Organisations want ban on energy drinks for kids

While health authorities have found success in using teenage mystery shoppers to catch stores that sell alcohol to underage customers, organisations from various sectors say they want a different type of drink to also be inaccessible for youngsters.

Energy drinks – the types that come in big, brightly patterned cans and are popular in gaming culture – have been brought into focus by health and consumer groups, who want Denmark to follow countries including Norway, Poland, Estonia and Latvia in banning sales of the drinks to under-16s.

Consuming too much of the drinks in one go can result in symptoms like headaches and palpitations and eventually stress and anxiety, including in young people according to a medical expert who spoke to broadcaster DR.

Denmark’s food authority Fødevarestyrelsen already recommends against children drinking the drinks but nothing can be enforced without a law change. So what does the government say?

Well, that’s not really clear at the moment. Although the health minister, Sophie Løhde, has previously expressed interest in following Norway’s decisions on the matter, she is currently on holiday and DR was therefore unable to get hold of her this week.

Arrest in Greenland snowballs into growing diplomatic dilemma

Two weeks ago, the anti-whaling activist Paul Watson was arrested in Greenland under an international arrest warrant.

You could be forgiven for thinking this sounds like it has limited relevance from a Danish point of view, but it has the potential to cause considerable diplomatic ill-feeling.

READ ALSO: Anti-whaling activist arrested by Denmark has ‘no regrets’

Watson, the 73-year-old American-Canadian founder of the Sea Shepherd activist organisation and former leading member of Greenpeace, was arrested on July 21st in Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory, over a 2010 altercation with Japanese whaling ships.

Denmark has since received an official extradition request from Japan, one of only three countries in the world to permit commercial whaling along with Iceland and Norway.

However, French President Emmanuel Macron’s office has asked Danish authorities not to extradite Watson, who has lived in France for the past year, while two petitions in France have also urged Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen not to extradite Watson, who is well-supported for his environmental activism.

In the latest development, some 73 different politicians, including MEPs from 10 different countries including France, Finland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg have sent a letter also asking Frederiksen not to allow Watson to be handed over to Japan.

French MEP Emma Foreau told broadcaster TV2 that the arrest represented “an increasing trend of repression and criminalisation of environmental activists around the world”.

It’s currently unclear what Denmark will decide to do. The justice ministry told news agency AFP on Thursday it would forward the case to Greenland’s police, “unless the ministry on the present basis finds grounds to reject the extradition request beforehand”.

If the case is forwarded to Greenland police, they will investigate “whether there is basis for extradition”, including whether it is in accordance with the extradition act applicable to Greenland, the justice ministry said.

Whatever the outcome, it is unlikely to improve Denmark’s standing on at least one side of the globe.

What price for clear communication at medical consultations?

Media in Denmark this week reported on the results of University of Copenhagen research into the potential health impact of rules requiring non-Danish speakers to pay for interpreters in the health service if they have lived here for more than three years.

If you have lived here for over three years and aren’t fluent in Danish, then you will be obliged to pay if a doctor thinks they need an interpreter to communicate clearly with you.

English speakers are not exempt from this, we found out after hearing of at least one case in which a Danish doctor decided they didn’t want to speak English with a patient.

As many as one in four people who spoke to the researchers in the study said that interpretation fees put them off going to the doctor. 

Denmark’s Minister of Health Sophie Løhde, when asked about the matter in the past said that she thinks it is “reasonable” to have to pay for interpretation “if your Danish language is so bad that you need” the service “after three years in this country”.

A senior physician at a clinic specialising in helping people from foreign backgrounds has said that he has “not met a single patient who has learned Danish through this scheme.”

READ ALSO: Danish translator fees stopped ‘4 in 10’ from going to doctor

An English-speaking resident of Denmark similarly told The Local that “It was incredibly stressful, and did not instil in us a wish to ‘integrate’ at all.”

“The language barrier was used as a ‘big stick’, and hospital visits are often stressful enough to begin with,” they said.

Another concern relating to putting interpretation costs on patients is that it can result in them bringing family members or friends with them to interpret – resulting in a potential for miscommunication and even misdiagnosis, the researchers said.