A baby was born on New Year’s Eve on Northwest Airlines Flight 59 from Schiphol Airport near Amsterdam to Boston, USA, reports Fox News. Phil Orlandella, spokesperson for Logan International Airport, said that a doctor and paramedic who happened to be on board assisted with the birth. Upon arrival the baby was treated as a Canadian citizen, as it was born while flying over Canada.

I would assume that births in airplanes to the US are rare, as women who are more than 32 weeks pregnant a rarely allowed to fly on American flights.

Welcome to this big blue marble, baby, and a happy new year to you, and also a happy new year to all our readers!

We’ll leave the political scandals and rantings to the Dutch newspapers. Only two souls post at 24 oranges (we are always looking for more – drop us an e-mail – no really!), and one of them is enjoying a vacation in Québec, Canada, where these lovely pumpkins were snapped.

Canada celebrates Halloween, while the Netherlands does not. When the Dutch do try to celebrate it, they often take elements of Christmas and give them an orange and black twist, like cakes and gifts. It’s weird.

And then a note to those city employees that make so much noise blowing leaves in the street twice a week and in some places on Sundays:

They sell plastic garbage bags with funny faces here that look like Halloween pumpkins. They are more efficient, nicer and the kids like to help rake the leaves. It has to be cheaper and less noisy than those stupid blowers.

More real news tomorrow, although this has a Dutch-Canadian connection.

Yesterday Mayor Job Cohen received an honorary Doctor of Common Laws degree from the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada. Cohen received this distinction because he was the first mayor to perform a same-sex marriage in 2001. He had presided over the necessary legislation only months earlier while serving in the Ministry of Justice. In 2005, Cohen was named one of Time Magazine’s European Heroes for his position on the murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist in November 2004. Cohen rallied the citizens of Amsterdam – Muslim and non-Muslim – to condemn the murder and called for unity and tolerance in the wake of the racial tensions that followed the incident. Led by Cohen, citizens of the traditionally liberal city protested in the streets in outrage over the attack and Cohen was credited with diffusing a situation ripe with racial and religious violence into one of dialogue and social progress.

(Link: rtl, University of Windsor)