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LULEÅ

Suspect freed in delayed Haparanda murder trial

The 24-year-old key witness in the trial against a man suspected of shooting dead axe-attack victim Esa Rano in northern Sweden, brought in by police for questioning on Thursday, has been released.

Published: 24 August 2012 07:24 CEST

“The man was questioned over the course of the evening and morning. During interrogations he has given satisfactory explanations and he is no longer a suspect,” said prosecutor Mikael Lundquist in a statement.

The Luleå District Court in northern Sweden, where the trial was set to begin Thursday, was evacuated after a bomb threat, which was called in via telephone shortly after 3pm.

The person who made the call told the receptionist that a bomb would go off at 4pm, according to the local Norbottens Kuriren newspaper.

Police immediately cordoned off the area, blocking off nearby roads and stopping local traffic, but were unable to find any traces of explosives in the area.

At about the same time as the building was evacuated, police arrested the witness near the court hall.

The victim, Esa Rano, was already known in Sweden after miraculously surviving a gruesome axe attack to the face and neck in 2008.

The attack was triggered by a village feud and left him permanently disfigured despite multiple surgeries.

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SNOW

‘The perfect workout’: gym clears snow for free

A gym in northern Sweden has turned this week’s monster snowfall into “the perfect workout”, sending its members out for an hour on Saturday to shovel snow around the city for free.

Published: 31 January 2015 21:58 CET
Aerobic snow-shovelling on Saturday morning: Crossfit Holistics webpage
Daniel Muotka, who runs Crossfit Holistics in Luleå, one of Sweden's most northerly cities, took a class of ten from his gym out between eleven and twelve on Saturday morning to clear snow from driveways across the city.  
 
“We went all out for one hour, so it was a pretty hard workout," he told The Local. "It’s the perfect training. You get the cardio and you get the strength. You can make it as hard as you want or as easy as you want depending on your fitness level. And it’s fun.” 
 
Muotka had the idea earlier this week after the city received almost metre of snow in four days. 
 
“It’s obviously chaos in Luleå because of all the snow that’s fallen, and we have a gym full of people that love to sweat and work out, so I thought why not do something useful with all the energy?” 
 
Muotka posted a message on his Facebook page on Friday lunchtime offering to shovel snow for anyone who’d make him and members of his gym a cup of coffee. Close to a hundred people responded, who Muotka  then ranked according to need, putting old people whose grandchildren were away living in southern Sweden ahead of the local companies who applied. 
 
“We did what we could with the people we had,” he said. 
 
Muotka has now launched a campaign, "Snöhjälpen" (or 'snow help') on  his company's Facebook page, which he hopes will inspire other gyms across Sweden to run similar snow-shovelling 'workouts'. 
 
"We want to attract gyms from all over Sweden to do the same thing," he said. "Everyone can help out it doesn’t have to be a gym. We can't do it all ourselves. Some people are really snowed in. I don’t know when we’ve had as much snow as this.”