A radical Australian imam has described Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders as a devil and satan in audio tape published on the Telegraaf newspaper's website.
Police in The Hague have fished a rare albino tiger python out of a city centre canal. They had been alerted by passersby who spotted the one metre snake in the water.
An 18-year-old youth from Vlaardingen has been arrested in connection with the shooting of a 16-year-old boy in central Amsterdam on Thursday evening.
Central bank president Nout Wellink has told a press briefing on the fringes of a conference about regulation in Seoul that the risk of a double dip recession is irrelevant, news agency Dow Jones reports.
The leaders of the three parties involved in talks on forming a new right-wing cabinet met the queen's official negotiator Ivo Opstelten on Friday afternoon.
The State We're In, 4 September 2010. A man wrongfully imprisoned wins a multi-million dollar lawsuit against the police. Another man admits he deserved his incarceration for dealing ecstasy, but didn’t deserve the treatment he endured in America’s “toughest jail”. And why an Auschwitz survivor returns to the death camp and dances, before millions, on YouTube.
The audio for this week's show will be available 17.30 CET, Friday 3 September.
A 10-year-old cow in the Netherlands has tested positive for BSE, more commonly known as "mad cow" disease, the first such result in more than two years, the Dutch government said on Friday.
The government ministry responsible for food quality said the animal tested positive for the brain-wasting disease bovine spongiform encephalopathy at a slaughterhouse. It was the first positive test for BSE in the country since May 2008, the ministry said in a statement.
With precision instruments and painstaking patience, Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum has completed a six-month cleaning and restoration of The Bedroom by Vincent van Gogh. The Bedroom is once again clean and fresh.
Almost three months have passed since the general election and the Netherlands is still without a new government. Various combinations of political parties have tried and failed to reach agreement on a majority coalition.
Turmoil in the Hague
Discussions began around three weeks ago between the biggest party, the liberal VVD, the Christian Democrats (CDA) and anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV). The negotiations are aimed at forming a minority cabinet composed of the VVD and the CDA with support in parliament from the PVV.
Mad cow disease or BSE has been identified in a 10-year-old cow, the farm ministry confirmed on Friday.
The high speed train service between Rotterdam and Amsterdam is still carrying an average of just 75 passengers per trip, train operator NS Hispeed is quoted as saying in Friday's AD.
The latest episode in the coalition formation talks is spiralling into a real life soap; a radical Australian Muslim wants Geert Wilders' head on a platter; workers at Dutch pharmaceutical Organon can breathe a four-month sigh of relief over an earlier proposed closure; and a neurologist with a drugs addiction was allowed to rule over his department.
Dutch newspaper de Volkskrant reports that an investigation has shown that clothes store chains C&A and H&M have part of their collection manufactured at an Indian factory where workers are being exploited.
The newspaper visited the KPR Mill near the textiles city Coimbatore together with representatives of the SOMO foundation (Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations). The KPR Mill produces gentlemen’s sweaters for C&A and polo shirts and children’s leggings for H&M.
Dutch anti-Islam MP Geert Wilders has received a death threat after his appearance on Australian TV.
A radical Muslim preacher, Feiz Muhammad, speaking on a members-only jihadist website, described Mr Wilders as a devil and a dirty politician. The preacher called on Dutch radical Muslims to decapitate Mr Wilders because he was "humiliating Islam".
An interview with Mr Wilders recorded in June was aired by SBS TV in Australia on Sunday. He called Islamic culture "retarded" and "violent".
PVV leader Geert Wilders and the VVD Liberals' Mark Rutte are still in talks with MPs about restarting negotiations on forming a right-wing cabinet with the Christian Democrats.
If the Dutch social housing sector is to survive, housing corporations should sell up to 800,000 of their 2.4 million homes to their tenants, according to three top economists in Friday's Financieele Dagblad.
The Flevo hospital in Almere is the best performing hospital in the country, the AD writes on Friday.
A 16-year-old boy has died in hospital after being shot several times in central Amsterdam.
The caretaker cabinet is planning to increase traffic fines by 15% as part of a package of measures to reduce the budget deficit, the Telegraaf reports on Friday, quoting sources in The Hague.
Jos Tio charges his electric rental boats 1400 times a year with his own home-produced "green" energy. The Frisian entrepreneur is a prime example of sustainability in the year 2010 and there's nothing about him that reminds you of the traditional tree-hugging environmentalist.
Of course he likes being eco-friendly and being independent from energy companies, but above all his new specially-built office building-cum-wharf saves him so much in energy costs that his extra investments are really going to pay off.
HEAR THE WORLD (repeat) A performance by the Zimbabwean singer Chiwoniso and her band Culture Vibe. Chiwoniso accompanies her songs with the thumb piano. Her music is a mixture of traditional and modern influences, a wonderful combination of rhythms and melodies from the Zimbabwean Shona culture with soul, reggae and blues elements. Singer Atongo Zimba from Ghana accompanies himself on the molo, a two-stringed calebash banjo. His voice is raw and bluesy and the music is a swinging fusion of traditional Ghanaian music with Afrobeat, jazz and funk.
Network Europe - 2 September 2010
- With or Without her - Middle East Peace talks go ahead but where's the EU?
- Bad memories? A row erupts in Germany over comments about Muslims and Jews
- School year kicks off - but will there be any teachers left in France?
- Third time lucky? The Greeks try their smoking ban again
More at euranet.eu
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Massive strikes in South Africa’s private and public sectors looked set to continue on Thursday after the latest pay offer by the government was rejected by the country’s main trade unions. Thousands of workers in healthcare and education have been on strike for over two weeks in a dispute which government officials have dubbed “a disaster” for the country’s economy.
PVV leader Geert Wilders and VVD Liberal leader Mark Rutte said on Thursday they planned to discuss the crisis within the Christian Democrats with their own MPs before deciding whether to continue cabinet formation talks.
Persgroep Nederland, the new owner of the PCM newspaper group, has decided not to take any legal action against former managers found guilty of maladministration earlier this year.
The father of an alleged victim of a man on trial for making child pornography attacked the suspect in court in Zwolle, the Stentor newspaper reports on Thursday.
Football club Real Madrid has lost Ђ68m on the sale of its six Dutch players, news agency ANP reports on Thursday, quoting a Spanish paper.
Some 75% of professors think universities should select students according to ability and aptitude and two out of three favour scrapping student grants, Elsevier magazine reports on Thursday.
Moschee Ba Ba! or Bye, Bye Mosque is the name is of a new internet game in which one may - if so inclined - fire to your heart’s desire at mosques, minarets and muezzins. It’s not the design of some embittered individual or marginalised minority group. Rather, it’s part of a political campaign for Austria’s far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), ahead of regional elections on 26 September.
This week on Earth Beat, we've dug out a treat from our archives. The programme, first broadcast in March, look as bugs as food, from munching on mealworms to lunching on locusts. We also hear about eco legal battles, and the environmental impact of war.
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