PVV senator Marjolein Faber responded to her tweet in which she unjustly said that the media was withholding the "North African appearance" of the perpetrator in a Groningen stabbing two weeks ago. She called it "awkward", but still hasn't removed the tweet from Twitter.
"Since I never reveal my source, I should have taken this into account before posting this tweet. With this in mind, I should not have sent the tweet. Was awkward", she said on Twitter on Monday night.
PVV Senator Marjolein Faber is under fire over a tweet in which she suggested that the media deliberately withheld the "North African" ethnicity of a man suspected of stabbing three people at a Groningen terrace last week. Days after two of the three victims refuted this claim, describing the suspect as having pale skin and gray hair, the populist politician's tweet is still online.
Three people sustained minor injuries in a stabbing on a terrace on Grote Markt in Groningen on Wednesday evening. A 67-year-old Groningen man was arrested and a weapon was confiscated, the Groningen police said the following morning.
Several ambulances were deployed to the scene when the police received a report of a stabbing with multiple victims. The police later confirmed that the three victims sustained only minor injuries, including two "bystanders who tried to overpower the suspect."
In August last year, gas extraction company NAM threatened to stop extracting gas in Groningen prematurely if the liability for damages caused by gas extraction in the province is not shifted away from the company, RTV Noord reports based on a secret report on a meeting between NAM director Thijs Jurgens, officials from the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate, and representatives of the National Coordinator for Groningen.
A young woman from Winschoten in the province of Groningen took her own life a week and a half ago after she tried and failed three times to reach the suicide prevention hotline 113 Zelfmoordpreventie. She called the number 1-1-3, as her psychologist told her, but that number does not exist. The actual number for the suicide prevention hotline is paid number 0900-0113, which costs five cents per minute.
Large and medium-sized cities in the Netherlands will face a total budget shortage of around 500 million euros in the next four years, according to the G40, a network of the Netherlands' 40 largest municipalities. Cuts to public facilities are inevitable, Paul Depla, mayor of Breda and chairman of the G40, said to newspaper AD.
The official valuations of Dutch homes, called the WOZ value in the Netherlands, increased for the fourth consecutive year. On January 1st, the average home in the Netherlands was worth 248 thousand euros, 7.8 percent more than in 2018. That is both the highest price ever and the biggest increase in years, Statistics Netherlands reported on Friday.
The Dutch government wants to halt gas extraction in Groningen much earlier than originally planned. Minister Eric Wiebes of Economic Affairs and Climate now thinks that gas extraction in the earthquake-ridden province can be stopped by mid-2022, instead of in 2030, NOS reports.
The names of the ten municipalities that will participate in the Dutch government's experiment with regulated cannabis cultivation leaked on Wednesday evening. In addition to Breda, Tilburg and Almere, which were already known, the other municipalities are Groningen, Maastricht, Nijmegen, Arnhem, Zaanstad, Heerlen, and Hellevoetsluis, ANP reports.
The Presence light exhibition by artist and inventor Daan Roosegaarde in the Groninger Museum attracted 45 thousand people since opening on June 22nd. An average off 6 thousand people visited the museum per week to see the exhibition, compared to the museum's usual summer average of 4 thousand visitors per week, director Andreas Bluhm said to Dagblad van het Noorden.
The temporary committee for mining damage in Groningen, TCMG, paid out a total of over 80 million euros in damage claims to Groningen residents since March last year. Over 17 thousand damage claims haven't yet been processed, and more claims continue to come in. Last week the committee received 462 new damage claims, the TCMG announced, NOS reports.
The price difference in buying a home in the Netherlands' cheapest and most expensive provinces is now 175 thousand euros, according to economists at Rabobank. The average price of a home in Noord-Holland is 388 thousand euros, while the average price in Groningen is 213 thousand euros, NU.nl reports.
Cat lovers can celebrate International Cat Day on Thursday by going to watch cat videos on the big screen in six Dutch cities. This is the first year that Dutch cinemas are participating in the international CatVideoFest.
Cinemas in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, Groningen, Leeuwarden and Hilversum are taking part in this international festival celebrating the hero of the internet, Het Parool reports. Visitors will see an around 70 minutes-long compilation of funny or cute (or both) cat videos and animations.
Travelers chose the main station in Groningen as the most beautiful train station in the Netherlands, in a poll ran by NS on social media. Amsterdam Central Station came in 4th place.
Of the over 10 thousand people who voted, over 33 percent voted for Groningen. The historic station in Valkenburg came in second place with 16 percent of the votes, followed by Rotterdam Central Station with 14 percent, Amsterdam Central Station with 11 percent, and Utrecht Central Station with 9 percent.
There is a very real concern in the Netherlands regarding potential terror attacks, particularly from ISIS recruits and jihadists, right-wing extremists, and radical activists, according to Dutch counter-terror office NCTV. Because of this, the terror threat level in the country remains high, with holding at 4 out of a maximum of 5 in the terrorism threat assessment published by the NCTV on Monday.
The arrest of a 26-year-old man for the fatal stabbing of Hidde Bergman in Groningen last month, left the suspect's housemates shaken. According to the housemates, the suspect is a foreign man who has been renting a room in the student home for a month or two. They describe him as a strange man that made them feel uncomfortable, Dagblad van het Noorden reports.
A 26-year-old man already in police custody for vandalism was arrested on Monday in connection with the seemingly random fatal stabbing of a runner in Groningen. The suspect, also from Groningen, was being held for the murder as of 1:15 p.m.
A total of 127 damage reports were received after a fracking earthquake in Groningen on Sunday morning, the temporary committee that handles mining damage in Groningen TCMG said. Six of the reports were of acutely dangerous damage. According to the committee, it is difficult to say how much of the reported damage is the direct result of the earthquake, NOS reports.
Residents in the Groningen province received a scary start to Sunday morning when an earthquake measuring 2.5 on the Richter Scale shook the ground and rattled windows. The earthquake took place at 7 a.m. with an epicenter located below the small village of Garrelsweer.
"It was a huge bang. For a moment I thought there was a truck on its side," Garrelsweer resident Sibrand Bakker told the Telegraaf.
Motorists in The Hague face the most delays due to traffic jams in the Netherlands, according to calculations by navigation system maker TomTom. In The Hague, motorists on average have to take 28 percent extra travel time into account, Hart van Nederland reports.
That means that a trip that should take an hour, on average takes Hague motorists an hour and 17 minutes. During evening rush hour, a one-hour ride takes almost 40 minutes longer. In one year, the average motorist in The Hague loses 130 hours in traffic.
The temporary committee for mining damage in Groningen TCMG received a total of 2,875 damage reports after a 3.4 magnitude earthquake at Westerwijtwerd in the municipality of Loppersumm last week, RTV Noord reports.
Most of the damage reports came from the municipality of Groningen, 1,323 in total. Stadskanaal is the only municipality in the province that had no damage reports. There were also dozens of reports from the province of Drenthe.
The Temporary Committee on Mining Damage in Groningen received 90 damage reports on Wednesday after a 3.4 magnitude earthquake hit the province near the village of Westerwijwerd early in the morning. There were also 12 reports of potentially acutely dangerous situations, NU.nl reports.
Groningen was hit by a major earthquake at around 5:50 a.m. on Wednesday morning. The quake had a magnitude of 3.4 on the Richter scale, according to meteorological institute KNMI.
Many people across a large area of the province felt the quake. RTV Noord received over a hundred reports of it. The epicenter was at Westerwijtwerd, a village in the north of the province that falls under the municipality of Loppersum, according to the KNMI. The meteorological institute called it an induced earthquake, which means that it was caused by gas extraction in the province.
The police released a composite sketch of a man they would like to talk to in connection with a fatal stabbing on Jaagpad in Groningen last week Tuesday. A 27-year-old man died in the stabbing. How the man in the sketch was involved in the stabbing, is not yet clear, the police said in a statement.
The stabbing happened at around 7:15 p.m. A short time later, witnesses saw a man near the crime scene walking towards Ringweg. He was dressed in dark clothing and a cap. Witnesses describe him as being between 20 and 30 years old and between 1.7 and 1.8 meters tall.
