Grid managers Tennet and Enexis want no new solar parks to be built in Groningen and northern Drenthe for the time being. The electricity grid there does not have sufficient capacity to process the energy from any new solar parks, according to the companies, NOS reports.
"We can handle the current situation, but if the many requests for solar parks keep coming, there is simply not enough space to transport all the electricity", spokesperson Loek de Lange of Enexis said to the broadcaster.
The police are searching for 33-year-old Karel Haan from the province of Groningen, who went missing on Monday night.
The Groningen man has no fixed place of residents. He is originally from Oude Pekela, but in the days before his disappearance he had been staying Odoornerveen in Drenthe. He had an appointment in Hoogeveen on Monday night, but never made it that far. Haan's mother reported him missing around midnight.
Ugbaad Kilincci, a PvdA candidate councilor in Emmen, was faced with racism while campaigning in the Drenthe town on Saturday. She was called, among other things, a "ragged-head moron", a "black monkey", and told to "go back to Africa", RTL Nieuws reports.
A train crashed into a car in the Drenthe town of Echten on Thursday morning. The motorist was killed in the accident. No one in the train was injured, the Drenthe police said on Twitter.
The accident happened on Velingweg around 8:45 a.m., according to NU.nl.
The police are investigating exactly what happened.
ProRail is also investigating the current situation on the track. Train traffic is halted between Meppel and Hoogeveen until at least 12:15 p.m., according to NS.
A video showing nude visitors to sauna SpaWell in Peize, Drenthe was found on popular porn site Xhamster. The video, which shows visitors showering, was uploaded to the site four years ago, Groningen blog Sikkom discovered.
Towels clearly showing the sauna's name can be seen in the video. It seems that it was recorded by a visitor who hid the camera in a bag. The video starts with the filmer directing the camera at the showering visitors, and the sound of a zipper can be heard.
The majority of primary schools in Groningen, Friesland and Drenthe are closed today as around 6 thousand teachers go on strike for higher salaries and lower workloads. This is the first of a relay strike, starting today in the North. On March 14th primary school teachers in Flevoland, Utrecht, and Noord-Holland will strike, combined with a demonstration in Amsterdam, NOS reports.
The strikes are supported by the PO-Front, a joint action group consisting of trade unions, school leaders and managers.
On Tuesday morning the police arrested a 45-year-old woman and a 60-year-old man in the Drenthe town of Hijken on suspicion of fraud with European subsidies. They're suspected of stealing around a million euros by getting subsidies for fake research, the police said in a statement.
The cause of a tragic fire that took the lives of six-year-old Antonin Kellner and his five-year-old sister Alice has still not been determined though rumors persist it involved a Christmas tree going up in flames. A fundraising campaign launched by their neighbors in Emmen collected nearly 66 thousand euros for parents David and Jindriska Kellner, as of Tuesday morning.
A heavily explosive firework caused the death of a 39-year-old man in Swifterbant, Flevoland on Saturday afternoon. Police suspect, but have not confirmed, that the explosive was illegal, a representative told newswire ANP.
The man was killed in front of at least one of his children, a teenaged neighbor, Damian, told De Telegraaf. "At first I thought he was unconscious, but that was not the case," he said, calling the victim "Jaap".
Two children were killed in a house fire that ignited Saturday morning in Emmen. The victims are a six-year-old boy and his five-year-old sister, a regional police office reported.
Their parents were not seriously injured in the blaze, and were transported to an area hospital for treatment. Police took charge of the investigation into the incident, a fire department spokesperson told Hart van Nederland. The victims' mother was sedated at the hospital, while the father was kept apprised of the ongoing situation.
On Friday NPO Radio 2 DJs Gerard Ekdom, Paul Rabbering and Frank van 't Hof officially kicked off the Top 2000 voting week with the residents of Beilen in Drenthe. From today until December 8th, people in the Netherlands can vote for what they think are the 2,000 best songs, NU.nl reports.
The Top 2000 bus will tour through the Netherlands over the coming week, helping people to vote along the way. Ekdom and Wouter van der Goes will also make programs from the bus.
Home sellers in the Netherlands made a profit of 32 thousand euros on average this year, according to calculation by research agency Calcasa. Amsterdam sellers were the most well off this year, making an average profit of 131 thousand euros, RTL Nieuws reports.
Noord-Drenthe is the most prosperous region in the Netherlands, according to the Broad Prosperity Indicator by Rabobank and Utrecht University. Residents of Noord-Drenthe are happy, healthy and feel safe. Gooi also scored very well. People living in the Randstad are much less satisfied, ANP reports.
A police officer shot a motorist suspected of driving under the influence while arresting him in Ees, Drenthe late on Sunday night. The man was taken to hospital for treatment and his condition is not life-threatening, RTL Nieuws reports.
According to the broadcaster, the man was arrested at a sex club.
Eighteen year old Ellen Drost from Pesse was found dead in a trench in the Drenthe town of Spier on Sunday. She was reported missing after not returning home from a barn party on Saturday night. A 24-year-old motorist was arrested on Sunday afternoon. He went to a police station to report that he hit "something" with his car the previous night, AD reports.
The body of the girl was found on De Steegde in Spier, around three kilometers from her home. A passerby spotted the body and called the police. She was identified a short time later.
Dutch food and consumer product safety authority NVWA added codes of another 14 poultry companies to its list of eggs contaminated with toxic insecticide fipronil. Foods that contain contaminated eggs are safe to eat, according to the federation of the Dutch foodstuffs industry FNLI based on its own research, NU.nl reports.
Dutch firefighters had their hands full battling forest fires in the Noord-Brabant nature area Mariapeel and on Terschelling during the early hours of Friday morning. The fires in both areas are now under control, with occasional flare-ups. Firefighters and the Forestry Commission are monitoring the areas, keeping the edges around the fires wet so it can't spread, Omroep Brabant and NOS report.
Top Dutch - Groningen, Drenthe and Friesland's campaign to bring a massive Tesla factory to north Netherlands - launched a new step in its campaigning on Monday. The northern provinces are now recruiting people to work at the prospective Tesla factory, the Leeuwarder Courant reports.
"If Tesla motors were to build a giga-factory here, would you like to work there? Sign up at TopDutch.com!", is the message being spread on social media.
A father and son from Paterswolde in Drenthe were killed in an accident while mountain climbing accident in Italy. The victims are 57 and 20 years old, the Martini Hospital, where the father worked, confirmed to Dagblad van het Noorden.
The accident happened on Friday, while the duo were climbing with a 38-year-old local guide on the mount Becca di Monclair in the Italian Alps. Exactly what happened is still unclear.
The climbers were at a height of around 3,200 meters on the north side of the mountain when the accident happened, NU.nl reports based on Italian media.
A helicopter pilot was taken to a police station for questioning after he caused a panic at the Retropop music festival on Saturday night with a nose diving stunt. The organizers of the festival called the stunt an "individual and rash action", RTL Nieuws reports.
Festival attendees were watching a performance by Di-rect and Lucas Hamming when the low flying helicopter suddenly started a nose dive right above their heads. The pilot pulled up before reaching the ground and people below, and no one was injured. But many did get quite a fright.
A buzzard living in Drenthe seems to have taken a disliking to a certain cyclist. Theo Rook from Westerbork was attacked by the bird of prey four times last week. The attacks always happen in about the same spot on his cycling route from Westerbork to Emmen, RTV Drenthe reports.
All Dutch provinces except Groningen saw economic growth last year, according to figures Statistics Netherlands released on Tuesday. Of the four large Dutch cities, Amsterdam saw the biggest growth at 3 percent, The Hague the lowest at 2.2 percent. Rotterdam had the highest unemployment rate in the Netherlands last year at 11.3 percent, far above the national unemployment rate of around 6 percent.
The male resident of a farm in Exloo, Drenthe is missing after a massive fire at his property on Wednesday night. The property, which included the Turv Exloo Distillery, a barn and a farmhouse, went up in flames and burnt to the ground. Emergency services will search the remains of the buildings to find out whether the man was killed in the fire, ANP reports.
Emergency services managed to make contact with the man's wife. She is staying with relatives elsewhere in the country and could give no clarity on his whereabouts.
As far as murders go, Drenthe and Zeeland are the safest provinces in the Netherlands, according to Elsevier's annual murder list. Over the past 25 years, the fewest murders were committed in those provinces. Zuid-Holland had the most murders in that period, NU.nl reports based on the Elsevier list.
