The big news in today's Dutch papers is the dismissal of Tariq Ramadan as Rotterdam Council's integration advisor. Following earlier allegations of his being anti-gay and anti-women, the final straw was his continuing, after the recent violence in Iran, to work for Press TV, a station bankrolled by the Iranian government.

 
Nrc.next quotes Councillor Rik Grashoff: "This indirect relationship with the repressive regime, even being seen to be associated with it, is unacceptable". Mr Ramadan is also being dismissed from his post as guest professor at Rotterdam's Erasmus University, a chair financed by the city council. For the university Dick Douwes says: "You can't explain this link with the regime, certainly not to our students, some of whom are from Iran".

 
In de Volkskrant, Mr Grashoff endorses Mr Ramadan's claim that he has been the victim of a witch-hunt in certain areas of the press, but stresses this has nothing to do with his being sacked. He tells the paper that when asked to sever his links with Press TV, as other journalists had done after the suppression of the recent protests in Iran, Mr Ramadan "displayed no grasp of the urgency of the situation" and wanted "time to think about it".

 
De Volkskrant runs a short front-page interview with Mr Ramadan, who vows to fight the Rotterdam decision in the courts. He says he is the victim of political Muslim-bashing and angst in the Netherlands and defends his moderate credentials. "You shouldn't look at the situation in Iran with Western eyes," he explains. "You can sometimes achieve more from within. I wanted to talk this over with the council."
 

Frustrated adoption agency chief resigns
Hailed by some colleagues as a whistle-blower, Ina Hut is resigning as head of the largest Dutch adoption agency. She tells Trouw that international adoption is less about the good of the child and more about the desire of Western couples to become parents. She complains of "market forces, corruption and sabotage".

 
Ms Hut has had a long battle with the Dutch justice ministry over adoption from China where, it is said, children are kidnapped and traded for the adoption market. The ministry found it "unacceptable" that she should investigate for herself whether Chinese children's homes regularly bought children.
 

She denies she wanted to launch an undercover operation and says it was suggested that, if she went to China to investigate, the Dutch authorities would rescind her agency's permit. "I can no longer deal with these sorts of practices," she tells the paper.
 

Nuisance neighbours to be tackled
The AD's headline tells us: "Bad neighbours being taken to court". Apparently, it's not just people in rented accommodation who can lose their homes if they behave badly. Even home owners found to be terrorising the neighbours can have their houses taken away. A growing number of us are going to court to have our neighbours evicted after mediation has failed.

The Labour Party (PvdA) thinks councils are not dealing with the problem well enough and has set up a "national neighbour nuisance helpline". In its first week, it received 300 calls. A Labour MP tells the paper that 80 percent of the complaints were about home owners and not tenants. "Disputes with home owners is a big problem, and it's underrated," she says.

 
Higher jackpots increase threats
De Telegraaf today exposes a nasty side to national lottery fever. Whipped up by promises of a pay-out of 27.5 million, which actually never materialised, some people seem to have flipped and are threatening the lottery's top management. The threats have become so serious that lottery chief Yvonne van Oort is being given extra protection.

 
The increasingly huge jackpots and a number of blunders made by the lottery company have led to the worrying situation. The paper, perhaps rather disingenuously, says the threats against Ms Van Oort have nothing to do with recent reports about her salary of 420,000 euros a year.
 

Ecstatic car talk ruins case
The prosecution service in central Dutch town of Zutphen has admitted making a mistake in a major, and hitherto confidential, drugs investigation says nrc.next. The case will probably now fail to make it to court.

The police transcript of a suspect's tapped telephone call mistakenly included the words "ecstasy trade" while the conversation was actually about a Mercedes S400 car.