• chevron_right

      Sweden and Canada will resume aid to UN agency for Palestinians

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 9 March - 15:24

    Funds to alleviate humanitarian suffering allocated after UNRWA agrees to stronger accountability

    Sweden and Canada have said they will resume aid to the cash-strapped UN agency for Palestinians with an initial disbursement of $20m, after receiving assurances of extra checks on its spending and personnel.

    They were among countries that suspended aid to UNRWA after Israel accused about 12 of its employees of involvement in the 7 October Hamas attack that sparked the conflict in Gaza.

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      Sweden finally joins Nato after nearly two-year wait

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 7 March - 16:42

    Hungary dropping opposition allows historically neutral country to become member, cementing alliance’s control of Nordic region

    Sweden has officially became the 32nd member of Nato, in a landmark moment for the historically neutral country and the western military alliance.

    Stockholm’s ratification process was finally completed in Washington on Thursday, as Sweden and Hungary – the last country to ratify Sweden’s membership – submitted the necessary documents after a drawn-out process that has taken nearly two years.

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      Olof Dreijer on the Knife, Swedish nationalism and dancefloor activism: ‘Music gives us energy to overcome’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 6 March - 12:00

    After disbanding cult pop act the Knife, Dreijer helped migrant musicians and resisted the Swedish far-right. His wondrous new club tracks now reconsider how art can inform politics

    The past decade has been a journey for Olof Dreijer. In 2014 he and his sibling Karin disbanded their avant-pop duo the Knife at the height of their fame, and the Swedish producer found himself reckoning with his creative future. “I was spending my time doing a lot of youth work and activism and the tracks I was releasing weren’t in my own name,” Dreijer says over a video call from his home in Stockholm. “I wasn’t sure if I would continue working professionally in music.”

    Having already released a slew of eerie, techno-influenced solo singles under the moniker Oni Ayhun from 2008 to 2010, Dreijer went on to teach music to undocumented migrants in Berlin and Stockholm, as well as produce for friends including Tunisian multi-instrumentalist Houeida Hedfi. “I didn’t think we needed more music from people like me,” he says, ie a white man. “I wanted to focus on helping other people realise their projects.”

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      ‘We are buzzed with euphoria’: Electric Fields to represent Australia at Eurovision

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 5 March - 18:00

    The South Australian duo, who came close to competing in 2019, will be taking their new track One Milkali (One Blood) to Sweden

    South Australia’s ethereal dance pop duo Electric Fields will represent Australia at Eurovision in May, after missing out on the honour in 2019.

    The duo is led by vocalist Zaachariaha Fielding, who grew up in the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (APY) lands in South Australia, and often blends English with the Yankunytjatjara language in his lyrics. He’s joined by producer Michael Ross on keyboards.

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      Swedish police call for ban on civilians wearing bulletproof vests

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 5 March - 16:00

    Growing numbers buying protective gear as gangs recruit young people amid surge in violence across country

    Police in southern Sweden have called for a ban on civilians wearing bulletproof vests, which they say do not have a place outside war zones because they cause fear in communities.

    Increasing numbers of children and young people, including those under 15, are wearing protective vests in towns and cities, they said, as gang crime continues to pull in the younger generation in Sweden.

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      Artists, children, sex workers: Christer Strömholm’s sympathetic street scenes – in pictures

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Tuesday, 5 March - 07:00


    The influential photographer befriended the transgender people he shot in Paris – and found common ground with famed sculptors and young people in poverty

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      Alone time: reassessing Greta Garbo, 100 years after her screen debut

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 4 March - 11:04 · 1 minute

    The icy glamour of Garbo’s doomed heroines is genuinely iconic, but cinema’s most famous loner could also do comedy. A century after her first appearance – and 83 years since her last, here’s why Hollywood missed her so badly

    A century ago on Sunday, Greta Garbo made her first appearance on screen. Swedish silent epic The Saga of Gösta Berling, released on 10 March 1924, was based on Selma Lagerlöf’s bestselling novel and follows the misadventures of a disgraced ex-minister. Exiled to a wild estate in central Sweden, the commoner Berling falls victim to a marriage plot intended to unseat the heiress apparent. Garbo – born Greta Gustafsson, renamed especially for this appearance – plays the wife of the new intended heir. Cast while still a hopeful student at a Stockholm acting school, and not yet groomed into the rake-thin model of a Hollywood leading woman, she arguably steals the show. She is just as compelling in interior scenes as she is when pulled from a burning mansion over a frozen lake, pursued by wolves (the film is still revered for its set pieces).

    When Gösta Berling reached MGM, the biggest of Hollywood’s major studios, two new recruits were made. One was the film’s director Mauritz Stiller, whose American career lasted only four years. The other was Greta Garbo. She soon became the industry’s brightest star, a byword for the exotic and emotionally distanced: vamps, Soviets, loner ballerinas, ambiguously foreign spies, Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (twice), Dumas’ ailing Lady of the Camellias. In the midst of Hollywood’s mass-production age she made only 28 films – her last in 1941, at the age of 35. Then she lived out the rest of her life in retirement until her death in 1990.

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      Norway, Sweden and Finland host Nato military exercises

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Monday, 4 March - 10:18

    Nordic Response aims to strengthen cooperation between countries and bolster alliance’s ability to defend region

    A first-of-its-kind training exercise involving more than 20,000 soldiers from 13 countries has launched across northern Norway, Sweden and Finland as the region prepares to become a fully Nato territory within days.

    The joint defence exercise, which runs until 14 March, was previously known as Cold Response and held in northern Norway, a founding Nato member, every other year. In recognition of Finland’s recent membership of the western military alliance, and with Sweden expected to join imminently, this year it is being designated Nordic Response for the first time.

    Continue reading...
    • chevron_right

      Henrik Larsson: ‘I have 106 caps for Sweden but I see myself as foreign’

      news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Sunday, 3 March - 08:00

    Celtic’s ‘King of Kings’ on his tough upbringing, playing with Rooney and Ronaldinho, and falling out of love with the game

    Henrik Larsson is standing in front of the patch of grass where he first learned to kick a ball. Behind him is the block of apartments where he spent his childhood, the balcony from which his mum would call him in for dinner. In front of him are the swings through which he would shoot, and the ponds on top of which he would play ice hockey in the winter.

    Närlunda is an estate on the ­outskirts of Helsingborg, a quiet city near the most southerly tip of Sweden. Närlunda is a complicated place, an idyllic and green high-rise estate by English standards but also the scene of a brutal murder in 2021, where a man was shot dead in a nearby underpass. But then Larsson is a complicated person, devoted to his country but also unsure of his identity.

    Continue reading...