Category Archives: Netherlands

Rutger Hauer, star of Blade Runner, dies aged 75

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Dutch actor renowned for his role as cyborg Roy Batty in Ridley Scott’s sci fi epic, was equally at home in Hollywood and European cinema

Rutger Hauer, the Dutch actor best known for his role as cyborg Roy Batty in seminal sci-fi film Blade Runner, died at the age of 75. His website announced the news, saying that Hauer had died on Friday “after a very short illness… Rutger passed away peacefully at his Dutch home”.

Director Guillermo del Toro was among those paying tribute, calling him “an intense, deep, genuine and magnetic actor that brought truth, power and beauty to his films”.

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Netherlands and Belgium record highest ever temperatures

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All-time records in Germany and Luxembourg could also fall in continent-wide heatwave

The Netherlands and Belgium have recorded their highest ever temperatures as the second extreme heatwave in consecutive months to be linked by scientists to the climate emergency advances across the continent.

The Dutch meteorological service, KNMI, said the temperature reached 39.1C (102F) at Gilze-Rijen airbase near the southern city of Tilburg on Wednesday afternoon, exceeding the previous high of 38.6C set in August 1944.

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Actor accused of drug dealing claims it was ‘experiment’ for TV role

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Imanuelle Grives, 34, from Netherlands was found with drugs at Belgian festival

A Dutch actor arrested for drug dealing has claimed that large amounts of cocaine and ecstasy found at her rental flat were “an experiment” to help her prepare for a TV role.

Imanuelle Grives, a 34-year-old who has worked in TV and film, was stopped by police at the Belgian electronic music festival Tomorrowland, where she was found to be carrying a large quantity of drugs, according to prosecutors. A later search of an Airbnb property she was renting in the area revealed more than 20g of cocaine, about 100 ecstasy pills, ketamine and MDMA.

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Dutch council forces playground to close over noise complaints

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More than 4,000 sign petition to overturn decision, which aimed to appease neighbours

A national debate has been sparked in the Netherlands after a council ordered a primary school playground to be shut for being too noisy.

Questions have been raised in the Dutch parliament and a campaign has been launched to save the playground in the wake of the decision by Nijmegen council.

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Dutch gangland boss ‘De Neus’ jailed for life over five murders

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Willem Holleeder, famed for Heineken kidnap, failed to undermine sisters’ statements

A Dutch gangland boss who gained notoriety after the kidnapping of a Heineken beer tycoon in the 1980s has been jailed for life on five counts of murder, one of attempted murder and one of manslaughter after his sisters handed over damning recordings to prosecutors.

Willem Holleeder, nicknamed De Neus over the size of his nose, was accused by the judge of being “unscrupulous and indifferent” to “life and death” at the end of a 17-month trial in a secure Amsterdam courtroom known as the bunker.

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Three euthanasia cases face investigation in Netherlands

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Inquiries confirmed following controversy over death of anorexic teenager

Three euthanasia cases involving women with psychiatric conditions and dementia are under investigation in the Netherlands, the Observer can reveal.

Prosecutors confirmed that the deaths, in 2017 and 2018, were being investigated for potentially breaching strict conditions in the 2002 law that allows people in the Netherlands to ask a doctor to help them die.

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MH17: Four suspects named for shooting down plane – video

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Four suspects, three of them Russian, will face murder charges for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, international investigators have said. A trial is due to start next March in the Netherlands. The suspects were named as Igor Girkin, a former colonel of Russia’s FSB spy service; Sergey Dubinskiy, employed by Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency; Oleg Pulatov, a former soldier with the GRU’s special forces Spetsnaz unit; and Leonid Kharchenko, a Ukrainian man.


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MH17 court case will finally put truth on record

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Legal process essential even if those charged over killing of 298 passengers never go to jail

Wash kits, bags of duty-free shopping and sections of overhead compartment lay strewn across the fields. In one spot, there was a stack of holiday reading. The body of a young Malaysian boy had landed outside a babushka’s cottage.

The aftermath of the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was a landscape of carnage and chaos. Parts of the plane and its contents landed across several kilometres of the normally peaceful Ukrainian countryside, where villages had already been disturbed by months of war and people now witnessed bodies falling from the sky.

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Three Russians and one Ukrainian to face MH17 murder charges

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Four named as first to be charged over death of 298 people on flight downed over Ukraine

Four suspects will face murder charges for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, three of them Russians, international investigators said on Wednesday, with a trial due to start next March in the Netherlands.

Almost five years after the plane was downed over eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board, prosecutors said there was enough evidence to bring criminal charges.

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MH17: prosecutors to identify suspects and file first charges

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Inquiry expected to name first four suspects over downing of flight that killed 298 in 2014

Dutch prosecutors are to identify suspects and file the first criminal charges over the 2014 downing of flight MH17 over east Ukraine which killed 298 people in the worst atrocity in five years of war between Ukraine and Russia-backed separatists.

The charges are likely to target members of a Russia-backed separatist movement and may include Russian service personnel who commanded or helped transport the anti-aircraft missile system used to bring down the plane.

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England extra-time misery after John Stones’ blunder lets in Netherlands

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It was an ignominious way for England to lose and, ultimately, their collapse in extra time was probably best summed up by the image of Ross Barkley with his face down in the turf, not wanting to look up and survey the damage after his mistake for the third Dutch goal.

Barkley was not the only player wandering round the pitch with the look of a zombie. For John Stones, this was a personal ordeal in keeping with a bittersweet season on the fringes of Manchester city’s success. The records will show it was Kyle Walker’s own-goal that gave the Netherlands their second goal. In reality, it was a fairly dreadful error from Stones that put England in danger, dilly-dalling on the ball with Memphis Depay in close proximity.

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Dutch girl was not ‘legally euthanised’ and died at home

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Noa Pothoven is believed to have refused to eat and there is no evidence of assisted death

A severely ill Dutch girl widely reported by international media as having been “legally euthanised” in a clinic in the Netherlands died at home, apparently after voluntarily refusing to eat or drink and with no evidence that her death was assisted.

Noa Pothoven, 17, who for several years had been treated in multiple institutions for severe depression and anorexia, and had made previous attempts to kill herself, died at her parents’ home in Arnhem on 2 June, local media reported.

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Unwelcome guests: moped riders protest as Amsterdam drives them from bike lanes

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Dutch capital steps its pro-cycling reputation up a gear with new regulations – and not everyone is happy

Convoys of mopeds speed down Amsterdam’s bike lanes, beeping their horns and flouting their bare heads. This isn’t some strange Dutch festival, though. These were protests from some of the thousands of furious moped riders ahead of a new city regulation which came into force this week to force them out of bike lanes, on to main roads and into helmets.

The cycling city of Amsterdam is stepping up a gear – with plans to ban petrol and diesel vehicles from the centre by 2030, the removal of 10,000 car-parking spaces, a hike in parking charges and a wide range of measures to take from the car and give to pedestrians, cyclists, green space and children.

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‘It was a no-brainer’: but does a degree from abroad really make a difference?

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As applications to study in Europe plummet before Brexit, we ask British students who’ve done it where they are now

Adam Hussain was about to go to university in 2013 when tuition fees in the UK nearly trebled to £9,000. With additional loans for living costs, he realised he would incur debts of £40,000. So when he saw a television report about an exodus of UK students to the Netherlands, Hussain decided to attend an open day at Maastricht University, where annual fees were €2,000 (then about £1,700). That year more than 1,000 British freshers started university in the Netherlands.

“I already wanted to live abroad; when the higher fees came in it was a no-brainer,” says Hussain, 24, who attended an east London comprehensive.

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‘People aren’t disabled, their city is’: inside Europe’s most accessible city

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From flattened cobbles to threshold ramps, the Dutch city of Breda has much to teach its neighbours

When I arrived at Breda station last month to find out why this Dutch city was recently named the winner of the 2019 Access City award, I did something I have not done while travelling in a long time. Instead of taking a taxi, I independently pushed the two kilometres to the hotel, to see whether lack of access for wheelchair users like me is as big a problem here as it is in most other cities.

Usually, a journey like that would be a nightmare, particularly in older European towns like Breda, a city of just under 200,000 people that was an important centre during the Holy Roman Empire. Medieval city centres and cobble-stoned markets are a recipe for broken castor wheels and painful pressure sores for wheelchair users.

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European elections: triumphant Greens demand more radical climate action

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Green politicians to push agenda urging climate action, social justice and civil liberties

Europe’s Greens, big winners in Sunday’s European elections, will use their newfound leverage in a fractured parliament to push an agenda of urgent climate action, social justice and civil liberties, the movement’s leaders say.

“This was a great outcome for us – but we now also have a great responsibility, because voters have given us their trust,” Bas Eickhout, a Dutch MEP and the Greens’ co-lead candidate for commission president, told the Guardian.

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Dutch Eurosceptics dream of united front to roll back EU

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FvD will join divided ranks of Europe’s populist right where alliances are in flux

In the conference room of a slightly soulless hotel on the neat outskirts of the eastern Dutch town of Emmen, a crowd of 100 or so had gathered to hear a former MEP and European commission staffer tell them there is far too much Europe.

“Everyone wants more EU. We want less,” said Derk Jan Eppink. “Take power back from Brussels, return it to nation states. With our French, Italian, Polish, Spanish partners, we will be a united front.”

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Europe’s Greens ready to be kingmakers in EU elections

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Green candidates, on course for their best showing, could play a big role in a divided parliament

Europe’s Greens are on course for their strongest showing to date in next week’s European elections – and could find themselves kingmakers in a newly fragmented EU parliament.

“We’ll be at the table,” said Bas Eickhout, an MEP from the Netherlands and a co-candidate of Europe’s Green parties for European commission president. “We have a good chance to determine the new majorities. And we will have our demands, on green issues, social issues, and the rule of law.”

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Sequins, feathers, bondage and Madonna … Israel hits top notes with Eurovision

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But no joy for the UK as Michael Rice limps in last

The 64th Eurovision final, hosted by Israel in Tel Aviv, was swathed in controversy – from calls for a boycott over the Palestine conflict, to uncertainty over whether special guest Madonna would show up (she did), until only two burning questions remained – who would win, and how many of the estimated 200 million viewers would survive the full three hours and 40 minutes without opting to pour hot glue into their own eyes and ears just to make it stop.

The “Dare to Dream” themed ceremony was kicked off by 2018 winner, Netta Barzilai. The UK hasn’t won since 1997 with Katrina and the Waves – though some of us regard Jemini’s score of “Nul points” in 2003, as a national triumph. With the UK a member of the “Big Five” (along with France, Italy, Germany, and Spain, they make the biggest financial contribution to Eurovision), would our 2019 entry, bravely understated 21-year-old Michael Rice, make an impact with Bigger Than Us? No one could be sure – especially not with half of this year’s contestants garbed in racy PVC/leather/thigh-booted outfits, like a mass emptying-out of an Ann Summers seconds-bin.

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