Swedish News

Swedish nurses don’t like Red Bull. A Tiger with nine lives. Eklund to the Oscars? Let the Nobel festivities commence! 

  • Swedish nurses don’t like Red Bull.
    About 80% of the 700 school nurses interviewed by Swedish radio program Kaliber would like to impose an age limit for the purchase of energy drinks such as Red Bull, Burn and Monster. The majority surveyed want the age limit to be set at 18. Many of the interviewed nurses reported cases of students who suffer from severe headaches, chest pain and anxiety from excessive consumption of energy drinks. There is currently no legal age limit to buy energy drinks, but several stores—including Hemköp, Willys and Pressbyrån—have implemented their own limits.

  • A Tiger with nine lives.
    Oh no! Tiger Woods must prepare for some serious damage control—if anything can actually undo the damage his nine alleged mistresses have done. And it seems many of these girlfriends thought Woods was serious about them. “I thought I meant something to him,” said Mindy Lawton, a waitress. “But all he cared about was his own lust.” The only person who has yet to open her mouth in this nasty affair is Woods’ Swedish wife Elin Nordegren. People Magazine writes that Elin is now trying to renegotiate the couple’s pre-nup. She wants 400 billion SEK ($56,661,371,602) in order to stay in the marriage. She also wants to decrease the number of years the couple has to stay together in order for her to receive the money. Many American PR experts point to Elin as Woods’ only rescue out of this mess. The man who was for many years associated with perfection and good, old-fashioned values, was a dream for multi-national brands like Nike, Gillette and Accenture. “One of the reasons Tiger Woods is selling so well, is that one could always trust him,” said sports consultant David Carter at Sport Business Group in Los Angeles. And Swedish brand expert Niklas Olovzon adds: “Affairs like this are never good, especially not in the U.S. where family means so much.” Tiger Woods and Elin have two small children together.

  • Eklund to the Oscars?
    Swedish director Patrik Eklund’s short film “Slitage” has been chosen to compete in the Sundance Film festival in January next year, and his other film “Instead of Abrakadabra” is one of ten films eligible for best live-action short Oscar. The drama-comedy “Slitage” won the Grand Prix Canal+ this year, and Eklund both directed and wrote the script. Another Swedish director, Jenifer Malmqvist (who is currently enrolled at the famous Polish film school in Lodz), is also competing with a short film called “Födelsedag” at Sundance. Malmqvist won the Bo Widerberg scholarship last summer.

  • Let the Nobel festivities commence!
    The Nobel Week is once again in full swing, with the 12 Nobel laureates and their respective entourages arriving in the Swedish capital over the weekend. The week’s festivities will culminate with the Nobel Ceremony and Banquet on Thursday. As the laureates prepare to give their Nobel lectures at the beginning of the week, the event’s organizers are busy preparing the Stockholm Concert Hall (Konserthuset) and City Hall (Stadshuset). Altogether, 37,000 flowers have been imported from San Remo, the Italian city where Alfred Nobel died on 10 December 1896, to decorate Nobel Week’s two main venues. Konserthuset will be decked out in the colors of a wintery Swedish forest; the wall behind the stage will be decorated with about 14,000 flowers in various shades of green and white, which will be framed by Swedish fir. The entire royal family will be in attendance. Princess Madeleine’s fiancé, Jonas Bergström, will also be there, while Crown Princess Victoria’s husband-to-be will remain at home recovering from an illness. Neither Princess Lilian nor Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt will attend the ceremonies, with Reinfeldt in Brussels for the final meeting of European heads of state under the Swedish EU presidency. Michael Solfman, who has been executive director of the Nobel Foundation for 17 years, expects the award ceremony to be especially distinguished this year. “There will be another color than black and white on the podium, thanks to the ladies who are coming. It is an all time high that five of the 12 laureates in Stockholm are women, and that’s really exciting,” he told TT news agency.