Amsterdam

Three finalists chosen for International Criminal Court design

Amsterdam - Three finalists were named Thursday in an international architectural competition to design a new home for the International Criminal Court (ICC).

An international jury chaired by Liesbeth van der Pol, the Dutch government's chief architect, picked designs from Ingenhoven Architects of Germany, Schmidt Hammer Lassen/Bosch & Fjord, Arhus of Denmark and Wiel Arets Architects & Associates of the Netherlands.

The winning firm will be decided in the coming months. Construction on the Hague-baed court will begin in 2011. Work is scheduled to be completed by 2014.

Aegon reports Q3 losses, share value drops

Amsterdam  - The value of Dutch insurer giant Aegon's shares fell slightly Thursday on the Amsterdam stock exchange following the publication of its third-quarter company results.

Aegon said it lost 329 million euros (428.92 million dollars) in the third quarter of 2008, below the 350 million euros which the company had announced to shareholders in late October.

By 11 am local time (1000 GMT), Aegon share value stood at 3.92 euros, a drop of 2 per cent.

Aegon said the loss came mainly from the ongoing drop in share value on the stock exchange and write-offs on investments.

Write-offs on the US banks Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, both of which collapsed earlier this fall, amounted to 336 million euros.

Dutch PM congratulates Obama, stresses trans-Atlantic cooperation

Amsterdam  - Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende congratulated Barack Obama on Wednesday with his victory in Tuesday's US presidential elections.

The Dutch prime minister sent a letter to the US president-elect, wishing him success.

In a statement released by the Dutch government communication service RVD, Balkenende further said "it was beautiful to see this election has moved millions of people, both in the US as well as abroad."

Referring, among others, to the global credit crisis, Balkenende said Obama's presidential term will be "challenging" and noted that the need for "intensive trans-Atlantic co-operation" was "never more urgent" than today.

Dutch honour "humanitarian deeds" of Wehrmacht soldier

Amsterdam  - A memorial sculpture was unveiled on Tuesday in the southern-Netherlands city of Riel to honour the "humanity" of a soldier from the German army during World War II.

The initiator of the memorial in Riel in the southern Netherlands, Herman van Rouwendaal, 76, said the sculpture "honours the humanity displayed by a soldier of the German army, or Wehrmacht, during WW II".

Karl Heintz Rosch was an 18-year-old soldier when he saved the lives of two young Dutch children on October 6, 1944.

Process of detecting illegal nuclear tests improved

Amsterdam, Nov 4 : Researchers working at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute KNMI has improved the entire process of measuring, analyzing and interpreting infrasound, which would help them detect events that have ‘inaudible’ sounds like illegal nuclear tests.

Sources of infrasound are often large and powerful, like meteors, explosions, ocean waves, storms, volcanoes, avalanches, earthquakes and nuclear tests.

Infrasound is measured with arrays (series) of highly sensitive microbarometers.

TU Delft PhD student Laslo Evers, who works at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute KNMI, has now improved the entire process of measuring, analysing and interpreting infrasound.

Netherlands sex trade to feel a longer arm of the law

Amsterdam - Patrons visiting one of the Netherlands' red- light districts may soon find themselves on camera.

One by one, authorities in cities across the country are stepping up their efforts to regulate, scrutinize and generally clean up the country's sex business.

This week the mayors of the cities of Alkmaar and Utrecht followed moves by Amsterdam in 2007 to toughen regulation and reduce the ability of the sex trade to act as cover for and cause of other illegal activities.

Authorities have cited drug-dealing, money-laundering and the trafficking of women as crimes that are to be targeted.

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance of sex districts is just one method that has been proposed.

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