The alarm was raised about the fire at the Narvavägen building housing the embassies of Portugal, Tunisia, Argentina and Belgium as well as apartments and a restaurant at around lunchtime on Wednesday afternoon.

"The operation is still ongoing. Around 14 people have been affected by the fire, with no serious injuries but smoke and minor injuries," Stockholm police press spokesperson Kjell Lindgren told The Local.

"The latest information from the fire fighters is that there's no one left in the building, but they're still working to extinguish the fire in the apartment section."

Lindgren said police were looking to speak to a person who they "think could have something to do with" the incident, with a description released to the public in an effort to locate him.

Asked if it's thought the fire was started deliberately, Lindgren affirmed "we think it was lit by someone, which is why we've started an investigation into arson".

An arrest was made in central Stockholm just after 2pm on Wednesday, with a man arrested suspected of arson on reasonable grounds (the lower degree of suspicion according to Swedish law).</s>STOCKHOLM — Police in Sweden say they have detained a man his 50s who is suspected of arson at the Portuguese Embassy in Stockholm.

A large fire broke out shortly before noon Wednesday in a downtown building that also houses the embassies of Argentina, Belgium and Tunisia.

Police spokesman Mats Karlsson told Swedish public broadcaster SVT that 14 people received medical assistance and some have been taken to a hospital to be treated for smoke inhalation.

He says none of them are in a serious condition.

Police say they think the fire most likely started at the Portuguese Embassy. Tabloid Aftonbladet reported that the detained man had visited one of the embassies in the building before the blaze broke out.</s>The scene at the Portuguese embassy

Police, who are not ruling out arson, want to question a tall, bearded man in his 50s in connection with the incident.

The fire begun in the Narvavägen in Stockholm, which is home to several embassies.

Twelve fire trucks are at the scene with about 80 firefighters.

Roger Steffen, management operator at Storstockholm's fire department, said the fire was on several levels.</s>Police are chasing a bearded man in his 50s after the blaze broke out.

So far at least 14 people have been injured in the fire at Portugal's embassy building in Stockholm, Sweden.

12 fire trucks and 50 firefighters are currently at the scene.</s>Cowi has continued to expand its presence in Stockholm with the acquisition of a heating, ventilation and sanitation consultancy.

PB Teknik’s operations will be integrated with Cowi, and the 25 employees will work from Cowi's newly renovated offices in Solna, Stockholm.

The acquisition brings experience in compressed air and gas systems, medical gases, sprinklers, cooling and water treatment — all of which Cowi sees as reinforcing its position in pharmaceutical, healthcare buildings, laboratories and clean rooms, as well as cooling and bathing facilities.

Cowi has almost doubled its operations in Stockholm over the past few years. “Our aim is broaden and bolster our building and property expertise, including our offer to the market, and we are very happy to have gained access to PB Teknik’s experience and know-how,” said Håkan Adelwald, senior vice president buildings at Cowi Sweden.

“I am convinced that merging with a company like Cowi means our operations can continue developing in an environment that meets the expectations of both our surroundings and our employees,” said Patrik Bergström, CEO and joint owner of PB Teknik.

Last year, Cowi acquired project management consultancy Projektbyrån as part of its recent efforts to grow its operations in the Stockholm region.
• Click here to return to the previous page
• Buy & Sell Construction Plant Machinery online with TCiTrader.co.uk. Find new, used & reconditioned Construction Equipment. Click here to view Construction Equipment Classifieds.</s>HELSINKI, Finland, April 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Citycon has sold Åkermyntan in Stockholm, Sweden to Artmax AB. In addition, Citycon has sold adjacent residential building rights to a Swedish property developer. The total purchase price including residential building rights amounts to approximately EUR 30 million, which is above the asset's latest IFRS fair value. The transaction was closed on 31 March 2018.

"This divestment of Åkermyntan is a natural step in our strategy to refine our Nordic portfolio and focus on larger grocery-anchored shopping centres in urban crosspoints. We will use the proceeds from the divestment to strengthen our balance sheet and to fund our development pipeline," says Tom Lisiecki, Chief Development Officer at Citycon.



CITYCON OYJ

For further information, please contact:

Marcel Kokkeel

Chief Executive Officer, Citycon

Tel +358 40 154 6760

marcel.kokkeel@citycon.com

is a leading owner, manager and developer of urban, grocery-anchored shopping centres in the Nordic region, managing assets that total almost EUR 5 billion and with market capitalisation of close to EUR 2 billion. Citycon is No. 1 shopping centre owner in Finland and among the market leaders in Norway, Sweden and Estonia.

Citycon has also established a foothold in Denmark. Citycon has investment-grade credit ratings from Moody's (Baa1) and Standard & Poor's (BBB). Citycon Oyj's share is listed in Nasdaq Helsinki.</s>When Steve Bannon visits Sweden in the spring – if indeed he does – he will presumably hole up in a Stockholm hotel to receive like-minded anti-establishment conservatives and plot Trumpian tumult in northern Europe. The Sweden Democrats have said that meeting Bannon isn't top priority but someone will show up for him, just in case.

The conversation will turn to the election in September and how the distorted international image of Sweden as a country in crisis can be turned on the nation's voters to persuade them to return a populist-dominated government.

The news outlet Bannon used to run, Breitbart, has long been one of the main purveyors of an image of Sweden in crisis, consistently painting a bleak picture of riots, rape and ruin. But as Breitbart's audience shrinks, far larger and more mainstream news brands are picking up the theme and running with it. The New York Times recently gave the political-correctness-gone-mad theme a boost with an article about Sweden's gender-blending pre-schools, while the Times of London declared that teens with rifles were 'roaming' the country's streets.

What's remarkable about the 'Bad Sweden' narrative is not that it is so compelling, but that it has gone unchallenged by Swedish politicians for so long.

In the five years since the Stockholm riots of 2013, Sweden's politicians have had countless opportunities to challenge this wave of negativity. That was the point at which the 'Good Sweden' story being told by the world, in which all is perfect up here in the land of ABBA, Ikea and Volvo, was elbowed aside by a new, negative story about the place.

For five nights, there was unrest in the Swedish capital's suburbs and suddenly the country's detractors had a new story to tell about Sweden: somewhere in the ashes of the riots, paradise was lost. It wasn't what was happening; it was where it was happening. The socialist experiment had failed. Multiculturalism was a disaster. Political correctness collapses, a victim of its own spinelessness.

In fact, only 29 people were arrested for causing damage costing 63 million SEK, compared to 3,000 people arrested in England during riots two years earlier which caused 2 billion SEK worth of damage. But the international media unleashed the hounds of schadenfreude.

If a few of Sweden's most erudite English-speaking politicians had ridden out beyond the country's borders to meet the international media charge in 2013, perhaps they could have stopped this negative narrative dead in its tracks. They could have challenged the hyperbole. Put matters in context.

Perhaps they were focused on the national debate at the time, which was fierce. Perhaps they were simply unaware that the world had starting talking about their country in very different terms. Or perhaps they just didn't care: not their voters, after all.

Five years later the 'Bad Sweden' narrative has developed its own layered mythology (including the banning of Christmas lights in Jönköping and Malmö as the rape capital of Europe), with locations such as Rosengård and Rinkeby attaining a global infamy. News outlets like Mail Online and Fox News use Sweden as their go-to examples of the dangers of political correctness. Politicians such as Nigel Farage continue to add to the mythology while milking it for their own ends.

And still, Sweden's politicians fail to engage, fail to answer the accusations being made against their nation. Maybe they just think that The Local will do it for them. But most likely they still don't realise that by ignoring the international debate about Sweden they are ignoring the concerns of their own constituents.

Swedes consume international media more than ever before and thanks to social media, articles about Sweden published in New York, London or Berlin are only a share away.

Facebook and Reddit are the fourth and fifth most popular web sites in the country, while Omni, a news sharing app, is as likely to link to international news sites as Swedish sites. Mail Online, which in 2016 was accused by Sweden's embassy in London of running 'a campaign against Swedish migration policy' has over 800,000 monthly readers in Sweden. That's more than most Swedish news sites.

See also: 'When a US president speaks about Sweden, the fallout can last a long time'

To abuse geology for the sake of a metaphor, Sweden is no longer an island. News flows out of the country, gets decontextualized and reshaped to suit the agenda of whichever news outlet picks it up, and then flows back in through social media to influence Swedish voters.

Only the Sweden Democrats seem to have understood this. They were the quickest off the mark last year when President Trump referred to 'last night in Sweden', securing a lead spot in the Wall Street Journal to cheerlead his statement. Within hours of Stefan Löfven's press conference with Donald Trump in March, Jimmie Åkesson gave an 'exclusive interview' to Breitbart, describing Löfven's rejection of the term 'no-go zones' as fake news.

Meanwhile, the rest of Sweden's politicians stand silently in the corner, having the usual conversations with the usual crowd, vaguely aware that the strangers on the other side of the international media room are badmouthing them. But even as their audience drifts away towards the charismatic strangers across the room presenting a very different image of Sweden, even then the country's politicians don't dare to speak out.

They may not want to set themselves up for a fall by talking to Fox News or Mail Online but there are hundreds of other news outlets for them to engage with. Hundreds of other newspapers whose readers would be interested to hear a nuanced story of modern Sweden and whose Facebook shares would find their way back to these shores.

Steve Bannon's visit will bring the Bad Sweden narrative to the top of the agenda. The international media will report on it, as they reported on his trip to Italy before that country's recent election. As the election looms here and Sweden's political parties are considering where to engage with their voters, they will ignore the international English-language media at their peril.

Paul Rapacioli is the co-founder of The Local and author of the book Good Sweden, Bad Sweden, an analysis of how and why the country's reputation is changing in a post-truth world.

Where to buy Good Sweden, Bad Sweden in Sweden

Where to buy Good Sweden, Bad Sweden in the US

Where to buy Good Sweden, Bad Sweden in the UK</s>The fire is being treated as arson according to the Portuguese Foreign Minister Augusto Santos Silva.

"Everything points to an isolated act from a disturbed person who demanded to speak with the official in charge of the portuguese consular service. His demand was accepted but before they could speak he acted criminally by starting a fire and then running away." said Silva in a televised statement from Lisbon.

According the police 14 people received medical assistance after the fire and two were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation though none are believed to be in a serious condition.

Police have now arrested a man linked to the investigation but will not comment on his role.
A fire in a building housing the Portuguese, Tunisian, Argentinian and Belgian embassies in Stockholm, Sweden injures 14 people. A man is arrested on suspicion of arson.