Stockholm - Sweden was set to phase out the current tax break offered for ecologically friendly cars some six months earlier than planned, citing the aims of the tax had been "achieved," a cabinet member said Monday.

"The rebate scheme was introduced to give eco-cars a flying start. The rebate has been a success. Roughly every third new car sold today is an eco-car," Environment Minister Andreas Carlgren said

"We have achieved our aims," Carlgren said.

The scheme, offering a 10,000-kronor (1,500-dollar) rebate, was launched in April 2007 and was initially due to be in place until the end of December 2009, but was now slated to end in June 2009, Carlgren said.

Stockholm - A Swedish teenager was praised for accurate shooting when he shot a bear over the weekend while out on a moose hunt with his father, reports said Monday.

Filip Wikner, 15, was hunting under the supervision of his father when their dog tracked a bear near the village of Hornmyr, northern Sweden.

They subsequently spotted the bear in a thicket, Wikner told the Vasterbottens-Kuriren newspaper.

The duo had agreed that Filip would firet the initial shot, and when the bear turned its side on them he opened fire from some 20 metres.

"The bear went down immediately but got back up," Wikner said, adding that his father, seasoned bear hunter Peter Wikner, then fired a second shot.

London, Sept 6 : A woman suffering from multiple sclerosis was imprisoned for nine years in a small cabin in south-central Sweden, the police has reported.

The woman is believed to have been held by her 58-year-old partner in a cabin measuring 15 square metres in Eksjo, in south-central Sweden since 1999.

The man has been ordered by a court to be held in custody, local media reported, reports the Mirror.

He has, however, denied all charges.

The woman weighed less than 40 kilos when she was admitted to hospital earlier this week, Swedish television channel SVT reported on its website.

A prosecutor told news agency TT there was no indication this was due to ill treatment, but rather to her illness.

Stockholm - Sweden's central bank Thursday raised the country's key interest rate by 0.25 per cent to 4.75 per cent in what bank chief Stefan Ingves said was a move to curb inflation.

Men who have commitment and relationship problems should get gene testing done. A team of researchers at the Karolinksa Institute in Sweden released the results of their study which stated that men who carried a common variation of a gene that is involved in brain signaling could have communication and relationship issues.

The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and said that this gene can effect the production of vasopressin, a hormone which is said to influence monogamy in animals.  The study found that men who had two copies of allele 334 had double the chance of having had a marital or relationship discord as compared to those men who did not carry the gene variant.

Stockholm - A German woman charged with beating two small children to death in Sweden in March this year should serve a life term or be confined to a closed psychiatric institution, the prosecution said Monday.

In her summing up, prosecutor Frieda Gummesson told the court in the central city of Vasteras there could be no doubt that the 32-year- old student, who comes from Hanover, was guilty of the March 17 murder.