Sofia Arkelsten resigns as Party Secretary
Party secretary of the Moderate Party, Sofia Arkelsten, resigns. "She and Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt have agreed on this," said Reinfeldt’s Press Secretary Sebastian Carlsson to Expressen.se. Arkelsten succeeded Per Schlingmann as party secretary in October 2010. Her time at the post has been marked by scandals. Shortly after she took office, it was revealed that she had let herself be invited on a journey by oil company Shell. In October last year, she was under fire after having stated that the Moderates were the driving force in the struggle for freedom and equal right to vote in Sweden. She has also been accused of having plagiarized parts of a debate article about the elderly. However, no reasons have been given for why Sofia Arkelsten is now leaving her post. “It is time for change and renewal also in my life. And I want to work with other political issues. That’s why I today resign as party secretary,” Arkelsten said in a written statement. “It’s been a great job. I am proud of what we’ve managed to do. But I have my reasons and I will get back about the political ones. I’ve made a decision and I need change.” Kent Persson will take over Arkelsten’s post as new party secretary.

"Can’t you see I'm a man?"
Norwegian authorities couldn’t determine whether Swede Daniel Pohjantahti was a man or a woman when he applied for a Norwegian social security number. “Didn’t they see my beard?” Daniel wonders. It can be tricky to work in Norway. Father of two, Daniel Pohjantähti from Tvååker went to a small town south of Bergen in Norway to work as a baker, but needed to get a Norwegian social security number first, which he thought was being issued by the Norwegian social insurance office, Nav. He went there with his ID card and his birth certificate. The first question he was asked was: “Are you a woman?” Daniel was flabbergasted. “I looked like a cave man when I walked in, couldn’t they tell by my beard that I was a man?” he wondered. But not even after taking a closer look at his driver’s license and birth certificate could the Norwegian administrator (a female) tell for sure. “I tried with all means to show that I am a man,” says Daniel. That he was married and the father of two children didn’t help. In the end Daniel had to go back to Sweden to pick up his passport. Upon returning, it seems that he had applied for his social security at the wrong place, and that he instead has to go to the tax office. “I don’t have time for this,” says Daniel. “I have better things to do.”