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Pope Francis’ visit to Lund, Sweden, to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Reformation will comprise “two parts” and will begin with a “common prayer” service in Lund's Lutheran cathedral and continue with a public event at Malmö Arena that will be open to wider participation, Vatican and Lutheran leaders have announced. In a joint statement issued today by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, they reiterated that the Oct. 31 event will be centered on the themes of “thanksgiving, repentance and commitment to common witness". It also said the overall aim of...

On the face of it, the decision to offer special women's swimming hours at the Hyllie sports center, a municipal swimming pool in the southern Swedish city of Malmö, should not be contentious. Indeed, Malmö is not alone. According to a survey by the Swedish TV channel TV4, 13 of Sweden's 100 largest municipalities have begun offering separate swimming hours for men and women. “Our facilities are used by 40 percent women and 60 percent men,” Johan Hermansson, the head of Malmö's recreations department, told TV4. “Our ambition is for them to be used equally by girls and boys, men...

Six people have been arrested on suspicion of smuggling weapons to radical Islamists in Sweden, Bosnian Serb authorities said on Friday. ... Authorities further stated that another person had "previously" been arrested in Sweden, while another two remained at large. Five arrests were made by Bosnian-Serbian anti-terrorism officials on Thursday, said officials, after large quantities of military-grade weapons were found during police raids. ... According to claims in Bosnian Serb media cited by TT, police suspect that the smugglers had intended to deliver the weapons to a group in Sweden called 'Muslim Brothers'. It was not immediately known whether or...

Thankfully, he is out of society now, but it took three rapes and one attempted rape for the courts to finally stop him. Not only that, but this same man attempted his fourth rape while he was on bail. This shows how little he cares about his crimes or for his society. We saw the rape epidemic begin last year in Europe with the “refugee” invasion prompted by German Chancellor Merkel. Some places, such as Malmo, Sweden, are already predominately Muslim and known for being centers of rape and sexual assault against non-Muslim women. Expect things to get worse all...

San Francisco (AFP) - Sweden's Goran Marby was Monday named head of the body that manages Internet addresses, pledging to uphold checks and balances as it steps out from under US government oversight. Marby, director-general of the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority, will take charge in May of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) as the nonprofit transitions to become an independent non-governmental body. ***SNIP While the transition will not change how the Internet works, it will help reassure users, businesses and governments about its integrity, according to supporters who see it as a symbolic move towards...

The Knesset held a tense discussion Wednesday afternoon over Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom's recent demand to investigate Israel for the alleged extrajudicial "executions" of Palestinian terrorists. Science Minister Ofir Akunis (Likud) called Wallstrom's remarks "insane," and said they gave a boost to terrorism. An Israeli copywriter named Guy Ordever used humor to fight Wallstrom, creating a video based on a Swedish TV broadcast with Hebrew subtitles, that has received 730,000 views in four days. The huge number corresponds to about 9% of Israel's total population. A version of the video with English subtitles has been uploaded by a new...

Israel's prime minister has denounced a call by Sweden's foreign minister to investigate whether recent killings of Palestinians were "extrajudicial". Benjamin Netanyahu said Margot Wallstrom's remarks were "outrageous... immoral and... stupid". Ms Wallstrom had called for "thorough and credible investigations" into the deaths. Some 155 Palestinians - mostly attackers, Israel says - have been killed in unrest since October. In that time, 26 Israelis have been killed in stabbing, shooting or car-ramming attacks by Palestinians or Israeli-Arabs. The attackers who have been killed have either been shot dead by their victims or security forces. Others have been arrested. On Tuesday,...

It is supposed to be the model multicultural state. But Sweden is facing problems of its own after gangs of immigrants spent a fifth consecutive night rioting in Stockholm. Officers are battling to keep the capital under control after hundreds of cars were torched, a police station set alight and fire services kept from a major blaze by a stone-throwing mob of youths. To make matters worse, rioting has now spread to Sweden’s two other major cities, Gothenburg and Malmo... Growing unrest turned to violence last Sunday in a north-western suburb called Husby – where more than 80 per cent...

Just like with Germany-in-general (and Gunter Grass in particular) Sweden's obsessive liberalism -especially regarding minorities/immigration- could be understood as enduring societal guilt for their forefathers' close collaboration with the Nazis while cowardly claiming to be 'neutral'... Sweden's role as Nazi Germany's key iron ore supplier has been dismissed -as Swiss banking often was- as mere 'commercial' transactions, but it's hard to explain-away new information in a just-released book detailing how the Swedish government assisted the Wehrmacht's invasion of neighboring Norway by offering Sweden's national railways to ferry troops and equipment north, which were then used to defeat the British at Narvik (leading...

Two hooded gunmen opened fire at a man in a kebab restaurant at one of Malmö’s largest shopping centres on Saturday afternoon, in full view of several families and their children. Their victim, thought to be Ashkan Moayed Abedi, a member of the Wolfpack Brotherhood criminal gang, escaped into the carpark where he was then gunned down in front of shocked shoppers. He died later in hospital. “They fired perhaps ten or twelve shots," ... Abedi, 30, was a key player in the gang war which took place in Sweden's third largest city between 2007 and 2011, leaving at least...

Stockholm (AFP) - Swedish police launched a manhunt Thursday after the third arson attack against a mosque in a week, amid growing tensions over the rise of a far right anti-immigration movement. People saw a man throwing something burning at the building," police in Uppsala said in a statement, adding that the mosque in eastern Sweden did not catch fire and that the suspect had left behind "a text on the door expressing contempt for religion." A police spokesman told Swedish news agency TT that the burning object was a Molotov cocktail and that no one was in the building...

Some 40 asylum-seekers refused to leave the bus when they arrived at their destination in rural northern Sweden, demanding that they be taken back to Malmö or "some big city". When the transport arrived at a housing centre in Grytan south of Östersund the asylum-seekers didn't like the look of what they saw. "I am 75-years-old and come from the Middle East. Then I get sent to a place that looks like this," said a man from Syria to the local Östersunds-Posten daily, pointing to the icy road.

The risk of being raped in Sweden during one’s lifetime is one out of four (if every raped woman is only raped once), which is probably equal to the risk of being raped in countries in war, such as Iraq or Syria. When it comes to rapes, Islamized Sweden is already in a state of war. Sweden does not publish statistics on immigrant crime. If we want to have a hint about who is committing these tens of thousands of rapes and other types of sexual assaults yearly, we can turn to another Scandinavian country, Sweden’s neighbor Norway, the country...

An arsonist set fire to a mosque in the Swedish town of Eskilstuna on Thursday, injuring five people, police said, according to the BBC. About 15 to 20 people were attending midday prayers in the mosque, located in the ground floor of a residential building, when the fire broke out. Local media footage showed smoke and flames billowing from the windows before firefighters put the blaze out. The incident comes amid a fierce debate in Sweden over immigration policies. The far right wants to cut the number of asylum seekers allowed into Sweden by 90%, while mainstream parties are intent...

The deputy speaker of the Swedish parliament caused an outrage by suggesting that Jews living in Sweden should ditch their identity if they wish to be considered Swedes. The claim by Bjorn Soder, of the Sweden Democrats party, was made in an interview with a Swedish newspaper, according to the International Business Times. In the interview, Soder said that "most Jewish people in Sweden left behind" their racial identity in order to assimilate. He further said that it would be a problem if there were too many people in Sweden “who belong to other nations” and had non-Swedish identities. Paying...

Oddly enough Swedish ambulance workers didn’t need body armor or have to worry about machete attacks before the place became so very diversified. (via Religion of Peace) “‘- There have been so many incidents. There has been everything from shootings to people with machetes and people smashing ambulances or trying to attack the ambulance staff. We are not safe to the extent we have previously been,’ says Henrik Johansson, president of the Ambulance Association to Dagens Medicin.He explains that the organisation wants that the alarm center and ambulances should have access to the same information that police have on people...

The situation in the gang-controlled no-go zones of Sweden is deteriorating rapidly. Cars are torched practically every day in the ghettos, and Sweden holds the unflattering world record for the highest number of school fires. Despite being a small country of less than 10 million citizens, a 2012 study showed an average of one school being burned per day in Sweden.

The Sweden Democrats' new justice policy spokesman, unveiled on Thursday as part of a reshuffle in the wake of a racist video scandal, has already made headlines for his comparison of Islamism to Nazism. “We’re presenting a new team today after what happened last week,” Jimmie Åkesson said at a press conference, referring to the scandal after the publication of a video showing three party members in a drunken and racist tirade from 2010. Åkesson presented Richard Jomshof, a former high school teacher who was previously the editor in chief for the Sweden Democrat paper SD–Kuriren, as the replacement for...

Sweden's new Social Democrat prime minister Stefan Loefven unveiled what he called a "feminist" government including Green Party ministers for the first time in the Nordic country. ... Sweden is in a serious situation -- unemployment has become entrenched at high levels, school results have collapsed and the welfare system has major shortcomings ...

Sweden’s new prime minister said Friday that his government will recognize a Palestinian state, a move that drew praise from Palestinian officials. In a declaration listing his government’s priorities, Social Democratic leader Stefan Lofven told lawmakers that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can only be resolved through a two-state solution requiring “mutual recognition” and a will from both sides to co-exist peacefully. “Therefore Sweden will recognize the state of Palestine,” Lofven said. …