International News in Brief: India yearning for Danish food solutions

Elsewhere, Ulla Tørnæs visits Myanmar and DFDS migrant stalemate finally comes to an end

Nov 2, 2017

There is little doubt that India would be well-suited to embracing food product solutions from Denmark.

The world’s soon-to-be most populous country has an annual food waste that is the equivalent of the entire agriculture production of the UK.

The food minister, Esben Lunde Larsen, is in India to promote Danish food solutions along with 21 companies and organisations.

“Danish companies can contribute to reducing food waste in connection with harvests, storage and transport so tomatoes and grain don’t decay or grow fungi,” said Larsen.

“The country is in dire need of an upgrade of its agriculture sector, and Danish companies can help boost the Indian food sector and Danish jobs.”

Exporting expertise
India is the world’s largest dairy producer and second-largest producer of fruit, vegetables and grain, but 40 percent of the produce goes to waste on its way to the tables of the country’s more than 1.3 billion citizens.

Larsen said the export expedition’s goal was to sell Danish food products, but also to promote technology and knowledge associated with agriculture – such as cooling technology and expertise on food security.

As part of his ‘passage to India’, Larsen will be a keynote speaker during the opening of the massive World Food India conference, which Denmark is a partner nation of, and hold bilateral meetings with a number of Indian ministers within the realm of food production, the environment and water resources.

Last year, India was Denmark’s 36th largest export market.

DFDS stalemate ends
Following over three months of limbo, the 12 migrants held aboard the DFDS-owned ferry Kaunas Seaways for not having proper ID cards have finally been released. Six of the 12 migrants, who had threatened to commit suicide and burn down the ship in frustration at being held on the ship, were sent to Algeria, while the others were sent to Morocco. The ship, which operates in the Black Sea between Ukraine and Turkey, was forced to keep the migrants on board as neither country wanted to accept them. DFDS had to lock the migrants inside their quarters and weld iron grids onto the cabin windows.

Ulla meets Aung
The development minister, Ulla Tørnæs, has travelled to Bangladesh and Myanmar to meet with a number of officials in connection with the ongoing Rohingya refugee crisis. Tørnæs met with Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Nay Pyi Taw to underline the importance of the military ceasing all acts of violence against the Rohingya minorities in the Rakhine district. Tørnæs also visited the refugee camps in Bangladesh, where upwards of a million Rohingya refugees have fled in recent months.

Jagland visiting Copenhagen
Danish PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen will meet with the secretary general of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, tomorrow in Copenhagen. The meeting comes as Denmark prepares to assume the chairmanship of the EU’s Council of Ministers on November 15.

Tourist lost in Thailand
A Danish woman has been rescued in Thailand some 24 hours after wandering off a trail and getting lost while visiting a popular waterfall in the Rayong Mountains. The woman, 51, was found by rescuers early on Thursday morning about 1,500 metres from the trail she had left. She walked away from the ordeal with minor injuries to her ankle.

Bitcoin contract killing
A Swedish newspaper reports that a 58-year-old Danish woman from north Zealand has been detained for reportedly attempting to hire a hitman online using the cryptocurrency Bitcoin as payment. The contract killing, which never took place, was ordered on a ‘darknet’ site called ‘Crime Bay by Chechen Mob’ – a hidden virtual network that is only accessible via specialised software.