Netherlands

SCHIPHOL, Netherlands (AP) — Dutch prosecutors on Wednesday demanded life sentences for four suspects in the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014, saying they caused “deep and irreversible suffering” to relatives of the 298 people killed.

Prosecutors said the four recklessly used a Russian missile to bring down the passenger jet, killing all 298 passengers and crew.

Public prosecutor Manon Ridderbeks made the sentence demand on the third day of a presentation of evidence supporting the indictment. The suspects are being tried in absentia.

  THE HAGUE, Dec 20 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The EU’s drug regulator will decide Monday whether to approve a Covid jab by Novavax, which uses a more conventional technology that the US biotech firm hopes will reduce vaccine
hesitancy.

   Novavax’s jab, a protein-based vaccine of the kind used around the world to protect against many childhood illnesses, would be the fifth coronavirus shot authorised for the European Union.

   Approval would also be a boost for the Maryland company, whose jab has been plagued by delays.

THE HAGUE, Dec 20 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Dutch prosecutors will this week set out their sentencing demands for four men on trial in absentia over the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in war-torn Ukraine in 2014.

Prosecutors will also formally present the indictment during three days of hearings from Monday, charging the men with the murders of all 298 people on the Boeing 777.

The four suspects – Russian nationals Igor Girkin, Sergei Dubinsky and Oleg Pulatov, and Ukrainian citizen Leonid Kharchenko – have all refused to attend the trial in the Netherlands.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The leaders of four political parties set to join forces in the next Dutch ruling coalition pledged Wednesday to tackle thorny problems including climate change and housing shortages and to strengthen education and a health care system that has been stretched almost to breaking point by the COVID-19 pandemic.

THE HAGUE, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Judges at the International Court of Justice examining Armenian allegations that Azerbaijan breached a convention against racial discrimination on Tuesday ordered Azerbaijan to prevent incitement of racial hatred against Armenians and protect Armenian prisoners of war.

The court has yet to rule on a similar case from Azerbaijan's side, who filed a countersuit alleging violations of the same U.N. anti-discrimination treaty.

07 Dec 2021; MEMO: A Dutch appeals court today ruled that Israeli Defence Minister Benny Gantz was immune from civil prosecution in the Netherlands in a case brought over the deaths of six Palestinians in an Israeli air strike on Gaza.

The court upheld a lower court's finding of January 2020 that Gantz, as a high-ranking Israeli official carrying out government policy, could not be held liable in a Dutch civil case.

THE HAGUE, November 29. /TASS/: Russia is going to press for proper answers from France, Sweden, Britain and Germany regarding the case of blogger Alexey Navalny, Russia’s representative to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), Alexander Shulgin told the 26th conference of the organization’s member-countries. 

He stressed that "there are traces of a provocation and of politicization of the whole affair."

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Cases of the omicron variant of the coronavirus popped up in countries on opposite sides of the world Sunday and many governments rushed to close their borders even as scientists cautioned that it’s not clear if the new variant is more alarming than other versions of the virus.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Netherlands confirmed 13 cases of the new omicron variant of the coronavirus on Sunday and Australia found two as the countries half a world apart became the latest to detect it in travelers arriving from southern Africa.

Israel decided to bar entry to foreigners and Morocco said it would suspend all incoming air travel from around the world for two weeks starting Monday — the most drastic of a growing raft of travel curbs being imposed by nations around the world as they scramble to slow the variant’s spread.

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Social distancing became mandatory again across the Netherlands on Wednesday as coronavirus infections soared and the country’s leading intensive care physician called for even tougher measures to rein in the pandemic.

Health Minister Hugo de Jonge said that a press conference on coronavirus measures that had been scheduled for Dec. 3 has been moved forward to Friday.

“The picture is somber and worrying,” De Jonge told reporters in The Hague.