Libya still dominates the front pages, but the euro crisis is also hot news and embarrassing the government. There's a brain drain from Britain and another possible member of the royal family. It’s all in the Dutch dailies.

Fighting in Tripoli
Libya dominates all the front pages again today, with the news of the “euphoria and tension in Tripoli” as Trouw puts it. The paper says that, after taking large areas of the capital with lightning speed, the rebels began to celebrate in Green Square. But, it goes on, fighting again got the upper hand yesterday morning.

De Telegraaf follows the same line, but puts a more dramatic spin on events: “Slaughter in Tripoli” is its headline. An on-the-spot correspondent tells us how Gaddafi’s troops opened tank fire on the jubilant crowd in Green Square, which was immediately renamed Martyrs’ Square.

AD is one of the papers which ask “But where is Gaddafi?” It says no one knows the hated dictator’s whereabouts. De Volkskrant reminds us that with his “bizarre appearance and eccentric behaviour” he demanded attention from his people and from the world for 42 years. Now, he has suddenly become just a shadow: an angry 69-year-old man who’s not been seen in public since 12 June.

Even though he can’t be found, says nrc.next, it’s clear that Muammar Gaddafi’s time is over. He was a “villain, a nutter, a terrorist leader and a killer of dissidents”. But, the paper reminds us, perhaps ominously, he was latterly a friend of the West.

Euro and Greece trouble the cabinet
Trouw reserves a good chunk of its front page to report yet more trouble for the Dutch government on the latest eurozone bailout for Greece. The problem now is that Finland is apparently demanding collateral from Greece in exchange for its contribution to the bailout. MPs are furious and the paper describes the lengths Finance Minister Jan Kees de Jager was forced to go to assuage parliament yesterday.

First he said the collateral was illegal, then he promised MPs that if Finland got it, so would the Netherlands. The opposition Labour Party - on whose support the government is relying to get the bailout through parliament – argued it would just be better to veto the Finnish arrangement.

The euro crisis is taken up more broadly by nrc.next. It wheels out a “former top investor and economist” who says Greece should give up the single currency. He believes the country’s problems would never have got so bad if it had kept the drachma. “The euro,” he says damningly, “is a failed experiment.”

AD homes in on Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s performance during the euro crisis. Getting personal, it runs a picture of Mr Rutte, all smiles, giving the thumbs up. It says his slick image has been hit by a series of recent gaffes.

After his ‘honeymoon period’ in office, he’s now being described as too nonchalant, too much of an undergraduate type who readily deploys his gift of the gab. AD tells us that experts are saying he should repackage himself and quickly: “No jokes, no nonsense. This crisis is too serious for that”

Brain drain from Britain
Today’s de Volkskrant runs a piece explaining that British students have “discovered the Netherlands”. It’s good to gain international experience, but the most important motivation is money. In Great Britain, the paper explains, annual university fees are over 10,000 euros, but in the Netherlands they’re just 1,700 euros.

“I’m doing something unusual for a British student,” says 19-year-old Ritwik Swain who studies at Groningen University. “I’m getting international experience and saving lots of money.”

Just a few years ago, British students didn’t even consider studying in the Netherlands. Now that a growing number of Dutch universities are offering first degree courses in English, the Netherlands has become the third country of choice after Australia and the United States for British students.

Right royal scandal
The mass readership of De Telegraaf woke up this morning to find the news splashed across the front page that Queen Beatrix’ father, the late Prince Bernhard, “had another child”. After the prince's death, it was revealed that he had two illegitimate daughters. This would be a third.

De Telegraaf wisely puts its headline in quotation marks: this is not a hard fact, but an allegation. It’s made by “royalty reporter” Marc van der Linden in his book, Prince Bernhard’s Women, which, the paper helpfully fills us in, comes out tomorrow.

The woman in question is Dutch, 65 years old and lives abroad. She is said to have been the issue of “a passionate encounter of the prince” during the heady days around the liberation of the Netherlands in 1945.

About halfway down the page, we read that we shouldn’t get too excited though. Professor Doctor Cees Fasseur, who has himself written a “best seller” on the prince, assures us: “The royal archives are full of letters from people claiming to be members of the House of Orange.”