm.
A shadowy group of militant Stockholmers carried out their threat to ”execute” a fiberglass life-size cow after their demand that Cow Parade, an outdoor art exhibit, be dismantled was not met, organisers said on Tuesday. ”We have received the cow cut into pieces in a bag. It’s really sad,” a Cow Parade spokesperson said.
A truck carrying 8 000 live chickens overturned on a Swedish highway on Tuesday, sending a sea of fluttering poultry on to the road and forcing authorities to shut it down for more than nine hours, police said. Several thousand surviving chickens escaped from their cages and covered the E6 highway.
Norwegian scientists said on Thursday they may have found several new species of marine life, including previously unknown fish and squids, after scouring the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean in one of the most extensive marine expeditions in history.
Organisers of a race for homing pigeons were still scratching their heads in wonder on Thursday after about 1 500 of the birds, famous for their ability to find their way home, went missing during the contest. Of the 2 000 pigeons let loose last week, only about 500 have returned to their lofts after the 150km flight.
A new vaccine that aims to take the joy out of smoking, thus making it easier to stop, will be tested later this year in Sweden, reports said on Friday. The vaccine does not remove smokers’ nicotine craving but instead blocks nicotine’s access to the brain, thereby removing the stimulation that makes smoking pleasurable, Swedish daily Svenska Dagbladet reported.
The founder of Swedish furniture giant Ikea isn’t hurting for money, but the company he founded denied a report that he surpassed Bill Gates and Warren Buffett as the world’s wealthiest man. Swedish news weekly Veckans Affaerer said Ingvar Kamprad has surpassed Gates and Buffett as the world’s richest person.
No image available
/ 26 January 2004
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Monday the world had the capability but ”lacked the will” to prevent the mass slaughters of the 1990s, in opening remarks in Stockholm to the first international genocide conference in more than 50 years.
No image available
/ 11 December 2003
An intensely private South African writer, scientists whose research has helped develop magnetic resonance imaging and researchers who uncovered secrets of human cells were honoured on Wednesday at the Nobel Prize awards ceremony. Ten laureates received the prestigious awards in medicine, physics, chemistry, literature and economics.
No image available
/ 8 December 2003
Boasting a dedication to finding answers, this year’s Nobel Prize winners said on Sunday that the pursuit of knowledge is constant, adding it must remain above politics. ”It’s the beauty of science and the drive of curious people to find out how the world around is working,” said American Roderick MacKinnon.
No image available
/ 14 October 2003
Swedish foreign aid agency Sida has pledged to contribute 45-million kronor (about R42-million) to bolster the United Nations’s efforts to deliver food in Southern Africa. The agency said that the situation in Southern Africa has deteriorated because of a crucial need for money to pay for more food aid.
No image available
/ 11 September 2003
Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh has died, a day after being stabbed by an unknown assailant in Stockholm. Lindh had been a high-profile campaigner ahead of Sweden’s vote on whether to swap the krona for the euro, scheduled for Sunday.
United Nations chief Kofi Annan insisted on Wednesday that the UN had no plans to pull out of Iraq despite the bombing of its Baghdad headquarters, taking a swipe at the United States-led coalition, which he said was responsible for security.
Iraq: The agony goes on
UN Baghdad headquarters blasted
Swedish police said on Friday they had received information that Iraq’s former information minister Mohammed Said as-Sahhaf, dubbed ”Comical Ali”, was implicated in the unresolved 1985 murder of a defected Iraqi agent in Stockholm.
The United States’s ambition to do what it takes to remain the world’s only superpower is at least as unsettling for its friends as for its potential foes, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute said on Tuesday.
No image available
/ 6 February 2003
Nokia Corp. unveiled its N-Gage on Wednesday and said the company’s foray into handheld gaming marks a new path for the world’s largest mobile phone maker.
No image available
/ 30 January 2003
Swedish police said on Wednesday they had dismissed a former secret agent for South Africa’s apartheid regime as a possible suspect in the unsolved assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme 17 years ago.
No image available
/ 29 January 2003
Swedish police were to question on Tuesday a former secret agent working for South Africa’s apartheid regime in connection with the unresolved assassination of Swedish prime minister Olof Palme 17 years ago, Swedish media reported.
South African-born Sydney Brenner, John Sulston of Britain and American Robert Horvitz have won this year’s Nobel Prize for discoveries concerning how genes regulate organ development and a process of cell suicide.
Owners of older mobile telephones are at substantially greater risk of contracting a brain tumour, a Swedish study published in the current issue of the European Journal of Cancer Prevention reveals.