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Please, if you will, listen to Amira sing, Ave Maria. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRr6Q1g8s2c#t=176

Organization Seeks to Preserve Religious Heritage SitesA recent report by the “Future of Religious Heritage” states that an estimated 600-700 churches in the Netherlands will be decommissioned by 2018. The “Future of Religious Heritage” organization is comprised of associations, government bodies, universities and religious communities that are working together to preserve religious sites across the European continent. According to L’Osservatore Romano, which published the statistics, the organization also estimated that 400-500 Protestant churches will also be decommissioned. Currently, the Bishops of the Netherlands are in the Vatican on their Ad Limina visit, which is required by the heads of dioceses...

• Racism controversy dampens Holland's Sinterklaas tradition Children across Europe eagerly await the arrival of St. Nicholas on December 6. But in Holland, the tradition has racist implications that the Dutch aren't quite willing to give up. For the Dutch, Sinterklaasavond (St. Nicholas Eve) on December 5 is the biggest celebration of the year - bigger than Christmas. That evening, families gather and exchange presents, and children leave out their shoes in the hopes that Sinterklaas will have fill them with candy by the next morning. What seems like a harmless holiday devoted to gifts, candy, and children, has a...

Amira Willighagen (9) sings opera at the audition of Holland's Got Talent 26th nov 2013

A Romanian man who has admitted stealing masterpieces by Gauguin, Monet and Picasso, wants to pin the blame on the Dutch museum for failing to protect the works, his lawyer said Tuesday. Radu Dogaru is among six Romanians on trial for the spectacular three-minute heist from the Kunthal museum in Rotterdam in October 2012 which stunned the art world. Despite their value, none of the paintings was equipped with an alarm, Dutch authorities have said.

A senior Dutch diplomat was attacked by unknown assailants in Moscow late Tuesday night, Russian news agencies have reported, a week after President Vladimir Putin demanded an apology for a Russian diplomat's alleged beating in the Netherlands. Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans confirmed on his Facebook page that the attack on Onno Elderenbosch, deputy head of the Netherlands mission in Russia, did take place and summoned the Russian ambassador for an explanation on Wednesday, according to Dutch media. Russia was quick to express its regrets on Wednesday. The country’s investigative committee said Wednesday in a statement that it was investigating...

A new study shows that Germany contributes less per person to the permanent euro bailout fund than residents of several other countries in the European Union. Luxembourg, Holland and Ireland are among the nations paying more per capita. … EU member states have contributed some €48 billion ($65 billion) to the rescue authority to date. The cash contribution of the ESM is expected to increase to a total of €80 billion ($108 billion) by mid-2014, with the next installment due in October. …

<p>Last weekend Dutch reporter Dina Zararia was reportedly raped in Tahrir Square, Cairo.</p>

June 18, 2013 (PJSaunders) - In this last week both Belgium and the Netherlands have taken major steps towards euthanasia for children. A consensus among members of the Belgian Federal Parliament has reportedly formed in support of legislation to allow children to choose to undergo euthanasia in certain dire cases, according to a report in the Belgian daily newspaper Der Morgen, as translated by the Paris-based news agency Presseurop. If child euthanasia is legalized in Belgium, the country would become the first in the developed world to have a law on the books formally allowing the practice. Belgium became the second country in the world...

How I love and admire Switzerland. Now more than ever. A vast majority of the Swiss people, 78.5%, have yesterday voted in a referendum, approving the amendments to further restrict the asylum law in the country. All cantons of the confederation have been in favour. "A big disappointment" commented the result Adèle Thorens, co-chairman of the Greens. "We did not expect to win, but we did not expect a similar result." That the Greens are disappointed is a measure of how good the changes are, at least in relation to the rest of Europe. The amendments to the asylum...

A campaign against Griffon vultures is gathering pace in France after it was revealed that the carrion eaters had devoured the body of a 52-year-old woman who fell to her death in the Pyrenees. Major Didier Pericou of the gendarmerie said the woman had fallen down a 300-metre slope while taking a short cut walking with two friends. "There were only bones, clothes and shoes left," he told The Times. "They took 45 to 50 minutes to eat the body." French farmers are now demanding the right to shoot the protected birds after attacks on sheep and cows. The birds...

Willem-Alexander has been sworn in as king of the Netherlands following the abdication of Queen Beatrix. He became the country's first king since 1890 when his 75-year-old mother signed the abdication deed earlier on Tuesday after 33 years on the throne. Huge crowds of orange-clad partygoers are in Amsterdam to pay tribute. Now known as Princess Beatrix, the former queen maintained a recent Dutch tradition of monarch's handing over power to a new generation. Wearing the royal mantle, the new king swore to uphold the constitution at a colourful enthronement ceremony in the Nieuwe Kerk, a decommissioned church, before a...

Infamous for little boys plugging holes with their fingers and grown-ups plugging their mouth with their foot (D-Boom), it seems Holland, Berlin's most important ally in the goal of greater fiscal discipline in Europe, has fallen into an economic crisis itself. As Spiegel reports, the once exemplary economy is suffering from huge debts and a burst real estate bubble, which has stalled growth and endangered jobs.The statistics make for some worrisome reading: no nation in the euro zone is as deeply in debt as the Netherlands, where banks have a total of about €650 billion in mortgage loans on...

Boris Dittrich, a former Dutch politician, was behind the gay marriage campaign in Holland (Sebastiaan ter Burg / Flickr) The politician who masterminded the gay marriage campaign in Holland says that “group marriage” is now being discussed in the country.Boris Dittrich, a former Dutch politician, gave a video interview about how he successfully introduced gay marriage. He said, “There is now a discussion in the Netherlands that sometimes people want to marry with three people and maybe even more.“But that’s the beginning of something completely new and that will take a lot of years I guess.”Dittrich was speaking to a French...

Here’s something that slipped through the cracks thanks to the fake drama that was going on during the fake fiscal crisis coming from our fake government in Washington, DC: Another fake green company boondoggle has resulted in federal dollars being spent on …nothing. According to a report issued by the Department of Energy’s own inspector general, employees at LG Chem, a Korean company that operates a battery plant in Holland, Michigan- a plant that’s supposed to support the Chevy Volt- were paid for playing video games, board games, volunteer work at Habitat for Humanity and other local charities. Another fake-work...

This comes as no surprise to Hot Air readers, who learned about the value of the Obama administration’s $150 million subsidy investment of LG Chem last fall. After furloughing its workers at their Grand Rapids plant without having a single one of their batteries installed in a consumer vehicle, the local NBC affiliate produced this report on the way taxpayer money got spent:

Can we count just how many horrid 20th century chapters of humanity this might evoke? In a move that sounds straight out of Orwell, Amsterdam allocated 1 million euros last week to a plan that would relocate trouble-making neighbors to camps on the outskirts of the city, the BBC reports. The “scum villages,” as critics have called them, would lie in isolated areas and provide only basic services to their unwilling residents. According to details of the plan reported by Der Spiegel and the BBC, residents will live in “container homes,” under the watchful eye of social workers or police....

In a chilling parallel to the scandal sweeping Britain’s towns and cities, where a multitude of girls have been lured into sex-for-sale rings run by gangs, the Dutch pimps search out girls at school gates and in cafes, posing as ‘boyfriends’ promising romance, fast car rides and restaurant meals. The men ply their victims with vodka and drugs. They tell them lies: that they love them and their families don’t care for them. Then, the trap set, they rape them with other gang members, often taking photos of the attack to blackmail the girl into submission. ... Hard-line criminal behaviour...

"Mommy, what's that???" For anyone reading this, it shouldn’t come as a big surprise that Dutch food has yet to sweep the globe. Although pockets of the Dutch can be found scattering the world, delectable Dutch cuisine never seemed to have caught on. “Fancy I pick up some Dutch food on the way home from work?” or “Wow, you have got to try this new Dutch restaurant in SoHo!” are phrases you will never hear uttered. Isn’t it odd that a nation of traveling, colonizing, patriotic, emigrating folk never managed to sow their own culinary seeds? C’mon, who are we...

The left-wing Socialist party is expected to seize the largest gains in September's Dutch elections, threatening to deprive German Chancellor Angela Merkel of one of her closest allies in response to the eurozone debt crisis. With Dutch voters set to go to the polls on 12 September 12, opinion polls indicated that the Socialist party, which has never formed part of a government, is running marginally ahead of caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte's Liberal party (VVD). … The Socialist party is more euroskeptic than the mainstream Dutch parties, leading opposition to the ill-fated Constitutional Treaty, which was defeated in a...