Eight of Sweden's 277 glaciers have completely melted and disappeared in 2024 due to climate warming, according to research announced Monday by the Tarfala Research Centre in northern Sweden. The vanished glaciers represent 2.8% of the country's total glacial coverage, marking the first time glaciers have been erased from Sweden's landscape since high-resolution satellite imagery became available around the year 2000.

Professor Nina Kirchner, director of the Tarfala Research Centre and a glaciologist, confirmed that thirty additional glaciers are now considered at risk. The disappearance was discovered when researchers sat down to determine when glaciers had reached their lowest levels in 2024 and couldn't locate eight of them on satellite images. "At first, we thought we had made a mistake, or that we had missed something," Kirchner recounted, but subsequent verification confirmed the unanimous conclusion that all eight had vanished.

Among the lost glaciers was Cunujokeln, Sweden's northernmost glacier located in Vadvetjakka National Park. The largest of the eight disappeared glaciers was approximately the size of six football fields. Kirchner emphasized that these glaciers "will not return in our lifetime, and certainly not if climate warming continues," highlighting the irreversible nature of the loss under current climate conditions.

The extreme heat of 2024, which the World Meteorological Organization confirmed as the hottest year ever recorded globally, proved decisive in melting these glaciers to the point of disappearance. Researchers at the Tarfala station near Kebnekaise, Sweden's highest peak, annually study satellite images of these massive ice formations to track their evolution, but the complete disappearance of multiple glaciers represents an unprecedented development in their monitoring efforts.

Swedish prosecutors have charged four men aged 20 to 24 with robbery and assault in connection with three separate incidents that occurred in central Stockholm on August 27. The charges include allegations of unprovoked violent attacks with a hate crime motivation, according to court documents released by the Swedish Prosecution Authority.

The defendants are accused of robbing one individual and threatening that person's friend in Stockholm's city center, followed by what prosecutors describe as a severe assault against another person later the same night. Three of the men face additional charges for an assault that took place on the Stockholm metro system during the same evening. All victims in the three separate incidents were reported to have foreign backgrounds, though they had no connection to each other.

Prosecutor Gustav Andersson, who led the preliminary investigation, stated that surveillance footage and photographs show some of the defendants making Nazi salutes in connection with the alleged crimes. During house searches, authorities reportedly discovered materials and symbols indicating connections to right-wing extremism. The indictment specifically references the neo-Nazi and violence-promoting Aktivklubb movement as evidence of the motive behind the alleged offenses.

The Aktivklubb movement represents part of a larger international right-wing extremist network that outwardly focuses on strength training and martial arts. In Sweden, the movement gained traction in 2023 through the Aktivklubb Sverige network, which serves as an umbrella organization for local clubs. According to the Expo Foundation's 2024 annual report, five groups from Skåne to Hälsingland are part of Aktivklubb Sverige, with the number of registered activities increasing significantly last year.