Sweden

The European Commission on Tuesday stated the French government is allowed to contribute €4 billion to help keep Air France afloat.

In February, Ryanair lost a legal fight in the EU General Court against state aid being granted to Air France and Sweden's SAS through national schemes. Ryanair is still seeking to contest the German government's bailout of Lufthansa, as well as similar schemes in Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Portugal.

The Swedish government said it would end the travel ban for people travelling from Norway and Denmark to Sweden on March 31. All people travelling to Sweden will still need a negative Covid-19 test to enter the country.

"This means, among other things, that Norwegians and Danes can travel to their holiday homes in Sweden and that families and friends across borders can meet each other," Mikael Damberg, Minister of the Interior, told a news conference.

In 2021's World Happiness Report, Finland has retained the number 1 position.

In second place, Iceland jumps forward 2 places from 4th last year. Denmark and Switzerland move down 1 to third and fourth place respectively, with The Netherlands and Sweden jumping forward 1 to fifth and sixth place respectively.

Germany makes great strides in 2020, gaining 8 places on last year, moving to 7th place.

A total of 13 European countries have suspended the use of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine as of Tuesday due to blood clot concerns. Germany, France, Italy, Span, Portugal, Luxembourg and Slovenia suspended the vaccine on Monday, Sweden and Latvia followed on Tuesday.

The German government has declared a Russian diplomat "persona non grata" in response to Moscow's expulsion of EU diplomats last week. Poland and Sweden have made similar announcements.

Russia said the expelled diplomats had participated in a demonstration in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, but Germany disputed this.

"The German diplomat was merely carrying out his task of reporting on developments on the spot in a legal fashion," the Federal Foreign Office of Germany wrote on a statement.

Three diplomats from the EU have been expelled from Russia over their alleged participation in protests in support of Alexei Navalny, the jailed opposition activist who was jailed this week.

The expulsion of the diplomats, from Germany, Sweden and Poland, comes only hours after the EU's foreign affairs chief - Josep Borrell - met his counterpart Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

In response to the expulsion, Sweden called it "totally unfounded" and denied their diplomat had participated in any demonstration, and German's foreign ministry said that it was "in no way justified" and would retaliate if Russia did not reconsider the action.

Russia's foreign ministry said that the 3 diplomats allegedly took part in "illegal demonstrations" on 23 January.

Sweden has announced changes to its policy regarding coronavirus vaccines.

Updates include; expanding group criteria to more people, and creating a booking system that isn't reliant on having BankID or a personnummer.

There has been pressure on the Government to take action as Sweden has over 1 million foreign residents - of whom 100,000 have applied for residence/citizenship, with the majority still awaiting a decision, so are likely not to have a personnummer - are disproportionally affected by COVID-19.

McDonald's has started a trial run for its new plant-based "McPlant" burger in select locations in Sweden and Denmark earlier this year. The burger is co-developed with plant-based meat substitutes producer Beyond Meat Inc. and is made from pea-based protein.

"Our new McPlant contains a steak that is juicy, spicy and plant-based - and then it is made from i.a. pea and rice protein. In addition, the burger contains a slice of melted cheese with cheddar, lettuce, tomato, onion, pickles, mayo, mustard and ketchup, all in a delicious sesame bun," the description reads in the Danish McDonald's website.

The plant substance capsaicin makes chilies hot and it makes solar cells more effective, as scientists from Sweden and China have now discovered: capsaicin is said to minimize power loss and make solar cells more resistant to water. They have processed capsaicin in a perovskite solar cell.

This type of solar cell is seen as the hope for a new generation of photovoltaic systems. They are easy to manufacture with inexpensive materials. Adding the chili ingredient increased the solar cell's efficiency from 19.1 to nearly 22 percent.

King Carl XVI Gustaf, the King of Sweden, has criticised the country's Covid-19 approach in the royal family's annual TV review of the year.

"The people of Sweden have suffered tremendously in difficult conditions. I think we have failed. We have a large number who have died, and that is terrible," he told the state broadcaster SVT.

Sweden's independent Covid-19 commission states that the nation has partly failed to protect its elderly citizens as elderly care has major structural shortcomings. Mats Melin, the commission president, said Sweden was ill-equipped to handle the pandemic and measures were taken too late and were insufficient.

Sweden has reported a total of 341,029 infections so far and has seen a surge in new cases over the past few weeks. Prime minister, Stefan Löfven, said that health officials misjudged the virus's resurgence and " that most people in the profession didn’t see such a wave in front of them; they talked about different clusters."

The intensive care units of the hospitals in Stockholm have reached a capacity of 99 percent and are almost at a point where no new patients can be admitted.

Stockholm region's health and medical care director Björn Eriksson has called for help as "the consequences could be terrible" of nothing would change and if people "go for after-work drinks, do Christmas shopping or meet people outside your household".

The newspaper "Expressen" reported on Monday evening that a relative had found a 41-year-old man that had been cut off from the outside world since he was twelve years old in a completely neglected flat. The relative told "Expressen" that she had long suspected that the mother had locked up her son. When she heard that the 70-year-old mother of the man was in the hospital, she went to the flat on Sunday evening.

The police did not want to comment on details of the case but confirmed on Tuesday that the woman was arrested. She is under investigation for deprivation of liberty and aggravated assault. The woman denies the accusations.

As reported yesterday, today the Swedish Government ('Riksdag') debated and voted on bill 2020/21: SfU5 that was put forward by The Social Insurance Committee.

Confirming the decision, the Swedish Migration Agency ('Migrationsverket') detail that it will be called 'residence status', and will be available to obtain between 01 December 2020 and 30 September 2021.

The new residence status will be treated as any other residence permit, expiring after 5 years, where residents will be able to apply to renew it, or if they meet requirements, apply for permanent residence.

When applying, the agency suggest making the application online where it is easiest as the system will ask all questions required to ensure you get the application correct first time.

The Swedish Migration Agency will detail more information regarding the new status on their website in due course.

Today, 10 November 2020, the Swedish Government 'Riksdag' will onboard their supplementary provisions to the Article 50 Withdrawal Agreement that was initiated when the United Kingdom left the European Union.

The main supplementary provision is a new visa for British Expats who are legally residing in Sweden by the last day of the transition period. British people (who don't already have residence status) would be able to apply to the Migration Agency (Migrationsverket) for the new visa for a period of 10 months from 01 December 2020.

Once granted, the visa will enable the holder to continue to travel freely within the EU without visas.

The Riksdag are poised to confirm and accept the provisions in their vote tomorrow (11/11/20) on the recommendation from The Social Insurance Committee.

The Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) announced Tuesday a ban to telecom equipment from Chinese companies Huawei and ZTE in Sweden's 5G network. According to PTS, the ban is over a security assessment made by the Swedish Armed forces.

Sweden is the home of Ericsson, one of Europe's leading telecom equipment suppliers.

From October 2021, the "IKEA" Group will stop selling disposable alkaline batteries to reduce waste. According to its own information, the Swedish company sold about 300 million alkaline batteries worldwide between September 2018 and August 2019. By replacing this amount with rechargeable batteries, IKEA calculates that 5,000 tons of waste can be avoided annually.

The climate activists Greta Thunberg from Sweden, Anuna de Wever and Adélaïde Charliér from Belgium and Lisa Neubauer from Germany have met the German chancellor Angela Merkel for a 90-minute conversation.

According to Neubauer, they talked about international politics, CO2 pricing and trade agreements. She stated that "it became very clear that we are looking at the issue from different perspectives" and Thunberg said that "we have discussed some demands, but it is complicated".

De Wever stated that during the conversation there main request had been that "what we want are leaders" as "we don't have leaders who are treating this crisis as a crisis".

Based on data from South Korea, the United States and Israel analyzing the infections and spread of the coronavirus through children, researchers now believe that children can contract Covid-19 and easily spread it.

A group of 26 researchers from Sweden wrote that "Because children are contagious, can become seriously ill, and it is unclear today how a mild infection affects their future health, we should already at the start of school take measures to keep the infection down".

They recommend sport only outdoors, eating meals seperated in classes, avoiding group tasks and that masks should be worn at all times.

Following the fourth night of talks, EU leaders have struck a deal on a huge post-coronavirus recovery package involving €750 billion in grants and loans to counter the impact of the pandemic in the 27-member bloc. The deal includes as well as a seven-year €1 trillion EU budget.

Member states were split between those hit hardest by the outbreak -- Spain and Italy --, and those more concerned about the costs of the recovery plan --Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands and Finland. While the first group wanted a minimum of €400 billion in grants, the later set €375 billion as their upper limit.

The €390 billion figure was suggested as a compromise, and "frugal" nations were reportedly won over by the promise of rebates on their contributions to the EU budget.