Europe Netherlands Two years after it emerged that Orthodox Protestant schools required parents to sign a covenant rejecting homosexuality, the number of schools with an anti-gay charter increased from 29 to 36, as the news programme Pointer discovered
Europe Netherlands A large majority of Dutch MEPs in the House of Representatives opposed the European Commission's plan to bring in more migrant workers from North Africa to cope with labour shortages
Europe Netherlands Amnesty International and the KNVB - the Netherlands Football Association - condemned the Qatari hotels that refuse gay couples during the World Cup
Europe Netherlands Workers at the port of Amsterdam are refusing to unload a Russian oil tanker, sailing under the flag of the Marshall Islands and therefore exempt from sanctions, which was previously refused berth in a Swedish port
Europe Netherlands The number of sex crimes reported to police has risen by more than 25% since The Voice of Holland sex scandal broke; in total, police received 4.000 reports in the first three months of this year, 1.100 more than in the same period in 2021
Europe Netherlands Children detained at the Ter Apel refugee centre live in "unacceptable conditions" and face "mental neglect", said children's ombudsman Margrite Kalverboer
Europe Netherlands Dutch authorities have decided to lower the temperature in all public sector buildings by 2 degrees to make the country less dependent on Russian gas
Europe Netherlands A court in Breda ordered the early release of two Ukrainians to fight the Russian invasion of Ukraine, finding that the situation was one of 'special and grave circumstances' and noting that the two men were 'insistent' on returning home to fight
Europe Netherlands Around 40% of people who receive disability benefits from the UWV social security agency because they cannot work for health problems have psychiatric problems; the national statistics office CBS counted 365.000 men and 394.000 women in 2020
Europe Netherlands There are about 63.000 vacant houses in the country; as a solution, a tax on vacant houses has been suggested, similar to one that in Vancouver has reduced vacancy by 25%
Europe Netherlands Utrecht city council has become the third of the big Dutch cities to make a formal apology for its role in slavery, following on from Amsterdam and Rotterdam
Europe Netherlands Dutch startup Ocean Grazer has developed the Ocean Battery, which stores power underneath the wind farm, to overcome the problem of wasting energy when turbines produce electricity with the wind but demand is low
Europe Netherlands All classrooms will have a CO2 meter as part of the ventilation system, for which the government has set aside €17 million