GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A local train and a high-speed train crashed head-on just outside Amsterdam, Saturday 21 April, about 18:30. First estimates were that 60 peoople were injured, 2 of them seriously, but the number by midnight was reported to be 125. Sunday morning Dutch authorities lowered the figure to 42.
The accident occurred on a bridge between Sloterdijk and Amsterdam Central Station, according to AFP.
Links to other sites: AFP, Dutch News and AT5 TV in Dutch
Journalists were taken to the site of the crash Thursday evening, after families of the victims had visited and left flowers and messages, including a chalk heart, on the wall that the bus hit head-on
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – All 28 people who died in a bus crash Tuesday 13 March in Sierre have now been identified, say police. The formal identifications are necessary in order for police to release the remains to families.
The bodies will now be flown back to Belgium Friday on the two airplanes made available by the Belgian army, according to canton Valais police.
Police in Sierre earlier took about 250 journalists Monday evening to the closed Geronde Tunnel where the bus crashed Tuesday 13 March.
One of the distressing bits of news as part of their update was that only 19 of the 28 bodies had been identified.
Three hours later, police said that backup personnel and “exceptional means” made available for the identifications had allowed the process to be speeded up so that all the bodies could be identified in less than 48 hours.
Three of the problems the investigators ran into were the lack of a clear list for the occupants of the bus, since the group had three buses and one list of names, but also the fact that some of those who died in the violent crash were badly “mutilated”, making identification difficult, and too few witnesses given the number of deaths and serious injuries.
The peaks above St Luc, where the children stayed, 15 March 2012: the village is nestled in the wooded area seen here, below some of Switzerland's most beautiful peaks. Famed hikers' Weisshorn hotel is visible centre-left, above the tree line
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Two airplanes provided by the Belgian government are taking home the bodies of the victims of Tuesday night’s bus crash in a tunnel in Sierre but as of Wednesday not all of them have been formally identified and a forensic laboratory in Lausanne is taking on extra help to speed up the process as much as possible.
Families are visiting the morgue Thursday to identify the bodies.
Late Wednesday night the last two unidentified injured persons were identified, ending some of the uncertainty which faced families.
Investigators say an autopsy will be carried out on the driver of the bus.
The blog the group kept while on their ski trip to St Luc in the Val d’Anniviers, written by Frank Van Kerckhowe, a teacher in his 40s, with comments from the students and messages home, serves for many families as the last word from the children.
Sierre is holding a service at the Holy Cross church Thursday evening for local people to be able to pay their respects.
Updates on the crash victims, injured, from outside Switzerland
The bus drove the 21km down to Sierre via the twisting Val d'Anniviers road, visible here in the centre, lower half of the photo, then entered the tunnel via the autoroute access road seen bottom left here. The Geronde tunnel, where the bus crashed, is behind the Geronde hill, covered in vineyards, bottom centre of the photo (photo, Ellen Wallace, 15.03.12)
World media have focused on the Sierre bus crash that killed 28, including 22 children, Tuesday night 13 March, and stories are now beginning to surface about who the families are, and the last days of the children at a Swiss ski camp. We’ll regularly update this list of links to other sites that we think our readers will want to see; note that some are not in English:
Alexander en Luca overleven achter in de bus, DeMorgen, Belgium, about 11-year-old Alexander, at the back of the bus, who survived 15.03.12 (Dutch)
“Kinderen andere schoolbus hoorden nieuws op de radio”, Nieuwsblad, Belgium: children on one of the other buses, from Sint-Victorschool Beersel, heard the news on their radios while on the bus, 15.03.12 (Dutch)
SA doc’s child survives Swiss bus crash, News 24 in South Africa about the one child taken to hospital in Bern, 15.03.12
Belgium prepares to fly home bus crash victims, swissinfo, 15.03.12
Video interview with the first witness, who alerted emergency services, Swiss television RTS, 14.03.12 (in French)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Swiss companies share first place at the bottom of the list, but for a change this is a good thing: the list is Transparency International’s (TI) rankings of countries most likely to bribe abroad. Russia heads the list, with China close behind. The last two invested $120 billion overseas in 2010.
The Netherlands and Switzerland are the countries whose companies are the least likely to bribe. The report ranks 28 major international and regional exporting countries by the likelihood of their firms to bribe abroad, based on surveys of 3,000 business executives.
The annual report on bribery looks, for the first time, at business to business bribery rather than just bribes paid to government officials. Story continues …
Source: Transparency International, November 2011
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Iceland’s president, Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, is making waves by saying Europe bullied the country into bailing out Icesave bank, which had large numbers of UK and Dutch investors, a bailout that was hugely unpopular at home, while the US was “absent” and India and China were helpful as the country faced serious debt problems. His remarks were initially made at the end of last week in an interview with the Financial Times following news that Iceland’s government has agreed to allow a Chinese investor to buy a large chunk of the island for an eco-tourism resort. He then repeated his remarks during a key radio broadcast Sunday, and he is asking the European Union to investigate the role of the UK and The Netherlands in the bank bailout.
The IMF has been involved in helping sort out the country’s debt problems and Iceland is eyeing European Union membership.
Links to other sites: China Post, The Financial Express, VOA blog
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The arrest 20 July of 21 hackers, some of whom are part of the loose networks Anonymous and LulzSec, is part of a wider net to catch computer hackers that included 60 searches, according to the United States Justice Department, but reactions, mainly in the US and Europe, have been tempered by skepticism. Hacks on sites, possibly including Nato, have continued since the arrests and there are doubts that the 14 Anonymous people arrested are ringleaders. The group has close ties to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks and has been tied to attacks on PayPal’s eBay in retaliation for the company’s refusal to accept donations for WikiLeaks. Most of the arrests were in the US, but four people were arrested in The Netherlands and one in London, with police in both cases working with US authorities.
The US crime of conspiracy and intentional damage to a protected computer carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Each count of conspiracy carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Links to other sites: Christian Science Monitor, CNET, IP Watch, Main Justice
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The Netherlands Wednesday threw its support soundly behind Geneva-based Global Fund, agreeing to invest €163.5 million to fight Aids, tuberculosis and malaria. Perhaps more critically, the Dutch government made the announcement with a firm message of support for the organization’s financial credibility.
The Global Fund suffered a sharp if possibly temporary reduction in funding this year following a widely distributed US news agency report in January that mistakenly accused the fund of not managing money properly.
The report focused on alleged fraud cases and implied mismanagement, but used information the Global Fund itself had published, following internal investigations, as part of its policy of transparency. Several governments withdrew their funding pledges as a result, saying they needed time to review the situation, putting the Global Fund’s operations into a precarious situation.
Dutch Minister for European and International Affairs Ben Knapen underscored Dutch support in the wake of the Geneva group’s funding crisis, in announcing the agreement through the Dutch Foreign Ministry:
Two countries who lost money now suing Iceland
Iceland’s citizens voted by more than 60 percent 10 April not to pay back Britain and The Netherlands for losses incurred when Landsbanki went under in 2008. The bank’s failure was part of the country’s economic failure, an early victim to the global economic crisis. British and Dutch investors were covered by domestic deposit insurance for the money they had in the bank’s Icesave unit, under European Union rules. The two governments are out $5.8 billion and have now vowed to take Iceland to court to collect the money.
The three came to an agreement on repayment, in December 2010, but Iceland’s President Ólafur Ragnar Grimsson ordered a national vote on the agreement, soundly rejected, just as a first one was. The no vote, The Netherlands has suggested, could put at risk Iceland’s application to join the European Union.
Links to other sites: BBC, Financial Times (registration), The Netherlands.com
Largest number of arrests in UK
Europol, the European police organization, said in The Hague Wednesday 16 March that police have arrested 184 people, 121 of them in the UK according to the BBC, “and identified over 200 victims of child abuse following one of the biggest investigations of its kind by law enforcement agencies across the world”.
The investigation has identified 670 suspects and “safeguarded” 230 children.
The heart of the operation was a web site, now taken down, called boylover.net, that promoted sexual relationships between adults and young boys. The website operated from a server based in the Netherlands and, at its height, boasted up to 70 000 members worldwide.
The suspected child sex offenders were members of the site’s online forum.
Police located the owner in 2009 and tracked down the server in The Netherlands. “In January 2010, a copy of the seized site’s server was received by Europol, and the Australian and UK police. Working with Zaanstreek–Waterland Police in the Netherlands, Europol rebuilt the forum offline and forensically interrogated the server to produce intelligence analysis which was disseminated globally to law enforcement authorities,” Europol says.
The success of the operation, coordinated by Europol, was thanks in particular to “the work of Europol analysts in cracking the security features of a key computer server at the centre of the network which uncovered the identity and activity of the suspected child sex offenders. Europol subsequently issued over 4,000 intelligence reports to police authorities in over 30 countries.”
Video, investigation
Date for compliance with special US treaty covering UBS draws near
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – The Swiss Federal Council has approved four double taxation treaties, with Poland, The Netherlands, Japan and Turkey, all of which now conform to OECD requirements. The governing council of seven has forwarded these to the Swiss Parliament, which can consider an optional vote to approve the treaties. Switzerland earlier this year gave final approval to 10 0ther double taxation agreements.
The government also approved two completely new agreements, with Georgia and Tajikistan, but noting that “because a speedy entry into force of the DTAs was sought, Switzerland, Georgia and the Republic of Tajikistan agreed to waive the extended administrative assistance clause in accordance with the OECD standard for the time being.”
Dutch fan ecstatic - Photo 2010 FWCLOC
Dutch fan ecstatic - Photo 2010 FWCLOC
International sports, World Cup football
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) - Uruguay is out, after The Netherlands won 3-2 Tuesday night 6 July. This is the third time Holland will fight for the World Cup title.
Now all eyes are focused on the next semi-final match, Germany against Spain tonight at 20:30.
Here’s the squad list and background; Fifa wants to know who you think will win.
Follow GenevaLunch’s daily recap of the 2010 World Cup.
Links to other sites: Fifa World Cup, Guardian on the Dutch in the finals
The owner of The Netherlands largest cannabis-selling coffee shop, which was closed in 2009 by the government, was fined 10m euros for breaking the law by having more than the permitted amount of the drug on the premises. Meddie Willemsen’s Checkpoint coffee shop in Terneuzen reportedly served up to 3,000 customers a day at its peak. In two police raids officers netted more than 500kg of cannabis, well over the allowed amount of 500g. Willemson has also been sentenced to 16 weeks in prison.
Hans-Rudolf Merz, Swiss finance minister, says the stolen bank data dispute must not be allowed to escalate
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - The Swiss Federal Council says it will insist that any discussion about bank data stolen from Swiss banks and offered to Germany must take place during negotiations for a double taxation agreement. Switzerland has initialed 18 of these with other countries since March 2009 and it is in the process of negotiating one with Germany. Bern said in a statement Wednesday afternoon 3 February that it is cannot accept the argument that stolen data should be used to boost tax revenues.
“In its meeting today, the Federal Council expressed its astonishment at the German government’s indication of its readiness to take up the offer to obtain data on clients of a Swiss bank. Recently there has been an increase in the theft of Swiss bank client data which is subsequently sold abroad. This is a criminal offence in Switzerland.
London, England (GenevaLunch) – The Netherlands beat England on the final ball of the opening match of the world Twenty20 match at Lords.
