Damaged overhead lines between Hoofddorp and Leiden left three trains stranded on Thursday, ProRail reported. Around 1,400 passengers were evacuated. The stranded trains are currently being towed away.
"The contractor is currently inspecting the damage", ProRail said. "How long the repairs will take is not yet known." No trains are currently running between Hoofddorp and Leiden. "ProRail regrets the inconvenience for all travelers on this route."
Fatima Abouloufa, a team chief at the Leiden police who was suspended after drawing public attention to discrimination within the police, is no longer welcome at the police unit Den Haag, which covers Leiden. Paul van Musscher, police chief in The Hague, informed her that she does not have enough support from a dozen managers in the unit, NRC reports.
In June Abouloufa posted on Instagram about racism, discrimination, abuse of power and bullying within the police organization. She wrote that the police management ignores both whistleblowers and complaints.
A team chief of the Leiden police was placed on leave after she called public attention to racism, abuse of power and bullying within the police organization this summer. She was sent home because her criticism caused "too much internal tensions" at the police unit Den Haag, which covers Leiden, NRC reports.
There are massive differences in the costs involved in getting a building permit for new homes from Dutch municipalities, according to homeowners' association VEH. The association wants Minister Kasja Ollongren of Home Affairs to put an end to the large differences in municipal building fees, Omroep West reports.
Of the 514 European Medicines Agency (EMA) employees who moved to the Netherlands so far, half decided to live in Amsterdam. 256 of these expats now call Amsterdam home, and 258 opted to live elsewhere in the country, according to figures released by the municipality of Amsterdam.
Travelers association Rover wants rail manager ProRail and rail company NS to do more to make sure customers are inconvenienced as little as possible during rail works and breakdowns. The association made a number of recommendations on how to achieve this, including improving information provision to travelers, compensation for inconvenience, and using longer trains.
After its two-year-long European tour, Tyrannosaurus Rex Trix is back in Leiden. The T-Rex skeleton was reassembled and now has a prominent place in the Dinotijd room in the renovated Naturalis Biodiversity Center, NU.nl reports.
Trix was excavated in the American state of Montana in 2013. It is one of the most complete T-Rex skeletons ever found. The Naturalis named the 66 million-year-old dinosaur after Princess Beatrix.
A 27-year-old man was arrested in Leiden over the weekend for abusing an 8-year-old boy and live-streaming the abuse on a Facebook group. The police came into action after receiving multiple reports of the live stream, the police said in a statement on Monday.
Using several objects that could be seen on the live stream, police officers managed to identify where the abuse was taking place. They responded to the home in the center of Leiden during the early hours of Sunday morning.
On Thursday the police released a photo of a pregnant woman who is missing in Leiden. 26-year-old Sabrine Amir is 35 weeks pregnant and in urgent need of medical care, the police said.
The woman was last seen in the municipality of Leiden, during a medical check on July 23rd. She did not show up for her last check up on July 29th.
The police call on anyone with information about Sabrine's whereabouts, or anyone who thinks they saw her, to contact them at once.
Today would have been Rembrandt van Rijn's 413th birthday. The Rembrandthuis Museum in Amsterdam is celebrating with a festival on the street where the 17th century painter used to live. The Rembrandt Art Festival starts at 10:00 a.m., featuring artists in action, workshops, stalls and live music, RTL Nieuws reports.
High winds were expected all day throughout the Netherlands, prompting the fourth straight day of inclement weather warnings from the national meteorological agency KNMI. Operations at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam showed only a handful of cancellations but dozens of delays.
KNMI issued a code yellow weather alert for Noord-Holland and the Wadden Sea islands, Friesland, Zuid-Holland, Zeeland, and Limburg. Gusts of wind out of the southwest were expected to be between 75 km/h and 90 km/h, the agency said.
A lack of available primary school teachers forced the Rudolf Steinerschool in Haarlem to put an early end to its Group 7 class on Thursday. The students from the Waldorf-style education program will be redistributed among similar schools in Haarlem, Hillegom, and Hoofddorp, up to 15 kilometers away.
"We've searched all over the country," said Lida Berkhout, the school's deputy director. "From Groningen to Brabant," she told the Volkskrant.
The Netherlands' national museum for world cultures NMVW will generously return art taken through colonial theft to their countries of origin. The museum will not wait for claims, but is actively searching its own collections for objects that qualify for restitution, Trouw and NRC report.
A Hague dog decided to scare his owner and go on a little adventure on Tuesday. The not-so-good boy went missing from The Hague on Tuesday afternoon, and was later found riding in the first class compartment of the train to Leiden Central Station, the Leiden Noord police said on Facebook.
On Tuesday afternoon the police in The Hague received a report of the missing pet. The dog was last seen near the train on the station. His owner had no idea where the dog wandered off to.
Two police officers were injured while arresting a man for violating a restraining order against him on Seringenstraat in Leiden during the early hours of Monday morning. The 29-year-old man from Harlingen resisted arrest so violently that the officers felt forced to use pepper spray on him and fire a warning shot, the police said in a statement.
Rail manager ProRail will be working on the railways around Schiphol airport over the coming days, which means less train traffic to and from the airport. The rail works will take four days, starting on Thursday. On Thursday and Friday, trains from Amsterdam will still be able to reach the airport. But over the weekend there will be no train traffic to Schiphol. NS will deploy buses to replace the trains, NU.nl reports.
Doctor Maarten B. confessed to secretly making 46 recordings of minor patients at GP's offices in Amstelveen and Schiedam between 2010 and 2017, while speaking in court on Tuesday. But he denies that he sexually abused the children, RTL Nieuws reports.
Later this month NS will launch an experiment in which travelers can pay for their trip with their bank card, instead of a separate public transit card. The experiment will last six months and will take place on the Den Haag-Leiden route. The Dutch rail company is currently looking for a thousand participants, AD reports.
"Traveling with a bank card or credit card is a logical choice", NS spokesperson Hessel Koster said to AD. "It is already in the wallet, travelers do not have to acquire a separate public transport card and do not need to have a balance on it in advance."
Emergency services in Leiden rescued two students from a construction crane during the early hours of Monday morning. The two young men were stuck in the crane on a construction site on Wassenaarsweg. Passersby reported them to the police at around 1:30 a.m., NU.nl reports.
Why they climbed into the crane, and why they couldn't get back down themselves, is not clear. Both the police and fire brigade responded to the scene. The street was closed down.
ProRail will be carrying out work around Schiphol this weekend. As a result, no trains will be running on the route between Schiphol Airport and Leiden from Friday to Sunday. On Saturday the airport will be completely inaccessible by train, ANP reports.
On Saturday no trains will run between Amsterdam Sloterdijk and Schiphol, Amsterdam Zuid and Schiphol, and Schiphol and Leiden. The Intercity direct between Amsterdam Central Station and Rotterdam will also be down over the weekend.
Six young people were arrested for multiple incidents of vandalism and arson in the Zuid-Holland town of Noordwijk this past summer. A total of 60 police officers took them out of their beds in Noordwijk, Voorhout and Leiden at 6:30 a.m. on Monday morning, the police said in a statement.
The suspects are between the ages of 16 and 23. Five of them were arrested on suspicion of arson and vandalism, the sixth for complicity thereto. Two are also suspected of drug dealing.
A collision between a train and a person resulted far fewer trains running to and from Schiphol airport on Friday morning. Travelers should take considerable delays into account, a spokesperson for rail company NS said to NU.nl.
"There are problems especially from the south towards Schiphol", the spokesperson said. "There are far fewer trains from the direction of Rotterdam."
Passengers departing from Amsterdam, The Hague, Leiden and Zaandam can also take delays into account. The problems are expected to persist until at least 9:30 a.m., according to the NS site.
The staff of restaurant Annie's in Leiden had an exciting evening on Monday. A pregnant woman came in asking to use the bathroom, and eventually gave birth in the restaurant. Mother and baby girl are both doing well, RTL Nieuws reports.
A large shipment of stem cells will be slowly and carefully transported from Leiden to Amsterdam, under police escort, on Wednesday. This is expected to cause some inconvenience for motorists on the A4 highway, where at least one lane will be closed, a spokesperson for blood bank Sanquin told NU.nl.
The transport will start around noon, the spokesperson said.
