Germany’s Beate Uhse acquired a Dutch chain of 44 “erotic discount centers,” plus a Dutch mail-order company that offers a full range of sex toys, videos and publications.

Sex shops: seedy, if not downright sinister; XXX signs plastered on blacked-out windows in shady neighborhoods; frequented mainly by men. When it comes to the flesh industry, Europe, for all its sophistication, wasn’t much different from the U.S. Then along came Ann Summers, a British chain of sex emporiums, and…

Ric Burns’ documentary New York shows that New NL. was run by the mammoth Dutch West India Co. The city remained dedicated to the godless buck as it became British and then American.

America was built by people who came here to believe in something. America was built by people who came here for the right to believe in nothing. And two upcoming PBS documentaries are aptly paired not simply because each comes from one of the documentarian brothers Ken and Ric Burns…

Researchers from the NL. studied the effect of coffee consumption. The bottom line: drinking 48 oz. of unfiltered coffee a day may carry a 10% increase in risk for heart attack or stroke.

Are you one of the millions of Americans who can’t start the day without a steaming cup of coffee? Growing dependence on that morning caffeine jolt has made the U.S. one of the biggest coffee consumers in the world, swallowing about one-third of the world’s coffee production. Is that good…

In the NL. recipients have to pay income tax on stock options as soon as they are bestowed. But intense competition from option-rich firms abroad are starting to change that climate.

To Juan Villalonga, the arrangement must have seemed fair enough. Shortly after taking over as head of the Spanish telecommunications firm Telefonica in February 1997, he awarded the company’s 100 top executives–including himself–a bushel of potentially lucrative stock options that could be cashed out after three years. With…

The Dutch official unemployment rate of 4% is the lowest in the E.U. But jobless people over the age of 57½ are not counted as unemployed; neither are almost 1 mil. on disability benefits.

Since the age of steam, the European labor movement has mustered red flags and brass bands on May Day for a traditional show of strength. But this year, post-May Day, Europe faces a labor paradox that Karl Marx never foresaw. While 15 million people are registered as unemployed in the…

In the Netherlands a company called Rigid Airship Design is building a 591-ft.-long airship, which it hopes to begin testing at the end of next year.

Just once, Scott Danneker would like to see a TV documentary or magazine story about his employer that doesn’t feature the airship Hindenburg’s bursting like a lava-filled egg over Lakehurst, N.J., on May 6, 1937. “What would happen if people felt compelled to mention Pan Am Flight 103 every time…

The networks are doing their best to translate other foreign “reality” shows to American tastes, among them Chains of Love and Love Test.

Now that Survivor is over, what will we watch? The networks are doing their best to translate other foreign “reality” shows to American tastes: ABC has picked up Britain’s Jailbreak (10 “prisoners” under 24-hr. surveillance try to escape for big money), and NBC has locked up Holland’s Chains of Love…

Sydney will be affected by illegal substances and methods, including EPO. The drug’s introduction in 1987 was followed by a series of mysterious heart attacks among Dutch cyclists.

It isn’t cheating if everybody else is doing it.” So declared Canadian track coach Charlie Francis in 1988 when his sprinter Ben Johnson became the Olympics’ highest-profile disqualification ever by testing positive for steroids. But of 8,465 competitors at Seoul, only Johnson and nine others were booted for drugs. What’s…

Dutch researchers report that using plant-derived margarines once a day at lunch seems to drive down bad-cholesterol levels as effectively as consuming them three times a day.

GOOD NEWS

SURVIVORS An experimental bone-marrow transplant may help treat kidney cancer, a disease so virulent that once it spreads, it kills half its victims within a year. Stem cells–the primordial cells that give rise to new cell lines–are collected from bone marrow. Once transplanted, they generate a…

Dutch researchers interviewed parents of 3,000 babies up to six months old and found that colic was twice as likely in infants whose mothers smoked 15 to 30 cigarettes a day.

LEARNING TO LEARN The thinking has long been that kids with dyslexia and other learning disabilities must work twice as hard to absorb as much as their peers. Now some teachers are making classwork more inviting to all students by adopting dyslexia-friendly “universal instructional designs” that use visual aids like…

To fight climate change wind power is a new technology. The Netherlands will soon be getting into the game in a big way, building one of the world’s largest wind farms five miles offshore.

The ambassadors from the 15-nation European Union got more than they bargained for when they invited National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to lunch two weeks ago. The gathering, a regular ritual in Washington, was held at the Swedish ambassador’s residence, and as often happens, a representative of the White House…

There’s something creepy about how far the Dutch have gone with the law that formally legalizes euthanasia. When it takes effect doctors will be able to euthanize sick children as young as 12.

French writer Emile Durkheim noticed a century ago that such intensely regulated environments as religious sects and military bases had higher suicide rates. Which makes you wonder what he would say about a society that decides to regulate suicide–that actually allows you to apply for it like a driver’s…

Many CAFOs (large farms) in Texas, who are owned by people from the NL, pollute local waters. One result is growing animosity in the region against the Dutch.

For years I have been trying to persuade people that George W. Bush, although no Einstein, is not stupid. Now comes word he is returning to Texas for most of August. He could have gone to Kennebunkport, Maine, instead. I give up. If you put his brain in a…

A 459-ft. barge from the Netherlands, the Giant 4, will raise the sunken Russian nuclear submarine Kursk.

A year after the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk mysteriously exploded and sank with 118 sailors aboard, an international team is trying to raise the vessel–or most of it–to the surface. This week salvagers are scheduled to begin the dangerous process of slicing off the heavily damaged torpedo compartment,…

On Jan. 1 twelve nations switched to one currency. Some 200 Dutch post offices kept their doors closed on the morning of Jan. 2 because the postal bank was not ready for the transition.

In Europe, old fears about Y2K returned as 2K2 loomed. Jan. 1 was the date for the 12-nation switch to one currency, and in the hours leading up to it, there were nightmare scenarios about riots and self-destructing cash machines as lire, francs, guilders, pesetas and deutsche marks were converted…