Dutch

Male songbirds that sing in a low, "sexy" voice are most likely to snag mates, but noisy human environments are cramping their style, forcing some species to sing shrilly to pierce the auditory urban blight. Now, Dutch scientists have shown that male great tits can overcome this dilemma by pulling out their Barry White impressions at just the right moment. Previous research had already established that lower-frequency mating songs were perceived to be sexier. In many creatures — including, perhaps, humans — a deep voice correlates with size, fitness and overall masculinity.

It's been two years since DJ Dave Nada spawned a dance genre that propelled him from Washington, D.C., nightclub fixture to unwitting sire of a rhythmic revolution. Since 2009, moombahton — Nada's woofer-rattling concoction of Dutch house and reggaeton — has become a rapidly mutating force in DJ culture, collecting piles of fans and eclectic sub-genres. So, when Nada decided to relocate to Los Angeles in 2010 to further his DJ career, the monstrous music movement he hatched in D.C. wasn't far behind.

A drawing by Rembrandt was stolen from an exhibit at a luxury hotel in Marina del Rey over the weekend in what authorities called a carefully planned heist. The small pen-and-ink drawing, valued at more than $250,000, was taken from the Ritz-Carlton Marina del Rey during an exhibit Saturday night. Los Angeles County sheriff's investigators said a man working with accomplices is believed responsible. After reviewing hotel surveillance footage, detectives believe the theft of the artwork from a private exhibit in the hotel was well orchestrated, Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Whitmore said.

It's been a while since one of those sweeping historical dramas wrapped around a tale of star-crossed lovers has come along. The new Dutch film "Bride Flight" is satisfying in that way, weaving together the fates of four young Dutch strangers caught up in the post-WWII migration to New Zealand. Fiancés await the three girls; adventure the guy; all in a land they believe holds infinite promise. Director Ben Sombogaart begins the story in the present day with a wonderfully weathered Frank (veteran actor Rutger Hauer playing a rugged youth in his later years)

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How can we best combat the anti-immigrant populists who are setting the political pace in many European countries? This month, a verdict is due in the trial of Dutch politician Geert Wilders for making anti-Islamic statements — such as calling the Koran a "fascist book" that should be banned. At the same time, the Netherlands' center-right coalition government depends for its survival on Wilders' Party for Freedom, which won more than 15% of the vote in the last general election. Wilders' price included a commitment to a burka ban. In the Netherlands, as elsewhere in Europe, center-right parties have been trying to win back voters who have turned to such anti-foreigner populists by adopting toned-down versions of their rhetoric and policies.

The Getty Museum is the first museum in North America to agree to return a painting to the heir of Jacques Goudstikker, a noted Dutch-Jewish art dealer whose huge collection was dispersed after he fled the 1940 Nazi invasion of Holland, with many of the prime works taken for the personal collection of Adolf Hitler's chief deputy, Hermann Goering. The museum's two-paragraph announcement Monday said it had bought "Landscape With Cottage and Figures," painted around 1640 by Pieter Molijn, "in good faith" at a 1972 auction.

Dutch physicist Simon van der Meer, who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physics with Italian physicist Carlo Rubbia for the discovery of the elementary particles known as W and Z that link two of the four fundamental forces of nature, died of undisclosed causes March 4 in Geneva. He was 85. The "standard model" of physics says that there are four fundamental forces in nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong force (which holds atoms and elementary particles like protons and neutrons together)

Straightforward and solid but only mildly involving, "Winter in Wartime" is the coming-of-age story of a Dutch teen boy, set during the final months of World War II. Director Martin Koolhoven elicits strong performances in the handsomely photographed feature but fails to sustain tension, creating a work that's smooth and reassuring, never truly gripping. Based on a 1972 children's novel by Jan Terlouw, the film avoids troubling ambiguities, resolving each challenge or conflict almost as soon as it arises.

Three crew members of a Dutch military helicopter have been held since Sunday by forces loyal to Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi after being prevented from completing an evacuation mission, Dutch defense officials said Thursday. The three are believed to be the first foreign troops to be held by the Kadafi regime since it began its bloody crackdown against antigovernment protesters, which has drawn international condemnation. The Dutch Defense Ministry said "intensive diplomatic talks" were underway to try to secure the release of the crew, whose identities are not being made public.