Prince Bernhard was forced to resign from virtually all his public and official posts after a government commission severely chastized him for “extremely imprudent” dealings with Lockheed.

The Royal House of Orange has held sway in The Netherlands almost without interruption for 400 years, and according to the constitution, its monarch is “inviolable.” Most of Queen Juliana’s royal subjects hoped that the same was true of her dapper, German-born husband Prince Bernhard, 65. When rumors from the…

Dutch parliament last week somberly debated whether the 65-year-old royal consort should be prosecuted, but the chamber voted overwhelmingly against prosecution

Like the Watergate scandal from which it once sprouted, the Lockheed scandal seems to have acquired a quality of indestructibility. Even when the charges of corruption are officially denied, they keep reappearing as rumors and innuendoes. Last week, as the scandal once again rippled across Europe, a parliament debated whether…

More than two-thirds of all tanker mishaps are caused by mistakes made by the men who run them. In The Netherlands and France there are three supertanker schools.

More than two-thirds of all tanker mishaps are caused by mistakes made by the men who run them. What is the answer to the human hazard? Many experts think it rests with the proliferation of the supertankers—including the behemoths known as very large crude carriers (VLCCs) that will be…

Social democratic governments are under pressure in Britain, The Netherlands and West Germany. Premier Joop den Uyl’s Cabinet collapsed last week.

It was supposed to be a festive birthday party. The European Community turned 20 last week, and leaders of its nine member states celebrated the anniversary by gathering in the damask-lined hall atop Rome’s Capitoline Hill where the unique organization was born.

But the mood in the hall was…

Two 231-ft.-long Boeing 747 jumbo jets collided on the ground. Taking off down a runway visible for less than a sixth of its length, KLM 4805 smashed into Pan American 1736.

The sweet scent of flowers reaching their boats inspired ancient Romans and Greeks to call them “the Fortunate Islands.” The refreshingly mild and breezy climate was praised by more modern travelers as “perpetual spring.” But early natives of the Canary Islands,*70 miles off the northwest coast of Africa, knew…

In The Netherlands, where a recent poll showed that 53% of the Dutch have doubts about nuclear energy, construction of three new reactors has been postponed.

The demonstration was part picnic, part protest march and part folk festival. Nearly 10,000 people, carrying accordions, flutes, guitars and a fluttering forest of posters and signs, gathered for a “festival of life” at the small Italian town of Montalto di Castro, 80 miles north of Rome, the site of…

Last week’s well-coordinated assaults on the train and the Bovensmilde school by South Mollucan terrorists took place two days before a national election.

A wave of revulsion and anger swept The Netherlands last week after terrorists seized more than 150 hostages in an effort to force the Dutch government to accept their revolutionary demands. The hostages included 55 passengers of an express train on the Utrecht-Groningen line and—to the particular fury and…

A Dutch military team mounted a commando-style dawn assault on both train and school. Six of the 13 Moluccan terrorists and two of the hostages were killed.

As dawn broke, a thick mist rolled across the pastureland around the Dutch hamlet of De Punt, enveloping the motionless yellow train. Inside, nine jittery Moluccan hijackers and 51 exhausted hostages were beginning their 20th day of cold fear together, a grisly endurance record of its kind. At a primary…

In The Netherlands, where Moscow has set up a computer center, the Dutch government last year expelled the Soviet director on espionage charges.

The Soviet Union likes to boast that it is the land of the future. Yet in the one technology most essential for industrial and scientific progress, the country is far behind. Western experts believe Soviet computer development trails the U.S.’s by three to ten years, depending on the segment of…

Proponents of midwifery point to The Netherlands, where midwifery is widespread and the national infant mortality rate has been lower than in the U.S. (10.6 vs. 16.1 per 1,000).

Rising costs and feminism bring back an ancient art

For most of the human species’ existence, the delivery of babies has been the exclusive prerogative of women. It was only at the turn of this century that U.S. physicians, most of them then male, decided to put the delivery business…

The belief that Jesus Christ was both “true God and true man” has been the bedrock of Catholic orthodoxy for more than 15 centuries. Theologians have been at odds about this dogma.

Germany’s Hans Küng again challenges the Vatican

The belief that Jesus Christ was both “true God and true man” has been the bedrock of Catholic orthodoxy for more than 15 centuries. Yet over the past decade some Roman Catholic theologians have been at odds with the church hierarchy about this…

Increasing fears confiscatory tax policies already have begun to discourage incentive and innovation. They seem to be undermining the Calvinist work ethic in The Netherlands.

It began as an outcry against “the dark satanic mills” of early capitalism, a shuddering reaction against the profound upheavals caused by the Industrial Revolution, a reassertion of the Utopian dream of the heavenly kingdom on earth. It sprang from obscure clubs, from workers’ associations, from garrets, libraries, bourgeois parlors…

With exhilarating wit and charm, Dutch Physician Wil Huygen and Illustrator Rien Poortvliet put together a mock sociological history of the gnome that is proving to be a money spinner.

One of the most enduring characters of European folklore is the gnome, a gnarled night creature who lives for centuries, stands only 6 in. when full grown but is seven times stronger than man. With exhilarating wit and tongue-in-cheek charm, Dutch Physician Wil Huygen and Illustrator Rien Poortvliet put together…

On the death of Pope John Paul I, Dutch Cardinal Willebrands said it was a disaster. He had a feeling that something fresh was going to happen to his church.

“How deep are the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God! How inscrutable his judgments, how unsearchable his ways!” St. Paul’s words rang out across St. Peter’s Square in the genial, high-pitched voice of John Paul I on that happy day last month, Sept. 3, when he was…

The Dutch writer Janwillem van de Wetering writes about Amsterdam policemen and the statutes and terrors that govern their lives in his new book The Maine Massacre.

THE MAINE MASSACRE by Janwillem van de Wetering

Houghton Mifflin; 256 pages; $8.95

The demimonde of mystery fans is divided into amateurs and professionals.

What aficionado has not been confined in a summer cottage on a rainy day with someone who does not know about thrillers and keeps announcing every…