Stockholm  - A Syrian-Lebanese singer was due to appear at a remand custody

Stockholm - Swedbank, one of four major Swedish banking groups, Tuesday confirmed it planned to sign on to a stability plan approved last week.

The application to join the guarantee programme was to be filed shortly, the group said.

The guarantee fund is worth 1.5 trillion kronor (201 billion dollars) and banks would have to comply with restrictions concerning bonus payments and other benefits to top executives.

The scheme is initially scheduled to run until April 2009.

Stockholm - Children can polish their reading skills by practising to read aloud to their dogs, according to a new Swedish study.

Two Swedish students at a teacher's training college presented the suggestion in a joint essay at the University of Skovde.

"A dog doesn't judge and I can practice listening to my own voice and become more confident," Rebecka Dirfeldt and Cecilia Persson on Monday told Swedish radio.

The two said they had put the method to practise after spotting an article about specially-trained dogs in the United States that were trained to sit still while children read to them.

The two college students asked a number of 8-year-olds who had a pet dog to practise reading aloud to their pet.

Stockholm - The Swedish government and banks unveiled plans Monday to cooperate in freezing payments to criminal organizations engaged in child pornography.

"If we can prevent the payments, we strike directly at the criminal activities of the gangs," Financial Markets Minister Mats Odell and Fredrik Sauter, chief executive of online bank Skandiabanken, said in a joint op-ed article in the daily Dagens Nyheter.

The sale of child porn is believed to be extremely lucrative, but it is hard to trace payments.

Stockholm - Swedish Finance Minister Anders Borg on Friday criticized major Swedish banking groups for not signing on to a stability plan approved earlier this week.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting of parliament's committee on European Union affairs, Borg said he also urged the general public to "pick up the phone and call their bank to find out if they have lowered their mortgage rates" or not.

Borg said he was disappointed that the banks have not lowered mortgage rates as much as envisaged in the wake of the plan that was approved Thursday by the European Commission in Brussels.

Stockholm - Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt hosted Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Thursday, and discussed the fallout of the recent war between Georgia and Russia.

Reinfeldt noted that Sweden has pledged large sums to Georgia and contributed personnel to a European Union monitoring team.

The Swedish premier told reporters that Stockholm did not feel Russia had fulfilled all the terms in agreements signed after the August war between the Caucasus nation and Russia.