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COPENHAGEN: Denmark and Norway said yesterday that their nationals had begun to leave Syria after protesters torched the buildings housing their embassies there in events the Danish foreign minister said were “beyond comprehension”. Danes were also told to leave Lebanon and Norwegians there were advised to remain indoors, after protesters in Beirut attacked the Danish consulate in protest against the publication of Prophet Mohammed (PBUH) cartoons in both countries. “I am horrified to see the way violence and attacks are spreading throughout the Middle East,” Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller told reporters yesterday. “The actions in Lebanon and Syria...

BAGHDAD - Iraq’s transport ministry said on Sunday it had frozen contracts with Denmark and Norway in protest against blasphemous cartoons published in the countries’ newspapers. “This decision was taken to protest the cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad and we will not accept any reconstruction money from Denmark or Norway,” said a spokesman on behalf of Transport Minister Salam Al Malaki. The spokesman said he did not know the value of contracts between Iraq and Denmark and Norway. Denmark has more than 500 troops in Iraq. The uproar over the cartoons, which first appeared in a Danish newspaper and were...

Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller on Monday criticized Poland for planning to pull out a third of its troops from Iraq following the successful elections at the weekend. "I think it is simply absurd to say that now that democracy is in place, we can leave," Moeller was quoted as saying by the Danish news agency Ritzau at a meeting of European Union foreign ministers in Brussels. "Democracy is a threatened plant. We must be glad that it has started to grow, but this does not mean that it is ready to withstand all storms and pressure," he said....

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - A Danish supermarket chain is free to ban employees from wearing religious headscarves at work, Denmark's High Court ruled on Friday. The case had been brought by a Muslim woman who was dismissed without pay in 2001 from her job in one of Dansk Supermarked's stores because she wished to wear a headscarf at work. The court accepted the bar as it is part of a general ban on headgear for employees in customer-facing roles at the group's four supermarket chains. "The legislator has weighed the the right of an employer to demand a uniform or a...