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

Amsterdam - Dutch nationals buying new cars are increasingly choosing diesel models, according to a report by the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) released on Wednesday.

The CBS said that in 2007, an unprecedented 30 per cent of new private cars were diesel cars.

Seventeen per cent of all Dutch cars run on diesel. This is below the European average of 50 per cent.

In the first six months of 2008, diesel sales in the Netherlands increased by 3.5 per cent compared with the same period in 2007.

By contrast, petrol sales decreased by 0.5 per cent.