Swedish News

Men – aggressive egoists? Former Swedish Nazi leader alleged middleman in Auschwitz theft. Great balls of… ice. Spike mats yes but, nails in the burger?  

  • Men – aggressive egoists?
    “During my almost 30 years as an actress I have met actors who are unfriendly, non-understanding, self-centered, and shamelessly egoistical. And with few exceptions, they have been men.” That’s what Swedish actress Jessica Zandén writes on the Newsmill website. A new book by Katarina Wennstam called “Alfahannen” (The Alpha Male) has prompted the debate in Sweden. Wennstam’s book looks at the oppression of women through sexual harassment and violence in the film industry, and Zandén added her two cents, describing male actors who let entire ensembles wait for them when they are late, who scream at the costume personnel while fawning over director and producer, who get uncontrollable fits of rage and slam the doors. But few colleagues of hers agree. Says actress Meg Westergren: “I haven’t experienced it this way.” And director/actor Rafael Edholm says: “It’s sad she feels like that. I have met many aggressive actresses, I don’t think it’s necessarily about gender, more about ego.” The debate continues.

  • Former Nazi leader middleman in Auschwitz theft.
    Anders Högström, Swedish former neo-Nazi leader and founder of National Socialist Front, is suspected of being the “brain” behind the recent theft of the Auschwitz sign “Arbeit Macht Frei”. According to Polish prosecutors, there is enough evidence to commence legal proceedings, but Högström claims he is innocent. “I stopped the world’s most talked about robbery,” he says to Expressen. Högström maintains he was forced to collect the sign in Poland. “My part was to collect it. I was supposed to be the middle man, I was to take care of the selling of the sign.” The plan was, Högström continues, to sell the sign for millions of Swedish crowns and to use the money to finance a bomb attack aimed at the Swedish parliament and government. “But I didn’t want to partake in that. As soon as the sign was stolen, I contacted police and gave them whatever information I had. I am not guilty of any crime. I made sure the sign was found,” Högström says.

  • Great balls of… ice.
    According to the Kalmar newspaper Barometern, a strange phenomenon could be noted a week prior to Christmas in Ottenby, a bird station on the Swedish island of Öland in the Baltic Sea. Some hundred giant ice-filled balls were sitting there, among the seaweed, some of them as big as soccer balls. Founders Magnus Bladh and Göran Andersson at the bird station were both baffled and contacted SMHI (Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute). “I realized this was something meteorologically interesting”, said SMHI’s Göran Andersson. It is indeed a rare phenomenon that has only been reported a few times during the last decades. Exactly how these balls are formed and why is unclear, but most likely small snowballs, with the aid of a gusty wind, are blown about and, in the process, get covered with ice. In order for this to happen, wind, water and temperature has to interact. Not bad, Mother Nature, not bad at all!

  • Nail in the burger.
    A man went into a hamburger restaurant in Göteborg’s Hisingen neighborhood and ordered a burger. But when he took his first bite, he experienced an unbelievable pain. Yusuf Bercil didn’t know what had happened at first. Distractedly he took another bite and realized something was stuck in his upper jaw. Carefully he pulled it out and it turned out to be an almost inch-long nail. Unfortunately the pain didn’t dissipate once the nail had been removed. “It was pushed in between a tooth and my gums,” Bercil said to Metro.se. “I managed to get it out, then I threw up. I was scared and in shock. What if it had happened to one of my kids?” The restaurant cannot explain how the nail got into the burger. “We saw it all unfold and can only express our deep regrets. We will begin an investigation,” said the director of the restaurant.