Free Republic

A heated debate is raging in Sweden after an eight-year-old boy's failure to invite two classmates to his birthday party resulted in a complaint filed with parliament. Nearly 200 outraged comments have been posted on the website of the local southern Swedish daily Sydsvenskan, just days after the paper reported on the unlikely string of events that followed a young boy's decision to invite all of his classmates to his birthday party except two. The policy at the boy's school in the southern town of Lund was that all children (or all the boys or all the girls) had to...

THE best schools in the world, it is generally agreed, are in Finland. In the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) studies, which compare 15-year-olds' reading, mathematics and science abilities in more than 50 countries, it routinely comes top. So politicians, academics, think-tankers and teachers from all over the world visit Finnish schools in the hope of discovering the magic ingredient. Journalists come too, and now it’s my turn. And since I'm coming this far north, I want to take in Sweden too. That social-democratic paradise has carried out school reforms that make free-market ideologues the world over weak...

STOCKHOLM,Sweden: A Swedish court of appeal on Tuesday sentenced a 27-year-old man to 18 months in prison for trying to make his girlfriend miscarry by mixing abortion pills in her food. The man, who was not named for legal reasons, had his jail term increased from a previous one-year sentence set by a district court in June. In its ruling, the Court of Appeal for Western Sweden found the man guilty of aggravated assault for attempting to make his girlfriend of eight years miscarry by giving her a yoghurt containing three ground-up pills. The sentence also included a more minor...

Two of Sweden's most influential church leaders have threatened to encourage Christians to vote against the government at the next election, following a proposal that foreign women should be allowed to come to Sweden for abortions. Sweden's Catholic bishop Anders Arborelius and leader of the evangelical Philadephia Church in Stockholm, Sten-Gunnar Hedin hinted that the Christian Democrats, traditionally supported by religious voters, could be hit hardest. "We are sad that this proposal is backed by a Christian Democrat social affairs minister, Göran Hägglund. It is incomprehensible that he is supporting this proposal while claiming that it was required by the...

Famed photog takes us inside the human experienceIt's a journey through the human body never imagined. Here are the most stunning, detailed photos of new human life ever photographed - published in the United States for the first time. Titled "Life," the collection of oversize color images from scientific photographer Lennart Nilsson magnifies the wonders of the human body like never before. Nilsson is best known for his iconic 1965 Life magazine cover shot of a living human embryo - the first time that life at such an early stage was captured on camera. Using the world's most powerful electron...

Scientists at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences Kristineberg Marine Research Station are using the brittlestar as a new model for studying stem cells, allowing them to do experiments that avoid the ethical issues associated with human and vertebrate research. The brittlestar, Amphiura filiformis, is a close relative of the starfish and can regenerate lost arms in a matter of weeks. Sam Dupont and Mike Thorndyke are presenting their latest work on Friday 7th April at the Annual Meeting for the Society for Experimental Biology [session A8]. "What is really amazing is that the nervous system starts to be functional...

An open letter to all Swedish political parties that are participating in this years election. Hello! If we are to succeed in engaging Swedish muslims so that they will participate in the election in September 2006, we should take note of the following demands and wishes from the Muslim minority in Sweden. I have not seen clear signals from all parties as to whether they'll accept such wishes. We want to see the most important demands as a part of the political programs. Otherwise there is the risk that the majority of the muslims will remain on their couches on...

In my essays on France, I remarked that under guise of anti-Zionism, anti-Semitism has returned because Zionist crimes gave Judeophobia an “objective� explanation. So while the Europeans in their cognitive egocentrism, apologized for Palestinian terrorism, which they took to express thwarted national aspirations, they continued to fuel Jihadi violence. The outbreak of the Intifada and constant exposure to “le petit Mohammed” brought the violent discourse against the Jews to new heights in Europe. This was especially true in France with the highest numbers of both Jews and Muslims in Europe, where formerly mixed and functional neighborhoods of Jews and Muslims...

Vikings. Once they were brave. Today some are brave and some are cowards. The brave ones are the Danish and the Icelanders, the cowards the Norwegians and the Swedish (at least where the governments are concerned).

The Swedish government has moved to shut down the website of a far-right political party's newspaper over cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The site's host, Levonline, pulled the plug on the website of the Swedish Democrats' SD-Kuriren newspaper after consulting with the government. It is believed to be the first time a Western government has intervened to block a publication in the growing row. Kuriren editor Richard Jomshof said the government was breaking the law. "We have to do something about it. This is illegal. They can't do this just because we are a small magazine," he told the BBC...

Swedish logo designer Bjorn Atldax did something that even the American ACLU could not do: He made walking advertisements among young Swedes for an anti-Christian message. Atldax’s logo, a skull with a cross turned upside down on its forehead emblazons denim jeans that, because of their trendy tight fit and low price, are all the rage in Stockholm, Sweden.

I think you stupud amerikans deserved this for a long time. Ever since you settled down in other peoples property you have been commiting ethnic cleansing and genocide against people just because they weren't white or as savy as you are. What ever to private property rights for the original inhabitants of the land? In Sweeden we don't do things like that. You forced them out at gunpoint and now you whine about Walmart taking away your homes for it's own benefit the same way. I hope you lose your land and live in the streets and die you fat...

Press release from the Mission Province Gothenburg and Karlstad February 25, 2005 As expected, the Cathedral Chapter in Karlstad, in session yesterday, February 24, has taken away from the bishop in the Mission Province, Arne Olsson, the authority to exercise the pastoral office in the Church of Sweden. Arne Olsson was consecrated on February 5 as bishop in the Mission Province. The Cathedral Chapter's justification is that Arne Olsson has violated his pastoral vows which bear upon loyalty to the Church of Sweden's orders, with reference to Church Order 2000, chapter 31, paragraph 12.1. During the meeting with the Cathedral...

Committee hears about 'useless' radar A parliamentary committee of inquiry has heard how a radar system Pasokbought has earned international condemnation as useless. Meanwhile, a $132million rebate for Russian missiles is still missing EFTHYMIOS TSILIOPOULOS Is he eating his cake, or having it? Defence Minister Spilios Spiliotopoulos was celebrating his birthday en route to Berlin on October 29. he has come under fire from socialists over a probe into past defence purchases A parliamentary committee of inquiry into arms procurements under socialist governments heard military testimony damning to former defence minister Akis Tsochadzopoulos. A US-made radar system Tsochadzopoulos selected for...

Swedish Children for Sale By Ilya Meyer FrontPageMagazine.com | November 29, 2004 In June 2004, Swedish mother Elizabeth Krantz's five children were kidnapped from Sweden by Krantz's estranged Palestinian husband Ismail Nowajah. The children -- Adam, Amina, Zakarias, Miriam and Sara -- range in age from six to sixteen. They were taken to the Gaza Strip against their will and in contravention of Swedish law and have since been incarcerated in separate locations. Their mother, from a small town outside Gothenburg on Sweden's west coast, has custody of the children, with visitation rights granted to her estranged husband. Ismail Nowajah...

Jerusalem, September 11, 2003 FM Expresses Condolences to Swedish Government and People (Communicated by the Foreign Ministry Spokesman) Minister of Foreign Affairs Silvan Shalom expressed today (September 11, 2003) the condolences of the government and people of Israel to the Swedish government and nation over the murder of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh. Foreign Minister Shalom asked that his personal sympathy also be expressed to the Lindh family for their loss. The Minister expressed outright condemnation of the criminal murder that took the life of a leader who guided Sweden’s foreign policy over the past five years. Any resort to such...

Sweden's Foreign Minister: "Israel is losing its moral values" By HERB KEINON After months of relative quiet from Stockholm, Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh again raised eyebrows in Jerusalem with a speech Thursday in which she blasted the Israeli election results and put down Israel’s democracy. Speaking at an award ceremony in Stockholm where Hanan Ashrawi was awarded the 2002 Olof Palme Award, named after the slain Swedish prime minister, Lindh – in a speech full of praise for Ashrawi - said "I fear that the Palestinian people soon will lose all hope of an independent state, and that Israel...