Priest admits to collecting child sex abuse images in trial, postal service reported to data protection agency, record warm weather in Greenland and more news from Denmark this Tuesday.
Priest likens child sex abuse images to ‘collecting stamps’
A Danish priest who downloaded 80,000 photographs and 2,300 films portraying child sexual abuse, including to his work computer, told a court yesterday he did it because it was “like collecting stamps”, media reported.
Tom Thygesen Frederiksen, 60, confessed to being in possession of the photos and videos during his trial in the Næstved court, news agency Ritzau reported.
“I’m incredibly sorry for what I’ve done,” he told the court.
Around 700 of the images were considered to be of the most serious type, portraying violence or coercion.
Police found the material when they searched his house in May 2024 following a tip from a file-sharing service.
Thygesen Frederiksen, who had previously led pastoral care groups for children, was suspended from his job as parish priest and later resigned.
The prosecution intends to seek a sentence of at least six months in prison, Ritzau reported.
The verdict is due on February 25th.
Greenland’s west coast posts warmest January on record
Greenland’s capital Nuuk registered its warmest ever January — beating a record that stood for 109 years — as temperatures soared across the Arctic island’s west coast, the Danish Meteorological Institute stated.
While Europe and North America experienced a cold snap in January, Nuuk registered an average monthly temperature of 0.1C (32 Fahrenheit), a whopping 7.8C above the average for the month of January over the last three decades.
That is 1.4 degrees above the previous record for Nuuk from 1917.
On the warmest day in Nuuk in January, the mercury rose to a balmy 11.3C.
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From the southern tip of Greenland up the west coast — a distance of over 2,000 kilometres-– the temperature in January set monthly records, DMI said.
In Ilulissat in Disko Bay, the January average was -1.6C, 1.3 degrees warmer than the previous record from 1929 and 11 degrees warmer than normal for January, DMI said.
Warmer air occasionally sweeps over Greenland, bringing milder temperatures for a day or two, but such an extended heat record across such a large area is “a clear indication that something is changing”, DMI climate researcher Martin Olesen said.
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Regional health authority reports postal service to authorities
Executives from the South Denmark Regional Health Authority and courier service Dao met yesterday after the former reported the latter to the Danish Data Protection Agency on Sunday over a potential personal data breach.
Dao described the incidents as human error in a press release on Sunday. However, the regional health board’s executive director Kurt Espersen said following the meeting that “based on our discussions with Dao, it is our assessment that the matter involves both organisational shortcomings and human error.”
According to Espersen, the company openly acknowledged its failings and admitted it had not exercised “due care”.
“At the meeting, we addressed the specific challenges we have experienced, including issues relating to patient safety and possible breaches of personal data security, and we received an unreserved apology,” he said in comments given to news wire Ritzau.
The report to the Danish Data Protection Agency was filed after the authority found that mail containing sensitive personal information had been left in publicly accessible locations on several occasions.
The two sides are set to meet again in two weeks’ time to follow up on actions agreed on Monday, according to the report.
Uber to expand food delivery platform to Denmark
Uber Eats is to begin operating in Denmark this year after the company announced an expansion to seven countries in Europe on Monday.
Uber returned to the Danish market last year after leaving the country in 2017 after taxi laws were changed, challenging the company’s business model.
A 2024 agreement with Danish taxi firm Drivr allowed Uber to operate in Copenhagen in keeping with the existing laws, and it confirmed the purchase of another Danish taxi company, Dantaxi, in 2025.
The expansion of Uber Eats into Denmark is set to challenge the dominant position in the country’s food delivery industry of Finnish-founded Wolt.
With reporting from AFP.