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TOPIC: sweden

food / travel

The Real-Life Tales Of Death And Terror Behind 10 Iconic Haunted Locations

With Halloween arriving, we have dug up the would-be ghosts of documented evil and bloodshed from the past.

Updated Oct. 31, 2023 at 4 p.m.

When Hallows Eve was first introduced as a Celtic festival some 2,000 years ago, bonfires and costumes were seen as a legitimate way to ward off ghosts and evil spirits. Today of course, with science and logic being real ghostbusters, spine-chilling tales of haunted forests, abandoned asylums and deserted graveyards have rather become a way to add some mystery and suspense to our lives.

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Tech-Savvy Sweden Leads Global Push To Ban Screens In Classrooms

Sweden recently announced that the country's schools will remove digital technology from classrooms because of poor student performance. Some ask how useful is digital learning. But it also poses the question: is "digital de-escalation" even possible?

Updated September 13, 2023 at 12:45 p.m.

-Analysis-

Sweden is suddenly putting the brakes on the progressive digitalization of education.

Without going into details, Sweden's Minister of Education, Lotta Edholm, announced last spring that the government was alarmed at Sweden's poor results in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), which found that over the past five years, Swedish children's reading comprehension skills had dropped from high to intermediate — not a catastrophic result, but worrying compared to their usual standards.

Conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), the PIRLS evaluates the reading comprehension of 9- to 10 year-olds. Meanwhile, the OECD's similar PISA test measures not only reading comprehension but also basic science and mathematics skills.

Since 2013, Sweden and its Nordic neighbors have registered increasingly worse results in the PISA, when at the beginning of the century they were considered the European benchmark. Indeed, in 2020, the Swedish daily Expressen even uncovered a fraud scandal: the education authorities had tried to falsify the Swedish results for 2018.

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This Happened — September 3: Sweden Switches Driving Side

Sweden switched to driving on the right-hand side of the road on this day in 1967.

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Turkey’s NATO Green Light For Sweden, Israel Protests Reignite, Hottest Week Ever

👋 Lumela!*

Welcome to Tuesday, where the NATO summit kicks off in Vilnius after Turkey OKs Sweden's bid to join, Israel’s controversial judicial reforms spark fresh protests and after the official hottest month and day ever, meteorologists register a record-breaking week. Meanwhile, Portuguese digital magazine Mensagem looks at how global warming, with its heat waves, could also incite violence in cities.

[*Sesotho, Lesotho, South Africa and Zimbabwe]

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In The News
Marine Béguin, Sophie Jacquier, Valeria Berghinz and Anne-Sophie Goninet

Ukraine Gains On Bakhmut, France Riots Spread, Book Your Barbie’nB

👋 Halo!*

Welcome to Thursday, where Kyiv says it’s regaining territory in the Bakhmut region, more than 150 protesters are arrested near Paris as violent clashes spread after the police shooting death of teenager during a traffic stop, and you can now live out your life-size Barbie dream. Meanwhile, Jacques Henno in French daily Les Echos explores how global warming could change humans on a genetic level.

[*Bislama, Vanuatu]

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This Happened

This Happened — June 29: Brazil's First World Cup Victory

Brazil won their first World Cup on this day in 1958 which was hosted by Sweden with the final match held at the Rasunda Stadium in Solna.

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FOCUS: Russia-Ukraine War
Oleksandr Kalinichenko

When Will Ukraine Join NATO? All Eyes On Vilnius, And The Frontline

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accepted an invitation to attend the next NATO summit in July, but he will arrive with expectations that the alliance is ready to pave the way for the country's accession to the military alliance, even as the state of the war itself remains crucial to the decision.

-Analysis-

KYIV — After years of unsuccessful efforts, Ukraine seems closer than ever to joining NATO — but debate within the alliance on Ukraine's membership is heated, and developments on the battlefield may shape Ukraine's path. With the next summit for the Western military alliance set for July in Vilnius, Lithuania, what does Kyiv now expect of NATO?

Ukraine has been trying to become a member of the Western military alliance since 2008. Constant promises of membership without specific deadlines have become a political trap that a full-scale war could only level.

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Geopolitics
Pierre Haski

Putin's Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Russia Now Has An 800-Mile Border With NATO

Russia's president only has himself to blame for historically neutral Finland acquiring NATO status.

-Analysis-

PARISVladimir Putin used to complain that NATO territory was advancing towards Russia: as of Tuesday, he now has 1,340 kilometers (833 miles) of common border with a nation that has been welcomed into the Atlantic alliance, with the accession of Finland as the 31st member of NATO.

But the Russian president will not be able to blame NATO’s expansionism: He can only blame himself for this expansion. A year ago, Finland was firmly anchored in its neutral status, and it took the Russian invasion of Ukraine to break it out.

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With Sweden, a country that has been neutral for even longer, the two Nordic neighbors quickly built a national consensus around the idea that it was no longer time for neutrality with a war on their doorstep. Decades of political posturing have been swept away in a few weeks — Putin has provoked the unthinkable.

But if there were two at the start (Sweden and Finland), there is only one left at the finish line: Sweden is stuck in the process of ratifying its membership, due to delaying tactics, mainly coming from Turkey. Stockholm will have to wait a few more weeks, at least until the Turkish election on May 15.

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In The News
Ginevra Falciani & Laure Gautherin

Ukraine Denies Pipe Sabotage, Georgia Protests, Holi Kickoff

👋 Hoi!*

Welcome to Wednesday, where Ukraine responds to a report about its involvement in the Nord Stream gas pipe sabotage in November, protests over press freedom rock Georgia's capital Tbilisi and the beginning of Holi celebrations coincide with International Women’s Day. Meanwhile, Karl De Meyer in French daily Les Echos takes us on a trip to Umeå, Sweden, a city where urbanism and feminism are words that go together well.

[*Dutch]

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Society
Karl De Meyer

Welcome To Umeå, The Swedish City Designed By And For Women

Umeå in northern Sweden is a veritable feminist city. And the initiatives go much deeper than just policies and promises — they shape how the city is built.

UMEÅ — For years, this university town in northern Sweden has been working towards building a city truly made for women as much as men. The task is a lot more difficult than you might first imagine. In addition to ensuring safety in public spaces, the municipality also aims to correct the biases inherited from the past.

In the Umeå town hall square, the movement is symbolized by a striking sculpture. With its muscles flexed, a sharp feline glares angrily at passers-by from a pedestal set on metal rods that signify the bars of the cage from which it has just escaped. Blazing red, the sculpture by artist Camilla Akraka, which Umeå residents have dubbed "the puma" since its unveiling in 2019, was commissioned by the municipality as an allegory for the#MeToo movement.

Its title, "Listen," means that even in a country known to be very progressive and ahead of the curve on gender equality issues, there is still work to be done.

"In Umeå, we do not have an equestrian statue of a king or a general, but an angry feline who has reason to be," says smiling Linda Gustafsson, in front of the "puma", while readjusting her hat as the first flakes of the season flutter in early November.

The gender studies graduate bears a rather unique title: she is one of the two "gender equality officers" at the town hall. The position has existed since 1989 in Umeå, the country's 13th largest city with a population of just over 131,000, almost a quarter of whom are students.

So when conservatives called for the removal of the "puma" during the municipal election campaign, which was held at the same time as the parliamentary elections in September 2022, the Social Democrats made it clear that the animal would remain in its place if they were re-elected.

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Geopolitics
Amélie Reichmuth

The "Swedish Dream" Under Assault, At Home And Abroad

Reverberations of the war in Ukraine is just one factor forcing Sweden to reinvent its identity as a nation in a destabilized world order which puts into question the values the country had long stood for, including non-alignment, free trade and market liberalism.

-Analysis-

STOCKHOLM — Sweden is making international headlines again, after a new turn in the country's NATO application, which has become more like a political thriller novel with each dramatic turn.

On January 21st, far-right politician Rasmus Paludan burned copies of the Koran during a demonstration outside of the Turkish embassy in Stockholm. The stunt outraged many Muslims in Sweden and around the world.

Although Swedish government officials distanced themselves from the action, Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan said his country will veto Sweden's NATO application as long as protests desecrating the Islamic holy book are allowed to take place. Turkey also canceled the Swedish defense minister's scheduled visit to Ankara.

Swedish authorities seem to have learned from this experience, and earlier this month issued a rare ban of a rally protesting the NATO membership bid, which had been expected to include another Koran burning. "The burning of the Koran outside the Turkey embassy in January 2023 can be determined to have increased threats against both the Swedish society at large, but also against Sweden, Swedish interests abroad and Swedes abroad," Swedish police said in a statement.

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Geopolitics
Johannes Jauhiainen

Smaller Allies Matter: Afghanistan Offers Hard Lessons For Ukraine's Future

Despite controversies at home, Nordic countries were heavily involved in the NATO-led war in Afghanistan. As the Ukraine war grinds on, lessons from that conflict are more relevant than ever.

-Analysis-

HELSINKI — In May 2021, the Taliban took back power in Afghanistan after 20 years of international presence, astronomical sums of development aid and casualties on all warring sides.

As Kabul fell, a chaotic evacuation prompted comparisons to the fall of Saigon — and most of the attention was on the U.S., which had led the original war to unseat the Taliban after 9/11 and remained by far the largest foreign force on the ground. Yet, the fall of Kabul was also a tumultuous and troubling experience for a number of other smaller foreign countries who had been presented for years in Afghanistan.

In an interview at the time, Antti Kaikkonen, the Finnish Minister of Defense, tried to explain what went wrong during the evacuation.

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“Originally we anticipated that the smaller countries would withdraw before the Americans. Then it became clear that getting people to the airport had become more difficult," Kaikkonen said. "So we decided last night to bring home our last soldiers who were helping with the evacuation.”

During the 20-year-long Afghan war, the foreign troop presence included many countries:Finland committed around 2,500 soldiers,Sweden 8,000,Denmark 12,000 and Norway 9,000. And in the nearly two years since the end of the war, Finland,Belgium and theNetherlands have commissioned investigations into their engagements in Afghanistan.

As the number of fragile or failed states around the world increases, it’s important to understand how to best organize international development aid and the security of such countries. Twenty years of international engagement in Afghanistan offers valuable lessons.

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