Category Archives: Sweden

Julian Assange faces US extradition after arrest at Ecuadorian embassy

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WikiLeaks founder’s removal from London embassy brings seven-year diplomatic stalemate to an end

Julian Assange is facing extradition to the United States and up to five years in prison after he was forcibly dragged from the Ecuadorian embassy in London on Thursday, bringing an extraordinary seven-year diplomatic stalemate to an end.

After 2,487 days in the embassy, the 47-year-old was arrested after Ecuador revoked his political asylum and invited Metropolitan police officers inside their Knightsbridge premises, where he has stayed since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations which Assange has always denied.

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Youth climate strikes to take place in more than 100 countries

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Movement inspired by Greta Thunberg has snowballed, as Belgian workers join strike

Hundreds of thousands of children are expected to walk out of their classrooms on Friday for a global climate strike amid growing anger at the failure of politicians to tackle the escalating ecological crisis.

Children at tens of thousands of schools in more than 100 countries are due to take part in the walkouts which began last year when one teenager – Greta Thunberg – held a solo protest outside the Swedish parliament.

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The Guardian view on Britain and China: it’s complicated | Editorial

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Beijing’s might and ambitions, and the approach of Brexit, make the path ahead more difficult. It’s time for careful thought

A few years ago, George Osborne announced that Britain’s relations with China were entering a “golden era”. On Thursday, his successor as chancellor gave a more measured assessment: they are “complex”, Philip Hammond said, noting that they “had not been made simpler” by the defence secretary Gavin Williamson’s threat to deploy an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea.

Britain, blanching as Brexit approaches, is more anxious than ever to keep Chinese cash flowing. Diplomats from other nations say London is already less willing to criticise Beijing because it knows how much it will need it. Yet some of the lustre is coming off bilateral dealings, as it is from China’s relationships elsewhere. The Trump administration is viscerally hostile, but Beijing’s increasingly repressive turn at home and forcefulness abroad has alarmed many who were more sympathetic to it.

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Swedish student fined for plane protest against Afghan’s deportation

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Elin Ersson received a £250 fine for refusing to take her seat on a plane in Sweden last year

A Swedish student who livestreamed her protest against the deportation of an Afghan asylum seeker last year has been found guilty of violating Sweden’s aviation laws and fined £250.

Elin Ersson, 22, avoided a prison sentence at the Gothenburg district court, where she was sentenced to a fine of 3,000 Swedish krona.

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‘The beginning of great change’: Greta Thunberg hails school climate strikes

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The 16-year-old’s lone protest last summer has morphed into a powerful global movement challenging politicians to act

Greta Thunberg is hopeful the student climate strike on Friday can bring about positive change, as young people in more and more countries join the protest movement she started last summer as a lone campaigner outside the Swedish parliament.

Related: Teenage activist takes School Strikes 4 Climate Action to Davos

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Sweden investigates its Beijing ambassador over ‘strange’ meetings

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Daughter of Swedish bookseller jailed in China says Anna Lindstedt set up meetings in Stockholm

Sweden is investigating its ambassador to China after she was accused of orchestrating a bizarre series of meetings between the daughter of a Swedish bookseller jailed in China and businessmen who said they could help secure his release.

The story is detailed in a blogpost by Angela Gui, the daughter of Gui Minhai, a Chinese-born Swedish bookseller who has disappeared twice and is currently held in Chinese custody.

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Misconduct claims after pregnant woman forcibly removed from Stockholm metro

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Incident caught on video prompts accusations security guards targeted black woman

Swedish police have launched two separate investigations after a video of a heavily pregnant woman being forcibly removed from the Stockholm metro and pinned down on a bench went viral, prompting accusations of racial profiling by security guards.

Swedish public radio SR said Stockholm police were investigating the incident at the Hötorget station on Thursday evening as a potential case of misconduct and assault by the guards, but also “violent resistance” by the woman, who was travelling with her young daughter.

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Germany extradites ‘laser man’ killer John Ausonius to Sweden

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Far-right extremist, 65, received life terms for shootings of immigrants and a Holocaust survivor in the 1990s

Germany has extradited to Sweden John Ausonius, the convicted killer known as the “the laser man” for using a precision-scope rifle to target immigrants.

“He was extradited on Thursday,” said Frankfurt state prosecutor Nadja Niesen.

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Russian activists denied asylum in Sweden: ‘We can’t go back’

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Alexey Knedlyakovsky and Lusine Djanyan say they fear being arrested and beaten if sent home

Two Russian opposition activists denied political asylum in Sweden say they fear being arrested and beaten up if they are forced to go home.

“You never know when something will happen,” say Alexey Knedlyakovsky and Lusine Djanyan, who fled their home city of Krasnodar in March 2017 after what they say was a campaign of persecution by the secret police. They flew to Sweden with their two-year-old son and claimed asylum.

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Sweden gets new government more than four months after election

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Social Democrat leader Stefan Löfven given a second term in office at the head of a new centre-left minority administration

Sweden’s parliament has voted to give the Social Democrat leader, Stefan Löfven, a second term in office at the head of a new centre-left minority government, ending more than four months of deadlock following an inconclusive election.

The caretaker prime minister will take office on Monday, governing in a coalition with the Green party and with the parliamentary backing of the Centre and Liberal parties, formerly members of the four-party centre-right opposition Alliance.

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Here, here: the Swedish online love army who take on the trolls

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#Jagärhär (#Iamhere) aims to battle abuse in online threads and jumps to defend those on receiving end

When a young woman with rainbow hair and a reputation for hostility towards sexual predators won a Swedish lawyer of the year award late last year, the online reaction came in two waves.

The first was unpleasant, a torrent of bile from people who objected to Linnéa Claeson’s looks, her feminist politics, her gender, her youth and her instagram account @assholesonline.

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Suspected Ebola sufferer does not have disease, say Swedes

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Tests negative for patient who had returned from Burundi and was treated in isolation

A young man being treated in isolation at Uppsala University hospital in Sweden after suspicion of Ebola contamination does not have the disease, the regional authority has said.

Region Uppsala, which oversees several hospitals and medical clinics north of Stockholm, said a test had been carried out on the patient, who was not identified.

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Why ‘good populism’ is the wrong strategy to fight ‘bad populism’ | Cas Mudde

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Many traditional parties are trying to co-opt the agenda of the radical right in order to defeat them. But various elections in 2018 reveal the limits of that approach

After the Dutch parliamentary elections of March 2017, the prime minister, Mark Rutte, triumphantly declared that “good populism” had defeated “bad populism”, a claim eagerly and uncritically repeated in media around the world. It confirmed received wisdom that the best way to defeat the populist radical right, is to co-opt a moderate version of their agenda, while excluding the party itself.

Few cared that Rutte’s claim rested on dubious empirical grounds: compared with the 2012 election, Rutte actually lost big (-5.2%), whereas Geert Wilder’s Party for Freedom (PVV) made gains (+3.0%) and was joined by a new far-right party, Forum for Democracy (FvD), with 1.8%, making their combined scored of 14.9%. That’s less than one percentage point lower than the PVV’s high score of 15.45% in 2010.

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Fake Navy SEAL gets three years in prison for defrauding charity

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A man who pretended to be a U.S. Navy SEAL who could rescue kidnapped workers for a Chicago aid agency was sentenced Monday to three years in prison, prosecutors said. William Burley, 36, formerly of Yucaipa, Calif., was also ordered to pay full restitution of $32,454 to International Aid Services America, or IAS, a non-profit Christian aid group that provides clean water in Africa, authorities said.