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FAMILY

Search continues for missing mum and child

Police are still searching for clues to help them find a mother and daughter who disappeared from a small town in Lower Saxony nearly a month ago.

Search continues for missing mum and child
Police search for mother Sylvia and daughter Miriam Schulze, missing since last month. Photo: DPA.

Police continued the search for the 43-year-old mother Sylvia Schulze and 12-year-old daughter Miriam on Wednesday by a lake and forest in Harburg near their family home in Lower Saxony.

The body of father Marco Schulze, 41, was discovered drowned on July 31st in the Elbe River.

Investigators said there was no evidence of foul play on his body and that they are considering the possibility of suicide.

The whole family has been missing since last month when acquaintances reported to police that they couldn't get in contact with them.

The father was last seen on July 23rd, when witnesses said they saw him driving his wife's car. The car was found parked at the family home, though, when police began their search.

A witness told police that she had seen the family all together at the lake where the police have now been searching.

Police said they believe the witness saw the family on July 22nd, the last school day before summer vacation for Lower Saxony.

Police said they have around 60 people searching for the mother and daughter.

Photo: Harburg police.

 

POLITICS

Denmark’s finance minister to take ten weeks’ paternity leave

Denmark's Finance Minister, Nicolai Wammen, has announced that he will go on parental leave for ten weeks this summer, writing on Facebook that he was "looking forward to spending time with the little boy."

Denmark's finance minister to take ten weeks' paternity leave

Wammen said he would be off work between June 5th and August 13th, with Morten Bødskov, the country’s business minister standing in for him in his absence.

“On June 5th I will go on parental leave with Frederik, and I am really looking forward to spending time with the little boy,” Wammen said in the post announcing his decision, alongside a photograph of himself together with his son, who was born in November.

Denmark’s government last March brought in a new law bringing in 11 weeks’ use-it-or-lose-it parental leave for each parent in the hope of encouraging more men to take longer parental leave. Wammen is taking 9 weeks and 6 days over the summer. 

The new law means that Denmark has met the deadline for complying with an EU directive requiring member states earmark nine weeks of statutory parental leave for fathers.

This is the second time Bødskov has substituted for Wammen, with the minister standing in for him as acting Minister of Taxation between December 2020 and February 2021. 

“My parental leave with Christian was quite simply one of the best decisions in my life and I’m looking forward to having the same experience with Frederik,” Wammen wrote on Facebook in November alongside a picture of him together with his son.

Male politicians in Denmark have tended to take considerably shorter periods of parental leave than their female colleagues. 

Minister of Employment and Minister for Equality Peter Hummelgaard went on parental leave for 8 weeks and 6 days in 2021. Mattias Tesfaye took one and a half months away from his position as Denmark’s immigration minister in 2020. Troels Lund Poulsen – now acting defence minister – took three weeks away from the parliament took look after his new child in 2020. Education minister Morten Østergaard took two weeks off in 2012. 

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