New York/Amsterdam  - The history of the Big Apple began 400 years ago when the Dutch ship, the Halve Maen, commanded by Captain Henry Hudson arrived at what is now Manhattan.

The ship embarked on its journey in Amsterdam and both cities are celebrating the anniversary over the coming months with a series of parties, parades and concerts.

Amsterdam is hosting New York jazz nights while the Big Apple has invited some big names from The Netherlands such as Dans Theater II and the country's symphony orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

Events begin on April 6 - the 400th anniversary of the day the Maen, flying under the flag of the Royal Dutch East India Company, began its journey westwards with the Englishman Hudson on board.

Amsterdam - Dutch aviation experts began Monday with the work to remove the wreckage of the Turkish Airlines Boeing 737-800 plane in a painstaking effort to reassemble the plane to try to help determine the cause of the crash.

Dutch media reported that work on Monday and Tuesday would concentrate on removing small parts from the wreckage from the site where the plane went down on February 25.

Removal of the cockpit and further fuselage sections, the wings and the tail will take place on the following three days through Friday.

Amsterdam - The mood at the Dutch stock exchange remained pessimistic on Friday with Amsterdam's main index AEX remaining under 200 points.

By 12:50 pm (1150 GMT) the AEX stood at 199 points, slightly up from its 15-year-low of 198.22 points reached half an hour before.

Bank and insurer giant ING Group saw its share value drop most (down 5.58 per cent) and now stood at 2.469 euros (3.099 dollars).

Next in line were TNT postal service (down 2.74 per cent) and chip manufacturer AMSL (down 2.50 per cent).

Amsterdam/Madrid - Dutch authorities have requested the extradition of a Colombian national from Madrid to the Netherlands, Dutch media reported on Friday.

Spanish police detained the 26-year-old in Madrid after he was suspected of robbing a jewellery shop at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport in August.

The man allegedly belongs to an international ring robbing banks and jewellery shops.

Last August six men and three women, all believed to be South Americans, seized booty worth 117,000 euros at Gassan Diamonds in Amsterdam.

They were believed to have flown in from Paris and committed the robbery during a 90-minute stopover before flying on to Istanbul.

Amsterdam - Controversial far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders claimed in an interview Thursday that a court had based its decision to prosecute him for discrimination and incitement to hatred on false quotes.

Wilders, famous for his anti-Islam film Itna and refused entry to Britain last month, confirmed he had filed an appeal with the High Court of Justice against a district court's decision to prosecute him.

In an interview with Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf, the leader of the Freedom Party (PVV) said the district court had based its decision on remarks attributed to him, but in reality originating from other people. In other instances he was simply misquoted, he said.

Ankara - Turkish Airlines Tuesday announced that it was prepared to immediately pay compensation to the families of those killed and all surviving passengers on board flight TK 1951 which crashed while approaching Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport last week.