A quick detour to Sweden
A couple Danes who were recently kayaking in Blekinge’s archipelago in southern Sweden were in for a big surprise when a dolphin and her calf followed them for four kilometers all the way to Järnaviks port. Bottlenose dolphins prefer warmer ocean waters, but due to rising water temperatures, they are occasionally sighted in traditionally colder areas. The spectacular experience was filmed by the kayakers. "It's quite difficult to catch them in the picture because they would prefer to be in front of the kayaks, so it's only few times I catch them," wrote Frede Jensen. Research Director Mats Amundin of Kolmårdens Wildlife Center in Stockholm guesses these dolphins may have followed a school of fish and will likely find their way to the Baltic Sea again.

Swedish royals' visit is divine
Queen Silvia, who is still recovering from emergency surgery for a shoulder cracked in three places during a skiing accident in Switzerland last month, is in Rome for a couple days. She is at Vatican City with Princess Madeleine and her family, where they all had a meeting with Pope Francis. The Swedish royals are there as representatives of the Childhood Foundation and Childhood USA, taking part in "Human trafficking with a Special Focus on Children," an anti-trafficking seminar held at Vatican City.

Swedish hostages in Syria return home
Two Swedish men held hostage by Syrian jihadists have been reunited with their families in Sweden, Sweden's foreign ministry said on Sunday. The hostages, Thomas Olsson, 50, and Martin Reen, 33, were freed with the help of Palestinian and Jordanian authorities. According to the newspaper Dagen, the men were released after 508 days in captivity. Both men belong to churches in northern Sweden and were taken hostage in 2013 when they crossed the border into Syria while doing missionary work in Jordan.
“We are doing well under the circumstances and want to thank everyone who was involved in setting us free. Now we want to be with our families and meet our children,” Olsson told Swedish TT, adding that they needed peace and quiet and would not answer questions about their ordeal.