Football hooligans on the rampage in Amsterdam, Mexican flu back in the headlines, chatting with the stars - VIPs' numbers available via internet, and a spider plague creeping across the Netherlands.

Wednesday's sports pages were filled with articles anticipating the England-Netherlands international friendly that kicked off in Amsterdam's Arena stadium yesterday evening but today's papers are filled with news of the hooliganism that blighted the evening for many fans and for hundreds of innocent bystanders caught up in the violence. It may well have been a friendly match but the fans were certainly not friendly and riot police swarming through the city centre doesn't make it a very friendly place to be.

Football hooligans on the rampage in Amsterdam
"Dutch hooligans attack England fans" headlines AD on its front page above a photo of riot police lined up in the centre of Amsterdam. According to the paper, some 250 Amsterdam Ajax and Twente SC fans ran yelling and screaming through the red light district attacking English football fans, who had travelled to Dutch capital to see the England-Netherlands match.

De Volkskrant writes that Deputy Mayor Lodewijk Asscher had announced extra security measures in the capital in the run-up to the match and hundreds of riot police were deployed in the city centre. Around 30 people were arrested.

England fan Simon Lancaster tells AD, "There were hundreds of them, they were throwing tables, chairs, and bottles at us, and we ran inside cafe to hide". Another fan, who was hit over the head with a bottle says, it all happened so fast, I heard screaming and then he smashed me over the head with a bottle".
And people wonder why football fans have a bad name.
 

Mexican flu back in the headlines
Several papers report that an Amsterdam hospital has opened a separate outpatient clinic where people can be tested for (A) H1N1 or Mexican flu. De Volkskrant writes that the clinic ignores National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) guidelines, issued on Friday, which state that only those considered at high risk should be tested. The Dutch Association of General Practitioners (LHV) says the clinic is a danger to public health, "If people think they are sick, they shouldn't be sitting in a crowded waiting room infecting other people," said a spokesperson.

NRC Handelsblad reports that the Dutch Association of Dispensing Chemists (KNMP) is furious because private companies, including gas and electricity companies and Feyenoord football club have purchased large stocks of the antiviral drug Tamiflu and handed out to employees as a precautionary measure.

According to the KNMP, it is extremely inadvisable to take Tamiflu unless it is absolutely necessary. There are serious side effects and it only works for six weeks. The organisation also advises against taking Tamiflu for a second time as, "Nobody knows what the side effects are". The LHV has warned against prescribing Tamiflu as a precautionary measure as it could increase resistance to the drug.

More problems for public transport swipe card
Trouw reports there are more problems with the public transport swipe card, due to be introduced as the sole payment method on Amsterdam public transport on 27 August. The Protestant paper says people find the touch screen machines used to purchase and upload credits to the swipe card difficult to operate as, "the screens have to be hit really hard before they respond and others simply do not work".

Amsterdam's public transport company GVB has filed a formal complaint with Thales, the company that produces the touch screen machines. A similar problem occurred in January of this year when Rotterdam introduced the swipe card and Thales was fined several times.

The East-West Consortium, the company in charge of introducing the swipe card, tells Trouw that the problems have been caused by the increase in the number of people using the machines. "We never thought so many people would be using them," said a spokesperson for the company.

According to Rover, the Public Transport-users Association, it's ridiculous to blame the problems on the number of people using the machines. A Rover spokesperson tells the paper, "An evaluation of the swipe card's introduction in Rotterdam revealed a huge number of problems. It appears that the GVB failed to learn anything at all from Rotterdam's experiences".

Chatting with the stars: Dutch VIPs' numbers available via internet
The story vying for the reader's attention on AD’s front-page this morning is news that dozens of Dutch VIPs were surprised yesterday when their telephones started ringing and just didn't stop. Tweakers.net, a Dutch website that evaluates and compares hardware and software, discovered that the firewall and security for an internal website operated by the Dutch regional press bureau (GPD), was so full of holes that the telephone numbers of thousands of well-known Dutch people were extremely easy to access.

Tweakers' editor-in-chief Wilbert de Vries tells the populist tabloid, "We exposed the problem at GPD's website because security for the site is so poor," adding, "we didn't expose it until 24 hours after we had warned them about the problem". GPD says the situation is extremely annoying but refused further comment

Spider plague creeping across the Netherlands
It sounds like the plot for a bad horror film but it's true, creeping, crawling, scuttling things are plaguing the Netherlands. We've already had plagues of wasps and ladybirds and now spiders are spinning their silken webs across the country and frightening people. AD interviews Dio Naaktgeboren, operations manager at Rentokil: "There's been a 20 percent increase in insect numbers in the Netherlands this summer and that has caused a corresponding increase in spider numbers". Mr Naaktgeboren says "Rentokil has been inundated with calls from across the country about spider trouble".

It's not just people who are afraid of spiders who have been calling Rentokil, security firms and other businesses have also been calling as spiders set off motion detectors when they scuttle past, triggering burglar alarms. Security cameras that respond to movement have also recorded hours and hours of web spinning. Until very recently, Rentokil had to disappoint people complaining about spiders, as killing the eight-legged beasties was illegal. Mr Naaktgeboren, who emphasises that spiders are extremely useful, says pesticide regulations were relaxed at the end of June and Rentokil is now allowed to kill spiders.