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Fungi are single or multi-celled organisms that break down organic materials, such as rotting wood, in order to absorb their nutrients. Neither plant nor animal, they range from mushrooms to single-celled yeast. Scientists were investigating organic chemicals trapped in an Italian sedimentary rock formation when they found evidence that an extinct fungus feasted on dead wood during a time when the world’s forests had been catastrophically eradicated.[1] What could have caused such a universal effect on forests, and why does organic material remain in rocks that are supposedly 251.4 million years old?...

The Netherlands has the world’s most liberal euthanasia law, which is even more radical in practice.  Its doctors assist the suicides of the depressed and  the grieving, a practice long since approved by the country’s Supreme Court.  Some “terminate” patients “without request or consent.”  Babies born with serious disabilities are subjected to eugenic infanticide. Doctors whose patients may not qualify for euthanasia refer patients to an on line “auto euthanasia” how-to-commit suicide” site. Doctors who decide it is too difficult to kill patients directly, put them into terminal sedation so they don’t do the deed directly and in person.And now:...

This article actually identifies the "terrorists" as "Islamic extremists," but only does so in the seventh paragraph. Now, why does this matter? Why should it be mentioned at all? Because the more we remain in denial about the source and nature of the problem, the harder it will be to solve. "Alleged Somali recruiter arrested, linked to Minnesota," by James Walsh and Richard Meryhew for the Star Tribune, November 11 A 43-year-old Somali man from Minneapolis was arrested this week in the Netherlands for allegedly financing the recruitment of up to 20 young Somali men from Minnesota to train and...

A Somali man from Minneapolis being held in a Dutch jail on suspicion of bankrolling terrorist activities has been identified by sources in the Twin Cities Somali community as Mohamud Said Omar, 43. Government officials in Amsterdam and federal authorities in Minneapolis would not confirm the identity of the man being held in the Netherlands. But several sources there and here say Omar, who is known by the nickname "Shariif," is the man in custody. Dutch authorities said in a statement that U.S. prosecutors suspect the man of bankrolling the purchase of weapons for Islamic extremists and helping other Somalis...

Geert Wilders wants to ban the Koran, impose a tax on headscarves and calculate the cost of immigration. The Dutch right-wing populist also plans to run for prime minister in 2011 -- and his party is currently leading in the polls. Geert Wilders is sitting on a plane, glancing at the clouds below and occasionally turning the page of a newspaper. A cameraman from a Dutch news agency is sitting behind him, filming his every movement. The plane lands in London, after the short flight from Amsterdam. Wilders, 46, the head of the populist right-wing Party for Freedom (PVV), is...

A 43-year-old Somali man from Minneapolis was arrested this week in the Netherlands for allegedly financing the recruitment of up to 20 young Somali men from Minnesota to train and fight with terrorists in their homeland. The arrest appears to be the most significant development yet in one of the most far-reaching counterterrorism investigations since 9/11. The identity of the man, who was arrested Sunday at an asylum-seeker's center 45 miles northeast of Amsterdam, was not released. But Special Agent E.K. Wilson of the Minneapolis FBI office confirmed Tuesday that the man was arrested in connection with the ongoing counterterrorism...

Asylum Seeker Arrested for Terrorism, US Requests Extradition ROTTERDAM, 12/11/09 - In an asylum seekers' centre in Dronten, in the province of Flevoland, a suspected Somali terrorist has been arrested at the request of the United States. The 43-year-old man allegedly provided financial and logistic assistance for an Al-Shabaab training camp. The police arrested the Somali man in the Dronten asylum seekers' centre on Saturday night. The examining magistrate in Rotterdam decided on Tuesday that he would be kept in custody for sixty days in anticipation of the procedure for his extradition to the US, the Public Prosecutor's Office (OM)...

THE HAGUE, 03/11/09 - Geert Wilders believes Integration Minister Eberhard van der Laan and centre-left (D66) leader Alexander Pechtold should be held responsible if he should ever be assassinated. They are creating a climate of hate in which lunatics are incited to violence against critics of Islam, according to Wilders. It was exactly five years ago yesterday that filmmaker and Islam critic Theo van Gogh was butchered by 'home-grown' terrorist Mohammed Bouyeri. Wilders considers Van der Laan and Pechtold are behaving like "political accomplices" of Bouyeri. Statements made by the PvdA minister and D66 leader yesterday morning contribute to a...

October was a tumultuous time for Geert Wilders, leader of the Dutch Freedom Party (PVV) in the Hague Parliament. Dutch public opinion polls show Wilders and the PVV in the lead position in any future Parliamentary election. The PVV is currently the leading Dutch party in the European Parliament. After the next elections, Wilders might be in a position to form a ruling coalition in Holland as Prime Minister. What sets Wilders apart from most EU political leaders is his ringing support of America and Israel. He considers Israel’s embattled position in the Middle East as fighting for all of...

The release of a convicted sex offender can stir up a community, but recent attempts to keep one from returning to the Dutch city of Eindhoven have caused equal commotion. His face was plastered on the front page of the biggest newspaper in the country on Thursday. De Telegraaf daily had removed the customary black bar across the eyes and, contrary to Dutch journalistic practice, used his full name when referring to "the paedophile who sees only one victim: himself". The paper had printed the same picture that appeared on posters behind windows across Eindhoven. Sytze van der V. (61)...

Kinderen voor Kinderen (Children for Children), the children's choir of public broadcaster VARA, has composed a song in which Islam is praised... In the song, 'Allah Akbar' is chorused 27 times. "The Dutch are in this way humiliated," declares PVV MP Martin Bosma. "The multi-culturalists have no shame any more. The multicultural faith is at death's door in society, but on subsidised public television, it is still alive and kicking." On Tuesday evening, the choir sung its 2009 CD on TV, among which was the Islam song. According to Bosma, the slogan 'Allah Akbar,' which forms the refrain, is "a...

News to Note, October 17, 2009: A weekly feature examining news from the biblical viewpoint (fascinating STEM CELL piece in story #5!)...

This is amazing. The wood alone would have cost him a fortune.     Man builds working replica of Noah's Ark (exact scale given in Bible) In Schagen , NetherlandsThe massive central door in the side of Noah's Ark was opened to the first crowd of curious townsfolk to behold the wonder. Of course, it's only a replica of the biblical Ark , built by Dutch creationist, Johan Huibers, as a testament to his faith in the literal truth of the Bible.The ark is 150 cubits long, 30 cubits high an d 20 cubits wide. That's two-thirds the length of a...

  On my most recent visit to Amsterdam for the World Congress of Families (WCF), I was once again struck by the remarkable façade of peaceful, tolerant prosperity the Dutch maintain. Although its famous openness to lust and license is ever more apparent, Amsterdam's charm remains in its tidy homes, shops, museums, and beautiful (though empty) churches.   The simple fact, however, is that this beacon of liberalism worldwide is rotting from the inside out and must increasingly rely on deception to keep up appearances as a nation of tolerance, peace, and prosperity.   That was made nowhere more...

-excerpt- A world away from Afghanistan, over in Holland, was approaching the 65th anniversary of the allied liberation from Nazi occupation, and I had been invited to attend by James “Maggie” Megellas. Maggie, who had fought his way through Holland and is today remembered there as a hero, is said to be the most decorated officer in the history of the 82nd Airborne Division. Now 92, Maggie has recently spent about two months tooling around the battlefields of Afghanistan, and though it would be an honor to finally meet him, there was the matter of extracting myself from Kandahar City...

MPs voted by a large majority to pull Dutch troops out of Afghanistan as planned in August 2010 during a debate on Tuesday night. The motion, drawn up by Labour and ChristenUnie from the ruling coalition, was not supported by the biggest coalition party, the Christian Democrats. Labour introduced the motion following hints from CDA foreign affairs minister Maxime Verhagen last week that the Netherlands may stay after the planned withdrawal date. According to the Volkskrant, Verhagen is furious at his coalition partner parties' action. The US and Australia are keen to keep the Dutch involved in the southern province...

The slow suicide of the West continues. Muslim communities are forming across the Netherlands, and Sharia Law is slowly taking hold. None of this apparently matters though, as the people of Rotterdam have voted in a Muslim mayor. Unifying Dutch city falls to Muslim mayor In Rotterdam, where cultural and social divides are apparent, the burden of bridging them now belongs to Morocco-born Ahmed Aboutaleb. How he fares could matter beyond his city's borders.

ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands — When two inspectors swung open the doors of a battered red shipping container here, they confronted a graveyard of Europe’s electronic waste — old wires, electricity meters, circuit boards — mixed with remnants of cardboard and plastic. “This is supposed to be going to China, but it isn’t going anywhere,” said Arno Vink, an inspector from the Dutch environment ministry who impounded the container because of Europe’s strict new laws that place restrictions on all types of waste exports, from dirty pipes to broken computers to household trash. Exporting waste illegally to poor countries has become...

1)URGENT -- Two freight trains and a passenger train have been involved in a collision near Barendrecht, the Netherlands. 2)Some injuries have been reported following the major train wreck in the Netherlands, but further information is not yet available. 3)Several explosions have occurred after a major train wreck in the Netherlands, the ANP news agency reports.

Note: The following text is a quote: Dutch Firm and Two Officers Plead Guilty to Conspiracy to Export Aircraft Components and Other Goods to Iran A Dutch aviation services company, its director and sales manager pleaded guilty today in the District of Columbia to federal charges related to a conspiracy to illegally export aircraft components and other items from the United States to entities in Iran via the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates and Cyprus. The announcement was made by David Kris, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Channing D. Phillips, Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia; and...

The Netherlands was one of several countries to walk out of the UN general assembly meeting on Wednesday during an address by the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The US, Canada and France also left the hall because of what news agency ANP said was Ahmadinejad's 'anti-semetic rhetoric'. The European Union had already decided to leave the meeting if the president denied the holocaust had taken place during World War II, ANP said. During his speech, Ahmadinejad criticised the 'zionist regime' in Israel for its 'inhuman police in Palestine'.

THE HAGUE, 15/09/09 - The criminal court case in which MP Geert Wilders will be on trial for incitement to hatred against Muslims begins on 20 January. The MP is considering calling "radical Imams and other idiots" as witnesses in the proceedings. The politician has to appear in the Amsterdam district court on 20 January for incitement to hatred and discrimination against Muslims and insulting Muslims as a group. In this pro-forma session, the Public Prosecutor and Wilders can bring up their investigatory wishes. Wilders wants to make it the 'trial of the century'. "I want Islam to stand trial...

A 26-year-old commando has become the 20th Dutch soldier to die in Afghanistan since the Dutch mission began in 2006. Corporal Keven van der Rijdt was killed in a gun battle with suspected Taliban fighters. A number of them were also killed, the defence ministry said. Van der Rijdt is the first member of the elite commando corps to be killed in Afghanistan.

UTRECHT, Netherlands – A Dutch court ordered authorities to take temporary guardianship of a 13-year-old girl on Friday, delaying her plan to sail solo around the world until psychologists can assess her capacity to undertake such a risky voyage.

AMSTERDAM (AP) -- It's not green cheese, but it might as well be. The Dutch national museum said Thursday that one of its prized possessions, a rock supposedly brought back from the moon by U.S. astronauts, is just a piece of petrified wood. Rijksmuseum spokeswoman Xandra van Gelder, who oversaw the investigation that proved the piece was a fake, said the museum will keep it anyway as a curiosity. "It's a good story, with some questions that are still unanswered," she said. "We can laugh about it." The museum acquired the rock after the death of former Prime Minister Willem...

AMSTERDAM, 18/08/09 - Orthodox Islamic schools treat Dutch teachers who are not Muslims as inferior beings. They have to have their meals separately and cannot be greeted in the same way as Muslims, says a former teacher at the As Siddieq school in Amsterdam. Hennie Metsemakers was suspended by the school a year and a half ago because she spoke of religions other than Islam in the lessons. "I had drawn a timeline and shown the most important events of a number of beliefs on it." Not only was that forbidden, but she was also ordered to teach the children...

Amsterdam - Sex might be fun, but the Dutch don't find it as fun as a pleasant trip to the bathroom, if survey results reported Thursday by the ANP news agency are to be believed. According to the poll of 1,000 adults, 88 per cent listed a visit to the bathroom as something "they enjoy the most," making it the most popular activity chosen, reported ANP. Only 21 per cent did the same for sex. ANP described the survey as "representative." It was conducted by the Intomart GfK institute for the popular scientific magazine Quest. The second most popular activity,...

THE HAGUE, 13/08/09 - Mohamed is by far the most popular name for babies in the Netherlands' four major cities. Additionally, many more boys are called Mohamed than the statistics suggest, Elsevier magazine reported yesterday. Party for Freedom (PVV) MPs Geert Wilders and Sietse Fritsma requested the cabinet in written questions this week for a Top 7 of the most popular names in the big cities and for the Netherlands as a whole. Elsevier already received this data from the Social Insurance Bank (SVB). The SVB data shows that in the four major cities - Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and...

By JB Thank you to Matt Engelmann for translating this report from the Dutch newspaper: NRC HANDELSBLAD MEXICAN VIRUS IS ORDINARY FLU ==================== BILTHOVEN, 7 Aug. — From now on, the Mexican flu will be treated by the authorities as an ordinary flu. Patients will no longer receive the antiviral drug Tamiflu as standard treatment. These policies were announced this morning by the [Dutch] National Institute for Public Health and the Environment [R.I.V.M.]. Cases of Mexican flu no longer need to be officially confirmed or reported. All Dutch residents will shortly receive a folder mailed to their homes with information...

The Dutch Muslim Party (NMP) has announced it will take part in local elections in five municipalities next year. The Dutch Muslim Party (NMP) will take part in local elections in Amsterdam, Almere, Den Haag, Rotterdam and Noordoostpolder, its president Henny Kreeft announced today.

U.S.-Dutch gay couples marry in Amsterdam Move is implicit criticism of lack of same-sex marriages in the United States [Pic in URL] Dutch-born Stephan Hengst, right, puts a ring on the finger of his husband Patrick Decker, who was born in U.S., after being married by Amsterdam's Mayor Job Cohen, center. Cohen married five American-Dutch gay couples on Saturday. All five couples had at least one partner from New York, where a battle over the legalization of gay marriage rages on. AMSTERDAM - The mayor of Amsterdam married five American-Dutch gay couples on Saturday in an implicit criticism of the...

Nice done movie answering to some semi-intelligent comments about the Netherlands. Made my day :o)

Anti-terrorist police officers arrested four Dutch nationals on suspicion they were crossing to southern Somalia to join the Al-Shabaab militia group. The Dutchmen, who were arrested at night in Kiwayu, Lamu District over the weekend, were taken to Mombasa and later flown to Nairobi for further interrogation. Lamu deputy police chief Stephen Limo said the foreigners travelled to Kiwayu by boat after a road journey from Nairobi to the Coast. Mr Limo said the four presented themselves as tourists but police doubted their travel documents prompting the arrest for further screening. Four tourists? "The four foreigners claimed they were tourists...

THE HAGUE, Netherlands — The descendants of an African chief who was hanged and decapitated by a Dutch general 171 years ago reluctantly accepted the return of his severed head Thursday, still angry even as the Dutch tried to right a historic wrong. The head of King Badu Bonsu II was discovered last year in a jar of formaldehyde gathering dust in the anatomical collection of the Leiden University Medical Center. The Dutch government agreed to Ghanaian demands that the relic be returned. On Thursday, members of the king's Ahanta tribe, dressed in dark robes and wearing red sashes, took...

Tributes are left for those killed in the hotel attacks Indonesian officials say there are "strong indications" a key wanted fugitive was behind Friday's deadly attacks on two hotels in Jakarta. Noordin Mohamed Top is wanted for plotting the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005 and other Indonesian attacks. Nine people, including two suicide bombers, died in the attacks on the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott. At least four of Friday's victims are said to be foreigners but have not all been formally identified. See map of area Police in the Indonesian capital are studying DNA and other evidence to...

THE HAGUE, 16/07/09 - The Netherlands will remain active in Afghanistan for longer. The Hague is also considering taking in prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, it transpires after Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende's visit to the American President Barack Obama in the White House. The Dutch Prime Minister emphasised that the Netherlands "would not turn its back on the Afghan people". If a request is received to prolong its military activities in Afghanistan, the Netherlands will "seriously consider" it. Balkenende repeated the cabinet standpoint that between September and December 2010, the Netherlands will cease to be the leading nation in the...

Pajamas Media | Friday, December 12, 2008 The funeral for Shirwa Ahmed last week in Burnsville, Minnesota, punctuated a growing national security threat metastasizing inside the U.S. — one Homeland Security and law enforcement authorities have quickly taken note of. Ahmed, who killed himself in a suicide bombing attack in Somalia in October, is just one of up to 40 men from the Twin Cities area who have disappeared and are feared to have returned to their homeland for training with the al-Shabaab terrorist group to wage jihad. The FBI is investigating similar disappearances in other major Somali communities in...

The committee on drugs policy recommends making the coffee shops members-only clubs, and experimenting with legal cannabis production. Neither will pass the European test. We can't go on like this, but where do we go from here? That has been the miserable state of the Dutch policy on drugs for years. Supporters of prohibition and tolerance have each other pinned down. They know that the production of cannabis invites crime, that the Netherlands has become a large-scale exporter of cannabis, that cannabis consumption leads to children dropping out of school, and aggravates social problems, and home-growing runs down neighbourhoods. The...

Another Chicago area resident, Fay Hartog-Levin, a longtime Democratic activist and fund-raiser and an early career supporter of Barack Obama, was tapped Thursday to be ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Her husband, Daniel Levin, is the chairman of The Habitat Company and the founder of the East Bank Club. Valerie Jarrett, before joining the Obama White House as a senior advisor, was the President and Chief Executive Officer of The Habitat Company. Levin's cousins are Michigan Democrats, Sen. Carl Levin and his brother, Rep. Sandy Levin. A Winnetka resident, Hartog-Levin is a senior consultant at the Res Publica...

White Prisoners Forced to Eat Islamic Diet AMSTERDAM, 30/06/09 - The justice ministry considers that whites should after all have the option of eating pork, a spokesman has stated in reaction to a report in De Telegraaf. According to the newspaper, many Dutch prisons currently only serve Islamic food. The ministry has concluded contracts in which the suppliers only provide halal food. Having two different menus was found too expensive. Prisoners are as a result no longer given any pork and only ritually-slaughtered beef or lamb, according to De Telegraaf. The matter came to light in a court case brought...

The Dutch Defense Ministry says Somali pirates have released a hijacked cargo ship aboard which one crew member was fatally shot. The ministry says Dutch marines are escorting the MV Marathon to a safe port. It says one of the 19 crew members died of a gun shot wound sustained when pirates seized the ship on May 7. Another crew member was injured, but the ministry did not give details of his condition. Dutch media say the crew members are Ukrainian.

THE HAGUE, 23/06/09 - The two Muslim broadcasters subsidised by the Dutch government have spent hundreds of thousands of euros of that money on legal battles against each other. This emerges from annual accounts obtained by Trouw newspaper. Every big religious movement receives a subsidy in the Netherlands for its own public broadcaster. Islam however has two broadcasters because Muslim groups have been unable to agree among themselves on a single umbrella broadcaster. The Foundation for the Care of Islamic Broadcasting Time (SVIZ) was set up in 2007 to keep the two Muslim broadcasters - Netherlands Muslim Broadcasting (NMO) and...

It's the Christian Coalition's worst nightmare. Gay and lesbian marriage, prostitution, marijuana, abortion on demand, physician-assisted suicide -- all are part of everyday reality in the Netherlands, and completely legal. What's more, the Dutch are happy with it, and the experiments are spreading elsewhere in Europe, as described by journalist Gilbert Charles in the December 7 issue of the French weekly news magazine L'Express. Beginning April 1, gays and lesbians have been able to marry. No "domestic partnerships" here -- these are full-fledged marriages indistinguishable from heterosexual marriages, and bearing all the same rights, including the right of adoption. ...

Dutch twin brothers who mugged a teenager in the northern town of Groningen were arrested after being caught on camera by a car gathering images for Google's online photo map service, police said. The pair stole the 14-year-old boy's mobile phone and 165 euros ($230) in cash last September. "The picture was taken just a moment before the crime," a police spokesman said. In March, the victim recognised himself and the two robbers while surfing Google Maps, which has a "Street View" feature allowing users to see images of buildings. The images are usually taken by a camera mounted on...

THE HAGUE, 16/06/09 - Prison sentences are in many cases not carried out. The judges that give these sentences do not know this, says conservative (VVD) MP Fred Teeven. In 2005, the government announced that in exceptional cases, criminals with short prison sentences would not have to serve these. They were given electronic house arrest via a GPS ankle-band. The temporary measure was taken because there was a shortage of prison cells. But Teeven has discovered that the policy has become standard, even though there is a cell surplus now. In 2008, Teeven discovered, 2,040 persons were only given house...

Scientists in Leiden, in the Netherlands, have unveiled the specimen -- a fragment from the front of a skull belonging to a young adult male. Analysis of chemical "isotopes" in the 30,000-60,000-year-old fossil suggest a carnivorous diet, matching results from other Neanderthal specimens... The Neanderthal frontal bone is the first known "archaic" human specimen to have been recovered from the sea bed anywhere in the world. It was found among animal remains and stone artefacts dredged up 15km off the coast of the Netherlands in 2001. The fragment was spotted by Luc Anthonis, a private fossil collector from Belgium, in...

Here the interview Geert Wilders gave in Denmark.

Queen Beatrix awarded a Dutch commando the country's highest military medal on Friday for his heroics leading an elite military unit in Afghanistan. Beatrix pinned the Willems Order cross and orange ribbon on Capt. Marco Kroon before slapping him on the left shoulder with her right hand to knight him at a ceremony in The Hague. It was the first time in more than 50 years that the medal has been awarded to an individual soldier. It also can be awarded to entire military units. Beatrix said Kroon showed "courage, discretion and dedication" in leading a commando unit in the...

A leaked recommendation by the government's highest advisory council says state-funded schools should be allowed to exclude teachers for being homosexual. Overall, the Netherlands is a good place to be homosexual. Same-sex marriage has been legal since 2001, gay couples can adopt children, and despite some violent incidents against homosexuals in Amsterdam, the city is still widely known for its gay-friendly atmosphere. Being an openly gay teacher, however, is still a sensitive subject, especially in schools that use the bible as their foundation. Although private schools do exist in the Netherlands, the overwhelming majority of religious schools are state-funded in...

MARGRATEN, Netherlands, June 10, 2009 – The 8,301 Americans buried at this beautifully manicured cemetery reminded Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today of the cost Americans pay for freedom. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates tours the World War II Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial where 8,301 U.S. servicemembers are buried in Margraten, Netherlands. Along the sides are Tablets of the Missing on which are recorded 1,722 names, June 10, 2009. DOD photo by Air Force Master Sgt. Jerry Morrison  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. Gates visited this cemetery during a break in meetings about Afghanistan’s Regional Command...