Better flooding defence needed on coasts

Recent years have seen several incidents of flooding around Denmark during stormy weather periods, and the Coastal Authority, which comes under the environment ministry, is now calling for improved protection against the elements on a hundred different stretches of Danish coast.

Given that, with all its islands, Denmark has close to 9,000 kilometres of shoreline, it’s perhaps unsurprising that many parts of the country are exposed.

The directorate is recommending measures including sea walls, sand banks and artificial cliff landscapes, DR reports.

House prices have increased this year

Perhaps a surprising report given the economic uncertainty in which Denmark and everywhere else finds itself.

Nationally, house prices increased between the second and third quarters of this year, according to Statistics Denmark.

We’ll have more detail on this in a report later today.

Unemployment down, meanwhile

Unemployment fell in October, for the fifth consecutive month.

However, this is a sign of gradual recovery from the huge impact on jobs of the initial shutdown of the economy immediately after the coronavirus pandemic reached Denmark in late February.

Net unemployment now stands at 4.6 percent, according to Statistics Denmark figures – still some way off February’s figure of 3.7 percent.

Trial to begin on Bornholm in murder case

Trial is scheduled to begin today at the district court on Baltic Sea island Bornholm of a 28-year-old man from the island who was beaten to death by two other young men, whom he knew, in June this year.

The two brothers have admitted gross violence but deny they intended to kill, according DR’s reporting of court papers.

The case became an international story in the summer when the New York Times reported it, pointing out that the victim was Black and authorities’ insistence the incident was not a hate crime. This drew a response from fact checkers and prosecutors in Denmark.

Google opens CO2 neutral Danish data centre

After two years’ construction at a cost of 4.5 billion kroner, tech giant Google today opens a major data centre at Fredericia in southeast Jutland.

The facility will use enormous amounts of electricity, but all of it will be supplied by five solar farms, the company said in a statement.

The five solar panel farms are located in various parts of Denmark.

Danish vocabulary:

• Opmærksomhed: attentiveness, awareness
• Strækning: stretch (of land, road, geographical feature)
• Bolig: home, housing, residence
• Ledighed: unemployment, availability (of a person or place)