Jim, Derrick,

it is indeed a sad day here. Whatever one might think of the current government, I believe the consensus is that she was one of the bright ones - of which there appears to be far too few of in the rest of all the party organizations to be comfortable. She was most definately thought of as a very strong - if not given - candidate for party leader/Prime minister once the current one (Göran Persson) stepped down.

I don't much mind the current government - the effective diff. between it and the other viable option isn't all that big IMO; but our current prime IMO suffers from illusions of grandeur and tends to get quite whiny when the people shows a different will than the official line...
And the assigned temp. Foreign minister is a right twit - consensus at work when we heard: "Oh no, not him!"

Ms. Lindh Mrs actually, 46 yo, married & 2 kids.....

The question of why there wasn't any bodyguards is, of course, heavily discussed. I can fully understand why politicians in general (the Prime minister does have constant guard) don't choose to use them unless there is a specific threat - it must get extremely suffocating.

We can only hope that, this time, they catch the guy. From what's been reported so far it doesn't sound like a planned attack, definately not like with Olof Palme - more like a deranged impulse thing. Much like what could happen to anyone walking around town - we don't yet know if her identity was an issue or not for the attack.

/Michael