Stockholm - The new Volvo S60 concept unveiled ahead of the Detroit Auto Show later this month features a revolutionary new driver safety system which brakes the car automatically to avoid a collision with a pedestrian.

The technology, know as Collision Warning with Full Brake, monitors the road ahead using both radar sensors and a camera. It recognizes not only other vehicles, but pedestrians who step into the path of the car. The system will be available in the production version of the S60 four-door coupe which is due to enter the showrooms in late 2009.

Stockholm - Heavy-vehicle maker Volvo Trucks said Tuesday it was to give notice to 1,020 employees in Sweden, citing "very weak demand" in Europe and no sign of a recovery.

Volvo's Powertrain division, which makes engines and gearboxes used in its heavy vehicles as well as construction machinery, was also to cut some 600 jobs, the Volvo Group said.

Both Volvo Trucks and the Powertrain division are part of the Volvo Group that does not include Volvo Cars, the Swedish carmaker owned by US giant Ford.

Most of the cuts - some 670 jobs - were to affect Volvo Trucks' plant in Umea, northern Sweden.

Stockholm  - Nordic telecommunications group Telia Sonera said Monday it had given notice to 1,200 Swedish employees.

The move was in line with a cost-cutting package announced in February 2008, and would mainly impact its broadband services.

A year ago, the group said it planned to cut 2,900 jobs of which two-thirds were to impact Sweden.

The measure was estimated to cost some 3 billion kronor (378 million dollars) of which slightly more than half was to be carried in 2008.

Recent study revealed that a brief test known as pulse oximetry screening on newborn babies can help in detection of duct dependent congenital heart disease.

One or two babies per 1000 live births are born with immediately life threatening heart abnormality, because a fetal blood vessel called the ductus arteriosus - which bypasses the baby's non-functioning lungs when in the uterus and normally closes off soon after birth - remains partly open. Current screening techniques fail to detect the abnormality in many newborns.

Stockholm - It is "extremely urgent" to get a ceasefire and end the violence in Gaza including the Israeli ground and air offensive as well as rocket attacks by Hamas on Israel, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said Thursday.

Bildt - just back from a visit to the Middle East as part of a European Union delegation - told reporters he was "at present not interested in laying blame" but wanted to "see an end to the violence."

Stockholm - Sweden is to earmark 1.1 billion kronor (139 million dollars) for bilateral aid to climate change programmes in "high risk" countries over the coming three years, the government said Wednesday.

International Development Cooperation Minister Gunilla Carlsson said the programmes would target countries "at high risk in combination with high vulnerability."

These included Bolivia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Burkina Faso, and Mali as well as regions in Africa and Asia, Carlsson said in an article in Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter.