Swedish News:

Avicii and Volvo collaborate with New Beginnings. Swedish Deputy Prime Minister criticized. April surplus in Sweden. Supreme Court rejects Assange appeal. Sweden faces questions about the Arctic climate. 

  • Avicii in collaboration with Volvo: <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S565hk5T7SA"target="_blank">“Avicii - Feeling Good”</a> 'A New Beginning'
  • New beginnings
    Avicii has released a cover of Nina Simone's 'Feeling Good' in a collaboration with Volvo. The Swedish DJ, remixer and record producer kept the original feel of the track, but re-recorded the vocals with Audra Mae and added his own touch with a new beat and a small synth section. The re-work was created for Volvo's new commercial titled "New Beginnings" in which Tim Bergling / Avicii stars by sharing various aspects of his life. The video was shot on location in Stockholm and Osterlen in southern Sweden. Watch the video on Youtube: Avicii - Feeling Good

  • Higher tax income creates short term surplus in Swedish finances. "… greatest tax hike in 20 years," said Sweden's opposition about the social democratic-green coalition's spring budget.
  • Deputy Prime Minister criticized
    In the introduction of a recent Swedish Television debate between party leaders, the Deputy Prime Minister Åsa Romson compared the present flow of refugees into the Mediterranean to the Nazi gas chambers in the extermination camp Auschwitz. "We are making the Mediterranean to the new Auschwitz," Romson, the spokesperson for the Greens, said. Romson was criticized by both representatives of Sweden's Jewish community and by her own party members and later excused herself for making the comparison.

  • The Swedish warrant for the arrest of Julian Assange is upheld. Assange photographed in the Ecuadorian Embassy, London (June 2013). Image: Wikimedia commons/Flickr
  • April surplus in Sweden
    Swedish government payments resulted in a surplus of SEK 7.0 billion in April. The Debt Office had forecasted a surplus of SEK 4.2 billion. The difference is mainly due to higher tax income and lower interest payments on government debt. Sweden has a debt-to-GDP ratio of around 44 percent and the national debt amounted to SEK 1,375 billion ($170 billion) at the end of April 2015.

  • Swedish Electro Dance Music DJ, producer and remixer Avicii releases A New Beginning.
  • Supreme Court rejects Assange appeal
    Sweden's Supreme Court said May 11 it has rejected an appeal by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange against his arrest warrant for alleged rape and sexual assault. Sweden issued the arrest warrant in 2010 following allegations from two Swedish women, one who claimed rape and another who alleged sexual assault. The Australian former hacker has been ensconced in Ecuador's embassy in London since 2012 to avoid extradition to the Scandinavian country. "The Supreme Court notes that investigators have begun efforts to question Julian Assange in London. The Supreme Court finds no reason to lift the arrest warrant," it said in the statement.
    In March Swedish prosecutors offered to question Assange in London, dropping their previous demand that he come to Sweden to answer to the allegations, making a significant turnaround in the case that has been deadlocked for nearly five years. Assange has agreed to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors in London, his lawyers said last month.
    Assange, who faces arrest if he tries to leave the Ecuadorian embassy, has always vehemently denied the allegations and insisted the sexual encounters were consensual. He has refused to travel to Sweden because he fears the country would send him to the United States, where an investigation is ongoing into WikiLeaks' release in 2010 of 500,000 classified military files on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and 250,000 diplomatic cables which embarrassed Washington.

  • Deputy Prime Minister Åsa Romson resigns. Romson has been criticized for hasty comments about the present European refugee situation. Photo: Martina Huber/Government Offices of Sweden
  • Sweden faces questions about the Arctic climate
    A two day conference on the changes, adaptations and opportunities in the Arctic will be held at the House of Sweden in Washington, DC on May 19-20. Organized by the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat, the Embassy of Sweden in Washington, DC and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the conference is aimed at Arctic oriented policy makers, researchers, business representatives and NGOs in the lead-up to the U.S. chairmanship of the Arctic Council, with thematic segments of policy, science, climate change and green technologies. A related, contemporary photography exhibition, Steps Forward: Facing the Arctic Climate, will be featured in House of Sweden through September 13.