SUMMARY: While many Dutch politicians say they dread the economic repercussions of the looming Oct. 31 Brexit deadline, the Netherlands is working to minimize the damage, in part by attracting some of the organizations and businesses that have already fled the United Kingdom. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent Christopher Livesay reports from Amsterdam.
SUMMARY: The Netherlands has become a global leader in implementing the tenets of a “circular economy,” a radical new approach to sustainable living that focuses on reducing consumption, minimizing waste and reusing nearly everything. As Jeffrey Brown reports, some Dutch companies are repurposing discarded materials into other marketable goods, but it can still be a challenge to convince investors.
SUMMARY: In our NewsHour Shares moment of the day, as spring begins, the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Washington showed off one of its biggest exports with a display of some 10,000 tulips.
SUMMARY: As Colorado and Washington begin selling legal marijuana, questions remain about the practical process of changing drug policy. NewsHour travels to the Netherlands -- the one nation that's been openly selling pot for over forty years -- to see what might be in store for the United States. Correspondent Wiliam Brangham and producer Saskia de Melker report.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: When you first visit Amsterdam’s famous coffee shops (that’s what all the marijuana shops here are called), the thing you notice is how normal it all seems.
It’s not unlike a quiet café or Starbucks in the U.S.: people, mostly foreign tourists, sitting around, sipping coffee, all the while openly smoking the marijuana they bought right there in the shop. What could easily get you arrested in most American cities, here, it’s just fine.
SUMMARY: As cities and states across the U.S. grapple with their pension programs, we travel to one country -- The Netherlands -- that seems to have its pension problem solved. Ninety percent of Dutch workers get pensions, and retirees can expect roughly 70% of their working income paid to them for the rest of their lives.
SUMMARY: Justin Fox, the Executive Editor of the Harvard Business Review Group and author of "The Myth of the Rational Market" has studied the Dutch pension system extensively. He discusses what aspects of the system -- mandatory savings -- annuitized payments -- national pools -- might work in the U. S.
SUMMARY: Superstorm Sandy showed U.S. coastal cities the damage water can do -- a threat the Dutch have lived with for centuries. Their system of dams and dikes, locks and levees is keeping the Netherlands safe in a world with rising seas. Miles O'Brien reports on what Americans can learn from the Dutch model of flood management.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): Now to the second installment of our look at what has and has not changed one year after superstorm Sandy blew ashore, taking 181 lives and damaging 650,000 homes.
Many of those affected are still trying to rebuild and to answer the question, are we doing enough to protect ourselves from floods?
In conjunction with NOVA, NewsHour science correspondent Miles O'Brien traveled to the Netherlands for one answer.
MILES O’BRIEN (Newshour): The Netherlands, the name says it all, the lowlands, built on a swampy delta. Much of the country lies below sea level. American Tracy Metz is an author and water management expert living in Amsterdam.
TRACY METZ, water management expert: You really wonder why people settled here at all. This must have been such an uninhabitable, inhospitable place. It's a very soggy delta.
MILES O’BRIEN: That's what these are for. Windmills are essentially pumps.
JUDY WOODRUFF (Newshour): For the first time since World War II, a head of state has been convicted of war crimes. The verdict came today at The Hague in the Netherlands against Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia.
We begin with a report from Alex Thomson of Independent Television News.
ALEX THOMSON: It took Judge Richard Lussick well over two hours to read out his verdict. But that's after a trial that lasted five -- yes, five -- years.
JUDGE RICHARD LUSSICK, Special Court for Sierra Leone: The trial chamber unanimously finds you guilty of aiding and abetting the commission of the following crimes and planning the commission of the following crimes.
ALEX THOMSON: Murder, rape, using child soldiers, mutilation, sex slavery.
Charles Taylor, the former Liberian leader, planned and aided hundreds of thousand of these offenses over a three-year war fought by his militias in neighboring Sierra Leone. Charles Taylor used diamond money to fund his proxy forces fighting in Sierra Leone.
So the court found there was no evidence that Charles Taylor was the commander of the forces in Sierra Leone that committed these atrocities, but there was clear evidence that he'd aided, abetted and planned what they did in that country.
BRENDA HOLLIS, prosecutor: Today is for the people of Sierra Leone who suffered horribly at the hands of Charles Taylor and his proxy forces. This judgment brings some measure of justice to the many thousands of victims who paid a terrible price for Mr. Taylor's crimes.
ALEX THOMSON: That price still very obvious in Sierra Leone today and in The Hague, too. Violent militias run by heads of state, human rights groups have been quick today to say it's a huge message that nobody is now above the law.
They're sincere, but entirely wrong, as defense counsel Courtenay Griffiths Q.C. pointed out.
COURTENAY GRIFFITHS, attorney for Charles Taylor: Have we forgotten Nicaragua? Have we forgotten El Salvador? Have we forgotten the mujahideen in Afghanistan? Whether you're the president of the United States or the prime minister of Britain, if you engage in such covert activities and crimes are committed, yes, haul in before an international court.
ALEX THOMSON: But limited justice, it will be argued, is better than no justice at all, and, in that regard, a little history was made here today.
The Dutch government, one of the most vocal critics of European countries failing to rein in their budgets, quit Monday after failing to agree on a plan to bring its own deficit in line with EU rules.
The government information service announced Queen Beatrix had accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Mark Rutte and his Cabinet after a meeting in which Rutte told her talks on a new austerity package had failed over the weekend.
Although the Netherlands has relatively low levels of national debt, its economy is in recession and it is expected to post a deficit of 4.6% in 2012.
Rutte is to address parliament Tuesday to discuss interim measures to keep public finances in order and schedule new elections. No date for elections was immediately announced, but opposition lawmakers called for a vote as soon as possible.
The Dutch government collapse came a day after the first round election victory of France's soft-on-austerity socialist candidate Francois Hollande. It calls into question whether austerity policies that are causing trauma in countries such as Greece, Spain and Portugal can be enforced even in "core" European countries such as France — or the Netherlands, one of the few along with Germany to maintain an AAA credit rating.
Rutte's hopes to clinch a deal to cut the target below the EU's 3% target evaporated Saturday, when his most important political ally, populist euroskeptic Geert Wilders walked out of the talks, saying a slavish adherence to European rules was foolish and would harm the Dutch economy.
That view is shared by some, such as the government's own Central Plan Bureau, and opposed by others, such as Dutch Central Bank President Klaas Knot.
"We don't want our pensioners to suffer for the sake of the dictators in Brussels," Wilders said.
European Commissioner Neelie Kroes called Wilders a hypocrite, since the Netherlands itself, along with Germany, had been one of the loudest in demanding Brussels adopt a 3% deficit limit in the first place.
"Pointing to Brussels now is dumb, it's untrue, it's distracting, and it doesn't solve anything," said Kroes, who is a member of Rutte's free-market VVD party.
A spokesman for the German finance ministry said that despite developments over the weekend, approval for Europe's plan to tackle government debt by cutting spending is actually "increasing." He didn't give evidence backing that assertion.
"We should not now simply let ourselves be thrown off track by daily developments," Martin Kotthaus told reporters in Berlin.
He said Europe's recent reforms had been well received at a weekend meeting of the International Monetary Fund. "The road is right; Europe has done its homework," he said.
Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager insisted he still plans to submit an outline budget to Brussels by April 30, as mandated by European rules.
He said he was optimistic about prospects for agreeing some cuts with opposition parties in Parliament.
"We'll show the financial markets, in consultation with Parliament, that the Netherlands' decades-long budgetary discipline will remain," he told reporters after a brief Cabinet meeting ahead of the resignation.
Opposition lawmakers say they are prepared to work with Rutte to draw up a 2013 budget.
However, Diederik Samsom, leader of the opposition Labor Party, signaled he would not insist on bringing the Dutch deficit back in line with EU norms next year.
"As far as we are concerned, you don't have to reach 3% by 2013," he said.
The package Rutte had been negotiating with Wilders would have slashed foreign aid and hastened a planned increase in the retirement age to 66 from 65.
Wilders, who is publishing a book in the U.S. next week about his struggle against Islam, said abruptly Saturday he could not support the package because it was unfriendly to the elderly.
Yields on Dutch bonds were up 0.11 of a percentage point higher than they were before the weekend. Netherlands government bonds are trading around 2.35% for 10-year debt, about 0.6 percentage points more than long-term German government bonds.
Ratings agency Fitch last week warned the Netherlands stands to lose its AAA credit rating depending on the outcome of the budget talks that failed Saturday.
Central Bank President Knot has predicted Dutch interest rates will increase by around a percentage point if the country's rating is cut, making budget reform vital.
