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.

A Swedish court has convicted six individuals for their involvement in the murder of a 41-year-old gang leader in the Berga district of Linköping during the summer of 2024. The Linköping District Court delivered verdicts in the case, which involved eight defendants originally charged with participation in the killing. The court established that the murder was carried out according to a criminal plan orchestrated by members of an organized crime network based in the Berga area.

The victim was fatally shot in a public space near Berga Church in Linköping on August 13, 2024. Multiple gunshots struck the man in his back and head during the daylight incident, which occurred near residential buildings and a playground. Several members of the public witnessed the shooting, adding to the evidence presented during the trial.

Court proceedings revealed that a 14-year-old boy fired the fatal shots that killed the gang leader. The teenager, who has admitted to the killing, was not prosecuted due to being below the age of criminal responsibility under Swedish law. Instead, prosecutors focused on the eight older individuals allegedly involved in planning and facilitating the murder, all of whom had denied the charges against them.

Evidence presented by prosecutors included extensive documentation of movement patterns through surveillance footage, GPS data from electric scooters, and mobile phone analysis. The court determined the victim had been lured to the crime scene under the pretense of a drug transaction, with communication occurring through a special Snapchat account and a dedicated mobile phone later found buried in nearby woods. Six of the eight defendants were found guilty, with two receiving life sentences for murder while others were convicted of aiding the killing.