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Today in Sweden: A roundup of the latest news on Wednesday

The Local Sweden
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Today in Sweden: A roundup of the latest news on Wednesday
Police in Vetlanda in March, where seven people were stabbed in a random attack. The suspect faces sentencing today. Photo: Mikael Fritzon/TT

Find out what's going on in Sweden today with The Local's short roundup of the news in less than five minutes.

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Vetlanda stabbing suspect faces court verdict

A 22-year-old man accused of stabbing seven people in the southern Swedish town of Vetlanda is to be sentenced on Wednesday. The man has pleaded guilty to two counts of attempted murder, but told the trial he could not remember much of the attack.

The man, who holds a previous conviction for a minor narcotics offence, told the trial that he was feeling unwell and got angry at a person who “abused him”, then went home and got a knife, went to the train station in Vetlanda and randomly attacked two men.

The attacks grabbed international headlines in March after police in the early stages of the investigation classified them as a suspected terror incident. However this was later changed to attempted murder. Eksjö Discrict Court is to pronounce its verdict at 2pm.

Swedish vocabulary: randomly – slumpartat

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Holiday-makers warned of increased spread of coronavirus

Several Swedish regions have linked recent cases of coronavirus to popular tourist destinations in southern Europe, reports the TT newswire. An infectious disease doctor in the Västra Götaland region, home to Gothenburg, told TT that at least around 11-12 percent of their total new cases at the moment were likely infected in Spain.

They are mostly young people who have not yet been vaccinated, he said.

Stockholm also said that out of positive Covid cases where they have been able to identify where the person was infected, around a third can be connected with foreign travel, and out of that third around two thirds are people who have been to Spain.

Sweden this week tightened its advice for returning travellers, urging more people to get tested for Covid-19 when arriving back in Sweden, even if they don’t have symptoms.

Swedish vocabulary: traveller – resenär

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Covid-19 vaccine booking to open to ALL adults in Sweden

From today, it will be possible for all over-18s to book their Covid-19 vaccination in every Swedish region. Uppsala, the last region in Sweden to open to over-18s, said it would make vaccine booking available to all adults on Wednesday (at the time this article was published at 8am, its booking system was still only open to over-21s).

Across the whole country, 5,689,425 people have received at least the first dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, according to the most recent update from the Public Health Agency on Friday. That’s equivalent to 69.5 percent of Sweden’s adult population, while 3,654,556 have received two doses (44.6 percent of the adult population).

Swedish vocabulary: to book – att boka

Swedish weather agency warns of extreme heat this week

Sweden's weather agency has warned of hot temperatures forecast over the coming days, which mean vulnerable people should take precautions not to fall ill. That means taking measures to cool down your home, avoiding being out in the sun during the hottest part of the day, and cooling down with lots of fluids, for example.

SMHI, the meteorological agency, issues these alerts when there is a maximum daily temperature of at least 26C for three days in a row.

The warning applies to most of the south and east of the country, facing extreme heat of around 30C — an area covering 32 of Sweden’s 40 “weather regions”, including all three major city regions of Stockholm, Skåne and Västra Götaland.

You can keep up to date with SMHI’s weather alerts HERE.

Swedish vocabulary: extreme heat – extrem hetta (or, as a compound noun, extremhetta)

Which is Swedes’ least favourite telecoms company?

Telia is top of the list of complaints about telecommunications companies to the Swedish Consumer Agency (Konsumentverket), writes the DN newspaper. The number of complaints have increased by 200 percent in five years, while complaints against fellow telecoms giants Telenor and Tele2 have increased 100 percent and 76 percent.

Many of the complaints relate to deals that did not live up to what was promised, unclear contracts and misleading marketing. Here’s a list of the number of complaints against the major telecoms companies in Sweden between 2016 and 2020:

Telia: 1,360
Telenor: 685
Tele2: 488
Tre: 588 (a six percent increase in five years)

Swedish vocabulary: complaint – klagomål

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