Our coverage of news about Sweden

The Jewish Community in Stockholm will not renew Rabbi David Lazar's contract, it announced last night after a meeting where members put forward two motions urging the community to resume job contract negotiations with Lazar.

"The community has previously announced that negotiations have closed, that the parties have not been able to come to an agreement and that the next step is to discuss an exit plan," the community said in a statement.

The troubled mining company Northland Resources, which runs an iron ore mine outside of Pajala in northern Sweden, had hoped to get investments worth 335 million US dollars to save the operation from bankruptcy. But instead, the company has secured three months of credit, worth just 35 million dollars.

According to a statement. this loan is meant to cover company costs while it develops a new long-term financial plan.

The Swedish Green Party sides with the Social Democrats more often than with the central-right government alliance parties. That is according to a review of parliamentary ballots by daily newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, ahead of the Green Party congress, which kicks off today.

On social and environmental issues, the Greens almost always vote on the same side as the Social Democrats. The four right and centrist government coalition parties tend to get the Greens' support on financial and social insurance issues, as well as on votes concerning pension and migration policy.

The people of Gothenburg will get to have their on the city's congestion charge, or "trängselskatt" in Swedish. There will be a referendum in 2014, since enough people had demanded it, and local government politicians had failed to get the two-third majority required to block it.

One worker died and two others were injured when the pontoon crane they were assembling for the building of a bridge, collapsed at Söråkers harbour, north of Timrå, Thursday. 

More details to follow.

Following four nights of rioting, Radio Sweden speaks to two people who have lived in the suburb where the unrest began and have insights into what is happening and why.

Swedish Radio International's Somali news desk was in Husby Wednesday night. Warsame Elmi grew up in Husby, and he now lives in a nearby suburb. He has been covering the situation there all week. "I have been talking to the young guys who are causing this," says Elmi. "They say 'we're doing this because we don't want the police here, we control this, this is our area, the police are racist, they are brutual, we have nothing to lose to do this'."

We also speak to Damon Rasti, a political commentator who lived in Husby when he was younger. He says the recent unrest has to be explained in terms of social division. "People seem to have given up, and that is really sad to see," says Rasti.

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt was given a rough ride in parliament today over the Stockolm riots.

Social Democrat Fredrik Olovsson took the opportunity of prime minister's question time to question the government's responsibility for four nights of urban unrest, and for "a society where joblessness is highest in the Nordic Region, higher than in all comparable EU countries."

One of the biggest local newspapers in the country, Sydsvenskan, is to axe almost a fifth of its staff. Management at the newspaper, which covers the cities of Malmö and Lund, blames poor economic results and restructuring in the newspaper branch. The paper currently employs 160 people.

A survey suggests the Swedish Public Employment Service, Arbetsförmedlingen, is too feeble at helping foreign-born people with academic training to find jobs. News agency TT reports that the white-collar union Saco has talked to 29 immigrants with a higher education degree, for their experiences of getting help from the Swedish authorities.

Swedish Parliament voted Wednesday, to end the requirement for people who undergo a sex reassignment surgery to be sterilized.

The Parliamentary majority believes the sterilization requirement goes against international conventions on human rights.

Beginning on July 1st, people living in Sweden without permission will have the same right to subsidized health care as asylum seekers, according to a decision Swedish Parliament made Wednesday.

For adults, this includes treatment that cannot wait, including dental care, reproductive health issues, and abortion-related care.

In Sweden celebrating your name day is, for some, just as important as having a birthday. But there is a problem: there are 150,000 different first names in use in Sweden, and only 600 on the official list of name days.

So two new names are to be added: Emmy and Jasmine.

A man in his 50s may have laid dead in his Stockholm apartment for almost two years without being discovered, reports news agency TT, citing the local newspaper Mitt i.