netherlands

The Netherlands has the lowest teen birth rate in the Western world. Teens wait longer to have sex (average age to lose virginity is 17.7 compared to 17.0 in the US), are more likely to use contraception, and aren't likely to lose their virginity spontaneously, since the majority of teens say "love and commitment" is the reason to do it.

The UK is trying to reform its own inadequate sex education by introducing Dutch sex-ed principles to its schools. The main tenet? Start young. Its government-subsidized sex-ed program was created in the '80s by a graduate of the International School for Humanities and Social Sciences, which suggests teen pregnancies can be reduced by exposing children to sex ed between ages 4 and 7.

Even if, by some sort of political amnesia, Congress made sex ed mandatory from kindergarten up, could the US go Dutch? Find out below.

Netherlands fans dressed up in traditional Dutch costumes for today's match against Brazil at the World Cup. The outfits must have brought good luck, because Holland upset tournament-favorite Brazil.

A woman attends an Easter Monday parade at the Keukenhof — the world's largest bulb garden — in Lisse, Netherlands. Parade-goers are encouraged to wear their own, homemade hats.

You've heard of lab-grown gemstones. But how would you feel about lab-grown meat? A group of scientists from Eindhoven University in the Netherlands have succeeded in culturing pork in a petri dish. Researchers extracted cells from the muscle of a live pig, then incubated them in a nutrient-rich solution, creating a sticky tissue that's being described as a "soggy form of pork."

There are still challenges to overcome — like how to achieve a firm consistency — but scientists believe an in-vitro meat breakthrough will happen and processed meat products could be manufactured from lab meat in as little as five years.

Cultured meat has the potential to reduce billions of tons of greenhouse gases emitted every year by farm animals. PETA even acknowledged, "If meat is no longer a piece of a dead animal, there's no ethical objection." But I disagree. In addition to blurring the lines between natural and artificial, something like cultured pork would complicate the ethics of eating meat, complicate vegetarianism, and create even more meat labeling problems. Would you buy a beaker-bred burger?

I spy lettuce, carrots, and cucumber chunks for this baby hippo and proud mama. Did you know that hippos eat just about 1 percent of their total body weight as adults? Don't call them greedy, though — if necessary, the huge mammals can store two days' worth of grass in their tummies and go up to three weeks without eating.

There's a whole buffet laid out here and no need to gorge, so check out one more picture of the grazing babe when you read more

Did you know one in seven women avoid the beach during their period? PR firm Labresse does! That's why it dropped tampons in pink parachutes down on Dutch beaches. Too bad its audience stayed home because of the high tides that day.

Don't worry if you can't watch the video. Unless you speak Dutch, you won't understand a word. You really don't need to! Parachuted tampons descending on a beach like medicine to a remote village is universally weird.