Swedish government presents spring budget bill
Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson presented the government's annual spring budget bill to parliament on Monday morning.
This is an amendment bill to present any new additions to the main autumn budget, but it still includes a fair number of important proposals, to the tune of 7.7 billion kronor, including:
Electricity support for households (2.4 billion on top of the 1 billion already allocated in the main budget)
Reduced tax on petrol and diesel (2.6 billion)
Compensation to government agencies for fossil-free fuels and electric vehicles (0.5 billion)
Additional funding for the company that operates the Esrange space base in Kiruna (386 million)
More IVF treatments for couples unable to conceive (327 million)
Various proposals within the justice sector (270 million)
Summer staffing in healthcare (250 million)
Summer jobs in municipalities for young people (250 million)
Funding boost against infectious animal diseases (166 million)
Language breakfast programmes, tutoring and more schoolbooks (130 million)
Subsidised air and ferry travel to Gotland (125 million)
Increased electricity preparedness for Svenska kraftnät (125 million)
Vaccination programme for the elderly (112 million)
Railway measures for the national defence (100 million)
Strengthened electric car subsidy (100 million)
Swedish vocabulary: spring amendment budget – vårändringsbudget
Man killed and woman injured in shooting
A man aged around 20 was killed in a shooting in Helsingborg shortly before midnight, and a woman was injured.
"There has been a shooting outside," police control room officer Patric Thelander told the TT news agency.
According to the healthcare service, the woman is in her mid-20s and was seriously injured.
Both of the victims were previously known to police.
No arrests had been made by 7.30am on Monday.
Swedish vocabulary: seriously injured – allvarligt skadad
Reza Pahlavi on controversial visit to Swedish parliament
Reza Pahlavi, the son of the last Shah of Iran and the former crown prince of Iran's Pahlavi dynasty, is set to visit Sweden on Monday.
He has been invited to the Swedish parliament by the Christian Democrats and Sweden Democrats after meeting him at a security conference in Munich.
TT reports that there has been discussion about which room in the parliament building should be used for his visit, to avoid it being seen as the Swedish parliament officially legitimising Pahlavi.
Swedish-Iranians are expected to turn up in numbers outside parliament to show their support for Pahlavi. Counter-protesters are also expected.
Bush said that the invitation shouldn't be seen as a backing of Pahlavi, rather a demonstration of support for the Iranian people's fight for freedom, she said.
"We have to support those oppositional forces there are who want a free and democratic Iran. And Reza Pahlavi is one of those," she told TT.
Pahlavi is however a controversial figure. He hasn't been in Iran since he was 17 years old, after his father was overthrown in 1979 in the Islamic Revolution which abolished the Iranian monarchy.
The last Shah was criticised for running the country as a police state, where dissidents were imprisoned and tortured.
The Green Party's foreign policy spokesperson Jacob Risberg criticised the invitation.
"He's a very controversial figure. Believing then that he could be a united force for the opposition seems very naive to me. But the big problem I think, above all, is that it legitimises him as the obvious opposition leader," he told TT.
Swedish vocabulary: to invite – att bjuda in
Grass fire warning across large parts of Sweden
There's a very high risk of grass fires in around half of Sweden on Monday, including all of Götaland, Svealand and parts of southern Norrland, as well as large parts of the northern Norrland coastal region.
The advisory, issued by national weather agency SMHI, is in place between 11am and 7pm.
SMHI warns:
Dry grass might ignite due to campfires or sparks from machines
Be very careful when lighting fires or operating heavy machinery outside
Swedish vocabulary: a grass fire – en gräsbrand
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