STOCKHOLM, 29 SEP 2023: An 18-year-old man was sentenced to 10.5 years imprisonment for the shooting and killing of a 21-year-old man a busy road tunnel of Stockholm in October 2022. The shooting took place from a moving car, and the judge says it is proven the convicted fired 4 bullets at the victims – from the backseat of the car he was sitting in. The convicted says he acted out of self-defence. Two more suspects were taken into custody for the incident in the Björktunnel. Also the victim was sitting in the car.
DENMARK, 28 SEP 2023: One Portuguese man was killed and two other Portuguese workers severely wounded in an explosion at the Welcon steel factory in Give, Denmark, which produces for wind turbines.
DENMARK, 26 SEP 2023: There will be no new oil and gas exploration of the coast of Denmark, the country’s Energy Board has announced. The only candidate for the activity, Norway-based BlueNord, has withdrawn from the tender that had no other candidates.
SWEDEN, 25 SEP 2023: 10 people are standing trial as of today for the shooting and killing of a 15-year-old boy in a sushi restaurant in Stockholm suburb Skogas in January. Among the suspects is the 16-year-old boy that is seen as the one that fired the shots.
SWEDEN, 25 SEP 2023: Four brothers in the age of 15 to 18 and a 16-year-old girl are standing trial for the hanging of a 26-year-old man in Enköping, Sweden. The girl earlier reported the victim, a taxi driver, for rape. Swedish police has said to media the killing could probably have been prevented.
SWEDEN, 24 SEP 2023: 12 people were brought to hospital on the night from Saturday 23 to Sunday 24 September after a fire broke out in an apartment complex in the Stockholm suburb of Bredäng. 40 people were evacuated to a nearby school. The building has seven floors, with the fire starting for yet unknown reasons in one of them on the forth floor.
LATVIA, 23 SEP 2023: After Latvian authorities closed the Silene border crossing with Belarus for all traffic, the only border post open was met with long traffic jams. The Latvian Public Broadcasting company LSM reported a lorry queue of at least 12 kilometres on Friday. Like Estonia, Lithuania and Poland, Russian-registered cars are blocked from entering. For Belarusian cars the prohibition does not exists, leading to speculation Russian will use Belarusian registered vehicles. However, the Belarusian government is supporting Putin and the war waged by Russia in Ukraine, fuelling voices to also ban Belarusians completely from entering the Baltic states and Poland unless for humanitarian aid.
SWEDEN, 22 SEP 2023: Two people were shot and killed and another two wounded in a pub in Sandviken, Central Sweden, on Thursday evening. The police say they think only one person was the target of a rival gang. Initially the two killed were alive, but they died of their wounds in hospital, according to the police.
DENMARK, 22 SEP 2023: Danish police has installed special body search zones in Odense in an attempt to combat crime. The zones include the Vollsmose, parts of Korsløkkeparken, Tornberg and more. Officers have now more rights to stop and search individuals they suspect might be part of (organised) crime. The so-called visitationszoner were made legal by law in 2004, and are meant to give the police the possibility to limit people’s rights for a limited amount of time after a serious indicent. In Odense, it was a bomb explosion that wounded one recently, quickly linked to an ongoing gang conflict. Danish police have already arrested six suspects in relation to the bomb attack.
NORWAY, 20 SEP 2023: Norway has donated 51 M548 tracked vehicles to the Ukrainian armed forces, Norway’s military confirms to the Norwegian broadcasting company NRK. The deal, which involved a 100 personnel, was kept secret until recently. The vehicles were armed with a simple machine gun, and can be used by the Ukrainians to quickly get forces and equipment through difficult terrain.
NORWAY, 20 SEP 2023: On 19 September, the biggest Norwegian court case against drugs smugglers to date started in Oslo. Seven people stand accused for transporting, organising or aiding in moving the drugs on quads across the forest covered Swedish-Norwegian border. None of them was caught red-handed, neither are there any major narcotics taken. The main proof is intercepted and decoded messages by the gang members on the encrypted chat Sky ECC that was intercepted by international law enforcement agencies.
NORWAY, 18 SEP 2023: Russian forces on the border with Norway have diminished to 20% of what their strength was before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022. This is noted by Norway’s Chief of the Armed Forces, Eirik Kristoffersen, to Norwegian news agency NTB.
POLAND, 16 SEP 2023: Two men are dead in a shooting in Częstochowa in Southern Poland on Saturday, Polish media report. One of the victims was found in his car, the other a bit further away. The likely weapons was also found on sight. Shootings are rare in Poland.
GREENLAND, 14 SEP 2023: The cruise ship Ocean Explorer that got stuck in a fjord in Greenland on 12 September, has been pulled free. A fishery research vessel managed to pull it off during high tide. The ship will call port to assess the damage, and the passengers will be flown home from there, Danish media report.
GREENLAND, 12 SEP 2023: Cruise ship Ocean Explorer with 206 people on board has gone aground in the Alpefjord of Greenland, where the Nordøstgrønland National Park is situated, on Tuesday. The Danish military – Greenland is a semi-autonomous country, under Danish rule – has sent patrol vessel P570 Knud Rasmussen to the area. But it will take days for it to sail the more than 1,200 kilometres (about 650 nautical miles) to the Ocean Explorer. The Danish Arctic Command hopes the vessel is able to get itself free with high tide.
SWEDEN, 11 SEP 2023: Ten people are accused of killing a 15-year-old boy in a sushi restaurant in Skogås, as Stockholm suburb, in January. The ten are between 16 and 27 years old, and include the 16-yr-old guy that pulled the trigger and killed the then equally old boy, investigators say. The police beliefs the hit was ordered and can be connected to the so-called “Kurdish fox” (kurdiska räven), which has been identified by Swedish police as a major crime boss. Of the ten suspects of this killing, only one remains at large.
DENMARK, 11 SEP 2023: Copenhagen police is temporarily closing the club houses of two motorcycle gangs, the police has announced during a press conference. The prohibition to be at the three addresses is valid until 25 September, and concerns the club houses of the Hells Angels and Loyal to Familia. “We think that the explosion (at the Hells Angels club house) in the weekend has caused the conflict to escalate,” a police spokesperson said about the incident. The law enforcers hopes to bring a pause in the conflict. On 26 August there was also a shooting in Christiania, the semi-free state in Copenhagen, which left one dead and four wounded. Also this incident was linked to the conflict between the two rival motorcycle gangs.
DENMARK, 11 SEP 2023: Clashes in Copenhagen between rival Eritrean groups on 10 September, with 67 arrest among the rioters. After 30 years of independence of Eritrea from Ethiopia, those pro and contra the Eritrean dictator seem to settle their difference more often with violence these days. Events of the one are being countered by the others more massively than before. Smaller clashes are not new in Scandinavia, but after larger fights in Bergen (Norway), Stockholm (Sweden) and now Copenhagen the situation seems to escalate. Fights also erupted in Zürich and, in July, in Giessen in Germany, among other places. A clash at the Eritrean cultural festival in Stockholm on 3 August – where reportedly many children were present too – left 52 people wounded, many severely. | © 2023 Marcel Burger, nordicreporter.com
SWEDEN, 8 SEP 2023: A young male hunter was severely wounded near Venjan, west of Lake Siljan, in Sweden, when a bear attacked him on Friday. The bear was later found dead, killed by bullets fired by the hunting party that included the wounded hunter.
SWEDEN, 8 SEP 2023: For the murder of a 14-year-old boy in Upplands-Bro, North of Stockholm in August, Swedish police have arrested three teenagers of 15, 18 and 19, plus a woman of 21 years old. The publish prosecutor has confirmed the arrest. All those arrested are suspected of murder or assisting in the murder of the boy that was taken out of its foster home.
SWEDEN, 8 SEP 2023: Padel sports are on sharp decline in Sweden. The number of padel sports locations exploded years ago, but now it is the other way around. Since the beginning 2022 a total of 113 “padel houses” have gone bankrupt, Swedish broadcasting company SVT reports.
NORWAY, 8 SEP 2023: An earthquake with force 3.6 on the Richter scale hit Northern Norway on Thursday evening at 21:49. The quake took place 80 kilometres west of Ålesund, in the Atlantic Ocean 15 kilometres deep. Norway’s seismological institute Norsar says these kind of quakes are a bit rare in the area. Since 1986 there were 25 earthquakes stronger than 3.0 in the northern part of Norway, with the strongest in 1988 of magnitude 5.3 on the Richter scale, Norsar reports. Norwegian media quote inhabitants on land felt a 10 to 15 seconds shaking.
DENMARK, 8 SEP 2023: The first 10 Leopard-1 main battle tanks donated by Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany have arrived in Ukraine, and can be used for offensive military operations. The Danish Ministry of Defence confirmed this on Friday. The tanks have been renovated. The Danish armed forces replaced the last of their Leopard-1A5s in 2005 by the newer Leopard-2A4.
SWEDEN, 6 SEP 2023: The explosion in an apartment complex in Norrköping, Sweden, last Sunday that injured a few inhabitants and led to evacuation of 150 people from 84 apartments, was not caused by an explosive device. The police still holds one of the original three suspects for breaking the law on narcotics. A fire that came after the explosion has caused severe damage to the residential building on the street Luntgatan. A substantial number of apartments are beyond repair, and many inhabitants lost most or all of their belongings. Investigators assume the explosion was unintentional, and no explosives were found. Further details have not been released.
NORWAY, 6 SEP 2023: Facebook and Instagram‘s mother company Meta is sentenced to pay day fines to the Norwegian people for breach of their privacy. A court in Oslo judged that the American social media giant cannot postpone paying the fines for illegally connected people’s GPS location to targeted content, while it awaits the outcome of the appeal in the court case. The day fine is about a million NOK, equivalent to roughly EUR 87.000. The case was started by the Norwegian Data Authority (Datatilsynet).
ESTONIA, 5 SEP 2023: Estonia´s Prime Minister Kaja Kallas should step down, after it became clear that her husband has done indirect business via Russia and that she has even given a loan to her husbands activities. This has been said by the Estonian president Alar Karis in a reaction to the PM refusing to go. Karis feels Kallas’ authority has been undermined, as she in public has always taken a tough stand on Russia. Kallas’ said she did not know her husbands business activities to the full extend, and that they were not against any rules or laws.
SWEDEN, 4 SEP 2023: Riots in the Rosengård area of Malmö in the night of Sunday to Monday. About 100 rioters threw stones to police vehicles and set cars on fire. A police spokesperson says to local media that the rioters used the burning of a Quran early on Sunday partly as an excuse to create unrest.
SWEDEN, 31 AUG 2023: Ten workers got stuck in a 7.5 kilometre long tunnel, 70 metres underneath Stockholm on Thursday. Smoke had filled the tunnel, used for electricity supply infrastructure, from a transport belt that malfunctioned. They managed to get to a safe room, and were later evacuated from the tunnel by the electricity company’s own personnel. Two other workers in the tunnel were transported to hospital after inhaling the smoke.
BEFORE 31 AUGUST 2023 I’ve published News in brief in tweets on Twitter for 13 years. It was renamed in X and new policies of its new owner Elon Musk made me decide to leave this news sharing channel, after more than 10,000 tweets.