Amsterdam - Male victims of domestic abuse in the Netherlands can seek refuge in special shelters such as that due to open Tuesday in The Hague by Deputy Health Minister Jet Bussemaker.

The four biggest cities - Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht - each received 200,000 euros (255,920 dollars) to provide safe havens for abused men, the ministry said Monday.

Each city should provide 10 shelters. Half the total of 40 abused men's homes will be secret shelters.

Amsterdam  - Several dozen Aja

Amsterdam  - A Dutch national has died of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease, or mad cow disease, the Dutch Royal Institute for Health and the Environment RIVM said in a statement released on Monday.

The patient died in early January.

Post-mortem investigations performed by the Utrecht Medical Center, the teaching hospital affiliated with Utrecht University, and the Creutzfeld-Jacob Disease expertise centre in Rotterdam, confirmed the patient died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob.

Amsterdam - Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende on Monday announced the establishment of an "independent committee" to investigate the previous government's "political support" for the US- led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

In recent weeks opposition has mounted from opposition parties and within the government to openly question the then-government's decision making process in the weeks leading to the Iraq war.

The Dutch government did not provide military support in 2003 but did make a statement of "political support" for the Iraq war.

Amsterdam - Dutch Agriculture Minister Gerda Verburg was due to sign a petition Monday calling on the United Nations to accept a Universal Declaration for Animal Welfare.

Animal rights have become an integral part of the Dutch political agenda ever since the Netherlands became the first country in the world to get a party for animal rights in parliament in 2006.

Animal welfare in the bio-industry, animal transport and slaughtering methods are discussed daily in parliament.

Amsterdam  - A Dutch company says it has developed the world's first internet search engine that guarantees users absolute privacy.

Ixquick (www. ixquick. com), established in 1998, is a so-called meta-search engine, which uses the search results of several search engines to provide its own list of results. The search is available in 17 languages.

"Ixquick is the first search engine that does not even store IP addresses temporarily," Ixquick CEO Robert Beens told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.