Dutch news in brief, 7 January 2005

Wiegel loses second wife to car accident

The wife of Hans Wiegel, a former leader of the Dutch Liberal Party (VVD), was killed in a traffic accident on Thursday evening. The woman, 53, lost control of the vehicle and was thrown clear when it turned over on the A2 near Hoogeveen in Drenthe. She died immediately. Wiegel was leader of the VVD in the early 1980s. His first wife died in a traffic accident in 1980. Two years later, he married her sister who was killed died in the accident on Thursday.

Taxes donated to tsunami relief

The Dutch tax office has agreed to lodge the taxes and premium contributions withheld from wages donated by Dutch workers to the tsunami appeal into the special relief account, giro 555. Initially the Finance Ministry said it was not possible to exempt the donations from tax, but Finance Minister Gerrit Zalm announced during Thursday night’s telethon that the withheld taxes would be forwarded to the appeal fund.

US bombing of Nijmegen was a “mistake”

The US aerial bombardment of Nijmegen in the east of the Netherlands on 22 February 1944 was a mistake, according to a new report. The findings of the study carried out by the Netherlands War Documents Institute (NIOD) were revealed on Friday during a presentation in city hall in Nijmegen on Friday. For the last 60 years a debate has raged in the city about whether the bombing, which killed 750 people, was an accident or whether the US forces had another sinister motive. “It was an error as the American pilots hampered by the chaos in the air and unclear communications thought they were flying above Germany,” one of the authors of the report said.

Union boss denies Dutch troops plan to strike

Jean Debie, chairman of the largest union for military personnel in the Netherlands, has described suggestions Dutch troops in Iraq are ready to go on strike as “rabble-rousing”. Earlier this week newspaper Algemeen Dagblad ran a story that said the 1,300 Dutch soldiers in Iraq were unhappy about the level of supplementary payments they receive for serving abroad. An official of the AFMP union staid the troops were in “revolt” and ready to take action. Refuting this, Debie of the of VBM|NOV union said the troops had a very highly developed sense of responsibility and the suggestion of a strike had been “pulled out of the air”.

Subject: Dutch news