Sweden

Tallinn accuses Moscow of responsibility for fire at Estonian company Milrem Robotics, a supplier of unmanned ground vehicles to Ukraine.

Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna has accused Russia of “sabotage” following an August arson attack on a defence company, Milrem Robotics, a claim the Kremlin rejected.

“We can conclude with certainty that the arson attack … in Tallinn was an act of sabotage ordered by the special services of the Russian Federation,” Tsahkna wrote on X on Tuesday.

He added that the perpetrators of the attack had been apprehended and “no longer pose a threat”, and that Estonia had summoned the Russian ambassador.

“This act of sabotage is part of Russia’s broader campaign across Europe, aimed at intimidating us and weakening our support for Ukraine,” he wrote.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov rejected the allegation.

“Such statements are baseless, ill-considered, have absolutely no relation to reality, and lack any form of reasoning. Consequently, we cannot and will not take such statements seriously,” he told reporters.

Estonia, a European Union and NATO member state along the alliance’s eastern flank, has accused Moscow of several hybrid provocations since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Along with its neighbours Latvia and Lithuania, it has ramped up its investment in defence in the years since and remains a staunch ally of Kyiv.

Support from allies

NATO chief Mark Rutte, speaking to journalists after Estonia’s accusation, said that “Russia continues its reckless campaign of hostile actions against NATO allies. It is trying to weaken our resolve and stop our support for Ukraine”.

“But Russia is failing. It is failing on the battlefield in Ukraine, and it is failing to undermine our unity and support for Ukraine,” he added.

The attack was condemned by several of Estonia’s allies, who also reaffirmed their support for Ukraine.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on X that Paris was in full solidarity with Estonia, adding: “The proliferation of these hostile acts reflects a dangerous headlong rush by Russia – one that will only lead it into a dead end.”

“Russia’s fingerprints are all over” the attack, Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys wrote on X, adding that Moscow’s “hostile activities do not stop at Ukraine’s borders”.

Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics added that “more support for Ukraine … will be needed and must be provided”.

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson called Estonia’s attribution of the attack “extremely serious”, and said the pattern of the attacks was “directed against Europe as a whole”.

Magdalena Andersson will likely face several challenges as she tries to get Sweden’s other left-wing parties to unite.

Sweden’s opposition leader has officially begun talks to form a coalition government after the country’s left-wing bloc won a slim majority in last week’s election.

Magdalena Andersson, leader of the centre-left Social Democrats, was asked by Parliament Speaker Andreas Norlen on Friday to begin efforts to form a new government.

Norlen’s request follows the resignation of centre-right Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, who stepped down on Thursday after the general election result was confirmed.

“I have now been tasked with exploring the possibility of forming a government. A task I undertake with great humility and will act constructively to put together a new government,” Andersson said in a statement posted on Instagram.

“My approach to the work that is now taking place is that all political forces now need to put party tactics aside and put Sweden and the Swedish people first.”

Andersson will likely face a series of challenges as she tries to persuade Sweden’s other left-wing parties to unite and form a new administration. The left-wing bloc won 176 of Parliament’s 349 seats in last week’s vote, securing a razor-thin majority of three seats.

Andersson is expected to seek the support of three other left-wing parties: the Greens, the Centre Party and the Left Party.

The socialist Left Party says Andersson will have to award some of its MPs cabinet posts to win their support. However, the liberal Centre Party insists it will not support such a government.

Andersson has until September 28 to form a government. If she fails, Kristersson, whose centre-right bloc won 173 seats, will try to form a coalition.

Coalition and minority governments are common in Sweden because the country has two major left- and right-wing blocs, both of which contain four parties.

The process of forming a government following the 2022 election took more than a month.

Tehran gives Swedish official 48 hours to leave as Iran says Stockholm is bowing down to outside pressure.

Iran has ordered a Swedish diplomat to leave the country one day after Sweden expelled an Iranian embassy official in Stockholm.

Sweden’s action was described by Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs as “unjustified” on Thursday.

“Without doubt, this action by the Swedish government is the result of the influence of the Zionist regime and an effort to disrupt the normal activities of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Embassy in Stockholm,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported.

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said its director general for Western Europe, Alireza Yousefi, summoned the Swedish ambassador in Tehran on Thursday. Yousefi protested Sweden’s policies, including its “⁠hosting of anti-Iranian terrorist elements and groups”.

The ministry said Iran would take necessary measures to safeguard its national rights and interests, including through reciprocal action.

IRNA reports that in response to Sweden’s actions, the ambassador was informed in the meeting that a Swedish diplomat in Tehran had been given 48 hours to leave Iran.

Sweden expels Iranian official

Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs announced on Wednesday that the Iranian official was asked to leave the country due to activity incompatible ‌with ⁠the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations.

The Vienna Convention defines ⁠the rules of ⁠diplomatic missions.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry also referenced Sweden’s obligations under international law, including the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, warning that disruption of the Iranian embassy’s duties would entail Sweden’s international responsibility, reported IRNA.

Swedish Foreign Minister Maria Malmer Stenergard said the decision to expel the Iranian official was taken to protect Swedish citizens and interests.

Swedish Justice Minister Gunnar Strommer told state television that the decision involved Iran’s alleged activities against “Jewish and Israeli interests”.

“We know that Iran, over a long period of time, has conducted activities that threaten security in and against Sweden,” Strommer said, adding that Iran was “making use of criminal networks” to achieve its objectives.

Opposition bloc leads in tight Swedish election with 95% counted.

Sweden’s centre-left opposition bloc has held a narrow lead as the far-right party saw its support slip, with about 95 percent of the districts counted.

The Swedish Election Authority reported on Monday that the four opposition parties were projected to hold 176 seats in the 349-seat parliament, called the Riksdag, while the remaining 173 would go to four parties that make up or support the current conservative-led government.

Results may not be clear until early votes and overseas ballots are counted on Wednesday. If the left-leaning bloc emerges victorious, it could take even longer to form a government because of ideological tensions among its parties.

Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is seeking a second term and has been leading the country since 2022 with a centre-right coalition that relies on the Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots. He could remain in office if the left-wing bloc wins its thin majority but fails to form a government.

The Sweden Democrats saw an unexpected drop in support, losing three percentage points compared with the 2022 general election, slipping from 20.5 percent to 17.5 percent. This marked the first time the far-right party suffered a loss in voter backing since it entered parliament in 2010.

Magdalena Andersson’s Social Democrats held onto first place, but a 28.1 percent share registered as one of their worst performances in more than 100 years, complicating any bid to assemble a working majority.

While the result appears somewhat out of step with recent far-right gains across parts of Europe, including Germany and Italy, the Sweden Democrats remain firmly entrenched as a dominant force in parliament.

The dip in support could be tied to changing voter priorities. In the past, many people voted for the far right, “simply because they liked their stance on refugees”, without necessarily agreeing with other policy positions, Anders Sannerstedt, a political scientist at Lund University, told AFP.

Even with a reduced vote share, the Sweden Democrats retain substantial leverage.

A closely divided legislature leaves any future government with a fragile working margin, ensuring the party remains an unavoidable force in parliament.

More broadly, the Sweden Democrats have already rewritten the boundaries of Swedish politics. Over the past decade, its once-fringe demands for strict asylum caps, easier deportations and tougher policing have been absorbed into the mainstream, with both the centre-right coalition and the Social Democrats shifting rightward to match public sentiment.

STOCKHOLM: Sweden’s national election results showed a dead heat ​on Sunday, with a partial count by the election authority indicating a one-seat majority for the opposition center-left bloc that could halt the Nordic nation’s drift away from its liberal heritage.

The bloc, headed by the Social Democrats’ party leader Magdalena Andersson, was expected to win 175 seats in the 349-seat parliament, the Riksdag, based on votes from 4,853 of Sweden’s 6,312 election districts, the election authority said.

The right-wing governing bloc of Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson was seen winning 174 seats, with ballot-counting continuing.

The election, while unlikely to change the course of Sweden’s pro-Western and pro-Ukraine stance, will decide whether Kristersson’s push toward a hard-right clampdown on migration continues.

Given the closeness of the race, ‌the winner may ‌not be known for several days, after all overseas ballots have been ​counted.

In ‌a ⁠pre-election pledge, ​Kristersson ⁠broke a longstanding taboo and said he would bring into government the Sweden Democrats, a far-right party with roots in the Nazi fringe, as he aims to create a majority-right coalition.

Many voters on the right say a win would amount to an endorsement of policies that have helped to curb gang violence and cut immigration dramatically.

But some Swedes have expressed wariness, saying Kristersson’s invitation to the far right was a step too far.

“I think it will be a long night,” said Maria Malmer Stenergard, minister for foreign affairs and a member of Kristersson’s Moderate Party. “Maybe we won’t even ⁠have the results until Wednesday when the votes that have been cast abroad arrive.”

Kristersson, who ‌has trailed in opinion polls throughout his four years in office, ‌had been catching up in the final weeks of campaigning, with Andersson ​and her Social Democrats losing ground.

Critics say the Kristersson ‌government’s immigration policies, whose incentives and penalties press migrants either to conform more closely to Swedish cultural norms ‌or leave the country, are undermining civil liberties.

Electoral success for the Sweden Democrats would be welcomed by Europe’s ascendant far-right parties, which were bolstered by the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany’s win in a German state election last week.

The far right hopes for gains in upcoming elections across Europe, with the National Rally’s bid for the French presidency next year potentially its biggest prize.

‘DOESN’T ‌LOOK LIKE SWEDEN’

While voting on Saturday in Rinkeby, near Stockholm, the Sweden Democrats’ longstanding leader Jimmie Akesson said the suburb, home to one of the country’s biggest ⁠Swedish-Somali populations, “doesn’t look like Sweden.”

Sweden ⁠was long one of Europe’s most welcoming countries for immigrants until Kristersson came to power four years ago. His government abolished permanent residency for refugees, tightened welfare rules and stepped up expulsions of those without a right to stay.

The Sweden Democrats acknowledge that their party was founded in part by neo-Nazis and white supremacists in the 1980s, but say they have eliminated such extremists from their ranks and have apologized for their past.

Cheers broke out at the Sweden Democrats’ election party after an updated projection from Swedish broadcaster SVT showed a much narrower gap than an initial exit poll, which had put the center-left opposition ahead with 51 percent of the vote.

“You cannot imagine how nervous I am right now. It feels like my life’s work is hanging in the balance,” said Ludvig Aspling, a member of parliament and immigration spokesperson for the Sweden Democrats. “It is going to be super tight. ​We still have a chance,” he said.

The far-right Sweden Democrats party could enter government for the first time if right-wing bloc wins.

Voters in Sweden are heading to the polls in an extremely close general election that will see either the far right enter government for the first time or the centre-left opposition reclaim power.

Opposition leader Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats was among the first to cast her ballot after polling stations opened at 8:00am (06:00 GMT) on Sunday.

The 59-year-old, who in 2021 became the first woman to serve as Sweden’s prime minister, voted with her husband at a school in her home municipality of Nacka, south of Stockholm.

Pre-election opinion polls have long credited the four parties in her left-wing bloc with a comfortable lead over conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s four-party alliance, which includes the far-right Sweden Democrats.

But the gap narrowed significantly in the final days of the campaign.

“It is now up to the Swedish people to decide which direction our country should take. Should we have a government entirely dominated by the Sweden Democrats? Something that has never happened in Sweden before? Or should we have a government led by me, which will steer Sweden in a new spirit of cooperation?” Andersson told reporters after voting.

Her party has pledged to boost the welfare state and help struggling households cope with the rising cost of living.

Outgoing Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is seeking a second four-year term at the helm of the European Union nation.

He has led Sweden since 2022 with a three-party centre-right coalition. It relies on outside support from the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration, far-right party that has moved towards the political mainstream, for a parliamentary majority.

If the right-wing bloc is re-elected, the Sweden Democrats can expect Cabinet posts in the next government.

Kristersson has promised to focus on improving Swedes’ everyday lives, following his government’s clampdown on organised crime and immigration.

“We want to use our new and far better preconditions to improve the lives of ordinary people … to make Sweden great again,” Kristersson told news agency AFP before the vote.

The Sweden Democrats, a party with neo-Nazi roots, took 20.5 percent of the vote in the 2022 election to become the biggest party on the right.

Kristersson announced in April that his conservative Moderates would allow the party into government if the right has a majority – though he would remain prime minister even if the Sweden Democrats are the stronger party.

Voting stations close at 8:00pm (18:00 GMT) when exit polls are expected to be published, with the first reliable results expected several hours later.

Some eight million people are eligible to vote in the election, in a country of 10.6 million where voter turnout regularly tops 80 percent.

About half of voters have cast their ballots in advance.

STOCKHOLM: Sweden began voting Sunday in a general election after a tight race that will see either the far-right enter government for the first time or the left-wing opposition reclaim power.

Opposition leader Magdalena Andersson of the Social Democrats was among the first to cast her ballot after polling stations opened at 8:00 am (0600 GMT).

Clad in a pale blue suit, the 59-year-old who in 2021-2022 became the first woman to serve as Sweden’s prime minister voted with her husband at a school in her home municipality of Nacka, south of Stockholm.

Opinion polls have long credited the four parties in her left-wing bloc with a comfortable lead over conservative Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson’s four-party alliance, which includes the far-right Sweden Democrats.

But the gap narrowed to a dead heat in the final days of the campaign.

“It is now up to the Swedish people to decide which direction our country should take. Should we have a government entirely dominated by the Sweden Democrats? Something that has never happened in Sweden before? Or should we have a government led by me, which will steer Sweden in a new spirit of cooperation?” Andersson told reporters after voting.

Her party, which governed the Scandinavian country for the better part of the 20th century and remains Sweden’s largest, has pledged to bolster the welfare state and help struggling households cope with rising costs.

‘Make Sweden great again’

Outgoing Prime Minister Kristersson has meanwhile vowed to focus on improving Swedes’ everyday lives now that his government’s clampdown on organised crime and immigration has begun to show results.

Deadly shootings and bombings by organised crime networks have decreased significantly in recent years, and asylum applications are at a record low.

“We want to use our new and far better preconditions to improve the lives of ordinary people… to make Sweden great again,” Kristersson told AFP before the vote, borrowing Donald Trump’s famous catchphrase.

His three-party minority coalition cut a deal in 2022 with the Sweden Democrats giving them influence over government policy, in particular on immigration and crime, in exchange for their support in parliament.

Over the past two decades, far-right leader Jimmie Akesson has steered the party with neo-Nazi roots into the mainstream.

It is now hoping to enter government. Kristersson has promised the far right key cabinet posts if the right-wing wins the election.

“I think it’s a very important election this year, and hopefully a lot of people will realise that we have to change course… so that everyone will feel included in society,” store manager Linda Eriksson, 48, told AFP as she voted at a polling station.

Ingrid Rudien, a 64-year-old assistant secretary, said she hoped the country “can unite together as a nation even though we may have a close result”.

‘We’ve already won!’

Akesson was confident of victory at a final election rally on Saturday in the Swedish capital.

“We’ve already won!” the 47-year-old said to thunderous applause in Stockholm’s Kungstradgarden Park.

“Sweden is becoming safer, better, and more Swedish,” he said, surrounded by blue and yellow campaign posters blaring “Make Sweden Sweden Again”.

Agneta Andersson, a 78-year-old pensioner attending the rally, told AFP she was voting for the far right.

“Like Jimmie, I want it to be like it was when I was young, in the old Sweden. I can’t cope with all this violence in society.”

Voting stations close at 8:00 pm (1800 GMT) when exit polls were to be published, with the first reliable results expected several hours later.

Some eight million people are eligible to vote in the election, in a country of 10.6 million where voter turnout regularly tops 80 percent.

Around half of voters have cast their ballots in advance.

If the right wing were to win the election, the formation of a new government would be fairly straightforward.

But as the four left-wing parties are splintered ideologically, tough negotiations would be needed to form a government even if they hold a majority.

‘It’s a magical place, and not just because of the hotel.” Standing outside the greenhouses at Högbo Brukshotell, two hours north of Stockholm, Stefan Johansson is talking about far more than hospitality. The former head chef, now responsible for sustainability at Högbo, has spent much of the past decade helping reshape the way this corner of Sweden grows, cooks and thinks about food.

The catalyst was disarmingly simple. Years ago, a journalist asked Johansson why he was cooking the food he was cooking. Like many ambitious Swedish chefs, Stefan trained in Stockholm’s top restaurants, where ingredients from around the world were only a phone call away. The question lingered long after the interview ended.

“Before, I wanted food to be spectacular; I didn’t really care where it came from,” he says. “Then I closed the window of where we source from down to the region. It was the best thing I’ve ever done.” Instead of looking farther afield for inspiration, he began looking closer to home.

Högbo Brukshotell sits in the former Högbo ironworks, a quiet pocket of forest, waterways and historic buildings north of Sandviken. The area’s industrial past is still visible in its old manor houses, smithies and mill buildings, but since the factories fell silent in the mid-19th century, the woods have reclaimed their place. Walking, cycling and cross-country ski trails now lead into the forest, while the old bruk buildings house cafes, workshops and small businesses.

Ingredients that once arrived at Högbo from far away are now grown here. The Made in Högbo project began with lamb, with animal rearing and butchery brought in-house. Vegetable production followed. Now greenhouses sit alongside kitchen gardens, producing ingredients for the restaurant and creating opportunities for people who might otherwise struggle to find work.

Refugees from Myanmar helped establish some of the early growing projects. New arrivals from the Democratic Republic of the Congo have joined the initiative, splitting their time between Swedish language classes and work placements, their influence visible in the rows of papaya, bananas and other plants rarely associated with Sweden. There are plans for an aquaponics system that will combine greenhouse cultivation with tilapia fish farming. In farm buildings there are now also a bakery making sourdough and cakes, a microbrewery run by one of the chefs, a dairy making fresh cheeses, and an excellent deli.

Högbo isn’t the only place asking these questions about food provenance. Over several days travelling through Gästrikland and neighbouring Hälsingland in eastern Sweden, I discover a network of millers, fishers, distillers, cheese makers and chefs connected by a shared idea: that food should reflect the place it comes from.

At Gammelstilla, an old ironworks has become a small whisky distillery. In the village of Gästrike-Hammarby, The Old Mill is now an award-winning restaurant run by Bogdan Ioan Gheorghe and Ellinor Andersson, with a tasting menu that features a roll-call of local producers alongside surprising ingredients such as the invasive species Japanese knotweed.

At Bergmans Fisk, in Norrsundet, low islands scatter across the bay and the Baltic stretches east towards Finland beyond the wooden smokehouses. The business is run by a seventh-generation fishing family whose connection to these waters stretches back more than a century. Inside the smokehouses, salmon hangs in neat rows, a slow process, refined over generations.

But for traditions – and the business – to survive, they have to evolve and diversify, Dennis Bergman explains. In 2020, the family opened a waterfront restaurant overlooking the bay where much of their fish is caught. We enjoy a smorgasbord of smoked salmon and böckling (hot smoked herring) piled on dark rye crispbreads. The family also operates a travelling fish van serving coastal communities and is planning a small hotel: new ventures that will help secure the future of old skills.

Driving north through the deep pine forests and lush fields of Hälsingland, I keep spotting hand-painted signs for potatoes, eggs and strawberries. Outside red-painted farm buildings, honesty boxes sit beside stacks of produce.

At Teve Kvarn, a mill south of Järvsö, I meet Anna Larsson, a seventh-generation miller. She sources grain from roughly a 150km (93-mile) radius, selling seed to farmers and then buying back the grain to ensure high-quality flour production. Only a handful of mills of this type remain in Sweden. Anna points out her newest machine – it was installed in 1930.

Beside the traditional wooden mill, shiny stills are visible in a tall glass building. This is the Tevsjö distillery run by Anna’s husband, Jonas, producing vodka, gin and aquavit using grain from the mill. The distillery runs on hydroelectric power generated from the nearby stream, and has already increased its production capacity more than 10 times on the strength of the products’ popularity – while creating 10 new local jobs.

At nearby Järvsö Lanthandel, I meet chef Tobias Annerhult who runs the general store and restaurant. For Annerhult, local sourcing isn’t just desirable, it’s his entire food philosophy. “I only buy salt, pepper, sugar and oil,” he tells me. “I don’t use stabilisers. Nothing gets thrown away; that feeds the creative process. Our philosophy is to grow through limitations.”

In a climate where vegetables arrive in abundance for only part of the year, preserving is essential. Annerhult pickles, cures and ferments local produce, including meat for charcuterie.

Tonight, we too have to work for our dinner, taking a cooking class that Tobias offers for private group bookings. We have brought produce collected across the region: flour from the centuries-old mill; cheese and potatoes from honesty boxes; fish from a family that has worked the same waters for generations; and vegetables from local greenhouses.

Together, we make fermented pea pancakes with sweet preserved apple and salty local goat’s cheese; bouncy fresh pasta using Anna’s wheat and eggs from Tobias’s chickens, served simply with burrata-style cheese, brown butter and garden herbs; and warm cake with the first of the season’s rhubarb.

It’s a meal that tastes all the better for knowing the stories and people behind it. Combining preserved and fermented ingredients with the season’s freshest produce harks back to traditional approaches to cooking and eating. Today’s chefs are reclaiming that philosophy, and the results are delicious.

It perhaps helps answer the question that changed Stefan’s career all those years ago. Why cook this food, in this place? Because when food truly belongs somewhere, it becomes a way of understanding that place too.

The trip was provided by Visit Sweden. For more information visit gastrikland.se and destinationhalsingland.se. Högbo Brukshotell has doubles from 1,995 Swedish kronor (£155) B&B

When her home burned down in the Eaton fire, artist Susannah Mills felt lost and adrift — but never alone. Her home was part of an Altadena artists collective called JJU, or John Joyce University, named after a beloved carpenter who lived there for 26 years. And although the residents were forced to scatter in the wake of the January 2025 devastation, they remained in contact, looking for ways to support one another through what is still an ongoing process of recovery.

A few months after her loss, Mills was accepted into an artist residency at BKN, a retreat in the northern Stockholm Archipelago, where she expanded her watercolor practice from relatively small works to large scale, and explored installation. Like JJU, BKN prides itself on building community, and while there Mills began talking with BKN curator Anna Viola Hallberg about bringing other L.A. fire survivors to Sweden to experience the same sense of connection and relief Mills was feeling.

Hallberg had already been thinking along those lines and suggested they create another residency to do just that. In the fall of 2025, Mills and Hallberg, with the help of another L.A. artist, Rick Gradone, started an organization named Los Angeles Wildfire Survivors, or L.A.W.S., and raised the funds to send 13 Eaton and Malibu-based artists to BKN for two months.

The result was life-altering for the artists, most of whom were still working to rebuild from the devastating loss — and some of whom had been so occupied with the logistics of recovery that they had not been able to make time to work.

“It creates a network, and people who work together in the residency continue to help each other,” said Hallberg in a recent interview. “So there’s a really true new arts community that lingers beyond the residency.”

It soon became clear to the team behind L.A.W.S. that more needed to be done, and they solicited another round of applications for a residency, set to begin later this month at Pilchuck Glass School in Washington state. Eight Eaton fire survivors have been selected in a competitive process, and plans are in the works to bring another cohort of artists to Sweden next Spring.

“We want to expand this outside of Los Angeles ultimately, because there are fires everywhere and there is climate disaster everywhere,” Mills said, explaining that the group’s mission is growing as changing weather patterns result in escalating cataclysm and displacement of artists globally.

“The media focuses on the disaster really fast, and they don’t understand just how long the recovery takes,” Gradone said in a recent interview. “So this puts some kind of resource in place where people can continue to to get help, especially artists who lose everything that they’ve made, lose their studio spaces and homes. That can’t be recovered in six months.”

L.A.W.S. operates as a not-for-profit and has applied for official nonprofit status, a process that can take some time in California. It is also actively looking for fiscal sponsorship. Up until now the group has relied on its personal connections to raise money to support its artist residencies. Mills’ partner, Brian Huskey, is a comedian and actor who has rallied celebrity friends to auction off small pieces of art on cards in support of L.A.W.S. But there is a need for more help as the group grows.

“Word has really caught on with people who want to have this experience, which I’m really happy about,” said Mills.

I’m arts editor Jessica Gelt, wishing I could turn back time, Cher-like, to an era before the world fast-tracked climate change with its laissez faire approach to global warming. This is your arts and culture news for the week.

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

Bruce Willis, left, talks with director M. Night Shyamalan on the set of the 2000 film “Unbreakable.”

(Frank Masi / Touchstone Pictures)

Unbreakable
M. Night Shyamalan’s 2000 superhero thriller with a twist stars Bruce Willis, Charlayne Woodard, Robin Wright, Samuel L. Jackson and Spencer Treat Clark.
7 p.m. Vidiots, The Eagle, 4884 Eagle Rock Blvd. vidiotsfoundation.org

SATURDAY

“the wheat leaping constantly from the shute,” Marley Freeman (2026). Oil, acrylic on linen, 58 by 54 inches.

(Marley Freeman / Parker Gallery)

Marley Freeman
The artist’s new exhibition of paintings, “worthless serpentine,” takes its title from the writings of Joan Didion.
Opening, 6-8 p.m. Saturday; 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Tuesday–Saturday, through Oct. 31. Parker Gallery, 6700 Melrose Ave. parkergallery.com

SUNDAY

Doyle Lane: Master Of Clay
The first major museum retrospective of the Los Angeles ceramic artist features more than 100 works from the 1950s through the 1980s, from functional pottery to monumental murals, as well as archival documents.
Through Feb 22. The Huntington, 1151 Oxford Road, San Marino. huntington.org

Marie Atoinette
A 20th anniversary screening of the semibiographical period film with a postpunk- and new wave-fueled soundtrack with writer-director Sofia Coppola and star Kirsten Dunst in person. Coppola and photographer Andrew Durham will sign copies of their new book, “Making Marie Antoinette,” at the Academy Museum Store in a separately ticketed event prior the screening.
6:30 p.m. Academy Museum, 6067 Wilshire Blvd. academymuseum.org

TUESDAY

Andrea Bocelli performs live in Vienna on Aug. 22.

(Thomas Kronsteiner / Getty Images)

Andrea Bocelli
The Italian tenor arrives at the Hollywood Bowl for two nights on his Romanza 30th Anniversary World Tour. 8 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

WEDNESDAY

Elliott Hundley
“Book of Sand” is an exhibition of new paintings, sculptures and tapestries focusing on the artist’s “own exuberant internal universe” created through compiling paint, paper cutouts, string, encaustic and other found materials.
Artist led walk–through, 11 a.m.; opening reception, 6-8 p.m.; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Oct. 24. Regen Projects, 6750 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles. regenprojects.com

The Peterson Show
The world premiere of Janine Nabers’ play about a group of former child stars from a beloved TV show about a Black family come together after a scandal entangles their famous TV father. Directed by Michelle Bossy.
Previews, 8 p.m. Wednesday-Friday, opens, 8 p.m. Saturday (sold out), runs through Oct. 26. Atwater Village Theatre, 3269 Casitas Ave. echotheatercompany.com

THURSDAY

The Case-Book of C. Auguste Dupin
The world premiere of a new play adapted and directed by John Strysik, based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe.
7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through Oct. 18. Mary Levin Cutler Theatre, 241 S. Moreno Drive, Beverly Hills. theatre40.org

The Ford/Hill Project
A Waterwell Production created by Lee Sunday Evans and Elizabeth Marvel, this documentary theater piece is based on the verbatim Senate testimony of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford during Supreme Court confirmation hearings, 30 years apart. The cast includes Rosemarie DeWitt, Betty Gabriel, Dulé Hill and Jerry O’Connell.
8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday. REDCAT, 631 W. 2nd St., downtown L.A. redcat.org

The SoCal scene

A view of the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles from a garden.

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)

Hey, have you heard? The Lucas Museum of Narrative Arts will open Sept. 22 and began member previews late last week. Just kidding. Of course you have heard, because hot takes currently abound on the new $1-billion museum. Love it or hate it, it’s here to stay, and Team Arts spent the week rolling out a spate of stories explaining how we got here, as well as what you can find in the shiny new 300,000-square-foot Ma Yansong-designed building.

Times film critic Amy Nicholson wrote about what “Star Wars” fans can expect from the new museum and contributed to a piece about 11 must-see things while you’re there. We also commissioned a handy artist-drawn map of the place that should help you navigate the 100,000 square feet of gallery space with its more than 30 discrete galleries arranged by theme. Finally, Times contributor Jane Horowitz wrote two stories: one about whether or not the museum’s disregard for established art hierarchies will upend the art world; and another on how the museum’s epic search for a forever home ended in L.A.’s Exposition Park.

I also wrote about a lawsuit that a contractor filed against the museum claiming unpaid work that shines fresh light on the Museum’s Exposition Park land deal.

Randolph Thompson, Desiree Mee Jung, Adam J. Smith, Nicole Javier and Julanne Chidi Hill in “Pericles” at Boston Court Pasadena.

(Brian Hashimoto)

Times theater critic Charles McNulty spent an evening at Boston Court Pasadena watching Ellen McLaughlin’s modern verse translation of Shakespeare’s “Pericles,” which takes place at a disaster relief center, where anxious evacuees improvise a play to escape their fear of the storm they are fleeing. “It’s hard to allow yourself to fully believe in the incredible turn of events when the prevailing attitude is so emphatically tongue-in-cheek,” McNulty wrote of the West Coast premiere.

McNulty also had lunch in Manhattan with playwright Samuel D. Hunter, who has two plays running in L.A.: “Grangeville,” which McNulty calls “Los Angeles’ most acclaimed theatrical offering of the summer” and has been extended at Ruskin Group Theatre through Sept. 21; and “A Case for the Existence of God,” in a recently opened Rogue Machine production at the Matrix Theater’s Henry Murray Stage. “Drama in Hunter’s hands is built around an encounter. He doesn’t force his characters to jump through hoops,” writes McNulty in a profile. “He listens to them, as they navigate their complicated feelings, closely tracking the way their intersecting paths lead them toward incremental revelation.”

Paintings from the private collection of the late music executive Clive Davis, estimated to fetch more than $35 million, are heading for auction at Christie’s in November.

Culture news

Lucien Smith attends the Hugo Boss Prize 2014 ceremony at Guggenheim Museum in New York City.

(Dimitrios Kambouris)

Lucien Smith, a Los Angeles–born multidisciplinary artist who garnered loads of attention in 2010s art scene, has died at 37.

IAMA Theatre Company is set to launch its ninth annual New Works Festival, which will take place Sept. 14-28 at Atwater Village Theatre, and will feature staged readings of six new plays. Tickets are $18 for each reading and can be found at iamatheatre.com. This year’s festival includes “The Half-Sibling Play” by Agyeiwaa Asante; “All Remaining Assets” by Serena Berman; “The Starters” by Laura Winters; “Betta Mus Come” by Alicia Carroll; “Werewolves” by Liba Vaynberg; and “The Great Florida Python Challenge” by John Lavelle.

Additional tumult is coming for the Smithsonian Institution as secretary Lonnie Bunch announced he will step down from his leadership position. The news comes in the midst of President Trump’s pressure campaign on the organization and his administration’s attempts to alter what Smithsonian museums include in their exhibitions.

— Jessica Gelt

And last but not least

Oh, no! In-N-Out is making tweaks to staples like buns and ketchup!

*Some interviewees asked that their surnames be withheld because of the political nature of the interviews.

Malmo, Sweden – A very Swedish political tradition is playing out in Malmo, the country’s third-largest city. Rows of twee campaign booths, known as “election cottages”, are packed into a corner of the central square.

National polls have Sunday’s election on a knife-edge, with the centre-left opposition bloc led by the Social Democrats just a few percentage points ahead of the right-wing group – a gap that has tightened over the past month.

In the middle of the row, representatives of the Left Party and the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD), bitter rivals from opposite ends of the political spectrum, campaign a metre apart.

Migration is a key election issue. Multicultural Malmo, with more than a third of the city’s 368,000 residents born outside Sweden, has become the centre of the debate.

For the right, the city represents failures of integration, a cautionary tale it says of what happens when immigration goes unchecked. Beyond Sweden, Malmo draws disproportionate interest.

In 2017, the populist English politician Nigel Farage branded it the “rape capital of Europe”, a claim a leading Swedish criminologist dismissed as nonsense, while Germany’s far-right AfD has used it in its narratives about the dangers of immigration.

Strength in diversity

In the city’s town hall, a grand building with a Dutch Renaissance-style facade, Anfal Mahdi, an opposition councillor in Malmo for the Left Party, sits amid the splendour of green velvet chairs, historical oil paintings and royal portraits.

Right-wing politicians ignore the socioeconomic challenges of living in the areas built under Sweden’s “Million Programme”, she said, referring to an ambitious scheme to build one million new homes between 1965 and 1974.

It began as a social housing initiative for working-class Swedish families. In later decades, as many of those families moved out, the apartments were allocated to migrant and refugee newcomers.

Observers say what began as a utopian welfare project gradually became the physical framework of today’s segregated suburbs.

Mahdi, whose family fled Iraq after the Gulf War, grew up in one of these areas during cuts to the welfare state that had defined modern Sweden, as public spending tightened after its early-1990s economic crisis.

But what they lacked in welfare, they made up for in diversity, she said.

“I had friends from Bosnia, Palestine, Somalia and when we grew up we did not have much, but we leant on each other,” she said.

The city’s most famous son, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, grew up in Rosengard, a Million Programme estate on Malmo’s eastern side that police still classify as a “particularly vulnerable area”. The famous footballer regularly credits the area for shaping the skill and confidence that defined his career.

“It’s often in these neighbourhoods that people can shine; there is a sense of community that doesn’t exist elsewhere,” said Adam*, a 20-year-old florist who also grew up in one of the areas Sweden officially labels “vulnerable”.

He rejects the stereotypes associated with Malmo, saying young people here are far more concerned with the cost of living, finding work and the everyday pressures of getting by.

Mahdi shared this sentiment, saying “wallet politics”, relating to healthcare and unemployment, are central issues for all sections of society.

Healthcare tops voters’ concerns nationally, while unemployment in Malmo, at around 11 percent, is among the highest of any Swedish municipality.

But not everyone sees it that way.

Lena, a 78-year-old campaigner for the Moderate Party, which leads the right-wing bloc, believes integration along with schooling are taking centre stage. At the last election cycle, it was care for the elderly, she said.

Jacob, a 19-year-old resident who was speaking to representatives of various parties, said a taboo has been broken with more young people turning right, including towards the SD, now polling as Sweden’s second-largest party.

The far-right party with neo-Nazi roots could enter government for the first time if the right-wing bloc wins: Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has promised cabinet posts, including the migration portfolio.

‘Divisive politics’

Sara, a woman in her twenties of Palestinian heritage, said “divisive politics” are normal now. The rhetoric around immigration and Islam in particular has left her feeling some “don’t want integration or even assimilation, they just want you to leave”.

Under the current right-wing government, many teenagers who grew up in Sweden with their families were ordered to leave on turning 18 while their parents were allowed to stay. The government paused the separation in March after a public outcry and moved to reform in June.

In February, the Swedish Migration Agency ordered an eight-month-old boy born in the country, Emanuel, to be deported alone to Iran while the rest of his family kept their permits.

The system concerns Binto Drammeh, whose father is of Gambian heritage.

“Our uncle was made to leave as he didn’t meet the income threshold,” she told Al Jazeera.

The government has repeatedly raised the salary threshold for work permits, most recently in June, when it increased from 80 to 90 percent of the Swedish median wage.

Failing to meet it could ultimately lead to a deportation order.

Criminal networks

Crime is another main election issue.

With a population of 10.6 million, Sweden has one of Europe’s highest rates of deadly gun violence, even though lethal violence fell last year to its lowest level since 2012.

Among the challenges, criminal networks are recruiting children as young as 12 to transport weapons, sell drugs and carry out contract killings. In 2024, Danish gangs were found to be hiring Swedish teenagers to carry out shootings and bombings.

How to tackle the problem divides the parties.

The right prioritises punishment and deterrence, while the left and centre-left emphasise tackling root socioeconomic causes, rehabilitation and preventive social work. The lines are not always clean, however: the Social Democrats backed lowering the age of criminal responsibility, while the Left, Green and Centre parties voted against it.

TikTok politics

Young voters appear more engaged than at the last election.

Lena of the Moderate Party said: “I haven’t met one person who said they won’t vote,” while Mahdi said the Palestine issue has had a galvanising effect.

“Right now, all the posts on my TikTok page are from party accounts; they got a lot of likes and views and many videos are trending,” said Jacob, the 19-year-old resident.

Yet some are undecided about whom to vote for, partly because of Sweden’s unusual bloc system. Built on the idea of consensus, it means a vote for one party’s policies may be diluted in coalition, or are hard to push through.

“I will be honest, I have not voted yet,” Adam said, as he looked out at the array of campaign booths next to his flower stand. “Young people are interested in politics, but many of us think that no matter who comes, nothing will really change.”

THE holiday destinations without the crowds that want MORE tourism have been revealed.

Intrepid has released its annual ‘Not Hot’ List, partnering with Globetrenders to look at alternative destinations to visit instead of the popular, oversaturated places.

Using both Intrepid’s local leaders and destination experts, along with trend forecasts, the study looks at three key elements – areas with few visitor numbers, their ability to welcome more tourists, and any new infrastructure for 2027 such as big events or transport systems.

When it comes to Europe, you might be surprised to realise there are still some Greek islands that don’t have the tourist crowds.

Intrepid named Alonnisos as a “not hot” destination which is a more sustainable holiday experience in the region.

They said: “Alonnisos is a slice of paradise that plays host to an array of aquatic and land-based delights, including the endlessly entertaining – and endangered – Mediterranean monk seals.”

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The island is actually home to the National Marine Park of Alonnisos and Northern Sporades (Europe’s largest marine protected area), as well as Greece’s only underwater museum, the Peristera shipwreck.

It remains off the radar for most tourists as you can’t fly to the island, with it only accessible by ferry or private yacht.

In 2024, it saw just 70,000 tourists – compared to its neighbour Skiathos’ 500,000 or Santorini’s 3.4million.

Intrepid’s eight-day Sail Greece excursion which includes a trip to Alonnisos starts from £2,102.

Another European destination highlighted was Liepāja, a beach city in Latvia.

Nicknamed the Baltic Mediterranean, next year it will become Europe’s Capital of Culture, meaning hundreds of events, festivals and shows.

Just under 120,000 tourists visited last year, meaning you’ll get the five-mile, white sand beach all to yourself.

To get there, Ryanair fly to Palanga from London Stansted for £25, which is around an hour from Liepāja

Sweden‘s Dalsland made the top 10 list as well, for being “unspoilt and unexplored”.

Around two hours from both Gothenburg and Oslo, it is known as Sweden‘s ‘Lake District’ for all of its outdoor activities from wild camping to kayaking and hiking.

Just 320,000 people visited last year, compared to the capital of Stockholm which saw 16million.

Other destinations on Intrepid’s list included Samburu National Reserve in Kenya, named for being the place for both “crowd-averse safari fans” and an “emerging astrotourism destination”.

Georgia is fast becoming a new holiday destination, after both British Airways and easyJet launched direct flights to the capital Tbilisi last year.

But Intrepid praised Mestia as an alternative, quieter place which, while popular with neighbouring tourism, is set to become bigger with international tourism due to new infrastructure plans.

Otherwise it is popular as an outdoor adventure holiday destination, with both hiking and skiing experiences.

Also mentioned was the Northern Highlands in Jordan, a green “alternative to the country’s iconic landscapes” while “Arctic tourism” was highlighted for visiting Whitehorse in Canada.

Timor-Leste, one of South East Asia’s least-visited destinations was also highlighted, with new flight routes to connect the capital of Dili to major hubs such as Kuala Lumpar.

Sri Lanka‘s first long-distance walking trail Pekoe Trail (with a new 10-day Intrepid trip launched) and Chile‘s ‘route 7’ Carretera Austral rounded out the list.

I wasn’t exactly in “Sunday best”, but I had made some effort. Well, I’d changed my underwear for the first time in a couple of days and given myself a baby-wipe bath. Still, as we filed into the chapel at Alkavare, I felt more a member of an expedition than a congregation. We sat on the low wooden benches, waterproof jackets rustling and leather walking boots stamping on the flagstone floor to keep warm. Fortunately, the priest, Mogens Amstrup Jacobsen, appeared to be a “man of the Gore-Tex”, as well as a man of the cloth, as he unzipped his own black rain jacket to reveal his dog collar. As the service began, the Arctic wind whipped through cracks in the dry stone walls, insulated only with reindeer hair, and candles flickered in their brass sconces.

I had hiked to Alkavare following the Präststigen, or “Priests’ trail”, a 37-mile (60km) route from Kvikkjokk that could stake a claim as Europe’s wildest pilgrimage route, and certainly one of its most beautiful. The Präststigen follows the path that priests would once have taken to the chapel, built in 1788, to perform a service each summer, and today, on the last weekend in July, intrepid hikers and perseverant pilgrims can attend that same service.

Alkavare sits on the western border of Sweden’s Sarek national park, home to many of the country’s highest mountains and steepest valleys, yet with no campsites or tourist huts and only scant sections of the more famous Kungsleden trail. There are no other marked paths and to hike here means wild camping, a heavy backpack and a sense of adventure. It was described by famed Swedish diplomat Dag Hammarskjöld in 1926 as vår sista stora vildmark – “our last great wilderness”.

“I hate it when people use the term ‘wilderness’,” Christian Heimrot from Laponia Adventures, a local guiding operator, told me, as I joined him on the research exhibition for a new Präststigen group trip launching next year. “This is a living landscape, people have lived, worked and shaped this land for thousands of years.” Indeed, Sarek national park, (as part of the wider Laponia region), was recognised as a Unsesco World Heritage Site in 1996 for both its cultural and natural value.

The Sami, Europe’s last Indigenous population, have braided themselves into these landscapes as tightly and beautifully as the thread of pewter in their traditional handicrafts. The Sami word for the Laponia area is Sápmi, the same word they use to refer to themselves, highlighting the indelible link between people and their environment. Sarek sits on the Sami’s traditional reindeer herding grounds. While they might now use motorcycles and snowmobiles to follow and herd the reindeer, their knowledge of and kinship with this landscape remains undimmed.

So, not wilderness, then, but certainly wild. To even reach the start of the Präststigen, I had crossed the Arctic Circle on the road north from Luleå, met with Christian at his warehouse in Jokkmokk (home to the famous Sami winter markets each February) to load up our rucksacks for the six-night trip, and journeyed an hour farther west to the town of Kvikkjokk. From there the trailhead was a short boat ride across Sakkat lake.

The first section of the trail climbed steeply, switchbacks tightly coiled in birch woodland; wild blueberries and cloudberries littered the path. Eventually we left the woodland and reached the ridge for our first proper view of Sarek. Away to the north was the cloud-covered summit of Bårddetjåhkkå, where in 1911 Swedish geologist Axel Hamberg built an observatory to conduct meteorological and glacial studies.

We slept soundly, as we eased into the rhythms of wild camping – water collected from a gin-clear lake, a hearty supper of reindeer stew, and an eye mask to keep out the midnight sun. The next day we hiked deeper into Sarek via the Vállevágge, the skies the blue of the Swedish flag, the silence only disrupted by the occasional breath of wind.

We were following the guidebook Priest’s Path by Hans Fowelin (currently only published in Swedish), and while there was no marked trail, Fowelin had plotted a path of cairns we were supposedly to follow. While some were solidly built square towers, most were little more than one rock propped up against another, mere whispers of waymarkers in a landscape of scree and moraine.

Alongside the familiar buttercups and heather there were bright blue blossoms of mountain gentian, red ptarmigan berries and otherworldly looking wild angelica, a source of vitamin C for the Sami. Sarek was visited by botanist Carl Linnaeus during his epic expedition through northern Sweden in 1732, and the first part of the Priest’s trail is sometimes referred to as Linnaeus’s trail.

On our fourth day of hiking Alkavare chapel appeared on a bluff above the glacial blue waters of Alggajavvre lake, surrounded by high peaks and valleys. It was utterly beautiful. I had a grin on my wind-burnt face for most of the day, one that even wading across rivers (a common feature of hiking in Sarek), shin-high in glacial meltwater, failed to dim.

After rowing across the Miellätno river, using one of the rowing boats left on each bank by the park rangers, we climbed up to the chapel late on Saturday evening where Jacobsen greeted us with a beaming smile.

Over tea, he told us he had been dropped off by helicopter at Alkavare with his family on Friday morning and this was his first time leading the service here. Others in the diocese no longer volunteered. “It is physical, hard work and the days are long,” he said, before heading off to re-tar the chapel’s roof and fix one of the rowing boats that had come loose and floated away down the river – returned, later, swinging beneath a helicopter.

Sunday mass began promptly at 11am the following morning for our small band of pilgrims (we numbered 11 in total, including the priest). The altar had a simple wooden cross and cloths on loan from the church in Jokkmokk. They were in the poster paint palate of traditional Sami clothing and a reminder that it was for the Sami that the chapel had been originally built – not an act of benevolence, but as part of the forced Christianisation and eradication of their shamanistic beliefs in the 18th century.

After the service we sat outside for coffee and pastries, before beginning our hike home. Christian was keen that we hiked via Sweden’s point of inaccessibility or otillgänglighetspunkten, just over the border from Sarek in the Padjelanta national park. This is the country’s point furthest from any road or town, about 31 miles (50km) in fact, and is often cited as western Europe’s remotest too. Marked with no cairn or monument, just a circle of quartz stones and a trio of reindeer antlers, it felt no more or less remote than most of the previous week’s hiking. And I was struck that what made Sarek and the Präststigen special wasn’t just the scenery, as beautiful as it was, it was the people – the Sami, Hamberg and Linneaus, and the motley congregation we’d briefly joined, and it was a route firmly deserving of more visitors. “I told you,” Christian said, grinning, “It isn’t a wilderness.”

The trip was provided by Laponia Adventures, which will lead a guided, small-group trip along the Priest’s Path to Alkavare in July 2027, and offers equipment rental and advice for independent hikers. For more information on Sarek national park and northern Sweden, visit arcticsweden.com