Netherlands

The Dutch airline KLM will suspend all its intercontinental flights and some European routes from Friday now that the Netherlands requires a rapid coronavirus test before entry.

New requirements mandated by the government require passengers to obtain a negative Covid-19 rapid test result no later than four hours prior to departure to the Netherlands. In addition, passengers must also have a negative result from a PCR test conducted within 72 hours from their flight's departure to be let into the country.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte's government stepped down on Friday after it emerged that officials had wrongly pursued thousands of people over welfare fraud. A parliamentary report called it an "unprecedented injustice" to claw back tens of thousands of euros without giving the accused a chance to prove their innocence. The pressure on Rutte's four-party coalition to resign had increased on Thursday when the leader of the opposition Labour party, Lodewijk Asscher, quit.

Rutte said the government would continue to lead the country's COVID-19 response team until elections already scheduled for March.

The ham sandwiches of British truck drivers are also affected by the new Brexit trade rules. The BBC on Tuesday showed Dutch TV footage of customs also checking drivers' provisions. Customs officials in Hoek van Holland explain to the drivers in the report of the channel NPO1 that they are no longer allowed to export animal food from the UK.

After a new strain of Covid-19 was detected in the UK, several European countries have imposed a landing ban on British flights. Trains to Belgium have also been banned.

The Netherlands have banned British Flights until January 1. Italy's foreign minister has announced that his government joins the ban on flights. Austria and Germany are planning to impose similar measures, but no immediate details are currently known.

The Netherlands imposed a five-week strict lockdown nationwide on Monday. Nonessential businesses, eateries, schools and cultural places will remain closed. The lockdown is set to end on January 19th.

Dutch PM Mark Rutte: "We have to bite through this very sour apple before things get better. The reality is that this is not an innocent flu as some people — like the demonstrators outside — think. But a virus that can hit everybody hard."

KLM announced on Friday it would begin offering Covid-19 tested flights between Amsterdam and Atlanta. The Dutch airline is the latest example of a European company adopting a testing strategy to increase passenger confidence in flying amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the KLM plan, travellers receive one test five days before their flight, another shortly before the flight, and a third after landing.

"Until an approved working vaccine is available worldwide, this testing program represents the first step towards the international travel industry's recovery," KLM CEO Pieter Elbers said in a statement.

300 large round cheese loaves were stolen by unknown persons from a farm in the Netherlands. The duo was caught trying to sell their loot worth €40,000 online, the police announced on Tuesday in Lichtenvoorde near the Westphalian border. What the perpetrators - a 19-year-old woman and a 21-year-old man - did not consider was that each of the cheese wheels weighing twelve kilos is individually marked.

Cheese producer Johannes Weenink told the "Algemeen Dagblad": "Based on our cheese stamp and an individual number on each cheese, we were able to prove that the cheese loaves belonged to the stolen batch". So far, the police have only been able to seize ten of the 300 cheese loaves. Whether the duo only acted as dealers or is also responsible for the break-in at Käsehof is still to be determined.

A Dutch metro train was saved from disaster Monday when it smashed through a safety barrier but was prevented from plummeting into water by a sculpture of a whale tail. The driver of the train, who was the only person on board, was unharmed in the incident which happened just after midnight at Spijkenisse, near the port city of Rotterdam.

According to Twitter, there are no indications that the claims of the security researcher are true that Trump's Twitter account has been compromised by using the password "maga2020".

The press office of the White House also does not want to comment on "Security procedures around the social media accounts of the president" and says that the story around the alleged hack is "Definitely not correct".

The researcher, Victor Gevers, had access to Trump’s personal messages, could post tweets in his name, and change his profile. Gevers took screenshots when he had access to Trump’s account. Trump, an active Twitterer with 87 million followers, had an extremely weak and easy to guess password and had according to the researcher, not applied two-step verification.

Netherlands Minister of Health Hugo de Jonge announced on Tuesday that assisted suicide for terminally ill children under the age of twelve is to be legalized. He quoted a study according to which the new regulation will affect about five to ten children per year.

The study shows that "among parents and doctors alike, there is a need to actively end the lives of terminally ill children who suffer hopelessly and unbearably and who will die in the foreseeable future," de Jonge wrote to Parliament.

Researchers from the Netherlands have reported the death of a woman, aged 88 years, that has died from a reinfection of Covid-19. After her first hospitalization due to Covid-19 early in 2020 the woman had tested positive again nearly two months later and subsequently died to the sympthoms.

The woman is the first known patient to die from a reinfection of Covid-19.

The Dutch Finance minister Wopke Hoekstra said Sunday Air France-KLM needs to lower its costs to survive its current crisis. Air France-KLM stated last month that it was losing 10 million euros per day due to the Covid-19 crisis.

In an interview with the Dutch public television, Hoekstra said, "The survival of Air France-KLM is not a given, They will have to address their cost base even as things stand now. And suppose this situation lasts until the end of next year, then they will have to cut even deeper."

Back in July, French and Dutch governments loaned a total of €10.4 billion, and in return, KLM has said it would reduce its staff by 20%, and Air France would reduce 16% of its workforce, through 2022.

According to the Nigerian police two men have allegedly cloned the website of a Dutch company to obtain an order for PPE worth €2,3 million from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia.

A representative of the state government visited the company's offices in the Netherlands after the PPE didn't show up and discovered that the company had never done business with them.

Individuals in Belgium and the Netherlands have been reinfected with the coronavirus, Dutch media have reported. Some experts believe it is a good sign.

A patient in the Netherlands and another in Belgium have been reinfected with the coronavirus, Dutch media reported Tuesday, following reports that scientists in Hong Kong had confirmed the first known reinfection.

Jesse Goodman, a former US Food and Drug Administration chief scientist has stated as a responses to the Hong Kong case that: "if there is a reinfection, it suggests the possibility there was residual immunity that helped protect the patient'' from getting sick again. 

During the day thousands of Belarusians have protested peacefully. Workers all across the country have gone on general strike including hospital, metro and factory workers.

Videos have surfaced that show police convoys apparently leaving the area around the independence square in Minsk. Lukashenko has appeared on television claiming that outside forces from Poland, Netherlands, Ukraine, and Russia have infiltrated the country in order to spark protests and destabilize it. He ordered all people to stay in their homes and not go outside.

Grant Shapps, transport minister for the United Kingdom, announce a 14-day quarantine on all arrivals from France, the Netherlands and Malta on Saturday because Covid-19 infection rates there are too high.

French junior minister for European affairs Clément Beaune said, on Twitter, "A British decision that we regret and which will lead to a measure of reciprocity, hoping that things will return to normal as soon as possible,"

Following the fourth night of talks, EU leaders have struck a deal on a huge post-coronavirus recovery package involving €750 billion in grants and loans to counter the impact of the pandemic in the 27-member bloc. The deal includes as well as a seven-year €1 trillion EU budget.

Member states were split between those hit hardest by the outbreak -- Spain and Italy --, and those more concerned about the costs of the recovery plan --Sweden, Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands and Finland. While the first group wanted a minimum of €400 billion in grants, the later set €375 billion as their upper limit.

The €390 billion figure was suggested as a compromise, and "frugal" nations were reportedly won over by the promise of rebates on their contributions to the EU budget.

The Dutch city Nieuwegein has announced that the Municipal Council has voted to immediately stop the partnership with the Polish city of Pulawy over a report that Pulawy is now part of the "LGBT ideology-free" zone in Poland.

The council of Nieuwegein has previously sent a letter to Pulawy in which it expressed their concerns and now canceled the partnership. Alderman Marieke Schouten had previously stated that "In Nieuwegein everyone can be who he or she is, regardless of his or her sexual orientation, gender, religion or ethnic origin. LGBT-free zones such as in Pulawy are really unacceptable in our view".

The Minister of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands, Ingrid van Engelshoven, has announced in a letter to the parliament that the country will remove the gender from id cards from 2024/2025 on. She stated that people should "create their own identity and live in full freedom and security" adding that she wants to "limit the unnecessary registration of gender" wherever possible.