Swedish News:

Mouse grounds SAS flight. Swedish Royals snubbed at restaurant. Does snus lead to cardiac insufficiency? Found boa constrictor on the balcony. 

• Mouse grounds SAS flight
  Swedish airline SAS cancelled a flight from Stockholm to Chicago because of an unruly passenger - a mouse. The rodent was spotted ahead of boarding on the Airbus A330 Tuesday but evaded the many mousetraps laid to catch it, SAS said. "For safety reasons, you don't board when there's a mouse on board," said company spokesman Anders Lindström. Apart from disturbing passengers, a mouse could creep among cables and chew through wiring, Lindström said, adding that a complete inspection would be carried out once the mouse was caught. The 250 passengers were re-booked on other flights. In 2009, two Delta flights were canceled over similar fears that a mouse was aboard the aircraft.

• Swedish royals snubbed at restaurant
  Not even royalties can be sure to get a table and service at a restaurant these days. That’s something the Swedish King and Queen experienced in Germany when they were hungry and wanted to visit a restaurant in Ladenburg, near Heidelberg (the Queen’s birthplace). The restaurant owner did not recognize them and denied them a table. The hungry couple then had to find somewhere else to eat, which they did: A local pizza joint called Da Vinci. When the restaurant owner Nadine Schellenberger was informed about the famous people she had snubbed, she said: “I didn’t recognize them, I never read those magazines.” But look how happy the pizza bakers at Da Vinci were, to be able to serve the King and Queen!

• Does snus lead to cardiac insufficiency?
  People who use snuff (snus in Swedish) may be more likely to suffer cardiac insufficiency, according to a new study done by researchers at Uppsala University and Karolinska Institutet. “Our results support the notion that it may not be without risks to use snuff,” says doctoral candidate Gabriel Arefalk at Institutionen för medicinska vetenskaper (Department of Medical Sciences). “But more research is needed to know for sure if the connection between snuff and cardiac insufficiency is a causal connection. One of the risk factors for cardiac insufficiency is high blood pressure, and snuff makes the blood pressure go up.” Arefalk explains that from previously known connections researchers have tried to find out whether users of snuff is a special risk group when it comes to cardiac insufficiency or not. “If that’s the case then cardiac insufficiency ought to be more common among them than among people who don’t use snuff.”

• Found boa constrictor on the balcony
  “It was terrible, I was petrified with horror!” Ingrid Wassberg was watching TV when it began raining outside and she decided to go out on the balcony and take in the chair cushions. “I was on the balcony fixing stuff when I saw something that wasn’t supposed to be there. It stuck out,” she says. She did a double take to make sure she saw what she thought she did. “I quickly went back inside, closing the balcony door. ‘I can’t have it like this,’ I thought.” A three meter (9.8 feet) long boa constrictor was coiled up on her balcony. After awhile Ingrid did venture out again, to see if the snake had moved – which it hadn’t – and to take some photographs. After that she called the police. Four policemen came to retrieve the snake. Nobody in Ingrid’s house claims the snake, but the owner most probably lives in the house though he or she won’t come forward to admit it.