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/ 11 October 2007
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
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.
Albert Fert of France and Peter Gruenberg of Germany on Tuesday won the Nobel Prize for Physics for work that led to the miniaturised hard disk, one of the breakthroughs of modern information technology. Fert (69) and Gruenberg (68) were lauded for discovering a principle called giant magnetoresistance, or GMR.
Mario Capecchi and Oliver Smithies of the United States and Martin Evans of Britain won the Nobel Prize for Medicine on Monday for their work in creating ”knockout mice”, the 21st-century testbed for biomedical research. The trio were honoured for discovering how to manipulate genetically mouse embryonic stem cells.
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/ 18 September 2007
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
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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/ 3 September 2007
The Swedish government said on Monday it would donate almost -million to preserve the works and memory of legendary filmmaker Ingmar Bergman who died in July. The money will be used to host an annual international theatre festival organised by the Royal Dramatic Theatre and to make digital copies of his films.
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.
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.
A Swedish couple were dismayed to find a 4cm-long bat in their breakfast cereal, the Swedish news agency TT reported on Saturday. The couple in Tanum, in western Sweden, were already part way down the packet when they made their unappetising discovery, the agency said.
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.
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”.
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/ 1 February 2007
Swedes earning tax-free money on internet games such as <i>World of Warcraft</i> and <i>Second Life</i> may have to think again after Swedish authorities said on Wednesday they are planning a clampdown. "We’re not interested in ordinary gamers; 99% of them play for the sake of playing," a tax official said.
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/ 27 January 2007
The world’s oldest newspaper, Sweden’s Post och Inrikes Tidningar, has embraced the digital age, ending its run as a print publication and opting to be published exclusively on the internet. Founded in 1645 by Queen Christina, the paper was a staple for readers in Sweden throughout the late 17th and 18th centuries.
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/ 25 December 2006
"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.
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/ 21 December 2006
The fatigue shows in his eyes and his jittery legs betray his nerves: Mohamed sits in a Swedish cafe six weeks after fleeing the bombs and death threats that have become a part of everyday life in Iraq, hoping for a chance to start his life again. Mohamed, a former shopkeeper in a town south of Baghdad, paid $40Â 000 to a smuggler to help him flee Iraq with his wife and two children, aged four and nine.
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/ 13 December 2006
The Swedish car maker Volvo is working on a ”city safety” system to prevent rear-end collisions at low speeds in urban environments. According to the car maker, the system is being developed to reduce the 75% of reported collisions at low speeds of up to 30kph.
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/ 12 December 2006
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.
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/ 1 December 2006
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.
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/ 3 November 2006
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.
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/ 12 October 2006
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.
Roger Kornberg of the United States won the Nobel Chemistry Prize on Wednesday for work on a key process of life called genetic transcription. Kornberg (59) received the distinction ”for his fundamental studies concerning how the information stored in the genes is copied, then transferred to those parts of the cells that produce proteins”.
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 young United States scientists, Andrew Fire and Craig Mello, on Monday won the Nobel Medicine Prize for discovering how to silence malfunctioning genes, a breakthrough which could lead to an era of new therapies to reverse crippling disease.
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.
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/ 18 September 2006
With a steady stream of bleak predictions that ”water wars” will be fought over dwindling supplies in the 21st century, battles between two Sumerian city-states 4 500 years ago seem to set a worrying precedent. But the good news, many experts say, is that the conflict between Lagash and Umma over irrigation rights in what is now Iraq was the last time two states went to war over water.
A record number of women are expected to take part in Sweden’s annual moose hunt when it opens next week, with women now making up a quarter of those passing hunting exams, officials say. Hunting is a hugely popular national pastime in Sweden, in particular the moose hunt, and is as much a part of life for the country’s working class as it is for the rich.
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.
Internet telephony provider Skype announced on Friday it now has more than 100-million registered users worldwide. Skype, which was bought last year for ,6-billion by online auctioneer eBay, said it has nearly doubled in size from September 2005 when 54-million people were using the service.