* 30 Mar 2010
* Ottawa Citizen
New political party fights for plants rights

Freedom for ferns, rights for roses and tolerance for tulips may be on the agenda for a new political group that plans to contest June 9 parliamentary elections. Founder Pieter Baas, former director of the National Herbarium, said the Party for the Plants opposes the use of plants for biofuel, wants communities to make free trees available and would tax the stone tiles many Dutch use to pave their back gardens.

* 30 Mar 2010

* AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Hamas police hold up bank to enforce court order

When gunmen burst into Gaza’s Palestine Bank on Monday and demanded a quarter of a million dollars, the branch manager had to give in.

He couldn’t say no to the police.

The incident in Gaza City took place when police run by the Islamist Hamas movement went to impose a court order unfreezing the assets of a health charity at the heart of a bitter factional dispute.

When the Friends of the Patient Society was taken over by Hamas earlier this year, the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank blocked the assets.
A Gaza court run by Hamas then ordered the assets unfrozen and police were dispatched Monday to enforce it, putting them in the odd position of barging into a bank and asking it to hand over the cash.

“Police carried out a court order today in favour of the Friends of the Patient Society,” police spokesman Ayman al-Batniji said.

“ In the beginning there were some problems, but then the branch manager cooperated and implemented the order.”

An official at the Palestine Bank confirmed the police had taken about $ 270,000 U.S., “ by force” and said the lender had suspended operations in protest.

Nearly all Gaza banks are governed by the Palestine Monetary Authority in the West Bank and boycott Gaza’s Hamas-run government.