An explosion blew the door off a Muslim school in a southern Dutch town and shattered windows across the street yesterday, Dutch television reported. There were no reports of injuries.
Pictures showed the burnt-out entrance of the school which was empty at the time of the attack at around 3:30am. Police suspected it was related to the murder last week of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a suspected Islamic radical, the report said.
Van Gogh's killing sparked a series of attacks over the weekend, including two attempts to burn down mosques. Although mainstream Muslim groups condemned the killing, it has caused an outpouring of anger.
Vandals threw red paint on Saturday night on an Amsterdam center that aids immigrants, many of them Muslim. The Emcemo center is located several blocks from the spot where Van Gogh was killed, and its director, Abdou Menebhi, told local TV station AT5 that the vandals were racists.
In the town of Huizen, police arrested two men they say were caught preparing to ignite a fire at the An-Nasr mosque on Friday night, national news service NOS reported. A mosque in the city of Breda sustained minor fire damage in another reported arson attempt.
Earlier last week, a small fire was set at a mosque in Utrecht, police said, and a pig's head was left in a plastic bag outside a mosque in Amsterdam.
NOS reported on Sunday that pamphlets with the image of a pig and a slur against Muslims were circulating in Rotterdam.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
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