Sweden

SUMMARY SWEDEN 2, USA 1 (Wolfsburg) Sweden 2 0 — 2 USA 0 1 — 1 FIRST HALF — 1. SWE, Dahlkvist, 16th minute (penalty kick). 2. SWE, Fischer, 35th. SECOND HALF — 3. USA, Wambach, 67th. Yellow cards — Le Peilbet, USA; Fischer, Sweden. Referee — Etsuko Fukano, Japan. Assistant referees — Saori Takahashi, Japan, Zhang Lingling, China. Fourth official — Therese Neguel, Cameroon. Attendance — 23,468.

WASHINGTON - Almost 30 years ago, two young women allegedly obtained fake passports in Europe for a clandestine trip to Cuba. Today, one is in prison serving a 25-year sentence for espionage; the other has taken shelter in Sweden. On Thursday, the U.S. government stepped up its efforts to get that second woman, Marta Rita Velazquez, from Sweden to an American courtroom. Velazquez, 55, a U.S. citizen born in Puerto Rico, was charged in 2004 with conspiracy to commit espionage for her role in recruiting Ana Belen Montes to give American secrets to Cuba, according to a previously sealed indictment that the Justice Department released Thursday.

Ride enthusiasts are already drooling over a multi-launch roller coaster coming to a Swedish amusement park that promises six inversions and a series of near-miss encounters with other rides dotting a wooded hillside terrain. Photos: Projekt Helix megacoaster at Liseberg Dubbed Projekt Helix, the $30-million coaster is set to debut in spring 2014 at the Liseberg amusement park located outside Gothenburg, about equidistant between Oslo, Norway, and Copenhagen, Denmark, along Sweden's west coast.

Finnair has launched an airfare sale on flights between New York City and Estonia , Sweden , Russia and Lithuania for less than $700 round trip. Los Angeles fliers could use up some air miles or hunt down a cheap L.A.-New York airfare to take advantage of sale prices. The deal: Prices for economy seats from New York start at $655 to Tallinn, Estonia; $670 to Stockholm; $679 to St. Petersburg, Russia; and $695 to Vilnius, Lithuania. The sale applies to business class seats too, which cost $2,729 to $2,755, depending on the destination.

For nearly 30 years, no nukes were good nukes in this Scandinavian nation. Spooked by the meltdown at Three Mile Island, Swedes voted decisively in 1980 to ban expansion of nuclear power, and lawmakers pledged to close down all of Sweden's reactors by 2010. Many here were therefore stunned this year when the government announced a sudden U-turn in energy policy. Not only should the country's 10 nuclear power stations stay open, officials said, but the plants should be allowed to buy new reactors to replace the old ones if necessary.

Leave it to the country that brought us Ikea to make the most of the Internet.  According to a new report from the World Wide Web Foundation, the people and government of Sweden are the best in the world at optimizing the Web The United States ranked second in the index, followed by the United Kingdom, Canada and Finland. Tunisia and Russia were smack in the middle of the list that ranks 61 countries, taking the the 30 and 31st spots respectively. At the bottom of the list were Zimbabwe and Yemen.

She can't vote yet, but 17-year-old Victoria Westburg has thrown herself headlong through cyberspace into the realm of real-world politics. A teenager who spends "a lot of hours" a day on her computer, she's ticked off by laws that allow the government to snoop into or limit what people do online, and she wants to translate her outrage into action. "The Internet is a big part of my life, and I think that it always will be," Westburg said. "These laws that have come right now are very hostile toward the Internet and everything I like about it, and I don't think that's OK."

"A Taste of Sweden" sandwiches 15 pages of well-organized information between 16 pages of color photographs and overviews of Stockholm and various regions of the Scandinavian nation. "Sweden A to Z" has alphabetized facts on everything from gasoline prices to tour companies, plus a directory of Internet sites. (212) 885-9700, www.visit-sweden.com.

The first name from the Kings on the verge of an agreement with a European hockey team during the NHL lockout is a big one. It's Anze Kopitar. The Kings' star center will be playing for Mora IK of the Swedish league, said his agent, Pat Brisson of  Creative Artists Agency, on Monday afternoon.  What made Mora so attractive to Kopitar was that his younger brother Gasper is playing for the team. Mora is competing in the second-highest division in Sweden. Kopitar, who in June helped lead the Kings to their first Stanley Cup championship, was in demand, having received interest from the Swiss National League.

I have lived in Los Angeles for 29 years and since 1962 I am an American citizen. Every year I go home to the south of Sweden, to Karishamn, where my whole family lives. Why I write is that I know that U.S. citizens are afraid to travel to Sweden. My friends are very worried about me because of the nuclear accident in Russia. But nobody here has had any feeling of it because we are far away and the winds were with us. Every morning that I am in Karishamn, I walk through the forest and listen to the birds.

Ride enthusiasts are already drooling over a multi-launch roller coaster coming to a Swedish amusement park that promises six inversions and a series of near-miss encounters with other rides dotting a wooded hillside terrain. Photos: Projekt Helix megacoaster at Liseberg Dubbed Projekt Helix, the $30-million coaster is set to debut in spring 2014 at the Liseberg amusement park located outside Gothenburg, about equidistant between Oslo, Norway, and Copenhagen, Denmark, along Sweden's west coast.

The lockout helped bring the Kings and Ducks together in Southern California as they figured that it would be far more beneficial to join forces than to practice in two smaller groups. Nine time zones away, the same thing was happening on a much smaller scale. The modest town of Mora, Sweden, was treated to the sight of two talented forwards in their prime, Bobby Ryan of the Ducks and the Anze Kopitar of the Kings, playing on the same line. Seeing two NHL players who combined for 56 goals last season playing for a second-division Swedish outfit might be a once-in-a-generation thing.

Team USA won the gold medal at the World Junior Hockey Championships on Saturday, riding two goals by Southern California native Rocco Grimaldi and another strong goaltending effort by Ducks prospect John Gibson to a 3-1 victory over defending champion Sweden at Ufa, Russia. Gibson, drafted by the Ducks in 2011, was voted the top goalie and the most valuable player of the tournament, which features the world's top under-20-year-old players. The competition, always interesting as a preview of future NHL stars, provided welcome entertainment for hockey fans who have missed the game during the labor dispute that has delayed the NHL season at least through Jan. 14. Grimaldi, an undersized but skilled forward who had trouble earning ice time earlier in the tournament, scored his goals less than three minutes apart in the second period.

As the NHL and players' association inched toward a labor deal during face-to-face meetings Saturday in New York, Kings center Anze Kopitar injured his right knee playing for Mora IK in Sweden's Allsvenskan hockey league. Preliminary indications were that Kopitar, the Kings' scoring leader each of the last five seasons, was not expected to be out of action more than two or three weeks. If a labor accord is reached soon and the season opens on or before Commissioner Gary Bettman's Jan. 19 deadline for a schedule of at least 48 games, Kopitar probably would miss the early steps of the Kings' defense of their Stanley Cup title.

JERUSALEM - Israel is facing an onslaught of criticism from European allies over its decision to revive a controversial West Bank settlement project known as E-1, which critics say could destroy efforts to create a Palestinian state. The governments of Britain, France, Spain, Sweden and Denmark called their Israeli ambassadors in for meetings Monday to formally complain about the project, located on the outskirts of Jerusalem. White House spokesman Jay Carney said the U.S., which has opposed the project for nearly 20 years, is urging "Israeli leaders to reconsider these actions.

America is the Wild West of electronic dance music today, and the Swedish house duo Rebecca & Fiona are fascinated by its native fauna. “Coming to America from Sweden, it was so unusual to see that there's an 'EDM crowd' here with the face paint and the boots,” says Fiona FitzPatrick, on a ledge inside the Venice branch of the coffee shop Intelligentsia. “It's so different from Europe. We love the energy and respect it, but we were so startled by the EDM guys here - they're so beefy!

*--* Tonight, 11:30, at Oita, Japan TV: ESPN, Ch. 34. Delayed: Ch. 46, noon, Sunday How they got here: Sweden finished first in Group F with a 1-0-2 record. Senegal took second in Group A at 1-0-2 Sidelined: Senegal's Salif Diao (suspended) and Khalilou Fadiga (suspended) Sweden update: Sweden was a surprising first-place finisher in the toughest group in the tournament.

The myth is that the rest of the women's hockey world is catching up to the U.S. and Canada, that the Finns and Swedes are no longer just cannon fodder for the sport's two major powers and can actually compete with them. The reality is that although the Finns and Swedes might have taken a half-stride forward here, the U.S. has regressed.

The meaning of identity is a subject close to the heart of the directors of two new foreign-language dramas that explore the consequences of the loss of individuality - Sweden's "Simon and the Oaks," which just opened, and France's "The Other Son," which will be released in Los Angeles on Friday. Both movies deal with issues of religious and national identities, and both come directly out of the personal experiences of the two female filmmakers. The award-winning "Simon and the Oaks," based on the Swedish bestseller by Marianne Fredriksson that spans 1939-52, stars Bill Skarsgard (actor Stellan's younger son)

"Simon and the Oaks" is a two-hour theatrical feature that has the kind of emotional and storytelling reach regularly found these days only in cable TV miniseries. It's a warmly done family and personal drama that seems to cover familiar territory, but only up to a point and very much in its own way. Given that "Simon" follows the fortunes of two interlinked Swedish families from 1939 to 1952, it's not surprising that the source material is a bestselling novel, in this case one by Marianne Fredricksson that has been translated into 25 languages and sold more than 4 million copies worldwide.