Sweden

STOCKHOLM/BEIJING (Reuters) - Beijing has doubled down in its criticism of Stockholm’s support for Gui Minhai, a book publisher detained in China, after Sweden’s minister for culture attended a literary award ceremony in his honor.

The Chinese ambassador to Sweden had threatened Minister of Culture Amanda Lind with a ban on entering China if she attended the prize-giving on Friday.

After the ceremony where Lind defended freedom of speech, China’s embassy in Stockholm said in a statement on Saturday that Lind’s attendance was a “serious mistake”.

13 November 2019; AFP: "Extremely educational" is how Greta Thunberg sums up her North American sojourn as she prepares to cross the Atlantic once more, this time bound back for Europe.

The 16-year-old Swede, who became world famous for founding the "school strikes for the climate," will set sail Wednesday morning, weather permitting, after 11 hectic weeks of criss-crossing the US and Canada, making headlines at every turn.

8 November 2019; AFP: Sweden, often held up as a safe and peaceful utopia, has experienced an unprecedented wave of bombings this year as criminal gangs increasingly use explosives to settle scores.

Regularly placed near the top of the UN's Human Development Index and among the world's richest countries in terms of GDP per capita, the Scandinavian country is facing an unusual challenge as bombings become a regular occurrence.

STOCKHOLM, Oct 15 (NNN-PTI) — Indian-American Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer jointly won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday “for their experimental approach to alleviating global poverty.”

“The research conducted by this year’s Laureates has considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty. In just two decades, their new experiment-based approach has transformed development economics, which is now a flourishing field of research,” said the Nobel committee in a statement.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - U.S.-based economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Michael Kremer won the 2019 Nobel Economics Prize on Monday for work in fighting global poverty that has helped millions of children by favouring practical steps over theory.

French-American Duflo becomes only the second female economics winner in the prize’s 50-year history, as well as the youngest at 46. She shared the award equally with Indian-born American Banerjee and Kremer, also of the United States.

10 October 2019; AFP: Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk on Thursday won the 2018 Nobel Literature Prize, which was delayed over a sexual harassment scandal, while Austrian novelist and playwright Peter Handke took the 2019 award, the Swedish Academy said.

Tokarczuk, 57, considered the most talented Polish novelist of her generation, was honoured "for a narrative imagination that with encyclopaedic passion represents the crossing of boundaries as a form of life".

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Latest on the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology (all times local):

11:30 a.m.

The 2019 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine has been awarded to scientists William G. Kaelin, Jr, Peter J. Ratcliffe and Gregg L. Semenza.

They received the award jointly for their discoveries of “how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability,” the Nobel Committee announced Monday.

It is the 110th prize in the category that has been awarded since 1901.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - U.S. and North Korean officials arrived to begin nuclear talks at an isolated conference center on the outskirts of Stockholm on Saturday, in an attempt to end months of stalemate.

The meeting will be the first formal working-level talks since U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un met in June and agreed to restart negotiations that stalled after a failed summit in Vietnam in February.

25 September 2019; AFP: Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg on Wednesday won the Right Livelihood Award, sometimes called the "alternative Nobel Prize", the jury for the Swedish human rights prize said.

Thunberg was honoured "for inspiring and amplifying political demands for urgent climate action reflecting scientific facts," the Right Livelihood Foundation said in a statement.

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - The chief executive of the Swedish firm which owns the Stena Impero, the British-flagged tanker detained by Tehran on July 19, said he had been informed that the vessel may be released later on Sunday.

Erik Hanell, chief executive of Stena Bulk, was speaking to the Swedish public broadcaster SVT: “We have received information now this morning that it seems like they will release the ship Stena Impero within a few hours. So we understand that the political decision to release the ship has been taken.”