A massive fire in Wolvega on Saturday destroyed 30 garage units on Chopinstraat triggering evacuations and leaving some residents unable to return to their homes due to lingering carbon monoxide required extensive efforts from firefighters who worked into the night to extinguish the blaze Authorities evacuated 42 nearby homes due to heavy smoke with approximately 50 residents provided temporary shelter at a care center on Steenwijkerweg While most were able to return home Saturday night residents of two homes remain displaced due to unsafe carbon monoxide levels Temporary accommodations were arranged for them which occurred in a densely populated residential area Firefighters used cranes to pull apart the damaged garages to gain better access to the flames An NL-Alert was issued for the entire town earlier in the evening but was not formally canceled to avoid disturbing residents overnight firefighters had completed extinguishing the fire but the site remained cordoned off for safety and Bachstraat were particularly affected by the evacuation and emergency responders continued monitoring affected homes for potential hazards This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks The action you just performed triggered the security solution There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page Royal Friesland Foods is a Dutch-based dairy company with interests across Western and Central Europe is one of the oldest cheese producers in the Netherlands producing 350,000t per year of various cheeses The company was founded in 1879 and currently employs more than 18,000 personnel Following the company’s 125th anniversary in 2004 the company was granted the royal charter from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands Friesland Foods Cheese decided to increase the efficiency of its cheese packaging operation at its Friesland’s KH de Jong facility in Wolvega by installing robot systems across three packaging lines Over 350t of Edam is produced per week at the Wolvega facility and packaged in three different sizes: 1.9kg The naked cheese arrives at the packaging facility in transportation trays and racks before maturing prior to packaging At the end of the maturing process the rack of cheese is transported to the buffering area at the start of the packaging line The buffering area can hold five full and five empty racks which are cycled through to the depalletising area A Fanuc Robotics R-2000iB takes a full tray (five lines of seven cheeses) from the rack and transfers a line of seven cheeses using vacuum cups onto a conveyor The cheeses are accurately placed prior to their depalletising as they go into the wax coating machine The robot can detect problems with trays which could cause problems in the automation The robot system is able to use sensors to determine if all the cheeses have been picked up for placement One of the problems is that the cheeses are not a uniform ball-like shape and in order to make sure the robot picks up a full complement of cheese it uses a wrist roll motion making sure that the cheese does not stick to the tray cellophane wrapping and labelling the packaging line conveyor moves the cheese to be packed in boxes prior to palletisation and transportation which is equipped with a pneumatically operated six-finger gripper This robot can pick up three cheeses at a time and then rotate the gripper through 180 degrees to pick another three cheeses before placing the six in a box The full boxes are then transported to a palletising robot the FANUC Robotics M-410i at the end of the line Productivity on the three production lines at KH de Jong has increased by 10% since the introduction of the robots The maximum capacity of the facility is now 3,600 cheeses per hour The labour savings due to the introduction of the robots comes to around 500 hours per week over two shifts The new system has also improved hygiene as the cheese is no longer handled by human workers Give your business an edge with our leading industry insights View all newsletters from across the GlobalData Media network With the 2023 World Driving Championship (WDC) now underway here is everything you need to know to follow the event and cheer on our Canadian driver STANDARDBRED CANADA'S COVERAGE OF THE WORLD DRIVING CHAMPIONSHIP Don’t forget to follow Standardbred Canada’s website, Facebook page and @TrotInsider on Twitter for the latest WDC news and info. Keep this page handy for updates including links to entries, results and program pages for the upcoming WDC legs. The 2023 World Driving Championship website is available here Don’t forget...all the WDC legs take place in countries that are in a different time zone than Canada Below you can see what time to check standardbredcanada.ca to watch the WDC races (when available) The 10 competing drivers and the country they will be representing appear below Points for the WDC are awarded in each heat according to the official order of finish The winner of the race receives 17 points and then in descending order 12 points (2nd place); 9 (3); 7 (4); 6 (5); 5 (6); 4 (7); 3 (8); 2 (9); and 1 (10)  The winning title is awarded to the driver with the highest number of points after all legs of the championship have been completed Copyright © 2022 | Standardbred Canada. All rights reserved. Use of this site signifies your agreement and compliance with the legal disclaimer and privacy policy MARK Kane was contacted while he was travelling to Belgium broken and trained by the family was to the front of his mind Harry’s European Tour could be the crowning glory of a super career If you’re going to go tilting at windmills where better than Holland “Harry Knows was one of the crop of foals who came in as part of the broodmare scheme from Le TROT He was named for my grandfather on my mother’s side and that has brought him lots of luck He dominated here as a four- and five-year-old so we made the decision to send him to New Jersey where he was handled by the Tritton stable He started brightly and won three in succession taking a mark of 1.51 in the Meadowlands It was a very proud moment for us watching him win in at the Mecca of harness racing “He lost his way a small bit after that and we decided he must have been missing us as much as we were missing him so we took him home gave him a break and started training him down again around Christmas time He was a big miss when he wasn’t there and he’s the first head you see poking out of his stable door to say hello … or look for his first feed he’s one of those horses who knows how good he is He’s not the most straightforward to train he would get keen and worked up at home if we weren’t careful it’s only myself or Patrick who will jog or work him and we kind of have the key to him don’t move them an inch and after five minutes he settles beautifully We’ve mixed up his fast work between my uncle Ger’s sand track Harry loves the beach and if you have any horse who can lie up with him on it… they are trotting well “We decided at the end of last summer that we should maybe look into Europe for races for him who knows when a horse like him could come along again he took us to the biggest track in America and now we’re planning raids of European countries We’ll know soon if it works out but we may as well dream on the track as dream in bed “We’re stabling at the track in Mons and Mieke Versluys from the Belgian federation and Ralf Dekker who’s track manager from Wolvega were very helpful in setting everything up Paul Murphy from Shuttle Horse Ltd handled all our paperwork Patrick was the logistics manager for the yard and PK senior shipped him himself I tried to keep the rest of the show on the road at home It’s hard to know what we’re up against tonight in Mons on paper the number 6 horse looks good and we’ll give them all maximum respect Harry Knows was an honourable fourth at 11/1 in the second race over 2,300 metres at Mons on Tuesday night The horse does not like to be rushed out of the gate and as he moved forwards so did the runners on his inside Patrick had to use Harry a lot at the 1,600 metre point and they briefly led Eventually Harry Knows tired on the last bend but kept on gamely for fourth The Prix Zeturf.Be carried an overall purse of €5,000 The replay can be viewed on Hippodrome de Wallonie’s You Tube Mark told The Irish Field on Tuesday night “Patrick was happy enough; he was first over (on the outside) for a long way It was our seasonal debut while the rest have been racing Patrick thinks we’ll change a little piece of harness the next day The race was won by “the number 6 horse” which Mark had mentioned the local scene will take up more of the Kanes’ season than these pleasant sojourns to the continent complete with a training track is currently home to fourteen horses in work for the 2024 season Mark seems to have been seconded to be stable spokesman and thanks are due for the detail he gave to his answers to The Irish Field Mark (31) is an equine dentist with an impressive roster of clients “I work for Gavin Cromwell Racing and have looked after all of his graded race winners I have treated group winners for Jack Davison and for a flurry of other talented horsemen like John O’Donoghue I’m good friends with James O’Haire who is an international event rider I make sure to keep my eyes open when I’m in those yards.” Mark’s highlight of 2023 was his first winning drive at the Red John Memorial “The Red John is a meeting dearly close to our hearts and we had Ladyford Express trained to the minute for it I’ve owned winners and we’ve trained plenty of winners at that meeting but this felt extra special.” and diplomatically decided not to name any clients for fear of leaving anyone out He won the Irish driver’s title three times before the age of twenty-two and more recently in 2021 and 2022 Patrick (37) had a productive 2023 with Bobby Barry’s Ayr Corleone winning at so many of the big UK meetings Patrick also won the Black Horse Supplements Juvenile Final with Angelesy Hall which was another highlight “We dearly miss Portmarnock for racing and especially training round up all the help and owners we can find and head to Annaghmore Raceway for some fast work It’s a five hour round trip but we’ve a great team of owners to muck in and help Hannah Lawless from Dublin has joined the team this year and is a huge part of the operation Rocco Byrne recently drove in his first qualifier and is a good help too.” My dad loved him in the sales ring at York and Paddy has always had a great eye for a horse Sales organiser Craig Stevenson also said that Ayroplane was the pick of the sale The vendor Ryan O’Neill was sporting a black eye provided by this colt The Ball family from London backed the deal quite flighty and nervous on the ground but once the cart is clipped on he’s a pro He is entered in the major two-year-old stakes races she had some lovely form last season with Always B Puffin and managed to win the Irish juvenile final She’s a nice filly to work and a favourite of Patrick’s daughter Eliza Another one we bought in York with the Ball family Johnny Ball has a long association with Ireland “Frankie“ is a smashing horse to work with and he’s super intelligent We won with his half-brother (Stateside Deuce) before he was sold to America so we had our eye on this lad The breeders Sue and Carly Young couldn’t recommend him to us enough He is the last foal from their mare so they follow him closely Everyone’s favourite and we’re hoping there’s some exciting times with him at home and abroad By the time this article is printed he’ll have raced in both Belgium and Holland he showed flashes of ability last year but he was babyish and you can see why now He’s matured into a strong athletic horse but more importantly he’s matured a lot mentally too His owner Buddy Donaghey is a huge help to us and I’d love for this lad to give him some big days About us Contact us Advertise with us Company information Careers Privacy statement Terms of service Commenting policy Change cookies settings Almost a quarter of police stations in the Netherlands closed their doors in the past five years, EenVandaag reported based on figures from the National Police. In 2019, the country counted 293 “team stations” where people could go 24/7 to report a crime, for example. Now, there are 227. The number of police stations decreased in all regional police units, but the most in the Rotterdam region. There, 16 of the 38 stations have disappeared since 2019. The Noord-Nederland region, which includes Friesland, Groningen, and Drenthe, lost over a third of its total police stations. The Friesland town of Wolvega currently has one police station, which will close next year. Mayor André van Nadort called it “a very bad thing” that citizens will soon have to go to Heerenveen to file a report physically. “You see that the police are disappearing from the cities, but especially from the villages and neighborhoods,” he told EenVandaag. “And for trust in the police, it is very important that officers are visible in the neighborhood. You simply see less police.” Van Nadort also called it crucial for cops to have a bond with the neighborhood they work in. “Because we still have our own station, neighborhood police officers still start their shifts there. This is the place where they work from; from here, they go into the neighborhood.” He worries that the bond officers have with locals will disappear when they start working from Heerenveen. The Schoof I Cabinet’s government agreement states that the new government will focus heavily on increasing the visibility of police officers on the street. The Cabinet wants to open more police stations in places like town halls and libraries, though these counters will only be open to a limited extent, and citizens will typically only be able to visit by appointment. Pieter van Vollenhoven, the former chairman of the Dutch Safety Board who conducted extensive research into the police reorganization almost 12 years ago, blames the decrease in police stations on the formation of the National Police. Closing police stations was a deliberate part of the reorganization, he told EenVandaag. “Without any substantiation, it was determined that so much money could be saved,” he said. “But that wasn’t based on anything and those cuts were simply continued.” The National Police told the program that police stations exist to support police work. “And that work has become less and less dependent on a physical office,” a spokesperson said. “Where colleagues used to have to return to the station for all kinds of actions, they can now do their work almost everywhere with digital tools. Keeping stations open also costs time and money, and we have to handle both carefully.” © 2012-2025, NL Times, All rights reserved. 2017 Average speed cameras are to be introduced on 11 provincial roads in an attempt to cut the rate of accidents and deaths in traffic The cameras will be placed on N roads with two or four lanes in five provinces – Friesland The stretches of road have been chosen because they have a high accident rate or drivers regularly exceed the speed limit on them ‘Our experience has found that drivers keep more closely to the speed limit over a long distance where there are average speed checks,’ said the public prosecution department in a statement announcing the move The cameras are expected to be switched on over the next two years The complete list of speed camera locations N706 Vogelweg between A27 and Lelystad Airport N351 between Wolvega and Oosterwolde N381 between Drachten and Donkerbroek N275 between Blerick and Nederweert N564 between Weert and the Belgian border N277 between Ysselsteyn and Zeeland N270 between Venray and Ysselsteyn provincial section of the Zuilen ring road (eastern section) N414 between Eembrugge and Bunschoten We could not provide the Dutch News service without the generous support of our readers Your donations allow us to report on issues you tell us matter and provide you with a summary of the most important Dutch news each day Many thanks to everyone who has donated to DutchNews.nl in recent days We could not provide this service without you Please help us making DutchNews.nl a better read by taking part in a short survey.