The Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, wants Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus of Justice and Security to create a legislative proposal to ban gay conversion therapy. Parliamentarians called such "cures"' for one's sexuality "indigestible" and "harmful", the Telegraaf reports.
This VVD proposal got support from a majority in the Kamer, including from the D66, GroenLinks, SP and PvdA. Christian parties CDA, ChristenUnie and SGP, and populists PVV and FvD voted against.
Almost all the votes in the European Parliament elections have been counted. As exit polls predicted, the PvdA is the big winner in the Netherlands. While the exit polls said Labour would get five seats, the party now stands at six. Populist PVV and socialists SP walk away with no seats, RTL Nieuws reports.
Facebook is not keeping to promises it made to the Tweede Kamer last week about political transparency on the social media platform, according to privacy and civil rights movement Bits of Freedom who put the social media giant's promises to the test, Nieuwsuur reports.
FvD leader Thierry Baudet is facing criticism from other party leaders over a video he posted on Twitter. The video features women telling how they were sexually assaulted or raped by migrants and blaming politicians who "refuse to protect our borders", showing photos of GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver, VVD leader Mark Rutte and D66 leader Rob Jetten at the end.
The Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, wants to double the prison sentence for using or possessing a hand grenade from four to eight years. Minister Ferdinand Grapperhaus of Justice and Security approves of this proposal, AD reports.
Arnoud van Druten of Floating Solar came up with the idea of islands of floating solar panels. These floating panels have two major advantages - they are out of sight, and they rotate with the sun so they can generate up to 30 percent more energy than the static, land-based ones, he said to RTL Nieuws.
The rainbow crosswalk in Hardewijk was vandalized. A seemingly religious message was found spray painted on the crossing on Wednesday morning. "Sodom and Gomorrah are still there as a warning example", the text read, translated from Dutch. And: "Choose life."
Martijn Pijnenburg, D66 leader in Hardewijk, posted photos of the vandalism on Twitter "The rainbow crosswalk in Hardewijk smeared with religious insanity", he tweeted. "In one word: disgusting."
The municipality removed the text later on Wednesday morning.
American preacher Steven Anderson will not be allowed into the Netherlands and the rest of the Schengen area, State Secretary Mark Harbers of Justice and Security said on Wednesday in response to parliamentary questions. According to Harbers, the government is "taking strong action against extremist speakers who, by spreading their beliefs, restrict the freedoms of others or even incite hatred or violence", NOS reports.
A majority in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, want the number of night flights at Schiphol to be reduced. Some parties even want night flights to be scrapped completely. The Kamer will discuss aviation with Minister Cora van Nieuwenhuizen of Infrastructure and Water Management on Thursday, RTL Nieuws reports.
Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema and a majority in the Tweede Kamer, the lower house of Dutch parliament, are all against extremist Christian preacher Steven Anderson visiting the Netherlands. The American preacher plans to do some "soul winning" and give a sermon in Amsterdam on May 23rd.
Chinese spies stole trade secrets from Dutch chip machine maker ASML, causing hundreds of millions of euros worth of damage, Financieele Dagblad reports based on its own research. This is the largest known espionage case ever at a Dutch company, the newspaper writes.
Minister Sander Dakker for Legal Protection acknowledged in a parliamentary debate on Wednesday that he bears political responsibility for mistakes made in the treatment of Michael P., the man who raped and murdered 25-year-old Anne Faber from Utrecht in 2017. At the same time he asked parliament to trust him to also solve the problems. He survived the debate, NU.nl reports.
"I feel the responsibility in my every fiber", Dekker said. "One of my most important tasks is to protect society from people like Michael P."
D66 alderman in Tilburg Marcelle Hendrickx is under fire for a tweet she posted last week saying that a vote for the Noord-Brabant FvD leader Hans Smolders is a vote for racism, hatred and division. In a debate on the matter on Monday night, she said that she regrets that the tweet was misunderstood, but she stands by the content, AD reports.
GroenLinks leader Jesse Klaver believes that the government will opt for cooperation with the left-wing opposition in the new Senate. "The cabinet must choose: is it about the right or about the left? I assume it will opt for the Paris climate goals. That means that cooperation on the right is not an option", Klaver said, ANP reports.
FvD leader Thierry Baudet believes that his party's victory in the Provincial States election is punishment for the "arrogance and stupidity" of the Netherlands' current leaders. In his victory speech he emphasized that FvD is now one of the largest parties in the country, and that a change has been set in motion. "Economic and political capitulation is coming to an end", he said, NOS reports.
Voter turnout was up substantially in the country's provincial election on Wednesday, compared with turnout in 2015. Some 57.9 percent of eligible voters showed up at polling places, up from 47.8 percent four years earlier, according to RTL Nieuws.
The ruling coalition that forms the Cabinet in The Netherlands was projected to lose seven seats and its majority in the Eerste Kamer, the upper house of Dutch parliament. Eerste Kamer relative newcomer Forum voor Democratie (FvD), a nationalist right wing party, was projected to secure ten seats in the Dutch Senate, and left wing GroenLinks was expected to take eight seats. There are 75 seats in the chamber, with the coalition currently holding 38 for a razor thin majority.
On Tuesday evening the 13 political party leaders responded to the shooting in Utrecht, in which three people were killed and three seriously injured, at the start of the last political debate before the Provincial States elections on Wednesday. PVV leader Geert Wilders and FvD leader Thierry Baudet decided to use their moment to blame the attack on Prime Minister Mark Rutte (VVD) and CDA leader Sybrand Buma, linking the shooting to the Netherlands' immigration and integration policy, NOS reports.
The Dutch State acted carelessly in the investigation into Johan van Laarhoven and his wife. This negligence led to the arrest of the Dutch couple in Thailand in 2014, as well as they years' long prison sentences they received in the country, the National Ombudsman said in a report on Monday, NU.nl reports.
The first debate for the Provincial State elections of 20 March, which will ultimately also determine the composition of the Senate, happened on RTL on Thursday. The climate was one of the main points that the leaders of the VVD, CDA, D66, PVV, SP, PvdA and FvD debated, NU.nl reports.
D66 party leader Rob Jetten wants Dutch people who have more than a million euros to pay more tax on their wealth, and for the tax rate for small savers to be lowered, he said in his Kerdijk lecture at Sociëteit De Witte in The Hague, AD reports.
Almost a third of Dutch voters want to punish the Rutte III government for its policy during the Provincial States election on March 20th, according to the latest poll by research bureau I&O. A quarter of voters want to support the cabinet with his or her vote. And almost half said that they won't take into account whether or not the government coalition will get a majority in the Senate when they cast their vote, AD reports.
The Dutch government used old figures when calculating the average energy bill increase for this year, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate acknowledged to NOS after reports in AD.
Victims of sexual violence in the Netherlands no longer have to pay healthcare deductibles when they incur medical costs. With this one year long experiment, the Dutch government wants to find out whether free care will lower the threshold for seeking help, NOS reports.
Victims can go to a Center for Sexual Violence to get help. These are usually connected to hospitals' emergency room. The Centers perform trace evidence investigation, but they also offer psychological help and tests for venereal diseases.
