Amsterdam - It's a beautiful Autumn day in Buitenveldert, one of Amsterdam's most popular neighbourhoods set against a backdrop of high-rises including the headquarters of Dutch ABN Amro and ING Bank.

Children bike around safely here on the broad bicycle paths, separated by trees from the roads.

During office hours, elderly people are strolling around in one of the many parks or chatting on benches at the upscale Gelderland plein shopping centre.

But despite appearances of such a peaceful urban setting, times have changed for Buitenveldert.

Amsterdam- The reserves of Dutch pension funds have dropped dramatically due to investment losses in the ongoing financial crisis, Dutch media reported on Thursday.

The "cover factor" of many funds (a percentage that determines to what extent the funds can meet their obligations to pay pensions) have dropped dramatically in the third quarter of 2008.

Funds are required by law to hold in reserve a minimum of 125 per cent of obligations.

Amsterdam - People are getting goose pimples in front of Amsterdam's Nieuwe Kerk (New Church) these days. "Below us lie victims of the world's first financial crisis," says tour operator Raoul Serree.

This is the site of the "Ellendige Kerkhof," the old graveyard of the "miserables," which included people who had died by execution - or by their own hand.

For 17th-century Holland's Tulip Mania, seen as the earliest historical precedent of the current financial crisis, drove a lot of people to suicide.

Amsterdam  - Dutch police have arrested two blackmailers who are suspected of trying to sell a USB memory stick with sensitive information that had gone missing back to the military, the Defence Ministry confirmed Wednesday.

Officers from the national police force (KM) seized the two men as they turned up for the scheduled handover of money, the ministry said.

The two men, aged 28 and 29, had threatened to hand the electronic data over to the press if the military did not pay them, De Telegraaf newspaper reported.

The memory stick is believed to have contained information about cargo flights to Dutch troops in Afghanistan.

The men, who now face charges of blackmail and fraud, found the memory stick at a car wash.

Amsterdam - The Dutch Schiphol Group and French aviation company Aeroports de Paris (ADP) have signed a cooperation agreement, which includes cross-investment of 8 per cent, the parties announced on Tuesday.

Schiphol is investing 530 million euros (711 million dollars) in ADP while ADP is investing 370 million euros in Schiphol. The top managers of the two companies will take seats on each others' managing boards.

Schiphol, which operates Amsterdam's Schiphol airport, said the cooperation will strengthen the position of both companies.

Amsterdam - Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi, who was convicted for the so-called Lockerbie disaster, is terminally ill with cancer and expected to die within "weeks or months," a Dutch documentary filmmaker told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa early Tuesday.

Libyan former intelligence agent al-Megrahi, 56, was sentenced for life imprisonment in 2001 for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988.

A terrorist bomb on board the aircraft brought the plane down over the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing some 270 people.

The Dutch documentary maker says he was given the information about al-Megrahi by "reliable sources close to a Libyan delegation."