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POLICE

Swedish police officers injured in laser attack

Two Swedish police officers received eye injuries after being shot by a green laser in Trelleborg in southern Sweden late Saturday night.

The police were responding to complaints about a loud party in an apartment when the attack took place.

“Two officers were taken to hospital in an ambulance,” Skåne police spokesperson Lennart Honemark told the TT news agency.

“They’ve been treated and allowed to return home, but it will be awhile before we will know if their eyes were permanently damaged.

Another police car was show by the laser, but no officers were injured.

According to the Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), there have been more than 80 reported laser attacks against police in Sweden in the last year.

Officers have sustained injuries to their eyes, but so far none of the injuries has resulted in permanent damage.

In addition to the attacks on police officers, a number of other civilians have also been injured after being shot with laser pointers.

The offending laser pointers are thought to be of a variety used for lectures and are often no larger than a pen or a pocket flashlight.

Since February 1st of this year, Sweden has required people wishing to use laser pointers stronger than 5 milliwatts in public places to obtain a permit from the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (Strålsäkerhetsmyndigheten).

However, it’s still possible to obtain the products, which are sold freely over the internet.

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POLICE

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

A Danish court on Thursday gave a two-month suspended prison sentence to a 31-year-old Swede for making a joke about a bomb at Copenhagen's airport this summer.

Denmark convicts man over bomb joke at airport

In late July, Pontus Wiklund, a handball coach who was accompanying his team to an international competition, said when asked by an airport agent that
a bag of balls he was checking in contained a bomb.

“We think you must have realised that it is more than likely that if you say the word ‘bomb’ in response to what you have in your bag, it will be perceived as a threat,” the judge told Wiklund, according to broadcaster TV2, which was present at the hearing.

The airport terminal was temporarily evacuated, and the coach arrested. He later apologised on his club’s website.

“I completely lost my judgement for a short time and made a joke about something you really shouldn’t joke about, especially in that place,” he said in a statement.

According to the public prosecutor, the fact that Wiklund was joking, as his lawyer noted, did not constitute a mitigating circumstance.

“This is not something we regard with humour in the Danish legal system,” prosecutor Christian Brynning Petersen told the court.

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