Missing finger, roadside birth and bad breath

This week in Sweden's News in Brief, we take a look at a missing finger, a woman giving birth on the roadside, and severe consequences for a halitosis sufferer.

• Playboy mags, seals and drivers 'stuck' in traffic (13 Apr 12)
• Cocaine, candy, and angry Abba members (5 Apr 12)
• Pot growers plead not guilty for 'organic' weed (30 Mar 12)

Missing finger causes outrage
A man in Trollhätten, western Sweden, lost his finger after it got stuck in a toilet paper dispenser, wrote the TT news agency on Thursday.

The man, a worker at an elderly care home, has since pointed the finger at the emergency services and reported them to the Social Board for their tardy response time.

The man allegedly had to wait over an hour before the ambulance arrived, as they had deemed his case to be not enough of an emergency for an immediate call out.

A nearby nurse had iced the digit but by the time the man was taken to hospital it was too late to re-attach it.

The toilet paper dispensers have all been removed from the building.

Big fine for bad breath
The Bohusläningen newspaper reported this week that a man was fined 3,000 kronor ($446) for stealing a bottle of mouthwash from a shop in Uddevalla, western Sweden.

While the value of the mouthwash was only 140 kronor, the halitosis sufferer risks court if he doesn’t pay up the substantially higher fine.

If only he'd made a cleaner getaway...

Owner hounded by landlord over defecating dog
A 25-year-old man in Skåne, southern Sweden, has been evicted from his apartment after his defecating dog got on the landlord’s nerves, wrote the Västerbottens Kuriren newspaper.

The man would walk his dog on the front lawn of the apartment block every day for six months, allowing the hound to do his business at either end of the garden.

When two substantial piles of excrement built up, the man was evicted from the flat as he had allegedly failed to fulfill his obligations as a tenant.

A poor excuse for fertilizer to say the least.

Woman gives birth by the roadside
A heavily pregnant woman, who was rushing to hospital in her car, was forced to pull over halfway there to deliver her own baby, reported the Aftonbladet newspaper on Tuesday.

The woman managed to make a phone call to the Kärn hospital in Skövde, central Sweden, halfway through the birth, and an ambulance arrived promptly to assist with the final push.

“Everything went well, and we got ourselves a little lass,” said Björ Blixter of the emergency services to the paper.

The Local becomes BIG news
If you hadn't noticed already, The Local’s reporting on the so-called “racist-cake” went hugely viral, with newspapers around the world tuning in.

Al Jazeera, The Guardian, The New York Times, National Public Radio, ABC News, The Huffington Post, MSNBC all quote The Local in their reporting about the incident.

But as many readers may have noticed, this isn’t the first time that we’ve alerted the world… in fact, we’ve even composed a little gallery of five of our stories that became World News.

Click here for the gallery

Oliver Gee
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