Prime minister wishes foreign talent ‘welcome to Sweden’, more rain expected in Norrland, Securitas employee worked for gang for five years and music rights group signs deal to compensate artists for AI training. Here’s Sweden’s news on Wednesday.
Prime minister wishes foreign talent ‘welcome to Sweden’, more rain expected in Norrland, Securitas employee worked for gang for five years and music rights group signs deal to compensate artists for AI training. Here’s Sweden’s news on Wednesday.
Prime minister wishes foreign talent ‘welcome to Sweden’, more rain expected in Norrland, Securitas employee worked for gang for five years and music rights group signs deal to compensate artists for AI training. Here’s Sweden’s news on Wednesday.
Swedish prime minister wishes highly-qualified talent ‘welcome to Sweden’ in parliament opening
Sweden’s parliament, the Riksdag, reopened on Tuesday after the summer recess, with the King and Queen travelling through central Stockholm to attend the event flanked by soldiers in parade uniform.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson read out this year’s ‘Statement of government policy’, which started with the simple message that ‘Sweden is fantastic’.
Kristersson also had a few words to say about people who move to Sweden to work.
“Sweden must get even better at attracting international talent to strengthen our competitiveness. To achieve this, the government will propose making it easier to change jobs while also combating work permit fraud.
“The government is also working to make it easier for researchers and doctoral students to stay in Sweden. The signal from Sweden will be clear: If you are a highly qualified talent within your profession and you want to build your future here with us – welcome to Sweden!”
The Local’s Paul O’Mahony has written up a report of the full speech in this week’s Politics in Sweden column.
Swedish vocabulary: välkommen till Sverige ‒ welcome to Sweden
Infiltrator for Foxtrot gang discovered working at security company Securitas
SVT’s investigative journalism programme Uppdrag Granskning has revealed that an employee at the Securitas security company has been secretly working for the Foxtrot gang for five years. The employee was only fired once the programme presented its findings to Securitas.
The man, who worked night shifts with Securitas in Uppsala, has also been carrying out tasks for the Foxtrot gang and has been in direct contact with its leader Rawa Majid in Iran.
Reporters Axel Gordh Humlesjö and Diamant Salihu discovered the link between the men after the employee’s name appeared in an investigation into an aggravated drug offence, where he was discovered to have sent money via payment service Swish to a drugs courier working with Foxtrot.
The company’s head of security Rolf Joutsijärvi said in the programme that he was shocked when he heard the news and that the man is no longer working with the company.
“We don’t want unsuitable individuals working with us,” he said.
Uppdrag Granskning is already available on SVT and will be broadcast on SVT1 tonight at 8pm.
Swedish vocabulary: granskning ‒ investigation
Weather agency issues another rain warning for Norrland
Sweden’s weather agency SMHI has issued a yellow weather warning for rain on Thursday and Friday in Västernorrland, which is expected to hit much the same areas as last weekend’s rainfall.
There is also a warning in place from Wednesday of high water levels in the Moälven and Anundsjöån rivers.
“On Thursday and Friday rain and showers will pass over, with a risk that large amounts will fall in the areas which have already been badly affected in Västernorrland,” the agency wrote.
In total, 30-50mm of rain is expected to fall, while some areas may see even more than that.
A number of Swedish authorities are already working in the area to restore roads and railways after last weekend’s rainfall, which damaged around 40 roads so badly that they’re either completely or partially closed. Two trains derailed as a result of that rainfall, and the Transport Administration has closed the Botniabanen railway as some areas are still underwater.
Swedish vocabulary: hårt drabbade områden ‒ badly affected areas
Swedish music rights group signs deal aiming to pay artists for AI training
STIM, a non-profit Swedish organisation representing musicians said on Tuesday it signed the “world’s first collective AI licence for music”, aiming to compensate artists for use of their work in training artificial intelligence.
It added it had signed the deal to license music to an AI company under a “pilot project” with two startups, Songfox and Sureel.
STIM already collects royalties from businesses such as radio stations and distributes them to artists. Its new system allows the AI companies to train their models on licensed works while paying royalties to the creators.
“We’ve created a licence model that enables us to respond to AI developments without compromising the rights of music creators,” said STIM’s interim chief executive Lina Heyman, in a statement from the company.
STIM said that under its licensing model creators would also be compensated when new works that are “influenced” by their work are created and used.
The human-created work that influenced an AI creation would be detected using “independent attribution technology”, its statement said.
In the first phase, only a limited number of works from rights holders who had “explicitly opted in” would be included. (AFP)
Swedish vocabulary: artificiell intelligens ‒ artificial intelligence (although most Swedes would just say AI, pronounced aah-ee)