Amsterdam - The sexual morals of Dutch youth has gone astray, the country's youth and family affairs minister was on Monday quoted as saying in a report by the daily Algemeen Dagblad.

"A girl is seen as an object and sex as a currency. The meaning of love does not play any role anymore in the lives of youngsters," Minister Andre Rouvoet said.

Rouvoet said he wants to raise debate about the subject and emphasized he was not proposing specific legal measures.

Amsterdam - Three finalists were named Thursday in an international architectural competition to design a new home for the International Criminal Court (ICC).

An international jury chaired by Liesbeth van der Pol, the Dutch government's chief architect, picked designs from Ingenhoven Architects of Germany, Schmidt Hammer Lassen/Bosch & Fjord, Arhus of Denmark and Wiel Arets Architects & Associates of the Netherlands.

The winning firm will be decided in the coming months. Construction on the Hague-baed court will begin in 2011. Work is scheduled to be completed by 2014.

Amsterdam  - The value of Dutch insurer giant Aegon's shares fell slightly Thursday on the Amsterdam stock exchange following the publication of its third-quarter company results.

Aegon said it lost 329 million euros (428.92 million dollars) in the third quarter of 2008, below the 350 million euros which the company had announced to shareholders in late October.

By 11 am local time (1000 GMT), Aegon share value stood at 3.92 euros, a drop of 2 per cent.

Aegon said the loss came mainly from the ongoing drop in share value on the stock exchange and write-offs on investments.

Write-offs on the US banks Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, both of which collapsed earlier this fall, amounted to 336 million euros.

Amsterdam  - Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende congratulated Barack Obama on Wednesday with his victory in Tuesday's US presidential elections.

The Dutch prime minister sent a letter to the US president-elect, wishing him success.

In a statement released by the Dutch government communication service RVD, Balkenende further said "it was beautiful to see this election has moved millions of people, both in the US as well as abroad."

Referring, among others, to the global credit crisis, Balkenende said Obama's presidential term will be "challenging" and noted that the need for "intensive trans-Atlantic co-operation" was "never more urgent" than today.

Amsterdam, Nov 5: A team of researchers has found coral reefs growing at depths of six hundred to a thousand meters in the Atlantic Ocean.

Furu Mienis, a researcher from the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), led the research team.

Mienis studied the development of carbonate mounds dominated by cold-water corals in the Atlantic Ocean at depths of six hundred to a thousand meters.

Amsterdam, Nov 5: A researcher has shown that that an alloy of the metals magnesium, titanium and nickel is excellent at absorbing hydrogen, and is sixty percent less than a battery pack, which brings the world a step closer to the everyday use of hydrogen as a source of fuel for powering vehicles.

The researcher in question is Robin Gremaud, who was sponsored by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).

In order to find the best alloy, Gremaud developed a method that enabled simultaneous testing of thousands of samples of different metals for their capacity to absorb hydrogen, which led to the creation of the new alloy.

Hydrogen is considered to be a clean and therefore important fuel of the future.