Swedish goalie died in plane crash
Swedish ice hockey player Stefan Liv was among the 43 people who died when a plane carrying Russian team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl crashed Wednesday. The 30-year-old national team goalkeeper, an Olympic and world champion in 2006, was killed along with many of his team mates when the plane came down shortly after taking off for a flight to Belarussian capital Minsk. "We are in mourning, and our thoughts are with those close to him and his relatives," Swedish Hockey Association chairman Christer Englund said in a statement on the association's website (www.svenskhockey.se). Liv, who was drafted by the Detroit Red Wings in 2000, played 133 times for Sweden. He also won three Swedish championships with former club HV71.

Many want measles vaccination
Warnings of a measles outbreak in Europe have sent Swedes lining up at vaccination clinics—many see a measles vaccination as a way to secure their vaccination. The extremely infectious disease has shaken Europe recently, with France being the country hit the most. “We see a great and marked increase in people wanting to get the vaccination,” says Mikael Ericsson, medical officer of Stockholm’s vaccination clinic City Vaccin. “Many have read about it, are asking questions and choose to take the vaccine.” People who have had the measles disease are on the safe side, but many of the patients coming to City Vaccin don’t know for sure if they have had it or not. “If you’ve already had the measles and you get the vaccine, nothing happens, so it’s safe to have the vaccine,” Ericsson continues. Vaccination against measles was introduced in Sweden at the beginning of the 1970s but it wasn’t until 1982 that a universal vaccination was introduced. “People born before 1982 have had only one shot, which was then believed to suffice, but we now know they need another shot,” says Annika Linde, state epidemiologist at the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control.

Sweden’s oldest string?
What might be Sweden’s oldest piece of string has been found at an excavation of a Stone Age settlement in Mölndal, in the Göteborg area. The string is believed to have been handmade 10,000 years ago, of an unidentified material. “I’d guess it’s Sweden’s oldest piece of string,” says archaeologist Glenn Johansson. “It consists of two pieces twisted together, which in turn have been twisted with a much smaller string. This find is so unique, that I had to get it to the curator right away.”