More immigrants expected
Instead of the predicted 31,000 asylum seekers, 34,000 are now expected to arrive to Sweden this year. And Migrationsverket (the Swedish Migration Board) is also raising the prognosis for the number of family members migrating from Somalia, thus more money is needed from the government. “We have during a longer period of time seen that there’s an increase, and the turbulences in Afghanistan and Somalia continue,” says head of the asylum application department at Migrationsverket Oskar Ekblad. The increase in the expected number of asylum seekers is to be found in a prognosis that was delivered to the government last week. And the most increase from last year, are asylum seekers from Afghanistan, Somalia, and Syria. The main reason for the sharp increase in relative migration has to do with a judgment in the Migration Court of Appeal in January, which makes it easier for relatives to stay. This affects Somalis mostly. The last prognosis said 18 500 applications from Somalia, now 20,000 are expected. “Sweden is clearly a country of destination,” Ekblad says. Labor migration is also expected to go up during 2012. The bottom line is that Migrationsverket considers it needs another 65 million SEK ($9.4 million) this year and 214 million SEK ($31.1 million) more next year. “We need more people to receive and try these applications,” Ekblad concludes.

H&M criticized for tanned models
Swedish clothing giant H&M is being criticized by the Swedish Cancer Society for using deeply tanned bikini models in their recent ad campaign. The Cancer Society states that the tan beauty ideal is dangerous and adds to more people losing their lives to skin cancer. The ads strengthen the message that a tan is the height of beauty and advocates sunbathing. The exposure to harmful UV rays out in the sun or in tanning salons is a factor in the majority of skin cancer cases. In Sweden 40,000 people a year are diagnosed. It’s not clear whether the models used in H&M’s campaign are dark because of tanning or because of Photoshopping, however according to the Cancer Society the effect is the same. In a mail to TT (Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå – the Newspapers’ Telegram Bureau of Sweden), Charlotta Nemlin at H&M’s press office comments on the Cancer Society’s debate article in daily DN: “We’re sorry if we have offended people with our latest campaign. It was not our intention to show a specific beauty ideal, our intention was to show our latest summer collection. We will take these points of views to heart, and continue discussing them for our future campaigns.”

Biking from Malmö to Kiruna
It took Patrik Lyzell 19 days to bike through Sweden from his home in Malmö to Kiruna. Patrik wanted to surprise his military service friend Erik Ramnelius in Kiruna with a visit. Patrik and Erik both went through a tough physical education as mountain rangers in Arvidsjaur, which helped Patrik, as biking through Sweden proved to be quite a task: A snow storm greeted him when he reached Norrbotten on his bike. After having rested at Erik's place in Kiruna for a whole day, Patrik returned to Malmö on his bike.

100-year disease mystery solved
For over a hundred years, a family in Värmland has suffered a disease, forcing them to use the bathroom to pee up to 15 liters a day (3.9 U.S. gallons) and having to drink the same amount in order not to dehydrate. Now a physician at Centralsjukhuset in Karlstad has solved the mystery behind the curious disease. “We’ve had some cases here, where we simply couldn’t find an explanation,” Johan Jendle, the physician says to Nya Wermlands Tidningen online. “I discovered that the patients were related to each other. I investigated the common thirst test, and genetic tests, and then found it had to do with a genetic variation of diabetes insipidus, (a condition in which the kidneys are unable to conserve water), resulting from a mutation.” The cure seems simple enough – the victims of the disease need only to take hormone supplements.