Swedish News:

2013 Nobel Prize in Physics to Higgs and Englert. No Swedish generosity for Syria. 

  • Aid organizations say the same thing: It’s difficult to get Swedes to help the people suffering in Syria. The problem may be that the root to the catastrophe there is of a political nature.
  • 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics to Higgs and Englert
    Britain’s Peter Higgs and Belgium’s François Englert win the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics for predicting the existence of the Higgs boson particle, which explains how elementary matters attained the mass to form stars and planets. Said Higgs in a statement issued by the University of Edinburgh, where he has worked for many years: ”I am overwhelmed to receive this award. I hope this recognition of fundamental science will help raise awareness of the value of blue-sky research." The two scientists had been favorites to share the 8 million Swedish SEK ($1.25 million) prize after their theoretical work was vindicated by the CERN experiments.

  • KRAV-marked snacks (meaning they're ecological) can now be bought at a handful Swedish movie theaters.
  • No Swedish generosity for Syria
    The Swedish emergency collection for Syria is not going very well, in spite of attention from media and the fact that the situation in Syria is deemed catastrophic. Several of the greatest aid organizations that the news agency TT spoke to testify that it is difficult to collect money. The difficulty cannot be explained with Swedes becoming less generous, because the opposite is actually true. The will to financially help the disadvantaged has increased steadily during the 2000s. ”It’s a very clear and stable trend. The Swedish generosity increases every year,” says Tommy Jonsson, who is financially responsible at Svensk insamlingskontroll.
    Help organizations believe that generosity may be dampened by war, big politics or a more complicated conflict. Natural catastrophies and events that are easy to grasp tend to increase the willingness to give. During last year and up to today, Swedes have collected around 13 million SEK ($2 million) for the Red Cross emergency asistance to Syria, which is much less than for many other disasters in recent years. After the earthquake in Haiti in 2010, 55 million SEK ($8.5 million) was collected in just a few months. And in connection with the tsunami in Thailand in 2004, Swedes contributed 500 million SEK ($78 million) to the Red Cross emergency help. ”An unfair comparison, perhaps, since so many Swedes were involved,” says Malin Barnö, project manager for the Red Cross emergency fundraisers. ”But it is always more difficult to raise money when it comes to war and conflicts.” Even Doctors Without Borders and Save the Children testify that collections to Syria are not going well.