The City of Stockholm has announced big plans to celebrate the royal wedding of Crown Princess Victoria to Mr. Daniel Westling next summer. City planners have put together a dynamic two-week festival leading up to the couple’s June 19, 2010, wedding in Stockholm, Sweden.

“Love Stockholm 2010” will run June 6-20, and commences on Sweden’s National Day, June 6. The festival intertwines the joys of love with the Swedish capital’s engaging culture. For a fortnight Stockholm’s streets and squares will bustle with music, art, culture, food, fashion, design, and history.  Happenings at “Love Stockholm 2010” will include concerts and singing performances at Kungsträdgården, a special children’s program, poetic love celebrations with art and culture along Strandvägen, a Stockholm of the future exhibit, and much more. It is a venue for Stockholmers and visiting tourists to celebrate together.

Princess Victoria and Daniel’s wedding and the preceding festival are expected to attract approximately 2 million visitors and television viewers – comparable to the Olympic Games or World Championships – to Stockholm. Retail revenue for the combined events is estimated to be exceed SEK 2.5 billion.

“The royal wedding is an opportunity to show the entire world just how beautiful – and environmentally inclusive – our city is,” says Stockholm Mayor Sten Nordin. “The City of Stockholm strives to combine a sustainable and good urban environment with growth.” In recognition of this successful endeavor Stockholm earned the European Commission’s “Europe’s Green Capital 2010” award, the first of its kind; and Stockholm was recently named the “Best Municipality for Quality” in Sweden.

In 2008, the controversial Swedish fashion miracle employed almost 34,000 persons. According to statistics from the Swedish Textile and Clothing Industries’ Association, in the same year, Swedes consumed fashion for 75.1 billion SEK, and exports were over 11 billion. Compared with 2003, this is an increase in exports of almost 100 per cent.
Good figures, but the fact is that the reality is far better than the statistics. Statistics Sweden (SCB) only includes goods in the Swedish fashion exports that are either produced in Sweden or cross Swedish borders before going back out into the world. Today, however, fashion is more about creativity and design skill than actual production. This makes the definition we see in the statistics obsolete. The fact is that in 2008, H&M alone, whose designers are based in Stockholm, sold fashion abroad for more than 96 billion SEK, and it is far from alone in letting its goods bypass Swedish borders.
Since 2008, the world has experienced a serious financial crisis. The fashion trade has been hardhit. Fashion houses ranging from the long-established Lacroix to the independent Luella have gone into liquidation. The Swedish trade has suffered its fair share: fashion producers have seen sales fall and big shopping centres have closed down. As we point out in our article on Swedish fashion
in the recession, however, many companies have chosen to invest their way out of the crisis – and some have had their best results ever.
This applies from a financial perspective as well as on a creative level. Swedish designers have
matured. Today, the collections have a stronger profile and are more fashionable, which has led to an ever-clearer impact abroad. At the same time, craft skills and cost-consciousness are greater than ever. The Swedish fashion industry has also established itself as a cutting-edge trade in terms of the environment and social issues.
In 2009, the trade realised that opportunities for continued success required co-operation, and for the first time it formed a joint organisation, the Association of Swedish Fashion Brands (ASFB).
The goal is to develop the Swedish fashion industry nationally as well as internationally.
This year’s Fashion Week by Berns is the ninth in a row and has its strongest line-up since the start of the recession. This season includes Hope, Whyred and The Local Firm. We also welcome back Filippa K and Acne, and look forward to Cheap Monday and Carin Wester, among others. Above all, the belief in the Swedish fashion trade is greater than for a very long time. Talking about a miracle no longer feels like an exaggeration, and it is at Fashion Week by Berns 2010 that we will build on our blue and yellow miracle.

Swedish design has a lot of energy. It inspires one to many things such as to set a smashingly original table for a dinner party, to look smart in a cool new outfit, stand impressed by the works of amazing artists and architects, and generally feel uplifted and rejuvenated.
Many factors, old and new contribute to this desirable state. The works of Sweden’s young designers, for instance, are full of emotional value and pose challenges to aesthetic norms. They captivate with vitality and range of expression — without sacrificing the functionality and craftsmanship so highly prized in traditional Swedish design.
One of Sweden’s trendsetting craftswoman is Zandra Ahl who, in partnership with journalist Emma Olsson, published “Swedish taste—myths about modern design” that challenged traditional modes and rocked Sweden’s design “establishment” to its foundation. Silversmith Jenny Edlund uses intuition to guide her works in silver and enamel. Ceramic artist Gustaf Nordenskiöld creates pieces that are “trend-centric”: use of tool marks and adapted techniques from various crafts such as candle making.
In Sweden great Swedish design literally surrounds you – in buildings, street signs, hotels, trains, the clothes people wear. Dubbed “beauty on water”, the capital Stockholm offers up nonstop architectural stimulation. Sweden’s foremost example of national romanticism, Stockholm’s City Hall Stadshuset attracts 400,000 visitors annually including attendees at the Nobel Prize Banquet. It plus other famous landmarks such as the Stockholm City Library by Erik Gunnar Asplund, and the Royal Palace contrast with more recently acclaimed structures such as the Hotel Skeppsholmen, a new lifestyle hotel designed by the renowned architects Claesson Koivisto Rune. Skeppsholmen opened this September in a building dating from 1699. Beyond Stockholm one turns for inspiration from the 54-story deconstructivist skyscraper HSB Turning Torso in Malmo and the Röhsska Museum of art and design in Gothenburg on Sweden’s west coast, or the ‘Falu red” cottages of Dalarna in the east, home to the Kingdom of Crystal and the glass works of Orrefors and Kosta Boda.
The works of Swedish designers reflect individual commentaries on our times as well as a reflection of their own activities For instance, the Swedish Embassy in Washington DC designed by Gert Wingårdh, displays a strong ecological awareness and a personal expressive language.  Gert Wingårdh, also created  the spectacular building of Clarion Sign Hotel in Stockholm. Dominated by granite and glass, it leans over the square, reflecting the green park.
The renowned ICEHOTEL in Jukkasjärvi, above the Arctic Circle in Swedish Lapland is recreated from ice and snow every winter.
Swedish designers also imbue every day items with a palpable relevance. The Power Awareness Cord, for example, makes it easy to see how much electricity a machine uses – with shining or diminishing intensity. The Flower Lamp “blooms” with lessened electricity consumption. Both items were spin offs from a government-sponsored project to create energy awareness using design.
Looking good is among the more personal applications of Sweden’s new design. Known for cool designer clothes are the Swedish brands Odd Molly, Filippa K, WE, and Björn Borg. To buy jeans with a conscience there’s Cheap Monday. In general good taste, Sweden is home to many prominent fashion designers with their own brands.

West Sweden, with Gothenburg as its gateway, is one of Europe’s most popular getaways where forest paths mingle with cosmopolitan excitement and travelers will find a nonstop selection of activities and events for 2010.

Publishers contracted to produce the official memoir of Julian Assange will go ahead and release the WikiLeaks founder’s autobiography without his consent.

In December the Australian signed a contract with Canongate Books to write an autobiography, part memoir, part manifesto, due to be released in April.

However after working with a co-author and reading a first draft in March, Assange declared “all memoir is prostitution” before cancelling the contract in June, Canongate said in a statement.

Assange, who is currently under house arrest in Britain awaiting a High Court of Appeal ruling on whether he should be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault, now faces Thursday’s release of an unauthorised autobiography.

“He had already signed his advance over to his lawyers to settle his legal bills and has not repaid the advance owed since,” Canongate said.

“So the contract still stands and Canongate has decided to honour it and publish the autobiography.”

Titled Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography, snippets of the book will be revealed in British newspaper The Independent on Thursday.

Canongate describe the publication as “a revealing account of the man who founded the organisation whose work has dominated the news in recent years”.

“It covers Julian’s nomadic childhood in Australia and his life as a teenage hacker who realised, by the age of sixteen and in pre-internet days, the global potential and connectivity of the computer. ‘Hacking was,’ he says, ‘a way for us to connect with other kids who didn’t feel like hostages to normality’.”

The book has been compiled using more than 50 hours of recorded talks with Assange.

Before founding WikiLeaks in 2006 Assange describes his early adult life as a “cyberpunk”.

“The biggest question for me,” he writes, “had become, ‘how can we reduce the power of a conspiracy?’ And the answer seemed within our grasp: to chase their secrets into the open air.”

The online secret-leaking site has revealed hundreds of thousands of confidential political and military documents, attracting global attention and sparking investigation.

The Swedish government appointed a special committee on Thursday to look at whether the central bank needed to change the size and composition of its balance sheet in the light of the last financial crisis. During the 2008 to 2009 crisis the central bank’s lending to Swedish commercial banks soared from 5 billion crowns ($748 million) to 500 billion, of which $30 billion was in foreign currency, the government noted. “During the financial crisis the central bank built up liquidity in Swedish crowns and in foreign currency… The crisis resulted in measures by the Riksbank which greatly expanded its balance sheet,” the government said in a statement. The investigation, to be completed by August next year, will look at how large the central bank’s reserves should be, and how they should be financed. It will also analyse coordination between the central bank and the Swedish debt office, including the scale and scope of the Riksbank’s access to loans from the debt office. The committee will also look at whether there is a need for a foreign currency fund for which banks pay a fee, or whether the central bank should continue to bear the costs. It should also seek to understand what is an appropriate size of the Riksbank’s own capital, the government said. Sweden registered record growth rates last year following its deepest downturn in more than half a century in 2009. The country’s fiscal position is expected to remain robust — a sharp contrast to some euro zone states whose high borrowing and deficits have led to an intractable debt crisis.

England will host Sweden in an international friendly on Nov. 15 as part of the teams’ preparations for next year’s European Championship.

Both countries qualified automatically for the tournament in Ukraine and Poland, with England topping Group G and Sweden finishing as the runner-up with the best record across the nine pools.

They haven’t met since the group stage of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, when Henrik Larsson scored an injury-time equalizer for Sweden in a 2-2 draw. England has not beaten Sweden since 1968, a span of 12 games.

England will play world and European champion Spain in a friendly at Wembley three days earlier.

England will play Sweden on November 15 as part of their preparations for Euro 2012, three days after the interntional friendly against World and European champions Spain.

GettyImagesSweden will head to Wembley

Sweden, who qualified for Euro 2012 as best runners-up following Tuesday’s victory over Netherlands, will be England’s second opponents of an international double-header.

It is 12 meetings and 43 years since England last beat the Swedes in a 3-1 triumph at Wembley in 1968, when Sir Bobby Charlton, Martin Peters and Roger Hunt all scored.

Eight of those games, including the last meeting, in Cologne during the 2006 World Cup, have ended in draws, with England losing on the other four occasions, all of which have been in Stockholm.

Although officials face a tough test trying to sell two fixtures in such close proximity at such short notice, the will do so knowing England finished with by far the highest average home attendance of any country during the Euro 2012 qualifying phase.

The Wembley average of 77,071 for the four matches far exceeded second best France (64,339).

Club England Managing Director Adrian Bevington said: “The level of support the England team receives all around the globe is tremendous, and it’s important we acknowledge that as often as we can.

“They travel great distances, Sofia and Podgorica most recently, to support the team. With these exciting fixtures at Wembley it’s a great chance for us to play in front of our home support.”