Central bank recommends small cash reserve for crisis 

Following in from last weekend’s announcement by authorities that the population should stock up on emergency supplies, the Danish central bank Nationalbanken says it advises everyone has physical payment cards, knows their PINs and has a small supply of cash.

That is in case online payment systems are temporarily disabled, it said.

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“A small amount in cash as a backup should be in small denominations so it is easier for the shop to give change,” advised the National Bank’s junior director for Financial Stability, Peter E. Storgaard, in comments to the Ritzau newswire.

The amount that should be kept aside “depends on the expected payment needs in such a situation” for individual households, he said.

Vocabulary: kontanter – cash

Drugs seized, five arrested in major police operation in Aarhus

Police raided several addresses in East Jutland, including the western part of Aarhus, yesterday, resulting in five arrests.

Local police said the men are suspected of smuggling 466,000 tramadol pills into Denmark, while one of them is also suspected of dealing no less than 2.5 kilograms of cocaine and 96 kilograms of cannabis.

Weapons charges are also part of the arrests.

Several of the men have gang connections, East Jutland Police said. They will face initial court proceedings today.

Vocabulary: at ransage – to raid/ransack

Denmark ‘meets acute needs’ of Ukraine with new donation package

The government is to meet acute military needs in Ukraine with its nineteenth donation package since the Russian invasion in 2022, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement yesterday.

The package will also “support the long term restoration of Ukraine’s ability to defend itself,” the ministry said after discussions with parliament’s Foreign Policy Committee (Udenrigspolitisk Nævn).

“Ukraine still needs significant military support due to the continued Russian aggression against thm. With the latest donation package, we are therefore providing the most possible support for Ukraine’s needs on the battlefield here and now,” Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said in the statement.

The new package is funded by the 2023-2028 “Ukraine Fund” budgeted by the government, taking 1.2 billion kroner from the total fund of 64.8 billion kroner.

Vocabulary: slagmark – battlefield

Novo Nordisk HQ outside Copenhagen suffers second fire in two months

A fire broke out yesterday afternoon at the headquarters of Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk’s headquarters at Bagsværd near Copenhagen.

Images from the location showed the outbreak of a fire, subsequently confirmed by Copenhagen West Police.

“There are no reports of injuries. We currently have no further information,” the police district said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

The fire service, Beredskab Øst, said it had sent a large team in response to a “fire in the roof of a building at Novo Nordisk”.

On May 22nd, at least 70 firefighters were involved in extinguishing a fire at an administrative building at Novo Nordisk’s headquarters in Bagsværd and on May 16th, another fire broke out on a roof at a new building being constructed by Novo Nordisk at its site in Kalundborg, creating a pillar of dark smoke that could be seen from 30 kilometres away. 

There was no evidence of any criminal acts related to either of those fires, Novo Nordisk has previously said.