Sweden

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.

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.