10,000 hungry vultures are causing panic in the Pyrenees and Basque Country. They have been attacking live animals and have also been aggressive towards humans. The vultures are starving due to a new EU directive which prohibits farmers from leaving cattle carcasses on their land to rot. The dead animals must now be burned or disposed of in another way. The initiative is to prevent disease spread among cattle but the results have been devastating for the vultures. More »

Passengers of the Python roller coaster in the Dutch theme park De Efteling were lucky to survive a serious incident yesterday. The double-loop roller coaster (constructed in 1981) had gotten stuck at a high point of the track, with its first few cars hanging over the the incline. More »

Last Sunday the cockpit of an Air France Boeing 707 was sunk in De Beldert lake in Zoelen, the Netherlands. The sinking took place over a year later than originally planned. By the end of the day nearly 20 divers had already visited the new wreck. More »

The legendary musician Peter Gabriel was stranded on the A27 highway in the Netherlands on Saturday when his bus broke down in flames. More »

The saga of the Rotterdam ‘parkshuttle’ continues. After nearly eight years of setbacks (including the December 2005 crash), the driverless robot buses — that are supposed to bring commuters from a metro station to an office park on a two-kilometer special road — takes another blow as the company that made the buses has filed for bankruptcy. More »

After Germany and Poland, Comedy Central will now also start in the Netherlands. The new TV channel, owned by MTV Networks, will start on 30 April and will broadcast on an existing channel only from 8pm to 5am every day. They have just launched their website at comedycentral.nl where you can see their TV schedule. This includes That 70s Show, Saturday Night Live, The Office US and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. More »

Park World has a very cool report with figures for theme park attendance over 2006. Eight of the top ten parks are Disney; Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom tops the list with 16,640,000 visitors. I was also surprised to see that Disneyland Paris wasn’t doing all that bad at number five in the world with 10,600,000 visitors, just ahead of Epcot’s 10,460,000. More »

Check out this article from the Guardian about an unusual wildlife operation. More »

An article on the BBC website last Friday revealed that British households waste over 3 million tons of food per year. That amounts to just under a third of all food bought, although half of that is inedible matter such as packaging. Wasting food has been a pet peeve of mine for some time, so it’s nice to hear that someone is taking notice. More »

Kingfishers in the Netherlands are doing exceptionally well due to the recent mild winters. In the Dutch language they are called ijsvogels, which means ice birds. Despite that name, the birds do not fare well in cold winters. More »