Expert on Hans Christian Andersen says it is ‘hard to see what is racist’ about fairytale
The statue of the Little Mermaid in the entrance to Copenhagen harbour has been daubed with the words “racist fish”.
The 107-year-old statue has often been vandalised by protesters, ranging from pro-democracy activists to anti-whaling campaigners. As recently as January, “Free Hong Kong” was scrawled on the rock on which the 1.65-metre bronze sits.
Continue reading...EU summit intervenes to thwart Mette Frederiksen’s plan to marry her very patient ‘fantastic man’
Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, thought she had finally found a date for her wedding, but has now had to postpone it for a third time due to an EU summit, she said on Thursday.
Many a wedding plan has been upended by the Covid-19 pandemic and it seems not even world leaders are immune.
Continue reading...In the Danish town that is home to Lego HQ, Wow Park is a forest wonderland of swings, ziplines and treehouses immersed in nature
The birdsong is louder 14 metres up and there’s a citrusy tang of pine in the air. Scrambling to the top of a conifer with a six-year-old who suffers from vertigo wasn’t top of my post-lockdown bucket list, but after staring at the same four walls for weeks on end, there’s a welcome sense of perspective to spending time in a forest of 7,000 trees.
This is Wow Park in Billund, the Danish town that’s the home of Lego HQ, and that calls itself the “Capital of Children” – with ambitions to become the most child-friendly place in the world to live and work. Billund’s newest attraction is a treetop wonderland, the largest of its kind in the country, including suspension bridges, nets in the sky, giant bouncy balls, swings and ziplines; all crafted around the trunks of giant trees. It’s like Go Ape gone Viking, with a rough and ready, hand-whittled feel.
Continue reading...Infections keep falling in EU but reports suggest Russian death toll much higher than official figures
France is to lift its state of emergency on 10 July, Denmark said opening its bars, restaurants and malls had not led to a rise in infections, and Austria will reopen its border with Italy next week as EU nations pursue their steady exits from lockdown.
However, Germany extended its coronavirus travel warnings for more than 160 countries outside Europe until the end of August and reports suggested that Moscow’s death toll may be twice as high as Russia’s official figures.
Continue reading...Satisfaction levels across the continent have risen and fallen, but nowhere have they plunged as for Boris Johnson’s government
All across the continent, most Europeans now trust their leaders generally, and how they have handled the coronavirus pandemic in particular, a little less than when the crisis began – but nowhere has public confidence fallen as far and as fast as in the UK.
Even leaders seen as having managed Covid-19 the most successfully, such as Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel and Denmark’s prime minister Mette Frederiksen, have suffered slight dips in popular satisfaction as the weeks have worn on.
Continue reading...From Spain to Denmark, even those who have coped with coronavirus are aware the world has changed dramatically
Her customers may be back and there are, miraculously, more of them. Spring is here; the sun is out. No one wants to dwell on what happened; everyone wants to pick up their lives again, same as before.
“But still,” says Sophie Fornairon, “things have changed.”
Continue reading...France defends tracking app amid privacy concerns and Hungary aims to lift state of emergency
Denmark has made it easier for cross-border couples separated from their partners by lockdown to meet again, while Germany is expected to allow travel to 31 European countries from mid-June, as EU countries continued to lift coronavirus restrictions.
People living in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Germany can now visit partners in Denmark by signing a simple declaration rather than having to provide photos, phone records and other proof of a relationship, the Danish justice minister, Nick Hækkerup, said.
Continue reading...Restaurants reopen in parts of Germany, while Italy relaxes travel restrictions
Europe took a step towards post-virus normality on Friday when restaurants in Germany and Austria reopened for the first time in two months, and other countries loosened travel restrictions and threw open borders.
Berlin’s restaurants, cafes and snack kiosks were allowed to serve customers again, so long as they obeyed social distancing. People from two separate households could share a table, but had to keep a distance of 1.5m from each other.
Continue reading...Guardian writers report on how various European countries have managed the process
Boris Johnson has been heavily criticised for failing to show Britain a clear route out of lockdown. Easing a nation out of two months of confinement is a complicated business, and some degree of confusion is almost inevitable. Here, Guardian correspondents look at how other European leaders have managed the process.
Spain’s lockdown exit strategy – known formally as the Plan for the Transition Towards the New Normality – was outlined by the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, during a televised press conference on the evening of 28 April. Sánchez said the country’s four-phase de-escalation initiative would be “gradual and asymmetric”, adding that the first stage – dubbed phase 0 – would come into effect on 4 May.
Continue reading...Encouraging signs from EU states who acted early, as South Korea reports no new cases
Denmark and the Czech Republic have said partially easing their lockdowns has not led to a surge in new coronavirus infections, as the WHO continued to urge extreme caution and Germany relaxed some restrictions but extended others.
As EU governments grappled with the complex and conflicting imperatives of easing the lockdowns crippling their economies while avoiding a disastrous second wave of infections, meanwhile, South Korea reported no new cases for the first time.
Continue reading...Plenty of countries with male leaders have also done well. But few with female leaders have done badly
On 1 April, the prime minister of Sint Maarten addressed her nation’s 41,500 people. Coronavirus cases were rising, and Silveria Jacobs knew the small island country, which welcomes 500,000 tourists a year, was at great risk: it had two ICU beds.
Jacobs did not want to impose a strict lockdown, but she did want physical distancing observed. So she spelled it out: “Simply. Stop. Moving,” she said. “If you don’t have the bread you like in your house, eat crackers. Eat cereal. Eat oats. Eat … sardines.”
Continue reading...Politicians say expected announcement of $12m must not have conditions attached
Greenlanders have welcomed reports that the US wants to invest in their island, but said the money had to come without conditions.
The US administration is expected to announce the opening of an Agency for International Development office at the new US consulate in the capital, Nuuk, and at least $12m (£9.7m) in aid projects.
Continue reading...Health minister says Germany will produce 50m face masks a week by the summer
Germany has declared its coronavirus outbreak under control as it prepares to take its first tentative steps out of lockdown next week, while several European countries unveiled contact-tracing mobile apps aimed at facilitating a gradual return to a more normal life.
The German health minister, Jens Spahn, said on Friday that the virus was under control in Europe’s largest economy, thanks to confinement measures imposed after an early surge in cases. “The infection numbers have sunk significantly, especially the relative day-by-day increase,” he said.
Continue reading...Research shows abundance at sites in Europe has plunged by up to 80% in two decades
Two scientific studies of the number of insects splattered by cars have revealed a huge decline in abundance at European sites in two decades.
The research adds to growing evidence of what some scientists have called an “insect apocalypse”, which is threatening a collapse in the natural world that sustains humans and all life on Earth. A third study shows plummeting numbers of aquatic insects in streams.
Continue reading...From her landmark early films with Jean-Luc Godard to later work such as The Nun, Karina’s beauty and charisma shone out
It was Anna Karina’s fate, or curse, to be perpetually described as an “icon” or a “muse”: a devastatingly beautiful figurehead and inspiration-figure to all those male directors doing the creating or critics doing the rhapsodising – one male director-cineaste in particular. She certainly was every bit as beautiful as everyone ceaselessly said, but it was her easy charm, intelligence and grace which made that beauty visible and made it exist. It was the kind of acting talent that made her whole style and address to the camera look easy, or not like acting: the kind of thing that bad or inexperienced actors – or very good male stars – foreground as an effortfully meaningful performance. And she had parallel careers as singer, producer, director and novelist.
Related: Anna Karina, French new wave icon – a life in pictures
Continue reading...Melting sea ice is prompting fevered dreams of ever-easier access, and a renewed jockeying among Arctic nations for status, profit and ownership
I could not keep my eyes off the graves, could not stop staring at them even as I walked away, turning repeatedly to look over my shoulder at them as I slogged my way across the gravel-strewn shore of Beechey Island until they disappeared from view.
It was profoundly saddening to contemplate their presence on a low-lying, windswept outpost of the Canadian Arctic, to imagine the fear and loneliness those buried here must have felt as they faced death in the harshest of conditions, thousands of miles and a world removed from their homes. And yet, they were the lucky ones, the first casualties of an expedition that vanished 173 years ago while searching for the fabled Northwest Passage between Atlantic and Pacific, whose remaining members met their doom after their ships became frozen in never-yielding sea ice, who perished one by one waiting for a summer that never came.
Continue reading...Faroese art provocateurs want to use canvas of Tal R’s Paris Chic as raw material
A court in Denmark will rule on Monday on whether to prohibit a pair of Faroese art provocateurs from destroying a painting by the Danish artist Tal R and using pieces of the canvas as decorative faces for a line of luxury wristwatches.
Dann Thorleifsson and Arne Leivsgard, who five years ago founded the Kanske watch brand, bought Paris Chic, one of Tal R’s brightly coloured Sexshops series, for £70,000 at the Victoria Miro gallery in London in August.
Continue reading...State and defence departments wanted military aid restored, but the Greenland issue ‘took up a lot of energy’, new testimony reveals
After the White House cut off military aid to Ukraine, Donald Trump’s top officials scrambled to get it restored but were unable to organise a meeting with the president, in part because his staff were too busy pursuing his interest in buying Greenland, according to newly released congressional testimony.
The acting US ambassador to Ukraine, Bill Taylor, told Congress that Trump’s order in mid-July to cut off security assistance triggered a series of high-level meetings with cabinet members on how to get it resumed, given the urgency of the Russian military intervention in eastern Ukraine.
Continue reading...Some coastal cities are reclaiming land as a barrier against rising water – then selling it off. But critics argue that climate change defence should not be a business model
“The island is going to be placed where the British empire’s fleet once was,” says Anne Skovbro, looking out from her office in a 19th-century customs house over Copenhagen’s harbour.
She points out the mooring posts where tall ships once docked, the old masting crane that marked the harbour’s outer edge, and the patch of sea where Horatio Nelson is supposed to have held a telescope to his blind eye as his ships set the city’s medieval centre ablaze.
Continue reading...Green growth and ‘hedonistic sustainability’ have helped keep the public on board as the Danish capital seeks to reach its goal by 2025 – and so far it’s all going according to plan
“We call it hedonistic sustainability,” says Jacob Simonsen of the decision to put an artificial ski slope on the roof of the £485m Amager Resource Centre (Arc), Copenhagen’s cutting-edge new waste-to-energy power plant. “It’s not just good for the environment, it’s good for life.”
Skiing is just one of the activities that Simonsen, Arc’s chief executive, and Bjarke Ingels, its lead architect, hope will enhance the latest jewel in Copenhagen’s sustainability crown. The incinerator building also incorporates hiking and running trails, a street fitness gym and the world’s highest outdoor climbing wall, an 85-metre “natural mountain” complete with overhangs that rises the full height of the main structure.
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