Denmark

Giant pandas from China arrive Copenhagen for collaborative research

Xing Er and Mao Er, two giant pandas from China, are unloaded from a cargo plane at Kastrup airport in Copenhagen, Denmark, on April 4, 2019.

After arriving in Copenhagen on Thursday, the pair of giant pandas Xing Er, a 5-year-old male, and Mao Er, a 4-year-old female, will head to their new home in Copenhagen Zoo for collaborative research.

They will live in Denmark for 15 years, according to the agreement signed between the Chinese Association of Zoological Gardens and the zoo in 2017. (Xinhua/Li Pengfei)

In Sweden, naked policeman arrests fugitive in sauna

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — There’s no escape from the long arm of the law in Sweden. Not even sitting naked in a sauna.

Police spokewoman Carina Skagerlind says an off-duty police officer found himself sitting in the same sauna in Rinkeby, a Stockholm suburb, as a fugitive who had dodged a jail sentence for aggravated assault, among other offenses.

Skagerlind says after recognizing each other, “the naked police officer calmly told the man that he should consider himself arrested.”

NZ teroorist's manifesto resembles Norwegian terrorist’s text

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — The manifesto that the presumed New Zealand shooter published is shorter and “more sloppy” than the one written by a Norwegian right-wing extremist who killed 77 people in 2011, but expresses similar sentiments, a Swedish terror expert said Friday.

Magnus Ranstorp of the Swedish National Defense College says the shooter is against mass immigration and “has to some extent the same themes as (Anders Behring) Breivik,” who posted his 1,500-page manifesto online before carrying out his deadly attacks.

Shares in world’s top shipping firm sink on US tariffs risk

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Shares in the world’s biggest shipping company, Denmark’s A.P. Moller-Maersk, plunged Thursday after it warned of the commercial damage it would suffer from a U.S. escalation in the trade war with China.

The company reported a fourth quarter loss of $34 million, from a $32 million profit a year earlier. Revenue increased to $10.2 billion from $8.4 billion. For all of 2018, revenue rose 26 percent to $8.1 billion.

Deadly train collision closes Denmark's Great Belt Bridge

02 Jan 2019; DW: Several people have been killed in a train collision in Denmark. A severe storm has been hampering efforts by emergency workers to reach the train.

Six people were killed on Wednesday morning after a train collision on a bridge linking the islands of Zealand and Funen, according to train operator DSB. 

Danish media reported that a tarpaulin on a freight train hit a passenger train heading in the opposite direction on the Great Belt Bridge towards Copenhagen, prompting it to brake suddenly. 

Denmark to house foreign criminals on tiny island

20 Dec 2018; DW: Denmark has approved funding to transform a remote island from a contagious diseases laboratory to a detention center, which would house migrant criminals who cannot be deported. The move was criticized by the UN.

The Danish government will begin holding foreign criminals on a remote island, located approximately 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Copenhagen. The controversial plan was included in the 2019 budget proposal, which the legislature approved on Thursday.

Outsiders, academy members to pick Nobel Literature winners

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Only half of those who choose the winners of next year’s Nobel Prize in literature will be members of the scandal-rocked Swedish Academy that has always previously awarded the prize, the prestigious body said Monday.

Two authors, two critics and one translator — all Swedish — will join five members of the academy in picking the winners next year — including the 2019 and the delayed 2018 literature prizes — and in 2020.

Man at center of Nobel Literature scandal convicted of rape

COPENHAGEN, Denmark; 1 Oct 2018; (AP) — The man at the center of a sex abuse and financial crimes scandal in Sweden that is tarnishing the academy that awards the Nobel Prize in Literature was convicted of rape and sentenced Monday to two years in prison.

Jean-Claude Arnault, 72, a major cultural figure in Sweden, had faced two counts of rape for the same woman in 2011. He was found guilty of one rape but was acquitted of the other because the victim said she was asleep at the time and judges said her account wasn’t reliable. Arnault had denied the charges.

First woman fined in Denmark for wearing full-face veil

4 Aug 2018; AFP; A 28-year-old woman wearing a niqab on Friday became the first person in Denmark to be fined for violating a new controversial law banning full-face Islamic veils in public places, media reported.

Police were called to a shopping centre in Horsholm, in the northeastern region of Nordsjaelland, where the woman had become involved in a scuffle with another woman who had tried to tear her niqab off, police duty officer David Borchersen told the Ritzau news agency.

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