Copenhagen - Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Ramussen was Thursday set to test ride part of the tough mountain stage in the ongoing Tour de France, reports said.

The premier was one of thousands of spectators who Wednesday saw CSC cyclist Carlos Sastre of Spain grab the overall lead after winning the 17th stage that ended with a 13.8-kilometre climb to the top of the Alpe d'Huez.

Rasmussen was to take on the climb Thursday and has trained for it during the past year, the Politiken newspaper said.

Team CSC is headed by former Danish cyclist and Tour de France winner Bjarne Riis extended the invitation, the report said.

Copenhagen  - A 100-strong medical team from the Danish defence forces is to serve next year at a British army field hospital in southern Afghanistan, a Danish military spokesman said Wednesday.

The team including doctors, nurses and other health workers were to serve for a three-month period starting in July 2009, Major Bjarne Poulsen of the Danish International Logistic Centre told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The Logistics Centre based in Vordinborg, southern Zealand is in charge of recruiting and training staff and sending equipment to Danish international missions.

Copenhagen  - A Danish court on Monday heard evidence against two Tunisian nationals suspected of planning to murder a Danish newspaper cartoonist.

The court was due to rule earliest Tuesday on whether the two were to remain in custody.

They have been held since February when security police said they had averted a plot to kill Kurt Westergaard, who drew a controversial cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed wearing a bomb as a turban.

The cartoon was one of 12 images published in September 2005 by the Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

Copenhagen - Denmark-based Kurdish television station Roj TV said Friday it had nothing to do with the abduction of German climbers in Turkey.

"That has nothing in the slightest to do with us. We are also not commenting on this issue," the head of the broadcaster in exile, Manouchehr Zonoozi, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The group that abducted the three Germans late Tuesday, the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), said they were taken because the German government had banned Roj TV in Germany at the end of June.

Zonoozi said the ban in Germany was "politically motivated."

Copenhagen - A heavily inebriated 78-year-old Swede, who did not have enough money to travel home from Denmark on the ferry, stole a rowing boat and tried to row back home, police confirmed Tuesda

Copenhagen - An eight-week long strike by Danish nurses and other health workers ends this weekend after a wage agreement was announced late Friday.

The Health Confederation that organizes nurses, midwives and laboratory personnel accepted a 13.3-per-cent pay rise for the coming three-year period, despite earlier demanding a 15-per-cent hike.

The municipal and local government association (KL) that organizes employers welcomed the settlement that means work will resume as normal as of midnight Saturday.

"Three hundred and fifty thousand patients have suffered during this, so I am very happy we have agreed," KL head Bent Hansen told reporters.