Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Cash for Clunkers.....The European way!
Amsterdam police are deeply concerned about a new craze in which vandals toss parked Smart cars into the city’s canals.
The so-called ‘Smart tossing’ takes place mainly during the weekend, when many youths are out for a night on the town.
Dutch media indicate that environmentally-friendly "smart" cars, tiny two-seaters, are being picked up by roving bands of "pranksters" and tossed into the city's canals.
According to the Dutch-language Telegraff, five of the smart cars have been thrown in the water in the past two weeks. Authorities fear the practice will spread to other locations.
Interestingly, the car-chuckers are called pranksters whereas if they set the cars on fire, they would be called unemployed, disenfranchised minority youths protesting their poverty-stricken lives.
Another "only in Belgium story"
Escaping prisoners rob banks in Belgium
Three men on the run after escaping from a Belgian prison are reported to have carried out no fewer than four bank robberies since their escape on July 23, said VRT news on Saturday.
Ashraf Sekkaki and his two accomplices have been identified on CCTV footage from four small banks that were robbed earlier this week. The banks were all robbed in the same way by three masked men. In all four cases, the robbers made their escape in a small black car, said VRT news.
A clerk at one of the banks that was robbed recognized Sekkaki and Abdelhaq Melloul-Khayari. The two are also clearly recognizable on video footage of the robbery of a bank in Retie, Antwerp province. The third fugitive, Mohammed Johri, is believed to be the driver of the getaway car.
The three men made their escape from a high security prison in Bruges on board a hijacked helicopter. They later hijacked a car in the East Flemish town of Aalter. Although the car was later found, the fugitives are still at large.
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