Authorities in Europe have ramped up counterterrorism efforts, making hundreds of arrests. Dutch police in November arrested members of the Hofstad Islamist group.

A sliver of good news from across the Atlantic: things could be much worse. Since the 2004 bombings in Madrid, authorities across the Continent have ramped up counterterrorism efforts, making hundreds of arrests and foiling several large-scale plots. Here’s a rundown of some notable successes.

1) BRITAIN

British authorities charged…

Khan stole centrifuge designs from his employer in the 1970s and used them to develop Pakistan’s nuclear program. He later passed them on to other countries.

Not long ago, Abdul Qadeer Khan used to walk into a wooded park across the street from his mansion in Pakistan’s capital city and feed the monkeys who lived there. That was when he was a national hero and a multimillionaire, owner of a fleet of vintage cars and properties…

According to R. Gunaratna, an expert on terrorism at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, Reid’s reason for choosing the NL. is that it has become a center of al-Qaeda activity.

It was the scream that people noticed. Monique Danison, an American college student, had just finished lunch on American Airlines Flight 63 from Paris to Miami when she heard a woman cry out in terror. “When someone screams the way she did,” says Danison, “you know something bad is happening.”…

Richard Reid, aka the shoe bomber, told authorities he bought the explosives in the Netherlands and hid them in his shoes himself. But one French official says he bought the explosives in Paris.

The evidence is mounting that would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid, once thought to have acted alone, actually had the support of an Islamist terror network. French authorities now believe the network included a Parisian cell that has so far eluded detection. Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines flight…

Dutch prosecutor Jan Koers accused Irving Kott of fraud, tax evasion and various other crimes. Dutch authorities raided his First Commerce in 1986 and forced it into bankruptcy.

For years, the securities industry in the U.S. and elsewhere has been host to fast-buck brokerage firms that have ridden the back of the bull market like so many parasites. Typically, they hype penny stocks in tiny companies that are all promise and no delivery and then close up shop…

The history of faking is nearly as old as the history of art. Dutchman Van Meegeren (1889-1947) produced a stream of “Vermeers” and was sentenced to a year in prison for fraud.

The history of faking is nearly as old as the history of art, and for as long as there have been documents, there have been forgeries. “This is not a lie, it is indeed the truth,” runs an inscription of the earliest forgery we know, a Babylonian cuneiform inscription from…

British soldiers, who had come from their base in West Germany to Roermond to join the festivities marking the birthday of the Queen Beatrix, were shot by a member of the IRA, killing one.

The British soldiers had driven from their base in West Germany to the Dutch town of Roermond to relax and join the festivities marking the birthday of the Netherlands’ Queen Beatrix. But the trip last week turned into a nightmare after a member of the Irish Republican Army opened fire…

The wife of Dutch P.M. Lubbers saw two men trying to rip out the radio in her car. Her son and her husband chased the vandals until they cornered the pair, while waiting for the police.

At around 4 p.m. on a quiet Sunday, Ria Lubbers glanced out of her Rotterdam house and saw that two men had smashed the window of her car and were trying to rip out the radio. When Ria shouted, the burglars loosed a stream of obscenities and walked off. At…

In November 1984, a Dutch court sentenced him in absentia to four years in prison for espionage. Khan had copied the plans of the centrifuge process and sent them back to Pakistan.

It is called a research center, but the Pakistan Institute of Nuclear Research looks more like a fortress. Layers of barbed wire surround the sprawling complex in the dusty hills at Kahuta, 20 miles southeast of Pakistan’s capital, Islamabad. Much of the facility is buried beneath the earth, a precaution…

Three weeks after Beer Tycoon Heineken, 60, and his chauffeur, Ab Doderer, 57, were abducted, one of the largest manhunts in Dutch history had stumbled upon a happy ending.

A kidnaped beer baron is freed

The police were just about to give up their search of the lonely Amsterdam warehouse. Then, by chance, one of them spotted a lock on the corrugated-tin wall at the back of the building. The opening led to a false wall, complete with a…

The multimillionaire chairman and majority stockholder of the brewery that bears his name, Alfred H. (“Freddie”) Heineken was abducted, his kidnappers demanded a ransom of $8.3 million.

A beer tycoon is abducted

He did everything possible to protect himself against kidnapers. Hidden TV cameras guarded his Amsterdam offices; high fences, security officers and vicious dogs protected his villa in Noordwijk, a seaside town 22 miles away. Last month his only daughter was married in secret, and though…

Revolutionary leader Desi Bouterse ordered the arrest of 16 of the country’s most prominent citizens, incl. lawyers, journalists and labor leaders. All but one were dead the next morning.

Terror and Marxism replace tolerance and prosperity

Once upon a time the former colony of Dutch Guiana seemed to be an enchanted tropical paradise. Its gentle, unusually tolerant melange of Creole, Indian, Chinese and Javanese inhabitants were blessed with rich farming lands, rivers teeming with fish and one of the…

Dutchmen, earning millions, are believed to have passed off several million bottles of cheap wine as the product of well-known French vineyards.

he Dutch connection is cut

Wine scandals are like bad vintages. They don’t happen every year, but often enough to offend good taste. In 1974 the Bordeaux region was rocked by the news that the respected firm of Cruse et Fils Freres had sold cheap Midi reds under more expensive…

Abdul Qadar Khan, who worked for top-secret gas centrifuge factory at Almelo, where enriched uranium is produced, managed to carry home critical information to his Native Pakistan.

How another country is joining the nuclear club

He was a brilliant and charming man, a linguist who was liked by his colleagues and suburban Amsterdam neighbors. To be sure, Abdul Qadar Khan did seem a bit inquisitive to his fellow scientists at The Netherlands’ top-secret gas centrifuge factory at…

Britain’s Ambassador to The Netherlands, Sir Richard Sykes, 58, was shot and killed in The Hague. There was strong speculation that the hit men worked for the Irish Republican Army.

Britain’s Ambassador to The Netherlands, Sir Richard Sykes, 58, had just stepped into his silver-gray Rolls-Royce for the four-minute ride from his residence to the British embassy in The Hague. As Sykes’ Dutch valet, Karel Straub, 19, closed the car door, two men suddenly emerged from the back of the…