Swedish News:

Swedish boats are saving lives. Zlatan bought a church. The world celebrates UN70 with blue lights.  

  • The Swedish yellow boats have arrived near Greece and are helping emigrants who may be in distress as they try to cross the Mediterranean toward safer ground.
  • Swedish boats are saving lives
    The Swedish gula båtarna (the yellow boats) have arrived on the Greek island of Samos. Schibsted media group in Sweden is carrying out this extensive effort to save lives as families flee war, terror and oppression, and seek a new life in Europe. According to the UN Refugee Agency, over 2,500 have drowned in the Mediterranean this year — many of them children. The "yellow boats" campaign is a collaboration between the Swedish Sea Rescue Society (Sjöräddningssällskapet), the Red Cross and Schibsted, with daily newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet, and needed contributions from readers and the general public. The boats will patrol the Greek islands bordering Turkey, ready to go out on the increasingly stormy sea to rescue distressed refugees and migrants. "You can have whatever opinion you want about how the refugee policy works, but for me it is clear: People should not have to drown because they are fleeing a war," crewman John Henriksen said. The yellow boats can undoubtedly make a vital difference in the sea, especially around Samos, where about 1,500 refugees try to leave every day — on crafts unfit for the sea, much less the sea during bad weather, which will likely get worse as autumn storms come and the water gets colder.

  • The Swedish 'Gula Båtarna' ((the yellow boats) organized by Swedish Sea Rescue Society and Schibsted media group have arrived to the Greek archipelago.
  • Zlatan bought a church
    Swedish soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic, 34, has purchased Elim Kyrka in
    Ostermalm, Stockholm. The property was previously a church and renovated for residential in 2013 when a business he runs with his mother and brother purchased it. Shelling out approximately SEK 110 million (about $13 million) this week, Ibrahimovic quietly became the sole owner of the townhouse. Now the four-story church building has a well-appointed living area of 940 square meters (10,000 square feet) and a rooftop terrace. The footballer's lucrative career has allowed him to invest in multiple properties in Sweden, including one in his hometown of Malmö, one in Manhattan, NY where he is converting a commercial property to luxury apartments, and a spacious apartment near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He and Helena Seger, 45, have two sons, Maximilian, 8, and Vincent, 7, who are accustomed to a "rhythm" of living in different places, says their dad.

  • Swedish soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic recently bought this church-turned-townhouse in central Stockholm for about $13 million. Photo TEW.
  • Celebrating UN70
    More than 300 monuments, buildings, museums, bridges and other famous sites around the world were illuminated in blue — the official color of the United Nations — on Saturday, Oct. 24 to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the world body, chartered on the date in 1945. The global celebration kicked off in New Zealand and moved around the world to the Great Wall of China, the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, the Pyramids in Egypt, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Empire State Building and of course the U.N. headquarters in New York and, appropriately, the Globe Arena in Stockholm. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed hope that "by turning the world U.N. blue for a day, we can light a way to a better tomorrow." The U.N. charter unites all member states "in diversity beyond our differences of language, culture or religion, today as 70 years ago." Swedish Minister for Foreign Affairs Margot Wallström was in NY supporting women as peacemakers during a meeting on human rights. https://storify.com/un/unblue