Amsterdam - Short selling on the Dutch stock exchange will be prohibited for the next three months, Dutch Finance Minister Wouter Bos announced early Monday on Dutch television.

Short selling is when investors sell stock they borrowed from its owners, speculating the stock will lose value. If indeed it does, they can repurchase the same stock cheaper, increasing their profits.

Short selling by investors is believed to have played an important role in the ongoing global credit crisis. The US, Britain and several other countries have also imposed a temporary ban on the practice.

It marks the first time since the global credit crisis began in the summer of 2007 that the Dutch government has actively intervened in Dutch markets.

Amsterdam - Men, not women, are to blame that young adults remain bachelors against their will. Women aren't perfect, but men have no idea how to treat women.

Men are all too often rude and selfish - yet that only hides the fact that they are actually very insecure and have no idea what love and sex are really about.

This was the message from most dating coaches at the Real Man Conference at a two-day international convention in Amsterdam on the art of seducing women.

Many of the 430 participants agreed with the coaches: not women but men have a problem, and it's time they improved themselves.

Amsterdam - Hundreds of would-be womanizers from more than 25 countries attended the opening of Amsterdam's Real Man Conference on Saturday, billed as the "biggest event on seducing women ever."

More than 320 participants gathered to hear pick-up tips from a range of speakers - advertised as "a dozen of the finest womanizers" on the conference website - at the two-day event being held at the RAI Conference Centre in Amsterdam.

Amongst the speakers were individuals such as AFC Adam, Sean Messenger, Zan Perrion and Johnny Soporno. The advertised ticket price was 297 euros.

Amsterdam - The mayors of the four largest Dutch cities have urged the Justice Ministry to close a loophole in the law that allows certain men to gain Dutch citizenship, despite having concluded polygamous marriages abroad, it was reported Frida.

The law in question applies to men of foreign origin who were born in the Netherlands and returned to their country of origin, where they concluded the marriages, and then returned to the Netherlands.

Amsterdam - Dutch smokers, who want to smoke in a restaurant or cafe, can now click onto a new smokers restaurant database, according to the online publisher Tressis.

Smoking was recently banned in all Dutch restaurants, cafes and bars, except in places that have separate smokers' rooms or corners with ventilation facilities.

However, the places where smoking is allowed are in the minority and are hard to find.

By registering one's restaurant on the website www. hiermaghetwel. nl, cafes and restaurants can help smokers find them easily and quickly.

The database covers all of the Netherlands and an estimated 200 restaurants, cafes and bars have already registered.

Amsterdam - The global financial crisis has cost Dutch banks more than 16 billion euros (22.64 billion dollars) since August 2007, the Dutch Central Bank (DNB) wrote in its quarterly report releas