COVID-19 cases are sweeping Europe once again — here is a breakdown of how each country has reacted to the surge.
Measures vary across the continent — from a national lockdown in Austria and moves towards mandatory vaccination in Germany, to the United Kingdom where only light restrictions are in place.
Read more at:
COVID in Europe: Denmark reports jump in Omicron cases as Belgium protest ends in clashes | Euronews
Showing posts with label Denmark. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Denmark. Show all posts
Sunday, December 5, 2021
Monday, January 20, 2020
Denmark-Estonia relations: Danske Bank Money Laundering Probe Expands
The Estonian Prosecutor's Office
confirmed on Thursday it expanded the investigation into money
laundering through Danske bank’s Estonian branch from two to more than
10 cases that are involving suspicious transactions worth US$ 2 billion.
Prosecutors were previously looking into suspect money flows worth $300 million relating to two separate cases.
After media broke the story about extensive money laundering in the Estonian branch of Denmark’s biggest bank, Danske launched an investigation into 15,000 of its customers and 200 billion euro (US$222 billion) worth of transactions.
In 2018, the bank admitted that it 6,200 customers had hit the most risk indicators and that most of them have been found to be suspicious. Most of the customers were from Russia and other post-Soviet countries.
The bank closed its branches in the Baltics and promised to cooperate with investigators. The scandal also triggered worldwide probes and lawsuits.
Prosecutors were previously looking into suspect money flows worth $300 million relating to two separate cases.
After media broke the story about extensive money laundering in the Estonian branch of Denmark’s biggest bank, Danske launched an investigation into 15,000 of its customers and 200 billion euro (US$222 billion) worth of transactions.
In 2018, the bank admitted that it 6,200 customers had hit the most risk indicators and that most of them have been found to be suspicious. Most of the customers were from Russia and other post-Soviet countries.
The bank closed its branches in the Baltics and promised to cooperate with investigators. The scandal also triggered worldwide probes and lawsuits.
Read more: Estonia: Danske Bank Money Laundering Probe Expands
Friday, August 16, 2019
Denmark: Greenland tells Trump: ′We′re not for sale′
Greenland's government on Friday dismissed the idea of being purchased by the United States.
The statement follows reports that US President Donald Trump was interested in buying the territory from Denmark.
What the government said:
A "short comment" on the government website said that:
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The statement follows reports that US President Donald Trump was interested in buying the territory from Denmark.
What the government said:
A "short comment" on the government website said that:
- "We have a good cooperation with the USA, and we see it as an expression of greater interest in investing in our country..."
- "...Of course, Greenland is not for sale,"
- "Because of the unofficial nature of the news, the Government of Greenland has no further comments."
For additional information, including advertising rates - e-mail:Freeplanet@protonmail.com
Wednesday, October 18, 2017
Denmark: Copenhagen unions call for 30-hour week for municipal workers
 |
| The Copenhagen Waterfront |
The unions claim this would prevent many employees
developing stress, cut absences due to sickness, and help people balance
their work and family lives better, reports DR Nyheder.
“We know from a trial in Sweden that a 30-hour week
helped both employees and the institutions to cope better with the
pressure of work,” said Henriette Brockdorff, the head of BUPL, the
union representing pedagogues in Copenhagen.
As well as the pedagogues, the eight unions represent
health and social assistants, social workers, teachers, office
personnel, kitchen employees and cleaners.
Brockdorff agrees that the present 37-hour week is
already rather short by international standards, but contends that the
pressure on workers these days is extreme due to overly-high
productivity demands.
As well as a shorter working week, the unions also
want workers to be compensated salary-wise. That would mean an increase
in costs of around 20 percent, so the unions would like to see
Copenhagen Municipality setting aside 12 million kroner for the project.
However, the group chair for Socialdemokratiet at Copenhagen Municipality, Lars Weiss, rejects this idea.
“We have a ‘Danish model’ through which agreements
are made on salaries and employment conditions every second year, and
I’m not going to start negotiating on these matters in the run-up to a
local election.”
Weiss also said that calculations made by the
municipality’s finance department suggest that a 30-hour working week
would cost 3.6 billion kroner per annum.
“This would severely impact our service levels. We
would see higher numbers in school classes and kindergartens, and that
would put even more pressure on the employees.”
Note EU-Digest: Is
this for real? Municipal workers having too much stress in Denmark and
now want to work 30 hrs per week? As Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet:
"Something is rotten in the state of Denmark".
Wednesday, August 9, 2017
Tax Systems - money is not determinating factor: The happiest countries in the world also pay a lot in taxes
 |
| The US Tax System needs an overhaul |
Their populations are, in many cases, largely homogeneous. And they also have something else in common: They each pay a lot in taxes.
According to the United Nations' latest World Happiness Report, as covered by CBS News, the top 10 happiest countries are:
1. Norway
2. Denmark
3. Iceland
4. Switzerland
5. Finland
6. Netherlands
7. Canada
8. New Zealand
9. Australia
10. Sweden
Report co-author Jeffrey Sachs, who is also the director of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network, tells CBS that "happiness is a result of creating strong social foundations," and that if other nations prioritized "social trust" and "healthy lives," they could also find that their citizens become more content.
The top three happiest countries, Norway, Denmark and Iceland, are all among the highest taxed countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), in terms of total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP. The widely enjoyed social benefits residents get in exchange for their taxes, such as universal health care, access to education and subsidized parental leave, could have something to do with the "strong social foundations" touted by Sachs.
Note EU-Digest: These countries are happy, mainly for all the services they are getting in exchange for paying high taxes. Specially in the area of healthcare and low pharmaceutical costs, obviously also by enjoying great infrastructural advantages and obviously modern public transportation systems. In America right-wing politicians (mainly Republicans) have figured out that by telling the taxpayers they pay the lowest taxes in the world, it will make corrupt practices by them easier. Unfortunately over time this made the US taxpayer the big loser.
Read more: The happiest countries in the world also pay a lot in taxes
Sunday, March 12, 2017
Turkey’s Tyrannical Rule, Erdogan’s “Democratic Dictatorship” - by Stephen Lendman
 |
| The Boss is a dictator - vote NO |
He purged or imprisoned over 100,000 regime critics – from the judiciary, military, police, media and academia.
His state of emergency imposed after last summer’s coup attempt “target(s) criticism, not terrorism,” according to UN High Commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein.
He uses emergency powers to target dissent, aimed at consolidating unchallenged power.
He’s accused of disappearing opponents, extrajudicial killings, torture, and other flagrant human rights abuses.
Last year, he cited Hitler as a role model, calling his Nazi regime perhaps an ideal way to run Turkey, saying he wants things streamlined for more effective decision-making – code language for wanting iron-fisted rule, all challengers and critics eliminated.
He’s at war with Kurds in Turkey, Syria and Iraq, committing atrocities on the phony pretext of combating terrorism he supports – claiming he has a “historical (regional) responsibility.”
A row between Berlin and Ankara erupted after local German authorities cancelled campaign events Turkish ministers arranged to speak at in support of an April referendum on expanding Erdogan’s presidential powers.
About 1.4 million Turkish nationals live in Germany, eligible to vote in the referendum.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said she had nothing to do with it. Ignoring his own tyrannical rule, Erdogan responded angrily, saying “Germany, you have no relation whatsoever to democracy and you should know that your current actions are no different to those of the Nazi period.”
His spokesman Ibrahim Kalin claimed “(a) huge anti-Turkey, anti-Erdogan attitude is being systematically produced and serviced to the world, especially through Germany.”
Merkel said his accusations “cannot be justified. We will not allow the victims of the Nazis to be trivialized. These comparisons with the Nazis must stop.”
Last month, Die Welt reporter Deniz Yucel, with dual German/Turkish citizenship, was detained in Istanbul, accused of spying for Berlin and representing the outlawed Kurdish PKK group.
Germany called the charges “absurd.” Merkel told parliament her government is working “with all its means” to free him.
A separate row erupted after the Netherlands canceled flight clearance for Turkish Prime Minister Melvut Cavusoglu’s scheduled March 11 visit to Rotterdam to speak at a pro-Erdogan rally.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said Ankara wasn’t respecting public gathering rules, explaining:
“Many Dutch people with a Turkish background are authorized to vote in the referendum over the Turkish constitution. The Dutch government does not have any protest against gatherings in our country to inform them about it.”
“But these gatherings may not contribute to tensions in our society and everyone who wants to hold a gathering is obliged to follow instructions of those in authority so that public order and safety can be guaranteed.”
Cavusoglu angrily responded, saying “(i)f the Netherlands cancels my flight clearance today, then we will impose severe sanctions,” adding he intends flying to the country later on Saturday.
A Dutch government statement said his “sanctions threat made search for a reasonable solution impossible.”
Erdogan called Dutch authorities “Nazi remnants, fascists,” warning they’ll be impeded from traveling to Turkey.
How this row gets resolved remains to be seen. Dealings with Erdogan are never easy.
Note EU-Digest: Turkey under leadership of Erdogan is an ever increasing disaster: It is time for the EU, the NATO and democratic countries around the world to call a Spade a Spade and wake up to the fact that it is impossible to deal with this Turkish narcissist president.
He already is a dictator - has no respect for the present Turkish Constitution, election laws (which forbid the Turkish Government and citizens to hold political rallies abroad); locked up more journalists than China; and has enriched himself and his family with money from illegal business deals .Erdogan's so-called referendum on April 16, 2017 is nothing more than a further attempt to amass more power and influence.. YES INDEED, TURKS AROUND THE WORLD NEED TO PROTECT TURKEY FROM DESTRUCTION AND VOTE NO.
Read more: Turkey’s Tyrannical Rule, Erdogan’s “Democratic Dictatorship” | Global Research - Centre for Research on Globalization
Tuesday, November 1, 2016
US Economy: Upward mobility eludes many in US - by Evan Horowitz
To reach the fabled land of opportunity, you may have to move. The odds
of a low-income kid clawing his way up are better in Seattle than they
are in Boston.
Crossing an ocean might help even more, since the make-your-own-success promise of the American dream turns out to be more true in Denmark than the United States.
But if you really want to find a place of equal opportunity, where hard work brings real rewards and your life prospects aren’t constrained by the size of your parents’ paychecks, leaving home may not be enough. You might have to find a time machine. Research suggests that your chance of success isn’t just determined by your parents, but by the long-forgotten fortunes of your distant ancestors.
Pick yourself up by your bootstraps? Only if your parents, grandparents, and great-great-great-grandparents already did.
Let’s be clear what we’re talking about, because there are several definitions of mobility. I’m talking about relative mobility, or how common it is for people to climb to a higher rung on the income ladder than their parents did (or, less glamorously, fall to a lower one).
Foundational myths aside, there really isn’t a lot of mobility in the United States — at least judging from the work of Stanford University professor Raj Chetty and his team at the Equality of Opportunity project.
Children born into the poorest 20 percent of households have about 33 percent chance of staying there, they calculate, and only a 7.5 percent chance of cracking the top 20 percent.
Among the rich, it’s reversed. In a perfectly mobile world, it wouldn’t matter where you started on the income ladder; even if your parents were among the top 1 percent, you’d still have a 1 in 100 chance of ending up in that rarefied group, just like everyone else. But in reality, Chetty’s research found, your odds are 10 times better than that.
Even within the United States there are some big differences. For instance, kids across the West have a much better shot at improving their lot than those in the South.
Scan the globe and you can do even better. Compared to their US peers, poor kids in Canada are nearly twice as likely to find their way to the top. In Denmark, the numbers aren’t quite so good, but Danish kids still enjoy more upward mobility than ours do.
When scholars from Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, and the Census Bureau added a third generation to their measure of economic mobility, they found that the US economy was even less fluid than presumed. Studies that focus narrowly on parents and children, without attending to grandparents, underestimate social rigidity by a substantial amount.
Pause over that for a second, because it constitutes a huge challenge to our whole conception of economic mobility — more specifically, the idea that ours is not a rigidly hierarchical society because even small changes add up over time.
The argument usually goes something like this: Sure, the children of low-income parents have a reduced chance of moving up the income ladder, but they have some chance. And the ones who don’t make it will have their own children, with a new opportunity to move up. So after a few generations, virtually all scions of those once-poor families should have escaped.
But this won’t happen if grandchildren have a tendency to snap back.
One generation goes up, the next falls back down, and the whole system ends up in the same position as before.
What accounts for these differences? Chetty and his colleagues isolated a number of factors, though they’re careful to insist they don’t yet understand the full causal picture. Among other things, it seems that good schools help to develop essential skills, strong families provide valuable support, low inequality levels the field, and low rates of segregation aid both whites and blacks.
Put a few of these together and you can turn cities and countries into superior engines of opportunity.
The very fact that mobility rates vary from place to place suggests we can probably do something to expand opportunity. By following the example of higher-mobility regions like the Pacific Northwest or Northern Europe, we might be able to widen the avenues for poorer kids. And the better news is that the required changes are already high political priorities, things like improving schools and reducing inequality.
But if Clark is right, and family success persists across centuries, perhaps policy is beside the point. There seems to be a broader law at work, something that keeps the successful on top and the poor close to the bottom — regardless of school funding levels or divorce rates.
Clark raises a genetic argument, suggesting that families like the Pepys have some traits essential for success — grit, ambition, high IQ — that get passed down and provide each generation a substantial advantage.
But even if you don’t accept that claim, it doesn’t change the puzzle. In a world where 21st-century success is bound up with 17th-century happenings, the idea of economic opportunity starts to sound like a farce.
Perhaps the only thing to do is rewrite our economic rules so that everyone can find some real well-being, even if opportunity was mostly closed to them hundreds of years ago.
To read the complete report click here:: Upward mobility eludes many in US - The Boston Globe
Crossing an ocean might help even more, since the make-your-own-success promise of the American dream turns out to be more true in Denmark than the United States.
But if you really want to find a place of equal opportunity, where hard work brings real rewards and your life prospects aren’t constrained by the size of your parents’ paychecks, leaving home may not be enough. You might have to find a time machine. Research suggests that your chance of success isn’t just determined by your parents, but by the long-forgotten fortunes of your distant ancestors.
Pick yourself up by your bootstraps? Only if your parents, grandparents, and great-great-great-grandparents already did.
Let’s be clear what we’re talking about, because there are several definitions of mobility. I’m talking about relative mobility, or how common it is for people to climb to a higher rung on the income ladder than their parents did (or, less glamorously, fall to a lower one).
Foundational myths aside, there really isn’t a lot of mobility in the United States — at least judging from the work of Stanford University professor Raj Chetty and his team at the Equality of Opportunity project.
Children born into the poorest 20 percent of households have about 33 percent chance of staying there, they calculate, and only a 7.5 percent chance of cracking the top 20 percent.
Among the rich, it’s reversed. In a perfectly mobile world, it wouldn’t matter where you started on the income ladder; even if your parents were among the top 1 percent, you’d still have a 1 in 100 chance of ending up in that rarefied group, just like everyone else. But in reality, Chetty’s research found, your odds are 10 times better than that.
Even within the United States there are some big differences. For instance, kids across the West have a much better shot at improving their lot than those in the South.
Scan the globe and you can do even better. Compared to their US peers, poor kids in Canada are nearly twice as likely to find their way to the top. In Denmark, the numbers aren’t quite so good, but Danish kids still enjoy more upward mobility than ours do.
When scholars from Northwestern University, the University of Michigan, and the Census Bureau added a third generation to their measure of economic mobility, they found that the US economy was even less fluid than presumed. Studies that focus narrowly on parents and children, without attending to grandparents, underestimate social rigidity by a substantial amount.
Pause over that for a second, because it constitutes a huge challenge to our whole conception of economic mobility — more specifically, the idea that ours is not a rigidly hierarchical society because even small changes add up over time.
The argument usually goes something like this: Sure, the children of low-income parents have a reduced chance of moving up the income ladder, but they have some chance. And the ones who don’t make it will have their own children, with a new opportunity to move up. So after a few generations, virtually all scions of those once-poor families should have escaped.
But this won’t happen if grandchildren have a tendency to snap back.
One generation goes up, the next falls back down, and the whole system ends up in the same position as before.
What accounts for these differences? Chetty and his colleagues isolated a number of factors, though they’re careful to insist they don’t yet understand the full causal picture. Among other things, it seems that good schools help to develop essential skills, strong families provide valuable support, low inequality levels the field, and low rates of segregation aid both whites and blacks.
Put a few of these together and you can turn cities and countries into superior engines of opportunity.
The very fact that mobility rates vary from place to place suggests we can probably do something to expand opportunity. By following the example of higher-mobility regions like the Pacific Northwest or Northern Europe, we might be able to widen the avenues for poorer kids. And the better news is that the required changes are already high political priorities, things like improving schools and reducing inequality.
But if Clark is right, and family success persists across centuries, perhaps policy is beside the point. There seems to be a broader law at work, something that keeps the successful on top and the poor close to the bottom — regardless of school funding levels or divorce rates.
Clark raises a genetic argument, suggesting that families like the Pepys have some traits essential for success — grit, ambition, high IQ — that get passed down and provide each generation a substantial advantage.
But even if you don’t accept that claim, it doesn’t change the puzzle. In a world where 21st-century success is bound up with 17th-century happenings, the idea of economic opportunity starts to sound like a farce.
Perhaps the only thing to do is rewrite our economic rules so that everyone can find some real well-being, even if opportunity was mostly closed to them hundreds of years ago.
To read the complete report click here:: Upward mobility eludes many in US - The Boston Globe
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