Police hunt man in grey tracksuit and shawl after incident in Grote Marktstraat shopping area
Three youths were injured in a stabbing incident in The Hague’s main shopping street on Friday night, Dutch police said.
A manhunt was under way.
Continue reading...‘Final straw’ was refusal to allow partner to mark dubious claims by far-right parties
Facebook’s only Dutch factchecker has quit over the social network’s refusal to allow them to highlight political lies as being false.
The online newspaper Nu.nl had been Facebook’s only factchecking partner in the Netherlands since Leiden University dropped out of the programme last year. The website had sole responsibility for marking Facebook and Instagram news content for Dutch users as being false or misleading, in order to help power the social network’s tools that suppress distribution of misinformation.
Continue reading...Twenty-five people reportedly found on ship travelling from the Netherlands to the UK
Dutch authorities have discovered 25 migrants stowed away inside a refrigerated container on a ferry bound for England.
According to a statement published on a local government website, all those found onboard were alive, with one of them thought to be a child.
Continue reading...Expert warns of ‘huge inequality’ in capital, while Lithuanian males live shortest lives
Men from west London, one of the wealthiest areas of the UK, have the longest life expectancy of males in Europe with a newborn baby expected to live to the age of 82, according to statistics published to mark International Men’s Day.
The data from the EU department Eurostat suggests that only men from the city centre of the Spanish capital, Madrid, tend to live as long as the fortunate subset of Londoners.
Continue reading...City of Apeldoorn is hosting nationally televised arrival of St Nicholas and ‘Black Pete’
Antiracism campaigners are protesting in cities across the Netherlands as Dutch children anticipate the annual arrival of St Nicholas and a blackface character who traditionally accompanies him.
The character of “Black Pete”, usually portrayed by white people in black face paint wearing frizzy wigs and prominent red lipstick, has provoked intense discussion, and sometimes violent clashes, in recent years.
Continue reading...Some coastal cities are reclaiming land as a barrier against rising water – then selling it off. But critics argue that climate change defence should not be a business model
“The island is going to be placed where the British empire’s fleet once was,” says Anne Skovbro, looking out from her office in a 19th-century customs house over Copenhagen’s harbour.
She points out the mooring posts where tall ships once docked, the old masting crane that marked the harbour’s outer edge, and the patch of sea where Horatio Nelson is supposed to have held a telescope to his blind eye as his ships set the city’s medieval centre ablaze.
Continue reading...Dutch media report that 67-year-old was former member of movement known as Moonies
The father of a family that spent nearly a decade living in a secret room in a Dutch farmhouse once belonged to the Rev Sun Myung Moon’s controversial Unification church and was trying to found a cult of his own, Dutch media have reported.
The 67-year-old man, who has not been identified by Dutch police but was named by the movement, often known as the Moonies, as Gerrit-Jan van Dorsten, was arrested on Thursday on suspicion of “depriving people of their liberty, harming the health of others and money laundering”, police said in a statement.
Continue reading...Uighurs living in Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden, and France have complained of intimidation by Beijing
Two days after Abdujelil Emet sat in the public gallery of Germany’s parliament during a hearing on human rights, he received a phone call from his sister for the first time in three years. But the call from Xinjiang, in western China, was anything but a joyous family chat. It was made at the direction of Chinese security officers, part of a campaign by Beijing to silence criticism of policies that have seen more than a million Uighurs and other Muslim minorities detained in internment camps.
Emet’s sister began by praising the Communist party and making claims of a much improved life under its guidance before delivering a shock: his brother had died a year earlier. But Emet, 54, was suspicious from the start; he had never given his family his phone number. Amid the heartbreaking news and sloganeering, he could hear a flurry of whispers in the background, and he demanded to speak to the unknown voice. Moments later the phone was handed to a Chinese official who refused to identify himself.
Continue reading...Residents of Drenthe, a province in the north-east Netherlands, reacted to the discovery of a group of people believed to have spent years living in the cellar of a remote farmhouse 'waiting for the end of time'.
Six adults were removed and being taken care of, police confirmed, while a 58-year-old-man who was renting the farmhouse was arrested after refusing to cooperate with their inquiry.
Continue reading...Six adults removed from house and man, 58, arrested
A man and his six grown children have been found after spending several years living in the cellar of remote farmhouse in the northeastern Dutch province of Drenthe “waiting for the end of time”, local media have reported.
The family were discovered after the oldest son, aged 25, visited a local bar, the Kastelein cafe. On the first occasion, 10 days ago, he “ordered and drank five beers on his own”, the bar owner, Chris Westerbeek, told broadcaster RTV Drenthe.
Continue reading...Model from Eindhoven University will surround baby with fluid and deliver oxygen and nutrients via umbilical cord
Attempts to create an artificial womb for premature babies have been given a boost by the award of a €2.9m (£2.6m) grant to develop a working prototype for use in clinics.
The model, which is being developed by researchers at the Eindhoven University of Technology, would provide babies with artificial respiration. However, unlike current incubators the artificial womb would be similar to biological conditions, with the baby surrounded by fluids and receiving oxygen and nutrients through an artificial placenta that will connect to their umbilical cord.
Continue reading...There has been no sign of Naya or the pups she was carrying since May
The first wolf to have been sighted in Belgium for more than 100 years has not been seen since May, and environmentalists believe she is likely to have been killed.
The wolf, given the name Naya, was first sighted in Belgium in the north-east province of Limbourg in January 2018. She was fitted with a collar containing a transponder to track her movements.
Continue reading...Freedom party’s vote collapses to 16%, as others stall in Italy, Spain, France and elsewhere
The slump in support for the nationalist Freedom party (FPÖ) in Austria’s elections on Sunday is the latest indication that if the tide has not turned against Europe’s far-right populists, it does seem – for the time being, at least – to have stopped rising.
Sebastian Kurz’s conservative People’s party (ÖVP) won 37.1% of the vote, its best score since 2002, while the share held by FPÖ, until May his junior coalition partner in government, collapsed to 16.1%, down a full 10 percentage points.
Continue reading...Lawyers in gangland cases given emergency protection after unprecedented killing
Lawyers and prosecutors in major gangland drugs cases in the Netherlands have been given emergency protection after the unprecedented murder of a top defence lawyer prompted police and the media to claim that government naivety was turning the country into a narco-state.
Derk Wiersum was gunned down in the street as he left his home in the Amsterdam suburb of Buitenveldert on Wednesday morning. Police are searching for a 16- to 20-year old man in a black hooded top who fled the scene on foot.
Continue reading...Derk Wiersum, 44, was gunned down in an Amsterdam street in broad daylight
The murder of a lawyer for a key witness in a major Dutch organised crime trial has sparked outrage and calls for a tougher crackdown on violent underworld gangs.
Derk Wiersum, a 44-year-old father of two, was gunned down in the street shortly after leaving his house in Amsterdam. Police are hunting a hoodie-wearing assailant who fled on foot.
Continue reading...The former Rangers and Netherlands player Fernando Ricksen has died at the age of 43, six years after revealing that he had motor neurone disease.
“Rangers is deeply saddened to announce that former player Fernando Ricksen passed away this morning following his battle with motor neurone disease,” confirmed the Scottish club.
Continue reading...The Zwarte Piets, or Black Petes, who accompany Santa have been the subject of protests
After years of debate and at times violent protest, this year’s Christmas-season Saint Nicholas parade in the Netherlands will not feature white people in blackface makeup, the public broadcaster that organises the event has said.
The Zwarte Piets, or Black Petes, who accompany Sinterklaas in the annual televised parade, which this year takes place in Apeldoorn on 16 November, will instead have sooty faces, the broadcaster said, in what it called “a logical next step”.
Continue reading...Debate over Netherlands’ colonial past resurfaces with switch to ‘17th century’ as alternative
One of the Netherlands’ most prestigious museums has fuelled fresh debate over the the country’s colonial past by deciding it will no longer use the term Golden Age to describe the 17th century when it was at its pinnacle as a military and trading power.
The Amsterdam Museum said that in an attempt to be “polyphonic and inclusive”, the common description of the century in which the Netherlands bestrode the world stage would be banned from its exhibits.
Continue reading...Visitors have been asked not to share photographs of exhibits including Arno Breker statue
An exhibition of Nazi design has opened in the Netherlands to protests and a request for visitors to the museum not to take and share photographs for fear of the exhibits being glorified on social media.
The Museum of Design in Den Bosch is showcasing sculpture by Adolf Hitler’s favourite artist, Arno Breker, a 1943 VW Beetle, photos and Leni Riefenstahl films from the era, in what is being billed as the first great exposition of the “Design of the Third Reich”.
Continue reading...Prosecutors say doctor still broke law in trial on whether dementia patient could have given consent
A doctor has gone on trial in the Netherlands in a landmark case expected to probe the law on whether patients with advanced dementia can give consent to assisted dying.
Prosecutors argue the unnamed female doctor “acted with the best intentions” but broke Dutch euthanasia law by failing to ensure the consent of a 74-year-old woman with advanced dementia, who may have changed her mind about dying.
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