The Swedish unemployment rate jumped to its highest level since 1998 in June, at nearly 10 percent, due to the economic fallout from the novel coronavirus, Statistics Sweden said Thursday. The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate among 16 to 64-year-olds, the statistics agency’s longest-running series, reached 9.4 percent last month, surpassing the nine per cent peak in […]

For the first time in history, Swedish female priests outnumber their male counterparts, sixty years after they were first allowed to don the clerical collar, the Church of Sweden said Wednesday. Of the 3,060 priests currently serving in Sweden, 1,533 are female, or 50.1 percent, according to Cristina Grenholm, secretary for the Church of Sweden. […]

A row erupted on Friday between Sweden and the World Health Organisation (WHO), with the Scandinavian country calling the UN body’s move to include it on a list of countries facing a coronavirus resurgence a “total mistake”. The WHO had committed a “total misinterpretation” of Swedish data, said Swedish state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, whose country has […]

Sweden’s former ambassador to China went on trial in Stockholm on Friday accused of overstepping her mandate and risking national security by trying to negotiate the release of a dissident. Anna Lindstedt faces up to two years in prison if she is convicted of brokering an unauthorised meeting in January last year when she was […]

Sweden, which has gained international attention for its softer approach to the coronavirus than many of its European neighbours, said on Monday its number of deaths passed the 4,000 mark. The Public Health Agency said it had recorded 4,029 deaths and 33,843 confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus in the country of some 10.3 million […]