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A suspected right-wing terrorist allegedly planning an attack in the Netherlands was arrested on Thursday at a location in Badhoevedorp, a village situated between the city of Amsterdam and Schiphol Airport. A search of his registered home, a squatted vacant restaurant in Boerdonk, turned up several prohibited firearms, along with ammunition, the Public Prosecution Service (OM) announced on Friday.

The 24-year-old man is currently suspected of preparing a terrorist attack and weapons charges, as well as the illegal production of weapons and ammunition. He admitted to being a member of several far-right and white nationalist organizations, including the Geuzenbond, the OM said. He appeared before an examining magistrate in Rotterdam on Friday, who decided to remand the suspect to jail for 14 days while the investigation continues.

The case against the suspect developed from a report filed by Dutch civilian intelligence service AIVD. The raid on the squatted restaurant took place Thursday morning, with police securing the area using trained dogs and a camera mounted on a four-legged drone. Investigators also focused their attention on a BMW sport-utility vehicle at the building in Boerdonk. The village is close to the town of Erp, and both are part of the municipality of Meierijstad, Noord-Brabant.

The Geuzenbond targets young people, and should be considered a threat to society, said the NCTV, the Dutch national counterterrorism office. It has a presence in both the Netherlands and Belgium, and can be found online and at demonstrations. "The Geuzenbond is classified as one of the so-called 'active clubs,' which strive to normalize extremist right-wing ideology and empower the 'blanke race' through physical training," the OM stated.

The Dutch word, "blanke", can be considered to mean an absence of color when used in this manner. The outdated term is often used by white supremacists in place of the more commonly used, "wit", to describe an individual's pale skin tone.

Members of the Geuzenbond founded the Groot Nederlandse Studentenvereniging (GNSV), a nationalist student association, and are actively involved with the association. GNSV members were attacked during an event at Radboud University in Nijmegen in August 2023. Three individuals were arrested as a result of the incident.

The suspect arrested in Badhoevedorp will next face an arraignment hearing before a three-judge panel at a district court. During that hearing, he can be ordered to remain in pre-trial detention for up to 90 days. That period can then be extended in subsequent hearings.

Badhoevedorp is officially part of the Haarlemmermeer municipality in Noord-Holland. While it is just outside of Amsterdam, it is over 120 kilometers away from the squatted restaurant in Boerdonk.

Outgoing State Secretary for Environment Thierry Aartsen has spoken of his disappointment with the fact that 185 countries failed to reach an agreement to establish a binding international treaty to combat plastic pollution at the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC) in Geneva. According to the VVD member, plastic use now threatens to triple, “while 90 percent already ends up in the environment.”

Aartsen claims that no agreement was reached because oil-producing countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, the United States, and China are not willing to go as far as many European countries. Plastic is made from petroleum, and these countries therefore benefit from lenient rules on plastic use and recycling.

The state secretary thinks steps need to be taken, as China is now able to produce plastic more cheaply, and can use this leverage to push European and Dutch companies that recycle “out of the market.” The VVD politician believes that “as Europe, we need to take a tough stance on this.”

Aartsen continued: “It is incredibly complicated that a country like the United States, that while saying they stick up for freedom, free trade, and the economy, is on the side of Russia, China, and Saudi Arabia.”

The state secretary reportedly told the American delegation that they should take a critical view of their stance regarding strategic independence. “You can’t say: When it comes to raw materials, we are competing with China, but when it comes to these kinds of agreements, we are not involved."

Aartsen has not lost hope regarding a global agreement. According to him, the failure this time was also due to a lack of time. “There will be another meeting in Nairobi in December to continue discussions on this.”

Ocean Cleanup also spoke of its concern regarding the lack of agreement. “Now that the future of the treaty is uncertain, we risk losing momentum for this unique opportunity and risk losing the fight,” said the organization founded by Dutchman Boyan Slat.

“Plastic pollution continues to devastate marine ecosystems,” the organization stated. “And every delay means that more plastic will end up in our rivers and oceans. While we understand the complexity of reaching a global consensus, there is also a lot at stake, for our health, our oceans, and our future.”

Greenpeace said that the failure to reach an agreement has to be a wake-up call for the world. “Ending plastic pollution means confronting fossil fuel interests head-on. The vast majority of governments want a strong agreement, yet a handful of bad actors were allowed to use the process to drive such ambition into the ground,” said Graham Forbes, head of the Greenpeace delegation at the negotiations in the Swiss city.

“We cannot continue to do the same thing and expect a different result. The time for hesitation is over. Now is not the time to blink. Now is the time for courage, resolve, and perseverance,” Forbes added.

Consumer goods company Unilever is also “disappointed” by the failure to reach a binding international treaty. “These talks need to lead to concrete action. Coordinated regulation is necessary to reduce complexity and costs for companies and to increase confidence in investing in solutions,” said Rebecca Marmot, Director of Sustainability and Corporate Affairs.

Unilever lowered its targets for reducing plastic use last year. The company, which owns brands such as Axe, Knorr, and Dove, had originally planned to halve its use of new plastic this year, but it adjusted the goal to a 30 percent reduction by 2026. For 2024, the annual report lists a reduction of 23 percent compared to 2019.

A heatwave has now been officially declared at De Bilt, where the temperature reached 25.2 degrees Celsius at around 10:40 a.m. In recent days, the main weather station had already recorded summer days with highs of at least 25 degrees Celsius, and on three of those days it was even tropically warm, with a minimum of 30 degrees Celsius. This is the second heatwave of the year, something Weeronline calls “very unusual.”

Since weather measurements began in 1901, only the summers of 1941, 2006, 2018, and 2019 have had two official heatwaves. A heatwave requires a series of at least five summer days with temperatures of 25 degrees Celsius or higher, with at least three of those days reaching tropical temperatures of 30 degrees Celsius or higher.

This is the 32nd heatwave ever recorded at De Bilt, which is often considered the meteorological average for the country, as it is is the basis for official national records and is home to headquarters of the national meteorological institute of the Netherlands, the KNMI.

There is also a heatwave at the regional level, which is more common. Last year was the first time in years without a single regional heatwave in the Netherlands. By contrast, there were three regional heatwaves in 2023.

The current official heatwave is expected to end on Saturday, with temperatures at De Bilt forecast to stay below 22 degrees Celsius.

The longest heatwave at De Bilt lasted 18 days, from July 29 to August 15, 1975. The highest number of regional heatwaves in a single year occurred in Maastricht in 1947, with five. The last of these remains the latest heatwave on record in the Netherlands, from September 11 to September 17.

An 80-year-old woman was found dead in her home in Amsterdam Nieuw-West on Wednesday afternoon. There are indications that she was killed in a crime, the police said on Friday.

Police officers went to check the woman’s home on Wittgensteinlaan at around 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday after she failed to show up for an appointment. They found her body inside.

“Because there are indications of a possible crime, the home is being treated as a crime scene and the police have launched a large-scale investigation team led by a public prosecutor,” the police said.

The police released no further details about what happened to the woman. Investigators asked anyone with information or relevant video footage from dash cams or doorbell cameras to come forward.

The data that leaked through a hack at the Clinical Diagnostics laboratory also contained the names and addresses of women living in shelters for domestic violence victims, RTL Nieuws discovered in an analysis of the leaked data. For these women in particular, keeping their whereabouts secret can be vital.

The leaked data included the women’s names, citizen service numbers (BSNs), and the addresses of the shelters where they were staying. Several women from multiple women’s shelters are affected. The shelters in question confirmed the data to RTL Nieuws.

Keeping the identity and whereabouts of these women secret can be crucial. Last month, an Eindhoven man tracked down his ex at the women’s shelter in Gouda, where she was staying, and shot her dead in front of their two children.

“Perpetrators of intimate partner violence will also be active on the dark web; we shouldn’t be naive about that,” Kirsten Regtop, an expert in domestic violence, told RTL Nieuws. “The most dangerous types are extremely cunning and will do anything to discover someone’s whereabouts.”

Clinical Diagnostics is a laboratory used for all kinds of medical tests ordered by general practitioners, as well as the population screening for cervical cancer. The data breach affects 485,000 women who participated in the cervical cancer screening and around 50,000 patients sent for tests by their house doctor, including at least one Minister and one parliamentarian.

Cybercrime group Nova claimed the hack and told RTL that the laboratory paid the ransom to prevent further data from being leaked. The hackers told RTL that they stole 300 gigabytes of data and only leaked a small portion of it. According to the broadcaster, the leaked portion of the data can no longer be downloaded, but it is still in the possession of everyone who accessed it before it was taken down.

The Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP) is investigating the data breach. “People must always be able to trust that their data is in safe hands, especially when it comes to their most personal information,” a spokesperson told the broadcaster. The AP spoke of a “very serious” breach.

NSC parliamentarian Diederik Boomsma is switching to JA21 for the upcoming parliamentary election on October 29. He is leaving the NSC effective immediately, but won’t take his parliamentary seat with him.

JA21 published its list of candidates for the election, and Boomsma is sixth on the list. He is the second coalition politician to switch to the right-wing party, following former PVV State Secretary Ingrid Coenradie. She is third on the list.

Joost Eerdmans, the only current JA21 member of parliament, will lead the party again. Co-founder Annabel Nanninga is in second place. JA21 will focus on three key themes for the election: migration, security, and prosperity. “The previous Cabinet was supposed to be a big right-wing promise, but the results have been zero. JA21 exists to restore that trust,” Eerdmans said with the list of candidates.

Boomsma attempted to become the NSC leader for the upcoming parliamentary election but withdrew from the race due to resistance from the party leadership. Caretaker Minister Eddy van Hijum became the new party leader of the NSC.

Boomsma is not the first NSC MP to jump ship in recent months. Aant Jeele Soepboer resigned his seat in mid-July to become the leader of the Fryske Nasjonale Partij. And Agnes Joseph switched to the BBB late last month, taking her seat with her.

Pieter Omtzigt established the NSC in the run-up to the previous parliamentary elections in November 2023. The party won a massive 20 seats in the Tweede Kamer in its first election and became part of the Schoof I Cabinet with the PVV, VVD, and BBB.

Since then, the party has pretty much imploded. Party leader Omtzigt first took an extensive medical leave due to burnout and then left national politics altogether. His successor, Nicolien van Vroonhoven, announced that she would not lead the party again. And support for the NSC in the polls plummeted. The party currently stands at one projected seat in parliament.