Alice Babs dead
Swedish singer Alice Babs (born Hildur Alice Nilsson on January 26 in 1924) has passed away. While she worked in a variety of genres (Swedish folklore, Elizabethan songs, and opera for instance), she was best known internationally as a jazz singer. Alice Babs made her breakthrough in the film ”Swing it magistern” in 1940, and then went on to appear in more than a dozen Swedish language films. In 1958, she formed Swe-Danes with guitarist Ulrik Neumann and violinist Svend Asmussen, Swe-Danes later toured the U.S. before dissolving in 1965. In 1963, Alice Babs began a long and productive period of collaboration with Duke Ellington, and participated in performances of Ellington’s second and third Sacred Concerts, which he had originally written for her. Alice Babs had a range of more than three octaves, and Ellington said that when she did not sing the parts that he wrote for her, he had to use three different singers. Alice Babs died of complications from Alzheimer’s disease on february 11. She was 90 years old. Listen to the title song from the singer's first film Swing it, magistern (1940)

H&M opens in India
Swedish clothing giant H&M has been given green light to open stores in India. H&M is now scouting the country to see where the first flagship store ought to be located. ”We were just given the ’go’ sign to open,” says Kristina Stenvinkel, Director of Communications at H&M.

18th century painting in restroom
A wall painting from the late 1700’s has been discovered during the building of a restroom at Gärdslösa rectory on Öland. The painting will now be kept, and visitors will be able to enjoy it while they do what they normally do in a restroom.

Business attracts more hotel guests
Swedish hotels attract more Polish guests as the number of foreign overnight stays increases. However, most popular of the foreign guests in Swedish hotels are the Norwegians. Business trips are what foreigners book the most in Swedish hotel rooms, though. According to the trade organization Visita’s mapping of the tourist streams, there’s a connection between the Swedish business exchange and the number of guest nights from the same countries. “If we have a business exchange, then we have an increase in guests, so we see how many parts syncronize with each other,” says CEO of Visita Eva Östling, to TT. In total the number of foreign overnight stays in Swedish hotels has increased 42 percent between 2000 and 2012, according to statistics from Statistics Sweden. The Norwegians made up for most of that increase, but there are also more guests from countries like Luxembourg, Poland, Ireland and Turkey. “Norway increased with 509,000 nights. But both Poland and Luxembourg have a huge increase in percentages,” says statistician Anna Warnemo at Sweden Statistics. People from Luxembourg spent a little over 6,000 nights in Swedish hotels in 2012, while folks from Norway spent slightly over one million.