National Round-Up: Olsen Gang prison bought for new green residential area

Roselyne Min

Aug 28, 2020

The area where Vridsløselille Prison is located in Albertslund has been acquired by the pension fund PKA, together with the construction company A Enggaard, TV2 reports.

The two companies are planning to turn the area around the prison, which is well known for its frequent appearances in the Olsen Gang films, into a green residential area.

The land will primarily be used to build homes in a green district – with hopes to accommodate a housing association for seniors and institutions such as kindergartens and crèches.

History will remain
The 160,000 sqm site has housed the prison since 1859.

The last inmates left the prison in 2016 when they were transferred to Storstrøm Prison on Falster. However, the site was used as an institution for detained asylum-seekers until 2018.

Parts of the prison will be preserved.

Maternity compensation for self-employed
According to the Ministry of Employment, self-employed people can soon receive maternity leave as part of the newly agreed Finance Act. The self-employed must pay into the joint equalisation scheme Barsel.dk from October 2021 in order to be eligible for the compensation. Already from April 2021, self-employed people on maternity leave will be able to benefit from the scheme – with retroactive effect to January 2021. The bill will be sent for consultation on Friday 4 September, and the government expects to submit it in November with a view to its entry coming into force in January.

France and Croatia going down to orange
According to updated travel guidelines from the Foreign Ministry, unnecessary travel to France and Croatia is now discouraged. However, Bulgaria has been moved back to yellow in the new guidelines, so travel is therefore no longer discouraged. The announcement comes just two days before this year’s Tour de France starts. The first three days are scheduled in Nice and in the Provence region, where 57.3 people per 100,000 inhabitants have been infected within the last week – the hardest-hit region in France, DR reports.

Norwegian ferry routes to implement temperature measuring
Passengers on ferries between Hirtshals and Larvik, Hirtshals and Kristiansand, and Oslo and Kiel must now have their temperature measured, reports TV2. The Norwegian shipping company Color Line requires passengers to confirm they have not been in close contact with an infected person, have no symptoms themselves, and have neither been quarantined nor isolated. Fjord Line is also considering introducing temperature measurements, according to the Norwegian media outlet Dinside. As the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has advised against trips that are not strictly necessary to Germany, the route from Oslo to Kiel will not operate from Saturday.

Smittestop flaws
The Danish coronavirus app Smittestop could be misinforming users, as its definition of ‘close contact’ is different to that of Google and Apple. While the smartphone’s operating systems could send a notification – such as: ‘Your device has identified 4 potential exposures this week and shared them with Smittestop’ – the app itself might not inform the user if contact is not judged to be close enough or long enough. The Danish authorities define close contact with an infected person when a user has been less than a metre from someone who registers as infected on Smittestop for more than 15 minutes. According to the Ministry of Health and the Elderly, 1,084,240 people in Denmark had downloaded the app as of 17 August, by which time 457 users had reported an infection.

Dane choreographed video for mega K-pop group BTS
A Danish choreographer has been working with the world-famous K-pop band BTS, reports BT. Nicky Andersen worked on the choreography for the video for their new song ‘Dynamite’, which recently broke their own YouTube one-day world record with 101.1 million views. Last September, Andersen moved to Hollywood to pursue his dreams of working in the K-pop industry, and it is believed he hooked up with BLS via Instagram in July.