Amsterdam - An Israeli and a Palestinian human rights organization on Friday received Holland's prestigious Geuzen Medal in the city of Vlaardingen in the south-west Netherlands.

The Geuzen Medal award has been awarded yearly since 1987 by the Geuzen Resistance Foundation, which was established in memory of the Netherland's Guezen resistance group that fought the Nazis during World War II.

The prize is awarded to persons or institutions dedicated to advancing democracy and opposing tyranny, discrimination, and racism.

Amsterdam - The chief suspect in a Mafia hit one and a half years ago at a German pizzeria has been arrested in the Netherlands, police said Friday.

Giovanni Strangio, 30, was taken into custody late Thursday in Amsterdam, said police in Duisburg, the western German city where the six murders took place in August 2007.

Strangio's brother-in-law, who was also accused in the murders of members of a rival clan in the southern Italian criminal organization 'Ndrangheta, was arrested in November, also in Amsterdam.

The Hague  - Seven terrorist suspects, identified as Dutch citizens of Moroccan heritage, were arrested Thursday in the Netherlands on charges they planned bombing attacks around Amsterdam, Dutch radio reported.

The suspects included six men and a woman, aged between 19 and 64 years.

Police chief Bernard Welten said investigators received a phone tip-off Wednesday from an informant in Brussels about the attack plans. The goal was to kill as many people as possible, the report said.

Police searching for explosives went through businesses near Amsterdam's football stadium Thursday morning and closed down the stores, including a large furniture firm. It was not clear if explosives were found, the report said.

Amsterdam  - Pupils of an Amsterdam elementary school on Thursday received the first copy of a so-called transfer diary marking the start of the memorial year of Anne Frank's 80 birthday on June 12.

The diary of the Jewish teenager, published as "The Secret Annex" in 1947, is one of the most famous documents recounting the Nazi persecution of the Jews during World War II.

To commemorate Anne Frank upcoming 80th birthday, the Dutch Anne Frank Foundation launched a national diary writing competition among Dutch elementary schools.

Amsterdam - Dutch police on Thursday said the sudden increase of mutilated porpoises washing onto the Dutch coast remains a mystery.

Between December and early March, more than 113 of the mammals had washed ashore on the northern Dutch coast. Almost half of them were severely mutilated, the cadavres showing multiple knife cuts or being cut in entirely half.