30 November 2008
It was mind-expanding for many while it lasted, but the trip is finally over: a last-minute attempt to stop a ban on magic mushrooms failed yesterday as the Netherlands sought to reverse its reputation for hedonism, which attracts drug tourists from around the world.
City authorities in Amsterdam are bracing themselves for a weekend of hallucinogenic bingeing as dozens of so-called “smart shops” that specialise in fresh psychedelic mushrooms sell off their stock before the trade becomes illegal on Monday. The Dutch Government has adopted a stricter stance on issues such as soft drugs and prostitution, as well as immigration, since the elections in 2006, which were held amid a backlash against tolerant attitudes.
The [mushroom] industry grew rapidly after 2002 when a Dutch court banned the sale of dried mushrooms but confirmed the legal status of the freshly grown product because of a loophole. While the active ingredient, psilocybin, was illegal, it could not be measured in the fresh fungi.
More at
The Times Online
26 November 2008
Cities across Holland are planning to grow their own cannabis crops in order to control the supply of the drug to the country's famous 'coffee shops'. The "grow-your-own" idea has taken hold in Eindhoven, while Tilburg's city council has said it is considering starting up a "cannabis market garden" of its own to supply local coffee shops. Others are expected to follow suit, as the Dutch government considers nationalising soft drugs production and sales in a bid to decriminalise the industry.
Forty mayors met at the weekend, with many in favour of legalising soft drugs, whose consumption is a major tourist draw for Holland. Amsterdam's Lord Mayor, Job Cohen, said that he was in "full" support of the country's cannabis-selling coffee shops, as their survival would hlep to keep the trade out of the hands of criminals. However, he told The Telegraph that the Eindhoven city council's plan to start an experiment involving the council actually growing cannabis for supply to coffee shops was going a "little too far". He said that he would prefer to see a form of 'Cannabis licence' granted to potential growers who would be carefully monitored by police.
Read the entire article at
The Telegraph
Or:
Councils plan to become drug dealers (Stuff.co.nz).
25 November 2008
Disappeared US teenager Natalee Holloway was taken to an Aruba beach by Joran van der Sloot and sold there to a Venezuelan man who 'wanted a blonde girl', Mr Van der Sloot told Fox News TV. In an interview with the US news channel, he claimed he repeatedly met the man in a casino. The Venezuelan offered him 10,000 US dollars. Joran van der Sloot told how he watched Natalee being hauled on board a vessel chartered by the Venezuelan. There was no struggle or anything, he said. (...)
The interview was cut short when Joran van der Sloot was asked about his father's involvement in the affair. According to earlier statements by Joran, his father, working for the Aruban Justice ministry at the time, bribed two policemen to remain silent about what they knew about the affair. Some time after the recorded interview was broadcast, Joran van der Sloot contacted Fox News and told them he had lied to the interviewer, Greta van Susteren.
More at
Radio Netherlands
Watch the video on
Fox News
23 November 2008
Amsterdam's mayor said Friday that the city will close nearly 20 percent of its marijuana cafes to comply with a national ban on having them near schools. Mayor Job Cohen announced his decision to close the shops before the opening of a "weed summit" of representatives of major Dutch cities who are debating the nation's long-standing tolerance policy. Marijuana is technically illegal here but it can be sold in small amounts in designated cafes without fear of prosecution.
More than a quarter of the country's coffee shops are in Amsterdam, where they are a major tourist attraction. Amsterdam spokeswoman Iris Reshef said the city doesn't have major problems with coffee shops, but had sent letters to 43 shops located within 250 meters (yards) of a high school that they will have to close by the end of 2011 if they cannot successfully appeal the decision. The cafes slated for closure include some landmarks, such as The Bulldog — a high-traffic shop operating on one of the city's main squares since 1985.
Read the entire article at
The Associated Press
In Dutch:
AT5 (Amsterdam local news) reports that Mayor Cohen supports the idea of the city growing its own weed. The city of Eindhoven is going to experiment with growing weed which will be sold in the city's coffeeshops. AT5 also
reports that a large majority of the city council is against closing the coffeeshops. Even the director of the Barlaeus Gymnasium, the school that's too close to the Bulldog Coffeeshop on the Leidseplein, thinks closing the Bulldog is unnecessary.
21 November 2008
Graffiti and disorderly behavior can encourage people to trash the neighborhood by littering, trespassing or stealing because they feel rules have broken down, a Dutch study found. Litter, abandoned shopping carts and impromptu fireworks may all prompt petty crime and feed further social disarray. The mere presence of graffiti more than doubled the number of people littering and stealing, the study found. The findings support such efforts as New York City's "quality of life'' campaign in the 1990s under then-mayor Rudy Giuliani, which scrubbed graffiti, swept the streets and erased signs of vandalism, said the authors of the study. That initiative was based on the 1982 Broken Windows Theory that suggested signs of social disorder induce misbehavior and crime.
"Observing that others violated certain social norms or legitimate rules makes it likely that people also violate other norms or rules, which causes disorder to spread,'' said Kees Keizer from the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, an author of the study in today's online issue of the journal Science. Keizer conducted six experiments in public spaces in Groningen. He deliberately created situations that flouted a common rule such as a no-littering law, making sure the tests were next to a sign prohibiting that activity. An experiment showed that people would trespass in areas where other rules were already broken. Noise violations such as fireworks in the weeks before New Year's Eve, which are prohibited and subject to fine in the Netherlands, also fostered unruliness and made people litter with abandon.
More at
Bloomberg.com
20 November 2008
Authorities in Aruba say they're looking into new evidence that could lead to an arrest 3½ years after Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway disappeared on a senior class trip to the island. Aruban police are investigating two new tips they hope will provide the corroborating evidence they need to make an arrest, lead prosecutor Hans Mos told CNN.
He would not discuss details but said police again consider Dutch student Joran van der Sloot to be the prime suspect in Holloway's disappearance. A new witness has emerged, authorities say, who can place van der Sloot and his father, Paulus van der Sloot, near a pond on the island at 4 a.m. on the day Holloway vanished. The witness told authorities he saw a young man, wet from the chest down and wearing only one shoe, running along a road from the pond to a fast-food restaurant. The witness said he saw the young man and an older man driving slowly down the road in a red Jeep about 10 minutes later. The pond was not among those searched in the early stages of the investigation, Mos said.
A second witness, a former girlfriend of Joran van der Sloot, also told police he made suspicious-sounding comments while they were on the beach. The witness, publicly known only as Celes, told police van der Sloot said: "Who knows? You may now be on the beach with someone who is able to get rid of a corpse." In addition, Mos said, two other witnesses have come forward. He declined to discuss those witnesses, other than to say he is hopeful the case can be solved.
More at
CNN International
20 November 2008
Bars and cafes in the Netherlands are seeing revenues slump after the government introduced a smoking ban in July, shortly before the credit crisis took hold. The double whammy is costing bars as much as 30 percent of their business, said Joris Prinssen of Royal Horeca Netherlands, a lobbying group representing 20,000 bar and restaurant owners. Other countries, too, have been hit by the coinciding smoking bans and economic malaise.
(...)
In August, the Dutch brewer Heineken reported its sales in Western Europe fell 1.3 percent in the first half of the year compared to the same period in 2007, assigning partial blame to the smoking bans. Some Dutch cafe owners have taken to putting the ash trays back on tables just to survive, said Prinssen, citing reports from members. Amid such open barroom rebellion, Health Minister Ab Klink wrote to Parliament this week to say the government would begin cracking down harder on establishments flouting the ban. "Let there be no misunderstanding," he wrote. "In this country, laws have to be respected and that applies to everybody."
Prinssen said 1,500-3,000 mainly small family-run cafes could go out of business if they refuse to let customers smoke. Bars and pubs elsewhere in Europe have adapted by providing sealed smoking rooms and heated outdoor terraces.
Read the entire article at
The Baltimore Sun.
19 November 2008
For the patrons of Internet Freeworld, a typical coffeeshop in the heart of Amsterdam, there is little to indicate the city played as advanced a role in delivering computer bytes as it did decriminalising soft drugs. Just a few miles from the tapping keyboards and pungent smell of marijuana, lies an unprepossessing science park where 20 years ago the Netherlands became the first country outside the US to gain a non-military link to what became the internet.
It led to Amsterdam’s growth as a major hub for global internet traffic and, like much internet history, only happened because of the enthusiasm of a handful of technicians. Piet Beertema, a now retired systems manager who spent most of his career at the Mathematical Centre in the science park, played a major role in campaigning to join Arpanet, the predecessor of the global internet.
The problem with Arpanet was that it had been conceived by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) (an outfit that itself was founded at the height of the Cold War as a reaction to the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite. European computer centres could already interact with US computers but they did so using a basic “store-and-forward” system for sharing electronic newsletters and email over the Usenet network.
Read the entire article at
The Financial Times
16 November 2008
From the Royal Netherlands Embassy
website:
"On November 16th, Dutch-American Heritage Day, 8 million Americans of Dutch descent celebrate their heritage and the contributions they and their ancestors have made to the economic, social, political, and cultural life of the United States.
The Dutch began their relations with America in 1609, when Captain Henry Hudson of the Dutch East India Company sailed up the present-day Hudson River looking for a shorter route to Asia. Although Hudson did not find his route, Dutch traders began to exploit the riches of this wild country and in 1614 established Fort Nassau (near Albany), the second European settlement in America. A few years later, the Dutch Governor Peter Minuit bought Manhattan Island for 60 guilders, the famous $24 bargain.
A large portion of the eastern U.S., stretching from New Jersey and Delaware through New York and from Connecticut and Long Island to central eastern Pennsylvania, was settled by the Dutch in the early-1600s. The area was once known as New Netherland, and many places--Schuylkill, Catskill, Brooklyn, Staten Island, Harlem, Wall Street, Coney Island, to name but a few---trace their names from this Dutch period. Over the next two centuries, several waves of Dutch emigrants settled in the United States and, today, most Dutch-Americans are concentrated in ten states: New York, Michigan, California, Florida, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Washington, Texas, Ohio and Illinois. (...)
In November 1991 the U.S. Congress and President Bush proclaimed November 16 as Dutch-American Heritage Day (hereafter DAHD). November 16th was selected because on that day in 1776 Dutch forces on the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius returned the salute of the American brig-of-war "Andrew Doria," thereby making the Netherlands the first country to officially salute the flag of the newly-independent United States. From the "first salute" in 1776 to the participation of the Netherlands alongside the U.S. in the recent Gulf War, the United States and the Netherlands have worked together for peace, freedom and commerce. The Netherlands-American partnership endures because of the close and natural ties between these two nations and these two peoples. On Dutch-American Heritage Day we celebrate those ties and pay tribute to the mutual respect and friendship that animates the Dutch-American relationship."
Also check out these previous entries:
Windmills have storied history in NY, captured by city's seal
1609-2009: 400th anniversary of Hudsons landing in NY
Historic New York: From Dutch colony to world capital
New York’s birth date: Don’t go by city’s seal
Harlem: Then, now and forever
Manhattan letter returns to New York
14 November 2008
A hobbyist with a metal detector struck both gold and silver when he uncovered an important cache of ancient Celtic coins in a cornfield in the southern Dutch city of Maastricht. "It's exciting, like a little boy's dream," Paul Curfs, 47, said Thursday after the spectacular find was made public. Archaeologists say the trove of 39 gold and 70 silver coins was minted in the middle of the first century B.C. as the future Roman ruler Julius Caesar led a campaign against Celtic tribes in the area.
Nico Roymans, the archaeologist who led the academic investigation of the find, believes the gold coins in the cache were minted by a tribe called the Eburones that Caesar claimed to have wiped out in 53 B.C. after they conspired with other groups in an attack that killed 6,000 Roman soldiers.
More at the
International Herald Tribune
11 November 2008
The famous Amsterdam magic mushroom will no longer be on sale in the city. The hallucinogenic mushrooms, imported mainly from Hawaii, Mexico and Ecuador, have for years been freely available, at modest prices, in shops around the city. Neatly packed and labelled in display cases beside regular goods like vegetables and milk, and often packed in souvenir gift wrapping, the mushrooms have been popular among mainly German, French and British tourists. Shop owners have claimed the ban will result in hundreds of jobs being lost and are planning protest marches.
While the dried variety, which provides even stronger hallucinations, is already illegal, the decision to ban fresh magic - or psilocybin - mushrooms was taken after a 17-year-old French girl jumped to her death from one of Amsterdam's canal bridges in March after taking them. Amsterdam city council supports the government's ban, hoping it will change the general perception of the city as a mecca for drug user and the sex industry.
More at
The Telegraph
09 November 2008
It ought to be a proud milestone in the Dutch seafaring heritage — the construction of a new ship its owner claims will be the world's largest. But there's one problem: its name. Edwin Heerema, founder of the company that has commissioned the $1.7 billion vessel, wants to name it the Pieter Schelte after his late father, Pieter Schelte Heerema, who was renowned as a maritime engineer but was condemned for his service in the murderous Nazi Waffen SS. The choice of name has provoked outcry and has revived painful questions about Dutch collaboration with the country's World War II occupiers.
Edwin Heerema's company, Swiss-based Allseas Group SA, rejected criticism. "Pieter Schelte Heerema was widely appreciated in the industry during his life and the companies that came from his heritage have an excellent name in the offshore industry," spokesman Jeroen Hagelstein e-mailed in response to questions.
It's an awkward matter for the government. It gave Allseas' Netherlands subsidiary a $1 million tax break for its part in designing the ship, and now acknowledges it didn't notice the name until a Dutch journalist, Ton Biesemaat, raised the issue. Hagelstein said Heerema joined the Nazis out of opposition to communism rather than enthusiasm for national socialism. He said he then switched sides and joined the resistance in 1943 "as he could no longer associate himself with the ideas of the Nazis." He noted that Heerema was tried and released shortly after the war, which shows he "cannot have been seriously delinquent." The respected Netherlands Institute for War Documentation said that's technically accurate. Heerema was sentenced by a Dutch court to three years in prison but quickly released, the courts having recognized his unspecified but "very important" services to the resistance between August 1943 and March 1944.
Read the entire article at
Associated Press
06 November 2008
(AP Photo/Peter Dejong)
While businesses all around the world are struggling in these difficult times, it's boom time for one type of establishment in Amsterdam. The coffee shops, for which the city has become famous, are full and doing brisk trade in carry-out cannabis and, for the more indulgent, "smoke-in" spliffs. (...)
"Business is good. The tougher the economical situation is, the more we're selling, because more people need to relax from stressful situations," said Co, a manager at Amsterdam's Abraxas coffee shop, who did not want his full name revealed. There is only one major restraint for the passing puffer: The joint has to be pure. The Netherlands passed a tobacco-smoking ban July 1, putting it in line with many other European countries.
"People are much more bothered by the nonsmoking ban, which was forced on us last summer, than they are by the financial crisis, which has hit Holland, too," Co said. "After the smoking ban was imposed we've seen a drop in sales of drinks and beverages, because the socializing factor is gone. More and more customers buy the drugs and take them home rather than staying at the coffee shop and have a smoke over a drink. I believe people will save on big things, like a new car or a new TV set, but they won't save on soft drugs." According to Co, "In times of crisis, you treat yourself to small luxuries."
Read the entire article at
ABC News
04 November 2008
Luxembourg's prime minister and the German and Dutch finance ministers backed Democrat Barack Obama to win the U.S. presidential election on Tuesday.
Germany's Peer Steinbrueck shouted "Obama" and Wouter Bos of the Netherlands laughed as he mouthed "Obama" to reporters who asked them which candidate they preferred before a meeting of European finance ministers in Brussels. (...) European Union foreign ministers meeting in the French city of Marseille on Monday did not say who they would prefer to deal with next in Washington. French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said the EU had prepared a letter for the next U.S. president, seeking more involvement for the 27-nation bloc in resolving world problems.
More at
Reuters
03 November 2008
From
Radio Netherlands:
A controversial anti-blasphemy law is being scrapped by the Dutch government. The move is remarkable as two of the current three members of the ruling coalition are Christian parties and they had originally wanted to maintain the ban. In scrapping the law the cabinet is meeting the demand of parliament where a majority of parties argued that offering religious groups an extra layer of legal protection is outdated. As an alternative the cabinet is now seeking to strengthen anti-discrimination laws against groups whatever their background, thus taking the religious component out of the equation.
Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin, says the law will now offer the same protection to all.
There has been much discussion about the balance between freedom of speech and the right not to be discriminated against in the past few years in the Netherlands, particularly around the role of Islam in society. (...) The Dutch anti-blasphemy law was much talked about - against the backdrop of the continual criticism of Fitna and of its maker Geert Wilders - as a possible means of redress for those who felt offended. Stand-up comedians and cartoonists who sought to satirise extremist Islam have also found themselves being threatened with possible prosecution under the anti-blasphemy law in the past few years. The discussion about the use of the law, which dates back to the 1930s, made a lot of people worried that the right to freedom of speech was being eroded and that the rights of the religious not to be offended was being given the upper hand.
Read more
here.
02 November 2008
AP Photo/Van Gogh Museum
Two portraits whose authenticity was in doubt have been verified as real Van Goghs, the museum named for the Dutch master confirmed Friday. One portrait is the face and torso of a woman in a hat. In the second, a lady sits with gloved hands folded in her lap. Because the themes were so common in the 19th century and the paintings had little similarity to the rest of the work by Vincent van Gogh, their authorship was in doubt, said spokeswoman Natalie Bos of the Van Gogh Museum. However, a review of physical and historical evidence showed Van Gogh painted them, probably in the spring of 1886 while he was studying under the painter Fernand Cormon in Paris. Chemical analysis showed the paint was identical to other works definitely attributed to Van Gogh in that period. On the back of one of the portraits was the stamp of a paint merchant near where Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo at that time, the museum said in a statement. The picture frames also were by the same manufacturer as other confirmed Van Goghs of that period, Bos said.
More at
Associated Press
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Shop Only in Holland
» Dutch cafe owners rally against smoking ban
Dutch cafe owners on Saturday took to the streets of The Hague in protest at a smoking ban they say has seen business drop by up to a third. Organisers said 5,000 people took part although police estimates put the number at around 1,500. (...) Protesters brandished banners denouncing the "dictatorship" of Dutch Health Minister Ab Klink. The cafe owners want the ban, which came into force on July 1, scrapped arguing they have neither the space nor the money to build specially-ventilated smoking areas.
Some opposition lawmakers have lent their support to the cafe owners' complaints. Extreme-right politicians have criticised the absence of any financial compensation for implementing the new regulations while liberals say the government is distorting the competition between large cafes who can install a smoking area and the small ones who cannot. For the past few weeks, many cafe owners have decided to deliberately break the law and put the ashtrays back on their tables. Some pool money to pay the fines of fellow cafe owners.
More at
AFP
» The Hermitage Amsterdam presents Caspar David Friedrich
The
Hermitage Amsterdam is to end its stay on Nieuwe Herengracht with a remarkable finale. For the first time ever all the works by Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840) from the collection of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg will be loaned for a special exhibition about this renowned German artist curated by guest curator Prof. Henk van Os. Friedrich’s paintings and drawings are at the centre of the exhibition, but they are surrounded by works by contemporaries, predecessors and followers. They all present aspects of the Romantic landscape and illustrate the special ties between these painters, with Friedrich at the fore, and Tsar Nicholas I and his family. Particularly noteworthy are the watercolours by Carl Fohr, which have not been shown or published before. They were discovered during the preparations for this exhibition, the tenth and last to be held in the Neerlandia building. Afterwards the Hermitage Amsterdam will move to the adjacent Amstelhof and become ten times as big. This second phase will open before the summer of 2009. The present premises will be converted into the Hermitage for Children.
Art Daily
» Dutch 'internet baby' case opens
A Dutch court is hearing the case of a Dutch couple's alleged illegal adoption of a baby over the internet from a couple in Belgium. The court in Zwolle is considering who should have custody of the baby, reportedly sold for thousands of euros. The case was brought by the Dutch Child Protection Council, which says the Dutch couple violated adoption rules. It says the baby should be placed in the care of a "neutral foster family" - with no ties to either of the couples. Kees Dijkman, a spokesman for the council, told BBC News that the Dutch couple had "stolen a child's identity" by breaking the international rules of adoption. He said that could be very damaging to the baby in the future.
More at
BBC News
» Dutch police eyeing DNA spray system
Stores and gas stations in the Dutch city of Rotterdam will soon be outfitted with a system that can spray criminals with a DNA substance, police say. Rotterdam police have outlined a plan to install devices in area businesses that can be used to coat escaping robbers with a substance featuring synthetic DNA in order to aid police in identifying suspects. The spray, which is dispensed after a shopkeeper pushes a button, will remain on a robbery suspect's skin for at least seven days. The synthetic substance could potentially survive longer on an individual's clothes.
More at
UPI
» Dutch home sellers cut prices in market that would ‘never fall’
Eighteen months after real-estate markets in Spain and Ireland began to sputter, the Netherlands is following suit. Prices of properties including 17th century Amsterdam canal-side townhouses dropped in the third quarter for the first time since 1980 after doubling in the last decade. The boom has left the Dutch saddled with the highest level of mortgage debt in the euro region just as the economy slides into a recession. As recently as the second quarter, the Netherlands was the only euro-area country among 11 surveyed by the Global Property Guide with rising property prices. (...) While the Dutch housing market was initially cushioned by the euro area’s lowest jobless rate, consumer sentiment waned after the government was forced to rescue the Dutch units of ABN Amro Holding NV and Fortis on Oct. 3. (...)
The Dutch have the highest mortgage debt in the euro area, at 98 percent of gross domestic product, 2006 data from the European Mortgage Federation showed. That’s almost double the European average. Dutch banks typically offered home buyers more than 4.5 times their annual salary for a loan worth up to 110 percent of the value of the property, allowing borrowing for renovations.
Read the entire article at
Bloomberg.com
» Anti-gay violence a problem in Amsterdam
Amsterdam faces an ingrained problem of violence against gay men, despite its reputation as a haven of tolerance, according to a study released Thursday. Town councilman Freek Ossel said the University of Amsterdam study, commissioned by the city, said the Dutch capital must improve protection of gays, increase education, and encourage reporting of discriminatory incidents. "Amsterdam's title as a gay capital, according to some people, has already been gone for years, and according to others in any case it's at stake," he said. The study said 67 attacks were reported in Amsterdam in 2007. Police commissioner Leo Wilde said the number was about average for recent years and "is not decreasing." The figure is difficult to compare with other cities. Amsterdam, with 750,000 people, has tried for years to improve reporting of anti-gay incidents, but police believe most still go unreported.
More at the
San Francisco Gate.
» 2010 Tour de France to start in Rotterdam
The 2010 Tour de France will start from the Dutch port city of Rotterdam - race organizers organisers ASO confirmed on Thursday. The Tour's 97th edition will start on July 3 and the route for the stage will be unveiled in Rotterdam on December 11. Rotterdam won the nod ahead of fellow-Dutch city Utrecht while German city Dusseldorf had also expressed an interest. The Tour has previously started from the Netherlands on four occasions. Amsterdam, which in 1954 became the first non-French starting point, Scheveningen (1973), Leiden (1978) and 's-Hertogenbosch (1996).
CNN International
» Dutch insurer may tap fund
Aegon, the Dutch owner of the American insurer Transamerica, said Tuesday it had signed up with the United States’ financial rescue program but added it did not yet plan to ask for aid. If it does ask for emergency financing from the so-called Troubled Asset Relief Program, Transamerica could request a minimum of $1 billion (794 million euros) based on the size of the company. Aegon has already received a 3 billion euro ($3.7 billion) lifeline from the Dutch government.
More at
The New York Times
» Dutch arrest dozens at Greenpeace chain protest
Dutch police on Saturday arrested more than 80 Greenpeace activists, many of whom had chained themselves to structures and machinery at the site of a new coal-fired power station in Rotterdam. The environmental group said its action, part of a Europe-wide protest against German power giant EON, was to protest an "unfolding climate disaster". Police spokeswoman Mignon van der Laan told AFP the 82 people arrested had been taken to three police stations in Rotterdam for trespassing on the Maasvlakte building site. "They will all be freed by the end of the evening," she said.
The group had set up camp on the perimeters of the site on Friday night. "This morning, in spite of an agreement with the police, they entered the site and were therefore trespassing," said Van der Laan. Thirty-two among the group chained themselves to machinery, buildings and cranes, and had to be freed by police. "We had to arrest all of them. Fifty have been fined for being on forbidden territory, but the 32 who chained themselves will be given a warning to appear in a Dutch court within days to answer to charges." Three journalists were also fined.
Read the entire article at
AFP
» New report finds Dutch healthcare system best in EU
Portugal, Malta and Cyprus are among several member states which ‘struggle to deliver adequate levels of care’, according to a new EU-wide report. The report puts the Netherlands at the top of a healthcare ‘league table’, saying US president-elect Barrack Obama would do well to use the Dutch system as a source of inspiration for his own country. Also highlighted is Estonia, described as a ‘beacon of potential’ for demonstrating “how to deliver quality performance with relatively low levels of expenditure.”
Johan Hjertqvist, president of the Brussels-based Health Consumer Powerhouse (HCP), the organisation which carried out the study, said, “In the past four years, the Netherlands have been in the top three among European healthcare systems in all our general healthcare indexes. “It is no exaggeration to say that the Dutch have the best healthcare system in Europe. When the Obama healthcare policy team looks at Europe for inspiration it seems to be the right system to study.”
More at
The Parliament.com
» Report: Natalee Holloway suspect involved in Thai sex trafficking
A suspect in the 2005 disappearance of an Alabama teen in Aruba is involved in selling Thai women into prostitution, a Dutch TV reporter claims. Reporter Peter De Vries has made a second hidden-camera expose on Dutch student Joran Van der Sloot, who was believed to be with Natalee Holloway when she vanished while on a senior trip to Aruba. De Vries won an Emmy this year for another report on Van Der Sloot, 21, in which the student admits to dumping Holloway’s body after she suddenly began shaking and died as they were kissing.
De Vries’ latest report, which was shown Sunday night on Dutch television, shows Van der Sloot telling someone posing as a sex-industry boss that he can get passports for Thai women and girls who think they are going to the Netherlands to work as dancers. Van der Sloot makes about $13,000 for every woman sold into prostitution in the Netherlands, De Vries claims.
More at
Fox News and Peter R. de Vries'
website (in Dutch)
» Dutch women settle for part-time work
Whether they have children or not, Dutch women don't want to work full time. This is the conclusion of a report published by the Social and Cultural Planning Office today. Only seven percent of women who work part time would prefer to work a 35-hour week if they could. In the Netherlands it seems that part-time work for women has become an obvious lifestyle choice. While the majority of men feel they inevitably have to work for a living, only a third of women have the same feeling. So in Dutch families, the traditional model is still dominant. Men work full time and develop their career, while women bring in extra money with a part-time job, and don't see their career as a priority. (...) Although the percentage of women who work in the Netherlands is comfortably above the European average, as this report shows, this doesn't mean they are going all-out for careers in full-time jobs. More women work part time here than in any other European country. It seems to have become a self-evident part of Dutch culture for women to work only part time. This is true not only in the family - at home women still do much more of the housework than men do - but also in the workplace. The Social and Cultural Planning Office puts the situation down to government policy in the 1980s. In an attempt to encourage women to enter the labour market, the government stimulated part-time work. As a result, part-time workers enjoy better pay and conditions here than they do for example in Britain, Germany or France.
Read the entire article
Radio Netherlands
» Dutch reactions to the election of Barack Obama
A round up of Dutch reactions to the historic election of Barack Obama at the
Moderate Voice.
» Is the Netherlands waterproof?
Preparing for a potential 'Katrina-like' scenario, a major five-day flood disaster exercise involving about 10,000 civil servants and rescue workers throughout the Netherlands kicked off on Monday. This disaster drill has been given the name ‘Waterproef' which, although it sounds like the English ‘waterproof', actually means water-test or trial by water. Its aim is to establish whether councils, provincial administrations and government agencies would be able to pull together well enough in the face of the worst imaginable flood disaster. (...)
People in just a few areas are going to be directly affected by disaster simulations. In the central Dutch town of Leerdam, 200 people will take part in an evacuation exercise, and a rescue demonstration is being held near Nijkerk to the northeast of Utrecht. Emergency sandbags will be laid at two weak spots in the sea-defence dunes near Katwijk on the coast north of The Hague.
Read the entire article at
Radio Netherlands
