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POLICE

Firefighters scuffle with cops in Barcelona protest

Spanish firefighters set fires in the street and scuffled with police in Barcelona on Wednesday during protests against budget cuts that they say are threatening public safety.

Firefighters scuffle with cops in Barcelona protest
Police moved in with extinguishers and put out some of the burning coffins the firemen had set alight. Photo: Lluis Gene/AFP

Hundreds of firefighters in yellow helmets and red jackets gathered in front of the Catalonia regional parliament, some letting off firecrackers and smoke bombs, and set fire to model coffins marked "public services".

There were light scuffles and police charged the protestors, detaining one, police and labour unions said.

Police moved in with extinguishers and put out some of the burning coffins.

The demonstration struck as the parliament was debating this year's regional campaign to prevent forest fires, a major threat during the dry summer. Several people were killed last year.

Labour unions representing the firefighters warned in a statement that cuts to staff and budgets in the economic crisis "put at risk the safety of workers and the people of Catalonia".

They said the plan involves "a big reduction in resources and above all an increase in the workload on staff".

The unions also complained that this year the emergency summer fire plan had been cut to cover just July and August, where previously it extended into June and September.

"There would have been more public calm if we had dispensed with firefighting aircraft and kept on more employees, but I would not have had a clear conscience," said the regional interior minister, Ramon Espadaler.

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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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