In other news … (Sept 7 – 13)

Bummer summer: Summer is officially over – if you can call the last few months a summer at all. “Apart from two warm periods at the end of July and the middle of August, it has been an unstable summer,” meteorologist John Cappelen told Politiken newspaper, proving that anyone with eyes and a window could have done his job these past few months. According to DMI, this has been the coldest summer of the last 12 years, and to add insult to injury, it’s been both wetter and darker than average. With an average ‘warmth’ of 15.1 °C, 258mm rain, and a measly 620 hours of sunshine, it is the worst recorded summer since 2000.

A combination of more prisoners and not enough guards has disrupted the power balance (Photo: Colourbox)Who's in charge?: Seven out of ten prison guards say that they have trouble controlling the bikers and gang members who are flooding into the nation’s prisons. The guards said that gangs are taking over as the current push against crime has filled prisons with hardcore criminals that prison employees are ill-equipped to handle. Many guards refuse to engage prisoners on the inside for fear that gang members will take revenge on their family members on the outside. William Rentzmann of  Kriminalforsorgen, the prison service, admitted that there is a problem. “We have too few employees,” he told DR News.

Mamma Jane: No longer alone? (Photo: Scanpix / Katrine Emilie Andersen)Jane's backup: Café Viking owner ‘Mamma’ Jane Pedersen’s stand against thugs demanding protection money has now prompted authorities to take action. The restaurant industry association Danmarks Restauranter og Caféer held a meeting in Copenhagen on Monday with the purpose of tackling the problem at a national level. Present at the meeting were about 20 restaurant owners from Nørrebro as well as representatives from the police and City Council. Restaurant owners were urged to report extortion attempts, and a nationwide anonymous survey will also be sent out to some 1,550 restaurant and café owners to gauge the problem’s extent.




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