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TODAY IN DENMARK

Today in Denmark: A roundup of the news on Friday

Thousands of lightning strikes, shocking figure for child poverty in Copenhagen, Danish rider returns for Tour de France and more news from Denmark this Friday.

Published: 28 June 2024 07:12 CEST
Today in Denmark: A roundup of the news on Friday
Denmark's Olympic rowing team take a Viking boat for a spin on Roskilde Fjord on Thursday. Photo: Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix

31,000 lightning strikes registered in Jutland

Thunderstorms across southern and western Jutland night brought over 31,000 lightning strikes in the region, broadcaster DR reports.

Residents in the area also report hailstones that, in a least one case, we big enough to rip through terrace roofing.

The storms signal the end of the hot weather spell this week, with more moderate temperatures forecast this weekend.

Vocabulary: lynnedslag – lightning strike

5,000 children ‘live in poverty’ in Copenhagen

As many as 5,000 children in Copenhagen live in poverty according to a new review from the city’s municipal Finance Committee (Økonomiudvalg).

Around half of the children live in the Brønshøj-Husum, Bispebjerg and Nørrebro districts. The number represents around five percent of the total number of children who live in the city.

More should be done to support charities that fight child poverty, Karina Vestergård Madsen, an elected municipal councillor said.

“What we need focus on is support for organisations in civil society like Save the Children and Mødrehjælpen who can give them some good experiences which they can’t afford,” she said to DR.

Vocabulary: fattigdom – poverty

Road-rusty Vingegaard set for Tour de France duel with rival Pogačar 

Two-time Danish Tour de France champion Jonas Vingegaard faces a serious challenge in the form of longstanding rival Tadej Pogačar when the tour sets off from the Italian city of Florence on Saturday.

Team Visma’s Vingegaard hasn’t raced since suffering multiple fractures in a fall in March but recently declared himself fit for the Tour, the biggest event in cycling.

Vingegaard’s fall offers Slovenia’s Pogačar a chance at revenge for the brutal manner in which the Dane crushed him on two Alpine stages late in the 2023 edition.

“I’ve tested my legs a little and to be honest, I’ve never felt so good on a bike,” Pogačar, a back-to-back winner in 2020 and 2021, told news agency AFP.

“Everyone thinks that I’m going to win the Tour every year, but I didn’t win the last two times,” he said.

Vocabulary: et styrt – a fall/crash (on a bike)

Blaze at Tax Ministry put out by firefighters

A fire at Denmark’s Tax Ministry yesterday was swiftly extinguished after the building was evacuated.

A fire broke out on during the morning on the roof of the building in central Copenhagen which houses Denmark’s Tax Ministry as well as some residential flats.

The building is located very close to the Old Stock Exchange (Børsen), which suffered a devastating fire earlier this year. The Tax Ministry building is a modern building, unlike the historic Børsen, and is on the opposite side of Copenhagen Harbour on Nicolai Eigtveds Gade.

READ ALSO: Why have there been so many fires in Copenhagen this year?

Vocabulary: den modsatte side – the opposite side

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TODAY IN DENMARK

Today in Denmark: A roundup of the news on Thursday

Supermarket chain in major buyout, jobs platform sues Google, downpours possible this afternoon and more news from Denmark on Thursday.

Published: 27 June 2024 06:56 CEST
Today in Denmark: A roundup of the news on Thursday

Heavy rain along to interrupt sunny summer weather 

The last few days have seen dry, sunny weather with temperatures in the mid-20s in Celsius, but that will be interrupted by a cooler day today with possible thunder and rain.

National Met office DMI has issued an alert for heavy rain and localised “cloudbursts” or skybrud in southwestern Jutland. The alert applies from 3pm to 11pm.

That rain will move north during the afternoon, forecasts state. Copenhagen and the rest of Zealand is less likely to be affected.

The criteria for “heavy rain” is over 24 millimetres in 6 hours. A “cloudburst” is defined as 15 millimetres in 30 minutes.

Vocabulary: køligere – cooler

Energy company buys out supermarket chain Coop 

The Coop supermarket chain is to receive a cash injection after energy company OK announced it would be buying an approximately 50 percent stake in the company.

The buyout was announced by Denmark’s Competition and Consumer Authority, which had to approve the deal.

Until now Coop has a cooperative ownership structure in which its members – some 1.9 million people in Denmark – are also owners. It appoints a chairperson who effectively takes a CEO role.

With the buyout, OK will have a say in how the company is run alongside the membership-owned company Coop Danmark. In return, Coop receives a 2 billion kroner cash injection, newswire Ritzau writes.

The chairperson of Coop, Pernille Skipper, welcomed the deal in a statement.

“Turning around the situation in Coop Danmark and making the company profitable again has been an urgent matter,” she said.

Coop’s stores include Kvickly, SuperBrugsen and 365discount.

Vocabulary: lønsom – profitable

Danish job site says Google has breached its copyright protection

Jobs portal Jobindex has filed a suit against Google, claiming the tech giant is breaching copyright and marketing laws by making job ads posted to Jobindex available on the Google for Jobs service without permission.

“It’s like if you sell counterfeit goods, you have a responsibility to not just say ‘I bought it from someone else’,” the CEO of Jobindex Kaare Danielsen said at Denmark’s commercial court Sø- og Handelsretten, in comments reported by Ritzau.

“Google has not respected our copyright. We have been doing this for 28 years without any problems, then Google comes along and won’t respect it,” he said.

Jobindex is happy to be included in Google search results but objects to its ads being copied, Danielsen stressed.

Vocabulary: kopivarer – counterfeit goods

New law against flying foreign flags

Justice Minister Peter Hummelgaard has tabled a bill which would make it illegal to fly foreign flags in Denmark under a new law.

Hummelgaard wants the Danish flag to have special status and other flags – such as the Ukrainian flag currently – to only be permitted in extraordinary circumstances.

The new ban will make it illegal to raise almost all other countries’ flags, including the Stars and Stripes, but will not apply to Nordic flags or the Greenlandic, Faroese or German flags.

A 2023 Supreme Court ruling found that a private individual had not breached a century-old directive against flying foreign flags when he displayed the flag of the United States at his home.

In the ruling, the Supreme Court said the directive was closely related to the situation before and during the First World War. It also noted that raising a flag may be protected by free speech rights.

As such, raising foreign nations’ flags in Denmark cannot generally be considered an offence under the directive, it concluded.

That meant the legal basis used for banning foreign flags no longer applied, so parliament revoked the First World War-era directive and has now drawn up a new bill.

Vocabulary: at flage – to fly/raise a flag

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