Dutch businesses threatened on Saturday to sue far-right legislator Geert Wilders if his anti-Islam film led to a commercial boycott, as EU foreign ministers and more Muslim countries condemned it.
"I don't know if Wilders is rich, or well-insured, but in the case of a boycott, we would look to see if we could make him bear responsibility," Bernard Wientjes, chairman of the Dutch employers' group VNO-NCW, told the newspaper Het Financieel Dagblad.
"A boycott would hurt Dutch exports. Businesses such as Shell, Philips and Unilever are easily identifiable as Dutch companies," he was quoted as saying.
Former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad called for a boycott on Saturday, echoing a call by media in Jordan.
"If we boycott Dutch products, they will have to close down their businesses," Mohamad said. "If the world's 1.3 billion Muslims unite and say they won't buy, then it [the boycott] will be effective."
Muslim nations including Malaysia and Singapore have condemned the 17-minute film Fitna, released online on Thursday, which links images of extremist attacks to verses from the Koran.
Although there were no mass disturbances in the Netherlands, in Utrecht two cars were set afire on Friday night, with a message calling for the Wilders' death.
Late on Friday the British Web site host pulled Fitna from its site www.liveleak.com, citing threats made to staff. It can still be seen on YouTube and other sites.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned the film, calling it "offensively anti-Islamic."
The Dutch government rejected the film, which appeared two years after clashes were sparked by the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed in Danish papers.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
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