Cecilie's Journal

Saturday, April 28, 2007

3, 2, 1 and.. lift-off for the Swedish space tourism...

An agreement was signed in January this year.. which will enable space travel for tourists from Kiruna in northern Sweden from 2012. For around 1.4 million kronor tourists will get to spend five minutes in a weightless environment 120 kilometres above the earth's surface.

A private individual from Sweden is among those who have already paid 200 000 dollars for the privilege of a space flight with Virgin Galactic, according to Abrahamsson from Esrange, the European Space and Sounding Rocket Range. The agreement was signed by British company Virgin Galactic and Spaceport Sweden, a new company consisting of several Kiruna-based businesses, including the Swedish Space Corporation. According to the company's website, 'the aim of Spaceport Sweden is to make Kiruna Europe’s first and most obvious place for personal suborbital spaceflight'.

Sweden's deputy Prime Minister Maud Olofsson was in attendance when the chairman of the board of Virgin Galactic, Will Whitehorn, and Spaceport Sweden's chairman, Claes-Göran Borg, put pen to paper. Virgin Galactic plans to launch its first forays into space travel for paying passengers from a base in New Mexico in 2009. One of the reasons Virgin Galactic became interested in Kiruna was the opportunity it provided for passengers to fly through the Northern Lights. The town's historic ties with the space industry and its proximity to Esrange were also decisive factors.

Posted at 7:07:10 am by Sophie Cecilie
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Thursday, April 26, 2007

Cocaine use rise.. in Swedish cities...

Cocaine use in Sweden's major cities is increasing, according to new research. Three out of ten people who work in the social services, healthcare, police or other community-focused organizations say that they have seen a rise in the number of people using the drug in the last six months. Access to cocaine in Swedish urban areas is becoming easier, and the price has fallen significantly over the last five years. It's a very worrying development. Cocaine is a dangerous drug which is at least as damaging as heroin. According to the research, which was carried out by the Swedish Council for Information on Alcohol and other Drugs (CAN), the typical cocaine user is likely to be aged 21 to 40. Use is most common among people with other drug addiction problems, criminals and high earners.

There is reason to believe that high earners are not as open about their drug abuse as other groups when they seek care. That's why healthcare staff ought to be trained to recognize cocaine abuse. The same goes for employers and unions. A detective in Stockholm police's drugs unit, told the news that the price of cocaine has almost halved compared to five years ago. Then you paid 1 500 kronor for a gram, now the average price is around 800. The research revealed that cocaine use is most common at private parties, in the home and in bars.

Only through working together with bar-owners, police and local authorities can we get rid of cocaine and other drugs from the bar environment. However, since the middle of the 1980s the number of police officers in Sweden who work exclusively on combatting drugs crime has fallen dramatically. Then, there were around 800 dedicated drugs officers in the country, compared to around 200 today.

Compulsory drug tests of children under 15 should be made possible, Sweden's Justice Minister Beatrice Ask has said. Police, social services and school nurses should be able to demand urine or blood samples from children suspected of using drugs.. even if parents object, argued the Justice Minister. She wants to establish a committee to bring forward a concrete proposal, so that she can put it to the Riksdag as soon as possible. The justice minister is currently working on a set of instructions for the committee. The proposal is likely to meet with opposition from Social Democrats. Thomas Bodström, chairman of the Riksdag's justice committee, called the proposal 'populist'.

Posted at 7:31:15 am by Sophie Cecilie
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Tuesday, April 24, 2007

The chocolate industry is still.. exploiting children...

Chocolate is often produced by child workers and other labourers who are not given basic rights, a report by Swedwatch, the Church of Sweden and Råd & Rön magazine has shown. The report shows that people working in cacao production often work in poor conditions and that the industry creates environmental problems. Chocolate production has been criticized in the past, including in a documentary from Channel 4 in Britain, which showed how young boys were exploited as slave workers in Cote d'Ivoire. The report was followed by a number of surveys by international organizations, which showed that working conditions in the cacao industry were often very poor. Around 284 000 children and young people were estimated to work in production of cacao, the main raw ingredient for chocolate.

The reports led to strong protests around the world, and the chocolate industry promised to improve things. A system for verifying working conditions was due to be in place by July 2005, but the industry has now delayed this to 2008. The new report shows that little has changed, Råd & Rön writes. The report is based on interviews with growers, international organizations and former labourers. Working conditions are still poor, and wages low. There are no trade unions and children are still used for work that is often tough and straining. The report also says that children are occasionally tricked out of their pay and kept in almost slave-like conditions. The background to this is that growers are badly paid for their cacao.

Tricking and exploiting their workers is a way for growers to balance the books, said a spokesman at Swedwatch, an organization that monitors Swedish business relationships with developing countries. Growers also use strong pesticides, which make workers sick. Swedwatch has also investigated Nestlé, Kraft-owned Marabou and Cloetta Fazer, all of which by cacao from West Africa. The companies say they take responsibility for ensuring their suppliers follow ethical rules, but the report said their systems for ensuring compliance were failing.

Posted at 8:39:23 am by Sophie Cecilie
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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Breach of the EU Directive 94/96...

Sweden is breaking EU law by making people's personal details public, according to a lawyer who is suing the Swedish state. The state is being taken to court by a man from Stockholm who received a demand for payment from the Swedish Enforcement Authority (Kronofogden), which was acting on behalf of someone who wanted to exact revenge on the man. Despite the fact that a court dismissed the claim, the man remained on a national non-payment blacklist for three years. The list was available to the public, as Sweden's constitution stipulates that almost all official documents must be made available. But making such details public can make it harder for people to get loans, apartments and jobs.

The state earns money by selling information on Swedes' private lives to credit rating companies. Anybody can, with no other reason than pure curiosity, get their hands on the information spread by the Swedish Enforcement Authority. This is a clear breach of EU Directive 94/96. The directive protects individuals' right to personal integrity. Sweden has excluded the Swedish Enforcement Authority's work from the scope of the directive, arguing that the constitutional freedom of speech laws take precedence. If the man wins against the Swedish state it will allow the nearly 900 000 other people who are registered in the database to go to court.

Posted at 7:01:29 am by Sophie Cecilie
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Monday, April 16, 2007

The Swedish annual seal hunt...

Sweden's annual seal hunt, aimed at killing off grey seals that damage fishermen's nets and equipment, opens today with a quota of 200, said the Environmental Protection Agency. The hunting season runs from April 16 until December 31 along Sweden's Baltic Sea coastline. No more than half of the seals can be killed before June 1. Seal stocks in the Baltic Sea are increasing by seven percent a year and are now estimated at 24 000 seals, it said.

According to the Swedish Board of Fisheries only a small number of seals damage fishing equipment, but the cost is estimated at some 55 million kronor ($8 million) a year. The 2007 quota is largely unchanged from 2006. One change introduced to the hunt this year is that fishermen will now be allowed to kill seals from a ship, providing they seek a permit to do so first. Previously, the hunt was only allowed from land. Professional fishermen must have better chances to eliminate the grey seals that are causing problems. That's why it's now possible to hunt from ships. But it will only be allowed under controlled forms, said the agency.

Posted at 11:18:31 am by Sophie Cecilie
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Saturday, April 14, 2007

Swedes loves eggs.. in many different forms...

More than 100 million get laid every year in Sweden.. kilos of eggs, that is. These eggs are laid by the 6 million hens residing in Sweden, according to a statement from Svenska Ägg, an egg industry association. Easter is almost like Christmas for egg producers, with Swedes consuming more than 6 million eggs per hour on Easter Saturday. Egg consumption at Easter doubles that of the rest of the year. Maundy Thursday is one of the most popular shopping days of the year for convenience goods. Thirty percent of Easter shopping occurred on April 5th. The Swedish Research Institute of Trade estimates that food sales during Easter week can exceed 5 billion kronor.

The tradition of eating eggs at Easter likely has roots in heathen sacrificial ceremonies. Although the medieval church rejected heathen traditions, several persisted and the egg continued to have symbolic meaning to parishioners. People brought baskets of eggs to the medieval church. Some of these eggs were decorated.. and that might be where the tradition of decorating eggs comes from. At the church, a prayer was held over the egg to protect oneself from dangers such as sickness. It is likely that several of our modern Easter traditions come from this old habit of blessing eggs.. and the egg is more popular than ever... in many different forms. Easter has the biggest candy sales of the year, and the best seller of the season is always egg-shaped candy. The tradition of candy-filled eggs is more than 200 years old. In addition to eggs, a typical Easter spread, known as a 'påskbord', includes herring, salmon and 'påskmust', a rootbeer-type beverage popular during Swedish holidays.

Posted at 10:45:32 am by Sophie Cecilie
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Thursday, April 05, 2007

Happy Easter...

A short entry today.. to wish you all a Happy Easter. I'm off to Gothenburg to spend a few days with my sister and her family during the easter holiday. Will be back next week and hopefully have time to write something interesting or just let you all know what I've been doing lately. The photo of the daffodils was taken earlier today outside our kitchen windows...

Posted at 2:12:57 pm by Sophie Cecilie
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Monday, April 02, 2007

The world's second-most gender-equal parliament...

Sweden, Costa Rica and Rwanda recorded the highest percentage of women in parliament in 2006, with the worldwide figure also reaching a record high, said the Inter-Parliamentary Union. Almost 17 percent of parliamentarians the world over are women, said the IPU. Nordic countries retained their reputation as bastions of female advancement, with the regional average increasing to 40.8 percent after Sweden elected a greater number of women MPs than ever before in its September polls.

Women now hold 47.3 percent of seats in the Riksdag, the Swedish parliament , as well as the justice, EU affairs, international development, energy and enterprise ministerial portfolios in the ruling centre-right government.. makes Sweden the world's second-most gender-equal parliament. Rwanda actually has the highest proportion of female parliamentarians, with 48.8 percent of seats in the lower house. The group also hailed the 'consistent rate of progress in the Americas over the past decade', notably Costa Rica where women made up 38.6 percent of parliamentarians. Women make up on average 20 percent of parliamentarians across the Americas, trailing only their Nordic sisters and ahead of the rest of Europe.

However, the IPU also highlighted 'missed opportunities' during 2006 in post-conflict states which are undergoing electoral and parliamentary reform. Women won only 8.4 percent of seats in the newly established lower house of the Democratic Republic of Congo, and four percent in Haiti's lower house. This contrasts with 'significant increases' in female representation over recent years in polls in Afghanistan, Burundi, Rwanda, Mozambique, South Africa and East Timor, said the IPU.

Posted at 7:19:53 am by Sophie Cecilie
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Friday, March 30, 2007

Sweden should improve.. protection of women...

A new United Nations report has criticized Sweden for shortcomings in its strategy for tackling violence against women. At the municipal level in particular there is much room for improvement, according to special rapporteur Yakin Ertürk. While Sweden receives praise for the advancement of equal opportunities in the public sphere, the country is deemed to have fallen short 'in addressing the deeply rooted unequal power relations between women and men which underlie the continuation of diverse forms of violence against women'.

Yakin Ertürk reached her conclusions after a close examination of various different manifestations of violence, which included intimate-partner violence, rape and sexual coercion, and violence against women of immigrant, asylum-seeker or refugee background. The standard of protection policies at the municipal level was found to have particular deficiencies. Some of the non-governmental shelters employ paid staff. Most rely on dedicated volunteers. Many shelters have to operate under severe budget constraints, because a large number of municipalities fail to fund the non-governmental institutions they use in order to fulfil their own legal responsibilities.

The report further cites an Amnesty International report, which found that 'more than a third of Sweden’s municipalities give no or only symbolic funding to women’s shelters'. An increase in violence of a sexual nature was also noted in the report. The perpetrators and victims can be found in all segments and at all levels of society, although some women, including immigrant, refugee and minority women as well as women in prostitution, face particular vulnerabilities. Sweden is reported to have an excellent legal framework for dealing with violence against women 'but low prosecution and conviction rates give a clear indication that its implementation must be further improved'. In conclusion, the report outlines a number of recommendations, including a call for the government to 'enhance the institutional capacity of municipalities in better fulfilling their obligation to protect women'.

Posted at 6:40:11 am by Sophie Cecilie
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Thursday, March 29, 2007

Sweden joining the Nato force...

Sweden could break with tradition and contribute to Nato's new rapid-reaction force, which was given the go-ahead at the Riga summit. The nature of Sweden's possible involvement in the Nato Response Force (NRF) is still unclear. However, the foundation for the increasingly close cooperation is Sweden's undertaking to lead the EU's Nordic battlegroup. The Nato military alliance will invite Sweden to participate in the force. Defence minister said that there is reason 'to try this in positive spirit'. However, the leader of the Left Party, criticised Sweden's growing relationship with Nato.

He said that it is becoming increasingly difficult to remain outside and that this was the point of the offer. Sweden should not join, and should seek other alternatives. The established Nato countries said at the Riga summit that the NRF, the brainchild of former US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is ready for action. 25 000 troops will be committed to the force, which has taken four years to organise.

Posted at 4:41:43 am by Sophie Cecilie
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