Morning news 4 September 2007 04/09/2007 00:00

The death of  Gessica “ the  Maas girl”, named after the place where her body was found, could have been prevented. This emerged from a report that the Health Inspectorate will publish today (Tuesday), according to Trouw. The report concludes that the social workers failed to put the safety of the girl first. The Rotterdam Youth Health Care Institute (JGZ), the Regional Institute for Mental Welfare (Riagg) and four family doctors in a row ignored the signals that this girl might be at risk of being abused at home. The Public Prosecution department has had suspicions that Gessica’s father killed his daughter in June 2006.

The police in Limburg have failed to take action when a woman was being tortured in a cellar, De Telegraaf writes. At the end of July the woman was being held at a location that had been reported to the police. The police authorities, however, refused to issue a search warrant. Some days later the woman succumbed to her injuries. “When the police arrived at the house, it was already too late,” a spokesperson for the Limburg-Zuid police said. “At the time the assistant public prosecution officer had decided that there were no legal grounds to raid the home. It was not a very good neighbourhood, with a lot of drug nuisance. You just think twice before raiding a home there.”

SUVs or Sport Utility Vehicles are becoming increasingly popular, de Volkskrant reports. Despite the negative publicity on de-luxe all terrain vehicles – the sales figures of in particular the BMW X5, the Land Rover Range Rover and the Porsche Cayenne have more than doubled. “A lot of criticism stems from envy,” car dealer Jan Rumping said. “As far as the environment is concerned, there are lots of cars with the same fuel consumption but these are less conspicuous. The SUVs are an easy target.”
 

Finance Minister Wouter Bos wants to set a ceiling for the remuneration of chief executives in the business sector. The supervisory board should cap the top salaries. Bos made his comments in an interview with the revamped Finacieele Dagblad  published in light salmon. Bos feels that the supervisory board should set a maximum to the height of variable remuneration packages. Bos has had consultations with the CEOs of Shell, Akzo Nobel ,ABN Amro and Philips.

Newspapers devote a lot of attention to ‘Ellen’ or Tanja Nijmeijer, a student from Groningen, who has been fighting along with the guerrilla movement FARC in Colombia. In a page-wide article De Telegraaf cites from the student’s diaries. Paragraphs citing her doubts for instance: ‘I sometimes wake up screaming, in the middle of the night, and always the same question pops up: is it right what I am doing? Wouldn’t I have been happier in the Netherlands, teaching, translating and working at the university. Married with children?”

While De Telegraaf is convinced that Nijmeijer will be facing the death penalty because of her criticism of FARC, a Colombian journalist in De Volkskrant says she will probably be let off with severe corporal punishment. “FARC treats foreigners differently.” A Colombian military expert agrees with this: “She is after all positive about FARC. She does not want to leave FARC. From that perspective the diary is propaganda for the guerrillas”.

[Copyright Expatica News + ANP 2007]

Subject: Dutch news