Egypt

Pieter Bas Habes, a 43-year-old man from Amsterdam, disappeared after apparently being arrested in Egypt over a week ago. The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs is doing its "utmost" to find out where he is, the Volkskrant reports.

Dutch tourists are again vacationing in countries like Turkey and Egypt after avoiding these countries due to terrorist attacks, AD reports based on figures from travel agencies sector organization ANVR.

Visits to Turkey from the Netherlands dropped to nearly zero following an attempted coup and several terrorist attacks. But in January the number of bookings to the country rose by 90 percent.

A terrorist cell the police arrested in Roosendaal end April, was planning an attack in Amsterdam, according to Wednesday's broadcast of Dutch television program Onder de radar

The Netherlands is launching cultural projects in seven countries as part of the fight against "the ring of instability around Europe", Ministers Bert Koenders of Foreign Affairs and Jet Bussemaker of Culture announced in a letter describing the Culture policy for 2017 - 2020.

Recent attacks in Turkey have been a blow to the countries tourism. Bookings to travel to Turkey is currently 40 percent lower than a year ago, tour operator TUI announced along with its quarterly figures.

TUI Nederland is scrapping all flights to the Egyptian resort Sharm el-Sheikh up until end March 2016. According to the travel agency, bookings to the resort fell so far after the Russian airbus crash in Sinai last month, that it is not profitable to make these trips

Empty charter planes will be flying to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheik on Sunday and Tuesday to pick up the Dutch tourists currently holidaying there. KLM has decided that people on the airline's flight to Amsterdam from Cairo will only be allowed hand luggage and that no suitcases will be loaded into the airplane's hold at the airport. Travel agencies TUI Nederland and Neckermann Travel also opted for this measure.

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs has also decided to stop all Dutch flights to and from the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh and to stop flying over northern Sinai until Sunday at least. The Netherlands is awaiting the outcome of a British investigation on the security situation. England and Ireland are also not flying in the region for the time being.

The 20 year old Maher H. has been sentenced to three years in prison for participating in the jihad in Syria. H.'s wife, the 20 year old Shukri F., has been acquitted. She was suspected of recruiting jihadists. This is the verdict of the court in The Hague.

A consortium around the Dutch dredging companies Boskalis and Van Oord has received the order to build a new Suez Canal in Egypt.

Dutch journalist Rena Netjes could be sentenced to between 15 and 25 years in prison if convicted of conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Netjes is one of twenty journalists criminally charged in connection with a clampdown on global news television network al-Jazeera.