title: How does Apple's new programming language Swift handle blocks and asynchronous requests?
body: <p>C.f. Apple's website page on Swift: <a href="https://developer.apple.com/swift/">https://developer.apple.com/swift/</a></p>
  
  <p>Are there blocks in Swift like in objective-c? How are they created and called? </p>
  
  <p>How would do an asynchronous request in Swift?</p>
  
  <p>Is it easy to create block related memory leaks in swift? If yes, how would you avoid them?</p>