A suspicious package was found on Amerikalaan in Utrecht on Monday morning. The police closed down a wide area around the street. Multiple homes and business premises were evacuated, a police spokesperson said to NU.nl.
The Ministry of Defense's explosives removal department is at the scene to investigate.
The police also closed down Beneluxlaan, which borders Amerikalaan, in both directions. The tram line is also closed, so no tram traffic is currently possible in Utrecht.
Sunday was the first official spring day of the year in the Netherlands. That means that temperatures climbed to above 15 degrees at the KNMI weather station in De Bilt. The south of the country even saw temperatures above 18 degrees Celsius. The Netherlands can look forward to more spring like weather this week.
On average the first official spring day is only on March 16th. The usual temperatures for early February is around 5 or 6 degrees, Nicolien Kroon of Buienradar said to RTL Nieuws. The earliest official spring day on record was on January 13th, 1993.
Eleven people from the Utrecht town of Cothen were injured when their carnival float collapsed on Sunday. Five people were taken to hospital, the other six sought medical treatment themselves. The injuries mainly involve broke bones, NOS reports.
The treasurer of the Cothen carnival association Brienkneuters told NOS that the victims are between 20 and 26 years old. They built the float themselves.
A broken beam caused the collapse of a carnival float in 't Goy, Utrecht on Sunday, according to the young people who built the float. They were on it when it collapsed. The driver was not under the influence of alcohol and was not speeding, they said to RTV Utrecht on Monday.
Bert Felling of party shop FeestXpert in Nijmegen and Wamel finds it "crazy" that cowboy- and Indian costumes are considered racist. He will therefore give every child who visits his shop on Saturday, February 23rd, a free Indian costume and free Indian face paint, AD reports.
The Dutch Tax Authority acted contrary to the Convention on the Rights of the Child when it discontinued the childcare allowance of over 200 families in 2014. The tax office did not adequately take the interests of these children into account, Children's Ombudsman Margrite Kalverboer wrote in a letter to the Tax Authority, which is in the possession of Trouw.
A suspicious package was found on Amerikalaan in Utrecht on Monday morning. The police closed down a wide area around the street. Multiple homes and business premises were evacuated, a police spokesperson said to NU.nl.
The Ministry of Defense's explosives removal department is at the scene to investigate.
The police also closed down Beneluxlaan, which borders Amerikalaan, in both directions. The tram line is also closed, so no tram traffic is currently possible in Utrecht.
Due to a decreasing number of pupils, secondary schools are threatening to disappear from at least 10 shrinking regions in the east of the Netherlands - Groningen, Friesland, Limburg and Zeeland, according to secondary school organization VO-Raad. This could mean that pupils in rural areas may have to travel over 20 kilometers to go to school, the organization warns, NOS reports.
Of all the Dutch provinces, primary schools in Zeeland on average achieved the best results on the final test in group 8. Primary schools in Noord-Holland performed the worst, according to RTL Nieuws' annual school research.
Asbestos was dumped at a construction site at Delfzijl station for two consecutive days. A specialized company was called in to clean up the first batch of the carcinogenic substance on Friday. This same company is also cleaning up the second batch, found on Saturday, RTV Noord reports.
On Friday a pamphlet was attached to the fence of the construction site. It read: "This pollution, asbestos, was blown here by the contractor Hoonstra. Wind-concentration camp builder in Drenthe. Those who hire this company, will harvest asbestos."
Two Russian women were arrested at Schiphol airport on Monday morning, independent Russian newspaper Novaja Gazeta reports. The Koninklijke Marechausee could not confirm the arrests to the Volkskrant.
There was a shooting incident in Heerlen shortly before midnight on Sunday. So far it is unclear whether anyone was hurt, or what the motive for the shooting was. The police are looking for three people, according to a Burgernet report shared on Twitter.
The police are looking for two men and one woman. One of the men wore white trousers with a red stripe. How they are involved in the shooting, is not clear.
The shooting happened on Hofstraat, according to 1Limburg.
A body found in the Oudeschans in Amsterdam on Friday was identified as Connor James Murphy, the police confirmed. The 39-year-old man from Northern Ireland has been missing in Amsterdam since mid-January.
The police took the body out of the water near Keizersbrug on Friday, according to Het Parool. Murphy was last seen around Oudeschans on January 13th.
Schiphol will continue to grow after 2020, despite protests from local residents and environmental organizations, according to Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen of Infrastructure and Water Management. The Amsterdam airport has to keep growing in order to keep its competitive position with other airline hubs in Europe, she said in an interview with the Volkskrant.
Sunday was the first official spring day of the year in the Netherlands. That means that temperatures climbed to above 15 degrees at the KNMI weather station in De Bilt. The south of the country even saw temperatures above 18 degrees Celsius. The Netherlands can look forward to more spring like weather this week.
On average the first official spring day is only on March 16th. The usual temperatures for early February is around 5 or 6 degrees, Nicolien Kroon of Buienradar said to RTL Nieuws. The earliest official spring day on record was on January 13th, 1993.
Eleven people from the Utrecht town of Cothen were injured when their carnival float collapsed on Sunday. Five people were taken to hospital, the other six sought medical treatment themselves. The injuries mainly involve broke bones, NOS reports.
The treasurer of the Cothen carnival association Brienkneuters told NOS that the victims are between 20 and 26 years old. They built the float themselves.
The Turkish police arrested three Dutch persons in an operation against terrorist organization Islamic State in Bursa, in the northwest of the country, sources within the Turkish security services told state press agency Anadolu.
A total of four people were arrested, three of whom had a Dutch passport. They were linked to ISIS activities in Syria, according to Turkish media. At least one of the suspects is a woman who has both Dutch and Moroccan nationality. The fourth suspect is Iraqi.
Exhibition 'Everyone a Photographer' currently in the Rijksmuseum shows the start of amateur photography. The over 100 year old photos on display are all remarkable in their unremarkable way - a baby photo, a family portrait, a seflie in the mirror. The exhibition focuses on how photography changed from solemnly posed portraits to snapshots of spontaneity at the turn of the previous century. "You can say that at that moment the daily life came into photography", Mattie Boom, who obtained her doctorate with these photos, said to NOS.
Dutch supermarkets are determined to use less and more sustainable packaging, according to supermarkets' association CBL. The goal is to reduce packaging material by 20 percent by 2025, RTL Nieuws reports.
The supermarkets will start with the handling of fruit and vegetables. "The most important question is what the function of the packaging is. Where it is possible and also the sustainable solution, packaging material will be significantly reduced."
Sports supplements containing banned substance DMAA can easily be bought online, for example in online stores or through Dutch sports influencers on Instagram, according to research by NOS and masters students from the University of Amsterdam. The majority of these so-called pre-workout shakes are legal, but on Instagram and foreign online stores shakes with banned substances can also easily be bought, according to the broadcaster.
The police in Oosterhout arrested a 28-year-old man for being in the possession of kilograms of cocaine. The cocaine was found in the man's car after the police confiscated it because the man had an unpaid fine, the police said in a statement.
On Wednesday the police and municipality went to check the man's home due to suspicions of housing fraud and that there was a cannabis plantation there. When they arrived no one answered their knocking, so the police forced the door open. Inside they found the 28-year-old man.
A massive 1,500 kilograms of cocaine was found hidden among mangoes in a container at the port of Rotterdam on Wednesday. A 37-year-old customs officer from Rotterdam was arrested on suspicion of involvement in this drug transport, the Public Prosecutor announced.
The container came from Brazil, according to the Prosecutor.
The United Kingdom is not strong enough to stand on its own on the world stage, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said in interviews with European media. "It is the British who will be left weakened after the Brexit, becoming a medium-sized economy. Neither the US nor the EU". According to Rutte, the power of the UK is "waning" compared to two or three years ago. The country alone is not big enough to play a significant role internationally, Spanish newspaper El Pais quoted him.
For years students with a part-time job at Amsterdam hospital OLVG had access to confidential and very personal patient files. This involved almost all patients who visited the hospital over the past 15 years, the Volkskrant reports. The hospital confirmed the leak to the newspaper.
The leak was discovered in August last year by a philosophy student who answered the phone and made appointments for the hospital's outpatient clinic. She informed the management of the hospital that she could see all of the patients' confidential medical information.
Dutch airline KLM will investigate whether individual employees were exposed to carcinogenic chromium 6, the company said in response to a demand for clarity from trade union FNV. The involved employees worked at the Regional Jet Center at Schiphol where airplanes of Martinair and Cityhopper, among others, were sanded, ANP reports.
The so-called Golden Fleece in the Flipje en Streekmuseum in Tiel is a fake. The 'golden pendant', said to belong to Tiel knight Claes Vijg, does not date from 1559 nor is it made of gold. It's a bad copy made of brass with a thin layer of gold paint, museum director Alexandra van Steen discovered, De Gelderlander reports.
After being bullied her whole life, 20-year-old Kaya van den Dikkenberg decided to use Valentine's Day to draw attention to this problem. On Thursday she handed out "Valentine's Day cards" at Utrecht Central Station. But instead of a love letter, the cards contained letters written by people who are being bullied, RTL Nieuws reports.
