News Briefs

World leaders combat fake news. Saab builds Navy vessels. Garbo's family puts NY home on the market. Stockholm growth tops the charts. 

• World leaders combat fake news
  Sweden and the U.S join seven EU and NATO nations in establishing a central body to combat unconventional methods of warfare such as disinformation and fake news. The European Center of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats will serve as a platform for EU and NATO to pool resources and share expertise. The countries — also including Britain, Finland, France, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland — signed a memorandum on April 11 to set up the center in Helsinki with the support of the Finnish government.

• Saab builds Navy vessels
  Sweden has contracted Saab's Kockums business unit to build a new signal intelligence (SIGINT) vessel, according to the Swedish Defense Material Administration on April 11. The nearly $80.4 million project for the Swedish Navy will replace the HMS Orion, which is currently used to intercept radio transmitted signals. The new ship will primarily be used for monitoring and analyzing communications traffic in the Baltic region. Saab, which had upgraded the Orion at its Kockums shipyard in Karlskrona, will take full responsibility for the design, construction, and delivery of the new vessel. The steel ship, ready in 2020, will be 71 meters long and displace approximately 2,300 tons.

• Garbo's family sells NY home
  Swedish-born film legend Greta Garbo lived in New York since the 1950s. Her wardrobe and art collection have been sold for high sums at auctions in recent years, and now her family is selling her 52nd Street apartment, where she lived until 1990. Garbo moved there in 1953 when she was 48 years old. The entire apartment is decorated in soft tones of pink and green, most of it is preserved like Garbo kept it when she lived there. Many of her personal belongings, and even a rug designed by the star, can be part of the purchase price, which is likely to be at least $5.5 million.

• Stockholm growth tops the charts
  The fourth quarter economic report for 2106 shows Sweden’s capital city is growing faster than the rest of Europe, according to Karin Wanngård, mayor of Stockholm. The increasing number of residents, jobs, new companies, housing projects and aggregated gross pay data all show positive growth figures compared to the same quarter in 2015. “To summarize, we saw strong growth in the hospitality industry and investments in Stockholm's fast growing tech companies more than doubled compared to the previous year. The fact that housing construction is now on the rise is a good sign that Stockholm’s stable growth will continue in 2017,” says Olle Zetterberg, CEO Stockholm Business Region.