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View on Västra Hamnen from Ribersborg.

My hometown Malmö is number four on Grist's list over the world's green cities! This is Grist's explanation:

Malmö, Sweden Known for its extensive parks and green space, Sweden's third-largest city is a model of sustainable urban development. With the goal of making Malmö an "ekostaden" (eco-city), several neighborhoods have already been transformed using innovative design and are planning to become more socially, environmentally, and economically responsive. Two words, Malmö: organic meatballs.

Reykjavik (Iceland), Portland (Oregon, US) and Curitiba (Brazil) is topping the list. What's also interesting with this article is that Grist is using photos from Flickr to illustrate the diffrent cities. For a nonprofit organization living from grants and reader contributions, its a very smart and cheap way to be allowed to use a photo without paying for it.

I feel very much at home in Ireland. The Swedes and the Irish do not only have potatoes in common,. To generalise: we are equally attached to neutrality and sceptical against attempts to militarise the European Union. We feel close to nature, we have some strange food (but I must admit that something like a “crisp sandwich�, meaning two slices of white bread with potato crisps in the middle and nothing else, I had never believed would be considered a lunch meal…! ;-) ) as well as heavy drinking habits in common. And then of course the cultural heritage and pride, including the language.

Margot Wallström, the Swedish EU commissionnaire, also went to Ireland and just like me, she liked it :-)

Maybe you asked yourself why Usama bin Ladin didn't attack Sweden? After his statement yesterday I surely did. Luckliy Stefan Geens has some inside information... ;-)

Why is football more interesting than politics?

Sweden played against Italy in the European Championships yesterday. I watched the game together with some friends. We ate pizza, drank some beer and ate snacks. A perfect Friday evening in front of the telly after a long busy week.

Italy played good, very good, putting a lot of pressure on the Swedes. We have goalkeeper Isaksson to thank for the fact that they only managed to score once.

It was a very exciting game and we were all very in to it, commentating on everything just like the experts in the tv-studio. When the time was almost up, Sweden�s Zlatan Ibrahimovic, made a lucky shoot and flicked the ball sort of backwards with the outside of his boot and scored!

The game ended 1-1 but after almost counting on Italian victory, it felt like we won anyway.

On my way home I started thinking� what if everybody would have been this enthusiastic and keen to discuss the elections to the European Union that took place last weekend. What if we would have gathered with pizza and beer at a friend�s house to watch the final debate between the candidates before going to vote? What is it that football has that politics don�t?

Maybe politics has something to learn from football?

The Swedish Minister for Justice, Thomas Bodström, who was in the studio yesterday commentating the game, is a former Swedish Premier League football player. Why don�t he learn his politician colleagues to play some football. It can�t hurt and it might even revitalize the whole political scene� :-)

Biljana Plavsic, serving an 11 years' imprisonment in Sweden for crimes against humanity, is problematic for the Swedish Prison and Probation Service.

Before Plavsic was transferred to the prison for women where she will be living, she was placed in custody in Stockholm. At Kronobergsh�ktet she recieved benfits that other inmates don't have. For example: she had a better cell, she were allowed to stay outdoors longer than the others, she got a cake on her birthday (!) and the guards also bought her Serbian newspapers.

The union and the prison guards at Kronobergshäktet is very critical to the prison management for giving the orders that Plavsic was not to be treated as a normal inmate.

- Other murderers are not welcomed to Kronobergshäktet with a handshake, says a prison guard who wishes to remain anonymous, to Svenska Dagbladet.

The Swedish local government workers have been on strike for five weeks and on June 4 they might be joined by bus- and train-drivers from the public transport system in Stockholm.

If this becomes reality, no commuter trains or buses at all would be rolling on the streets and tracks of Sweden's capital.

Despite the fact that it would be catastrophy for those who have no car and live far from where they work, it could be quite interesting from the sociological point of view. When there's a crisie like this, people tend to help eachother out. The last time the busdrivers were on strike here, I remember reading in the paper about neighbours who never spoke to each other before offering one another a ride to the nearest train- or undergroundstation and things like that. With a mutual problem to solve, connections between people that didn't exist before might be established.

And if people living in the city went by bike or walked instead of the underground, what effect could a strike have on the public health?

The government negotiations in Finland is over resulting in a three-party-coalition: the Center Party, the Swedish People's Party and the Social Democratic Party.

The new prime minister is a woman, Anneli Jäätteenmäki from the Center Party.

This means the two most prominent positions in Finland are held by women: Tarja Halonen as president and Anneli Jäätteenmäki as prime minster. Cool!

Read more in the international edition of Helsingin Sanomat. Or DN if you prefer Swedish.

Gunnar Langemark isn't in favour of Denmark sending troops to Iraq and made two suggestions for a new Danish flag.

The Danish flag, the Dannebrog, is the worlds oldest cross flag by the way. According to the myth, the Dannebrog falled from the sky on the Danish army at the battle of Volmer 1219.

Sweden climbed from 11th to 7th place at Blizg in just a couple of days! Yours truely, xipe's blog and Ben Hammersley have been joined by FrippeVille, Tankeboken, Bikupan and fad absurdum. But where are the rest? How to learn Swedish in 1000 difficult lessons and Det perfekta tomrummet have registered but not joined the happy Sweden bunch. If they would, Sweden would pass Belgium which boasts with 8 registered webblogs.

The war on Iraq? No, I try to concentrate on the small things of life right now. The things I feel I have the power to control, like what shoes to wear or if I'm taking the bus at 12.12 or 12.28 when I'm going to my one o'clock lecture at the university.

Todays lecture is about BoforsaffŠren, a very well known Swedish scandal which happend during the eigthties. Bofors used to be a Swedish-owned weapon manufacturer, nowdays controlled by the american United Defense. Bofors managed to export weapons to Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, which is against Swedish law, which says Swedens cannot export weapons to countries involved in a conflict or war. The whole thing was going very well. Bofors exported gunpowder to a company in Austria. Austria is not invovled in any conflict or war, no problems. The Austrian company which actually only consisted of one person sold the gunpowed to Finland, neither that a country in war. This was handled very quickly, the railway waggon entered Austria, was relabelled and send back over the German-Austrian border destination Finland.

But the waggons never reached Finland. They were all "lost" somewhere in the former East Germany.

This was going well for quite some time until two over-zeolus German customs officers noticed that the waggons they declared the same morning, came back on the afternoon but with a new destination. They got suspicious and sended an official letter to the Swedish Customs asking what was going on and this is how the whole thing got revealed.

Bofors was prosecuted twice but never convicted and our teacher wrote a book about the whole thing called Die Akte Bofors (yes, the title is in German) and that's what todays lecture is gonna be all about.

It looks as if Juhan Parts will be the next prime minister in Estonia. According to todays DN, his Res Publica party is forming a coalition together with the Reformparty, the Pro Patria and the People's Union Party.

It will be interesting to see the politics of this coalition lead by the newly formed Res Publica-party.