31 July 2008
Along with Berlin, Amsterdam Pride is one of Europe's top Gay and Lesbian Pride Festivals. Visitors will enjoy a fun programme that includes a canal parade, sporting events, street and club and circuit parties, a film festival and much more. Where most gay pride parades use trucks, Amsterdam has boats. Some 75 decorated boats sail from 14:00 until 18:00 through the Prinsengracht and Amstel river. Nighttours and YouTube will host one of the biggest boats during the Canal Parade this year, featuring DJ Fabio White and Diva MayDay.
Culturekiosque.com
For more information, see
www.amsterdamgaypride.nl.
27 July 2008
Happy Hooker swaps Penthouse for Dutch B&B
The “happy hooker” who was deported from America after writing a bestseller about running a New York brothel is “back in the bed business”, as she puts it, this time managing a Dutch bed and breakfast. Xaviera Hollander has lost none of the frankness or sense of fun for which she became famous after the appearance in 1971 of The Happy Hooker, her account of life as New York’s most successful madame.
The Happy Hooker, which sold millions of copies, chronicled Hollander’s progression from secretary at the Dutch consulate in Manhattan to upscale call girl. She speaks candidly in it about her enjoyment of sex and her belief that she was performing a social service. The book is still widely read, it seems.
More at
The Times
Let the sea rise, say the Dutch
Seventy percent of the Netherlands is below the sea, making it more vulnerable than any other country to climate change-triggered rising sea levels. The Dutch plan to deal with this national threat in a unique way - by adapting to the rise rather than trying to halt it. “In the Netherlands, we’re facing the impact of climate change every single day,” said Pavel Kabat, the country’s chief planner on how to deal with this issue, and one of the lead authors of the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize for its seminal fourth report on the subject.
"Already, there are parts of our country six metres below sea level. We cannot keep raising our dikes higher. And if there’s a breach in a dike, it will affect the region responsible for 80 percent of our economic produce.” Kabat illustrated what the Dutch planners plan to do instead. “Take the case of the Rhine, which flows through the Netherlands. Its level will also rise. We can keep raising the dikes on both sides. But how long can we do that? So instead, what we plan to do is to break the dikes on one side. Let the extra water flow there. And we’ll change the land use pattern on that side so that people on whose land the water will then flow can start commercial fishing or a similar activity. It’s a very new philosophy,” as Kabat pointed out. “It is the difference between hard infrastructure (as now) and allowing the water to rise and accommodating it as a part of your development. Let us not try to keep the water from coming,” Kabat said. “Let it come, when it does. Let us adapt to it. That is the basic idea.”
How will the Dutch protect the actual coast? Again, they plan to use local material. The North Sea bed has a huge reservoir of sand - and the Dutch are planning to dredge that up and create artificial islands in a line parallel to the coast to break sea surges.
More at
Thaindian.com
Flour power keeps Dutch windmills turning
THE Dutch are building windmills again. Up and down the coast, just offshore, you can see them: white and tall and slender as pencils, their three slim blades turning lazily in the North Sea breeze. These generate electricity, of course, rather than grind grain. Yet the government is also building, and rebuilding, mills like the squat, homely ones that have seemingly always dotted the Dutch countryside, and reflect as much the nature of the countryside, and reflect as much the nature of the country as do tulips or Gouda cheese. Last year, the government, concerned that one of the foremost symbols of the Netherlands was about to disappear out of neglect, approved an $80m programme to build or restore 120 mills of roughly 1,040 still standing. That has created a backlog of work for previously strapped mill restorers.
More at
The Scotsman
20 July 2008
Belgium struggles to resolve an old identity crisis
A team appointed by Belgium's King Albert II started work Friday to resolve a stalemate between the nation's French and Dutch speakers. At stake is not whether Belgium falls apart, but whether it becomes more like Switzerland. Ever since elections in June 2007, Belgium has been in trouble. It took nine months to form a government. Belgian newspapers ran alarming headlines warning of the nation's possible breakup. On Monday, the prime minister, Yves Leterme, offered to resign.
Belgium's Flemish majority has been restless ever since the country was formed in 1830, when French-speaking aristocrats, merchants and bankers set up Belgium as a unified, monolingual state. Even today, Brussels is a predominantly French-speaking island in the Dutch-speaking North. Previous constitutional shifts in 1970, 1980, 1988 and 1993 have since transformed Belgium into a Balkanized federal state with seven parliaments and some 60 cabinet-level ministers. Children go to separate French and Dutch schools. The major political parties have split into separate French- and Dutch-speaking versions.
Now, Belgium's Flemish majority, numbering six million, is pushing for further constitutional change, driven not least by resentment at the large annual transfers of their tax money to French-speaking Wallonia, in the south. The transfers amount to between $3 billion and $6 billion a year, according to a 2006 study commissioned jointly by the regional governments of Flanders and Wallonia.
More at the
Wall Street Journal
Brussels the key in battle for Belgium
The joke on the streets of Brussels is that this year's fête nationale could prove to be the last. Promising chips, beer and a 'day of national rejuvenation', the city's tourist board has invited all-comers to an extended party in the capital tomorrow. But celebrations of Belgium's national day have been overshadowed by renewed fears of a permanent split between the country's French and Dutch speakers.
Relations between the inhabitants of Flanders, who speak Dutch, and those of French-speaking Wallonia appear close to irrevocable breakdown and an overhaul of the constitution which would give more power to the regions - in what is already the most federal nation in the European Union - has exacerbated those tensions.
The country's embattled prime minister, Yves Leterme, a Flemish Christian Democrat who struggled for more than 200 days to come up with his contorted five-party coalition government, believes more devolution is crucial if Belgium is to remain a unified country. But the Francophone community, which has fallen behind economically in recent years and receives generous subsidies from the state, believes the federation is already too loose.
More at
The Guardian
Belgian king pleads for unity amid political crisis
King Albert II called on Belgium's Dutch and French speakers Sunday to remain united and find new ways of working together to resolve a political crisis threatening the country's cohesion.
Speaking on the eve of National Day, the king said the longtime disagreement over more self-rule for the two language camps was bridgeable. "Unity and tolerance, with respect for identity of every federal entity, those are the only routes forward in our democratic society," he said. "We have to think of new forms of working together."
Frequently quoting his deceased brother Baudouin, the previous king and a uniting element in a fragmented country of 6.5 million Dutch-speakers and 4 million Francophones, Albert II said in his speech that Belgium is enriched by its multicultural character.
The government — a cumbersome seven-party alliance of Christian Democrats, Liberals, Socialists and nationalist hard-liners from both language camps — took office March 20. But it failed to agree on devolving more federal powers to Flanders, Belgium's prosperous Dutch-speaking north, and Wallonia, its economically poorer southern half. The appointment of three politicians — two Francophones and the leader of Belgium's tiny German-speaking region — was seen as a desperate bid to force a breakthrough in a dispute that has deadlocked Belgian politics since June 2007 elections. Flemish parties want their half of the country to be more autonomous by shifting taxes, some social security measures, transport, health, labor and justice matters to the linguistically divided regions. Francophone parties accuse Dutch-speakers of trying to break up Belgium, which gained its independence from the Netherlands in 1830.
More at the
International Herald Tribune
14 July 2008
From
The New York Times:
For decades, the proud seal of New York City, with its depiction of a sailor and a Manhattan Indian, of beavers and flour barrels and the sails of a windmill, has celebrated 1625 as the year the city was founded. There’s just one problem: Most historians say the year has hardly any historical significance.
The first settlers arrived in what would become part of New York City on a Dutch ship as early as 1623; some say 1624. The Dutch “purchased” Manhattan in 1626. The first charter was granted in 1653. And the most notable event of 1625? Dutch settlers moved their cattle to Lower Manhattan from Governors Island.
“It is simply wrong,” Michael Miscione, the Manhattan borough historian, said of 1625 as the city’s birth date. “The first founding settlers of New York City landed here in 1624.”
The story of how the city arrived at 1625 as its founding year, however, seems a uniquely New York narrative. It entails machinations to glorify the Dutch, humiliate the British and, some believe, outdo Boston, thereby underscoring how in New York even something as seemingly inviolable as the city’s birthday is subject to political manipulation. The official city seal dates from about 1654, but the current one was more or less created in 1686, when Gov. Thomas Dongan granted the city a charter from the king. In 1784, the royal crown was replaced with an eagle; in 1915, the Board of Aldermen changed the date from 1686 to 1664, the year that Peter Stuyvesant surrendered New Amsterdam to the British, who renamed it New York. (The aldermen also shortened the sailor’s pants, perhaps in a nod to the growing influence of the city’s garment industry on fashion.)
Nobody complained much about the date until 1974, when Paul O’Dwyer, the Irish-born and Anglophobic president of the City Council, figured that the 700th anniversary of the founding of Amsterdam in the Netherlands was as good a time as any to strip the British of the distinction of having founded the city and bestow it instead on the Dutch. But how to define founded? The City Council, more familiar in those days with obliterating the past by changing street names to honor more contemporary worthies, was suddenly thrust into a debate of, well, historic proportions.
“The island of Manhattan was being used as a big pasture in 1625,” said Charles T. Gehring, director of the state’s New Netherland Project, a collaboration of the New York State Library and the Holland Society. “If you want to talk about New York City and not Manhattan, then 1624 would be a good date. If you want to put the actual date when it was purchased, when Peter Minuit made the deal, that was 1626.”
Now, on the eve of an elongated quadricentennial celebration that begins next year with a commemoration of Henry Hudson’s voyage of discovery (he was English; his employer was Dutch), some historians hope to correct the record.
“Next year there will be much hoopla over the quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s arrival in New York in 1609,” Mr. Miscione said. “That will cast a lot of attention on colonial New York history. I think it would be a good time to revisit the flag date.”
Read the article
here.
More about next years celebration here:
1609-2009: 400th anniversary of Hudsons landing in NY
14 July 2008
The Edmonton Journal visits Amsterdam:
The first thing we noticed in Amsterdam was that we were constantly walking in the wrong place. Gamely, we plodded the streets, marvelling at the architecture, the throngs of people, the hundreds of cyclists, and, of course, the picturesque canals, most of them lined with boats. Amsterdam roads have a car lane - and most of the vehicles are quite small - a bike lane and a pedestrian lane, and bicycles come first. No argument. No questions. But Amsterdam isn't all bikes and barely averted disasters. No, as its inhabitants will proudly tell you, it's just a big town of under a million people - though I had no trouble getting lost.
The canal system is legendary, but what isn't so well known is that the canals are flushed out every week to fend off stagnation. People fish in them, as do grebes, cormorants and the very common great grey heron, and people live on them, transport goods on them, and cruise around on them having a jolly old time. On our smaller canal, lined with houseboats, people from all over the city -- mostly the young -- would cruise in all manner of craft, talking, laughing, drinking, playing guitars and doing the equivalent of what young people in North America do when they drive up and down Main Street.
Tulips, canals, Rembrandt, and coffee houses: what's left to see in Amsterdam, or, at least this part of the Netherlands? Well, if you ignore the fascination of the city itself, with its easygoing attitude, its friendly inhabitants who are almost all multilingual and can offer helpful directions in English, its remarkable colonial history and the strong Indonesian presence that history has brought home, there's the lovely cuisine resplendent in sidewalk cafes, bakeries, restaurants and corner herring stalls. Then there's the multitude of cheeses, chocolates, coffees and apple tarts, and the seemingly boundless farmers market. That leaves the many museums, galleries, shops, and - who could forget? - dikes and windmills.
08 July 2008
From the
LA Times:
In the Netherlands, "secondhand smoke" takes on a whole new meaning. The country is among the last in the European Union to impose a smoking ban in restaurants. Or rather, a cigarette ban. Make it a tobacco ban. Because while the smoking of conventional cigarettes was officially forbidden starting last week, marijuana is still allowed at the 720 cafes where it already was in wide use. Of course, marijuana is illegal, even in the Netherlands, but the country's policy of "gedogen" calls for turning a blind eye to its own law. In fact, the special cannabis cafes are licensed to sell small amounts for consumption on the premises, where it is understood that customers will not be arrested or even questioned by police. Unless, that is, they mix it with tobacco. The Dutch prefer to blend their marijuana with tobacco for a smoother smoke. And now that is illegal.
But before we chuckle at the Dutch pot paradox, we should check out the puzzling ways of cannabis right here. Marijuana is legal in California for medicinal use but illegal according to U.S. law. Last year, federal drug agents raided five medical marijuana clinics in West Hollywood, one of the handful of California cities that have instructed their police to make even recreational marijuana arrests their lowest priority. A Garden Grove police officer confiscated a driver's medicinal marijuana, but a judge last year ordered it returned because its possession was legal under state law -- though a federal agent acting under federal laws would have had the right to take it.
Oh, those wacky Dutch.
More on the smoking ban here
06 July 2008
So Americans bedeviled by $4-plus-a-gallon gas want more transportation choices? They have no idea of what real choices are. For a taste of our necessary future — driven by rapid energy cost inflation and climate emergencies — check the streets of Amsterdam.
Sure, cars still function here. But by our standards, their numbers are remarkably modest. Especially on center city streets, another king reigns: the bicycle Bikes, indeed, swarm around by the thousands. With reserved lanes on practically every street, they're ridden by passengers of both sexes, virtually all ages, from necktied gents and high-heeled ladies to jeans-clad youth and uniformed police officers. And what the busy Amsterdamers accomplish on their two-wheelers defies imagination. They read maps, talk on cell phones, window shop. They "walk" their dogs, carry kids or canines in baskets great or small. Still rolling, they text message, eat ice cream, drink coffee, carry huge packages and musical instruments, sometimes a second rider. I even saw lovers on two bikes, holding hands as they cruised the streets.
Bikes, overall, account for 37 percent of Amsterdam transport. Public transit comes in second, at 22 percent of trips. On top of regular and high-speed rail, there's a massive light-rail network — 50 miles of tram lines, with many stops, dense in the center city, radiating out to neighborhoods and suburbs with cross-connecting lines, too. Recently, freight tram cars began running through the city, cutting truck use (and pollution). And Amsterdam has added three new subway lines since its first in 1976.
So what's the Amsterdam game plan? For decades it's been to nurture the "compact city," slowing a middle-class exodus and preserving the open landscape by dense development, recycling old industrial areas and intermingling uses. Reducing auto use — now just 41 percent of trips compared to 90 percent-plus in most U.S. cities — is the heart of the plan.
Helped along by the Netherlands' high gas taxes (per gallon costs are now over $9), the Amsterdam approach not only cuts energy use but provides a starting point for dramatic carbon reduction. But its genius, so rarely discussed in America, is smart land use and curbing the auto use that so easily overwhelms modern world cities.
Read the entire article at
Daily Press.com
02 July 2008
Cannabis smokers are feeling dazed and confused after a Dutch smoking law effectively banned tobacco from being used in joints. Millions of people flock to Amsterdam's "coffee shops" every year to legally buy cannabis and hashish over the counter and to smoke it without fear of arrest, as long as they are on the premises. But the new law bans tobacco inside cafés and restaurants, meaning cannabis users are now forced to light up potent and heady pipes and joints loaded with pure marijuana.
More at
The Telegraph
Dutch ban smoking tobacco — but rules on marijuana are still hazy
Coughing and spluttering resonated around Tweede Kamer coffeeshop in Amsterdam yesterday as customers got to grips with new Dutch smoking regulations that prohibit tobacco but not marijuana. The Netherlands' unique approach to smoking was much in evidence yesterday as it became the latest European country after the likes of Britain and France to introduce a ban on lighting-up in public places. Officials gave warning that offenders would face fines of between €300 (£240) and €2,400 (£1,900) if they were caught puffing on a cigarette in a bar, restaurant or café. But government lawyers said that the legislation only applied to tobacco. Cannabis remained subject to the country's famously liberal drug laws, which allow users to possess five grams without fear of prosecution. Jurists added that the 750 or so licensed Dutch coffeeshops could continue to stock and sell a maximum of 500 grams of cannabis, and their customers could continue to smoke it on the premises so long as it is not mixed with tobacco. Amid fears that pure cannabis could prove too strong for users accustomed to mixing it with tobacco, other coffeeshops have been seeking alternatives. Some have bought vaporisers that enable the drug to be inhaled without smoking it. Others have been baking hash brownies and other delicacies containing their favourite plant.
The Times
Coffeeshop owners reflect on tobacco ban and starting 'drug takeway' culture
Jason den Enting has been managing the Tweede Kamer for more than six years without any problems. He said that his European customers are the ones to be most affected by the new rule.
"Our guests from America are usually the ones to smoke marijuana pure or in a pipe. They're more used to that than our clients from here. Our local patrons traditionally prefer their cannabis joints mixed with tobacco, because it isn't that strong then."
Asked whether he expects business to plummet, den Enting said, "I don't think so, but it might be less fun in the future. So far," he said, "we're taking pride in providing a convivial atmosphere, We don't want to become a drug takeaway. Our guests like to come here for the social contacts, chatting with each other, reading newspapers or talking about politics. Now," he said, "that atmosphere is likely to be destroyed by an absurd decision."
ABC News
Cannabis lovers dodge Dutch smoking ban
The Netherlands introduced a tobacco smoking ban in bars and restaurants on Tuesday but weed lovers carried on lighting up pure cannabis joints, pipes and vaporisers in the country's coffee shops. "No smoking" signs were clearly visible in traditional Dutch brown cafes and trendy bars, while coffee shop owners handed out leaflets outlining the new rules of consumption and suggesting tobacco substitutes like a mix of herbs. "Many cultures don't smoke cannabis with tobacco. Americans often smoke with bongs (hookahs). But the Dutch are used to smoking it with cigarettes, so it will be more of a hassle for them," said Barbara Bovenkerk, floor manager at the Green House coffee shop. "The first few days will be a bit strange, but eventually people will accept it. A while ago they banned alcohol in the coffee shops and everyone complained but went along with it." Soft drugs are officially banned in the Netherlands but under a policy of tolerance, buyers are allowed to have less than 5 grams of cannabis in their possession.
Reuters
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Next Archive
Shop Only in Holland
» High-tech study reveals early Van Gogh work beneath another painting
X-rays from a particle accelerator help scientists reconstruct a portrait the artist had covered up to paint his 'Patch of Grass' in 1887. Using a thin beam of synchrotron X-rays generated by a particle accelerator, European scientists have reconstructed a portrait of a peasant woman painted by Vincent van Gogh that had been concealed beneath another painting for 121 years. The image, unveiled in a scientific journal published today, bears a striking resemblance to a series of somber portraits the artist produced in the Dutch town of Nuenen, where he composed "The Potato Eaters," completed in 1885 and regarded as his first major work. Conventional X-rays had revealed the rough outlines of the portrait, which Van Gogh covered 2 1/2 years later with a vibrant landscape of a flowering meadow after he moved to Paris and was influenced by Impressionism.
Los Angeles Times
» Amsterdam prepares for classical canal festival
Classical music fans will be preparing for this year's instalment of the Amsterdam Canal Festival, which takes place between 16th and the 24th August 2008. An ever popular event, more than 70 separate performances take place in Amsterdam, Netherlands over the weeklong period. The most hotly anticipated performance, as always, is the final Prinsengracht concert which takes place on a floating stage on the Prinsengracht (Prince's Canal). This year's final event will feature the music of the St Michael of Thorn orchestra whose musical dynasty dates back to the 1840s. The Prinsengracht concert is also free and starts at 4pm on the final day of events, 24th August.
Hostelbookers.com
» New Heineken Experience to reopen on 20 October 2008
The Heineken Experience, located in the former Heineken brewery in the centre of Amsterdam, will reopen for visitors on 20 October 2008 following extensive renovation and expansion. First opened in 2001, it has become one of Amsterdam's most popular tourist attractions with over 400,000 visitors a year.
MarketWatch
» Netherlands third-lowest business tax costs among 10 countries
The Netherlands has the second-lowest business tax costs among 10 countries, trailing Mexico and beating out the United States, Canada and Britain, among others, the report said. Audit firm KPMG LLP computed the total tax index using the U.S. as the benchmark with a score of 100. Canada's total tax index was 78.8, the Netherlands had 78.3 and Mexico scored 70.2. Aside from corporate income tax rates, the study also included levies on goods, property, capital, labor and local taxes. On the bottom five after the U.S. were Japan, Germany, Britain, Italy and France.
All Headline News
» Dutch Foreign Ministry warns visitors to Kenya
The Dutch Foreign Ministry has revised its travel advice for visitors to Kenya. It says travellers should be alert for sexual aggression as well as other forms of violence. The warning comes in the wake of the rape of five Dutch women, aged between 17 and 25, on a working holiday in Kenya last Thursday. The women worked for Livingston, an organisation based in the Dutch town of Amersfoort. A representative for the organisation said it was "extremely shocked" by what had happened and that the school project would be stopped immediately.
Radio Netherlands
» Amsterdam transportation ticket makes easy travel for tourists
The Amsterdam public transport authority and Dutch Railways organization, in cooperation with the Amsterdam Tourism & Conventions Board, have worked together to concoct a transportation package that combines ticket options for tourists that will make traveling to, from and around Amsterdam quite convenient. The "All-in-One Ticket"– which will be sold for a initial period between July 23 and October 31– includes admission for city trams, buses and the metro, plus return trip between Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport and Centraal Station.
Travel Agent Central
» OpenSkies announces daily flights to Amsterdam from New York
OpenSkies will begin offering daily service between Amsterdam’s Schiphol International Airport and JFK International Airport beginning October 15. Tickets for the Amsterdam-New York flight go on sale in early August. The flight departs from Amsterdam at 1:20 pm and arrives in New York at 3:35 pm, and departs New York at 8:05 pm arriving in Amsterdam at 9:40 am the following morning.
Travel Weekly
» Dutch minister says US spy chief affair kept quiet
Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst has confirmed that the cabinet kept news of the 2004 resignation of the head of the United States CIA in the Netherlands out of the public eye. She was answering questions from MPs following a newspaper article about the affair. The minister said the move was not made public so as not to endanger the good working relationship between the CIA and the Dutch intelligence agency (AIVD). Observers suspect the CIA chief was replaced because US agents in the Netherlands were involved in operations about which the Dutch authorities had not been informed.
Radio Netherlands
» Dutch government keeps up pressure on Serbia
The Dutch government has welcomed the arrest of Radovan Karadzic, but is urging Serbia to extradite other suspected war criminals. They include former Bosnian-Serb military leader Ratko Mladic and Goran Hadzic, former leader of the Croatian Serbs. Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen feels the idea that maintaining pressure on Serbia helps bring suspected war criminals to justice has been vindicated. The Netherlands believes Serbia can only be offered European Union membership if it co-operates fully with the Yugoslavia tribunal.
Radio Netherlands
» Dutch court voids language test for some migrants
A Dutch court punched a hole in toughened immigration restrictions, ruling an illiterate Moroccan woman cannot be required to pass a Dutch language test to join her husband in the Netherlands. The order dismayed politicians who have sought to curb immigration from non-Western countries and they vowed Friday to fix the law to cover the loophole exposed by the Amsterdam District Court. On the other side, the ruling was applauded by rights activists who say the government should scrap the requirement entirely, which they say is discriminatory and violates international human rights law. Human rights groups have denounced the culture requirement because it applies only to immigrants from Third World nations, such as Turkey, Morocco, India and China. Family members from industrial countries like the U.S., Japan and Australia are exempt.
Associated Press
» Amsterdam wants no business deals with prostitutes
Amsterdam City Council has decided not to rent out former brothels in the red light district to prostitutes operating independently. NV Stadsgoed, a real estate developer, researched the possibility but decided to withdraw from the project, saying there was no way to ensure that women were not exploited in some way. The city council had joined forces with Stadsgoed in an attempt to clean up the red light district and prevent exploitation and human trafficking, and in 2006 a number of brothel operators were refused permits. Charles Geerts, one of the important players in the sex business, was forced to close down several of his businesses.
The council then bought up some of his buildings and rented them out as shops and galleries. It was also the intention to rent some of the space to independent prostitutes. The council thought it would be a unique opportunity for them to improve their situation and be recognised as self-employed businesswomen. Now that plan has been scrapped, it is unclear what the council intends to do with the property. However, Amsterdam Mayor Job Cohen had earlier indicated that he wants to reduce the concentration of prostitution in the area, and create more opportunities for bona fide businesses.
Radio Netherlands
» Windmills coming around again in the Netherlands
The Dutch are building windmills again. Up and down the coast, out from port cities like this one, you can see them: white and tall and slender as pencils, their three slim blades turning lazily in the North Sea breeze. These ones generate electricity, of course, rather than grinding grain. The government has already built one enormous farm of mills far off the coast, where they are inoffensive to tourists, and plans a second. Yet it is also building, and rebuilding, mills like the squat, homely ones that have seemingly always dotted the Dutch countryside and reflect as much the nature of the country as do tulips or Gouda cheese.
International Herald Tribune
» Dutch search engine wins first Euro-privacy award
Dutch search engine IxQuick Monday became the first company to receive the newly-established European Privacy Certificate. The award, expected to become an important instrument in privacy and data protection legislation, was given to IxQuick by the European watchdog for data protection in Kiel, Germany. IxQuick is a so-called meta-search engine, available in 17 languages. It uses the search results of several search engines to provide its own list of search results. But whereas other search engines store the Internet Provider (IP) addresses of its users on its servers - and leave so-called 'cookies' on each of the users' computers that track his or her search behavior - IxQuick does not do any of that. All IP addresses and anonymized files are erased from its servers.
To avoid abuse of its search engine by search robots which perform automated searches on search engines to acquire addresses and privacy details, IxQuick erases IP addresses after 48 hours.
MonstersandCritics.com
» Amsterdam police officer killed in rare fatal attack
An off-duty policewoman was shot and killed by a man she had pulled over for driving erratically, in a rare fatal attack on a Dutch law enforcer, police said Thursday. The 28-year-old officer was on her way to work in her own car Wednesday night and was still in civilian clothes when she stopped the man, said the police area commander, Bernard Welten. Although there has been a series of underworld murders in Amsterdam in recent years, it is rare for a police officer to be shot. National broadcaster NOS said she was the sixth officer killed since 1977. The events surrounding the shooting are still under investigation.
Radio Netherlands
» Dutch health system rated best, U.S. worst: polls
From
Reuters:
Americans are the least satisfied with their health care system, while the Dutch system is rated the best, according to new research. Polls about health care in 10 developed countries by Harris Interactive revealed a range of opinions about what works and what doesn't. In the United States a third of Americans believe their system needs to be completely overhauled, while a further 50 percent feel that fundamental changes need to be made. In the Netherlands, where health care is financed by mandatory health insurance, 42 percent of people think their system works well and needs only minor changes. And only nine percent of the Dutch think a complete overhaul is necessary, compared to 12 percent in Canada and Spain, 15 percent Britain and France, 17 percent in Germany and New Zealand, 18 percent in Australia and 20 percent in Italy, according to the polls of more than 1,000 people in each country.
» Netherlands bans Iranian students from nuclear studies
The Netherlands will ban Iranian students from studying nuclear technology, a source of tension between Iran and world powers, at its universities, the government said Friday. "It is forbidden... to grant Iranian nationals access to special training or teaching that could contribute to nuclear proliferation activities in Iran and the development of systems for transmitting nuclear arms," the foreign ministry said in a statement. Some powers including the United States suspect Iran of seeking to develop a nuclear bomb. Iran insists its nuclear program is aimed at producing energy to serve a growing population.
AFP
» Dutch giraffe gathers troops, leads great escape from circus
Fifteen camels, several llamas and a potbellied pig broke out of a circus near Amsterdam on Monday. The ringleader? A giraffe who bolted, too. Police said the giraffe kicked open a fence and walked out. "The other animals walked out with him," said Amsterdam police spokesman Rob Van Der Veen. The animals were part of a traveling circus that had set up its tents in the city of Amstelveen, six miles outside the Dutch capital.
CNN
» Dutch MPs agree on embryo testing
An overwhelming majority of Dutch MPs have voted in favour of the compromise proposal on testing embryos for hereditary diseases. Earlier the issue caused a crisis in the Dutch cabinet when Deputy Health Minister Jet Bussemaker tried to expand the practice, only to be blocked by the smallest coalition party, the Christian Union. But as part of the compromise deal which takes Christian Union values into account, the government has decided to create two separate commissions. One will evaluate each individual case of embryo selection, the other will determine for which diseases - now and in the future - the embryo testing can be carried out.
Radio Netherlands
