Zaandam

Parents of pupils attending CBS Tamarinde in Zaandam want the primary school to return to a five-day school week. The school has been using a four-day school week these past months due to a shortage of teachers. On the fifth day children stay at home with homework. The parents are fed up with this and filed a request with the municipal school attendance officer to reverse the measure, NOS reports. 

The court in Alkmaar sentenced 47-year-old Husseyin A. to 20 years in prison for killing 19-year-old Milica van Doorn in Zaandam in 1992. The sentence matched what the Public Prosecutor demanded, NOS reports.

Milica was found dead in a pond in her home town of Zaandam in June 1992. She had been raped and murdered. Traces of DNA were found on her body, but these did not lead to a suspect at the time.

Activists angered by the use of blackface around the Dutch Sinterklaas tradition are planning to protest in Dokkum on Saturday. The protestors had previously made arrangements with the municipality to lawfully demonstrate in the Friesland town at the televised Sinterklaas arrival last year, but their buses were stopped by people who created a blockade on the A7 motorway shutting down all traffic on a main road into the province.

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 Zaanstad Sinterklaas committee, the largest in the Zaanstreek, will not participate in the national Sinterklaas arrival in Zaandijk on November 17th. A statement by broadcaster NTR, the organizer of the national arrival, led the committee to the conclusion that no blackface Zwarte Pieten will be allowed to participate in the arrival for the first time. But according to a spokesperson for NTR, this is not the case at all.

Three men in police uniforms robbed a home on Dok in Zaandam at around 2:15 a.m. on Tuesday. The police are looking for witnesses.

The resident of the home opened the door when three apparent police officers knocked during the early hours of Tuesday morning. They forced their way inside, threatened the man with a firearm and tied him up.

The other resident of the home was upstairs at that time. She managed to flee outside and call for help.

The robbers stole money and jewelry before running off.

Sanna Munnikendam, education alderman in Zaandam, was unpleasantly surprised to suddenly find posters calling for people to become teachers in Amsterdam throughout her city, Het Parool reports.

The poster shows a smiling woman with a smiling boy. It reads, in childlike writing: "Teacher, you always see what I'm good at". And below that: "Become a teacher in Amsterdam"

"I express myself softly when I say that the action was not pleasantly received here", Munnikendam said to Het Parool. 

A taxi crashed into a gas station in Zaandam on Sunday afternoon. A total of three people were injured, two people who were pumping gas and the taxi driver. According to the police, the taxi driver lost control of his vehicle for still unknown reasons.

The accident happened at a Texaco gas station on Julianaweg, which runs parallel to the A8 towards Amsterdam, according to AD. The three victims were taken to hospital, a spokesperson for the police said to the newspaper. He could not say anything about their condition.

The trial against four brothers accused of exploiting refugees in a laundromat in Zaandam in 2016, started on Thursday. The refugees were paid very little, had to work very long hours, and were sometimes forced to spend the night in the laundromat, Het Parool reports.

Two Dutch-Turkish families living in Zaandam have received threatening letters with swastikas, threats and heavy insults. One of them also found their front yard covered in what appeared to be blood splatters, according to Zaandam regional media outlet De Orkaan. After further inspection, what seemed like blood was actually red paint. 

The police had to clear out a conference center in Zaandam during the early hours of Tuesday morning, after a party attended by 300 to 400 Eritreans from across the country turned into brawls, NOS reports.

The evacuated Eritreans spread over the center of Zaandam afterwards. The police deployed a helicopter to keep an eye on the situation, according to news wire ANP.