Amsterdam - The Dutch economy has formally slid into a recession, with fourth-quarter 2008 figures published Friday showing a 0.9 per cent drop from the preceding quarter.

The Central Bureau of Statistics figures were the second straight quarter in which the Dutch economy shrank, thereby fulfilling the formal definition of a recession.

The fourth quarter statistics also point to the biggest quarter- to-quarter decline of the Dutch economy since the early 1980s.

On an annual basis, the fourth-quarter 2008 economy was down 0.6 per cent from the final quarter of 2007, the first year-to-year quarterly drop in five years for the Dutch economy.

Amsterdam - Dutch legislator Geert Wilders is due to travel to Britain on Thursday despite an entry ban from the British authorities, Dutch media reported.

The leader of the liberal-rightist Freedom Party PVV, which is highly critical of Islam and migrants, was invited to London by a member of the House of Lords for a showing of his controversial political film Fitna.

The British authorities recently decided to refuse Wilders entry because the legislator would allegedly pose a threat to public security.

Repeated requests by the Dutch government to Britain to reconsider the entry ban did not have any effect.

It remains unclear whether Wilders will be allowed to board the British airplane at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport.

Rotterdam, Netherlands  - The only Germans in the field at the ABN-AMRO World Tennis crashed out in straight sets on Wednesday with Philipp Kohlschreiber and Rainer Schuettler making first-round exits.

But it was a different story for a French quartet, all of whom advanced with relative ease.

Fourth seed Gilles Simon led the way as he accounted for the 38th-ranked Kohlschreiber 7-5, 7-6 (7-1) two years after the German reached the quarter-finals at the Ahoy centre.

Rotterdam, Netherlands - The only Germans in the field at the ABN-AMRO World Tennis crashed out in straight sets on Wednesday with Philipp Kohlschreiber and Rainer Schuettler making first-round exits.

French fourth seed Gilles Simon accounted for the 38th-ranked Kohlschreiber 7-5, 7-6 (7-1) two years after the German reached the quarter-finals at the Ahoy centre.

Croatian Mario Ancic, losing finalist at the weekend at home in Zagreb, was too much for Schuettler, with the veteran exiting 7-5, 6-2.

Amsterdam - Dutch banking and insurance giant ING announced Wednesday it would scrap 2,700 jobs in the Netherlands as part of worldwide cutbacks unveiled last month.

The group told staff that 1,000 workers would be made redundant, with a further 1,700 positions lost as vacancies were cancelled and retiring staff not replaced.

ING announced on January 26 that it was to lose 7,000 employees worldwide, but Wednesday's announcment was the first concrete details of where the cuts would come.

Amsterdam - A Dutch Catholic priest has been allowed to retain a formal relationship with a woman after a deadline for an appeal against the union expired, Dutch media reported Wednesday.

A Catholic court had previously ruled that Dutch priest Ruud Huysmans could not be held accountable for violating Church law when he had entered a "registered partnership" - a kind of legal cohabitation system in the Netherlands - in the year 2000, a year before a church ban on such partnerships took effect.

The appeal deadline for the ruling expired Wednesday.

In 2008, Rotterdam bishop Ad van Luyn had requested the Catholic court to disband the registered partnership which Huysmans had entered with female theologian Freda Droes.