The new Director of the Pan American Health Organization (Paho) Dr. Carissa Etienne, said recently that she will be working closely with Paho member countries to extend the benefits of health progress to all people in the Americas which also include
The police, the tax inspectorate and the national traffic service worked together in Rotterdam last week in a sweeping control. They had a system for automatic license plate recognition at their disposal and that paid off big time. The control sta
Here is some toe-curling news for tax-fundamentalists. Facebook and its 28-year-old founder Mark Zuckerberg made a hefty profit of $1.2 billion last year. But the company did not pay a penny in corporation taxes. Even better: Facebook got a tax refun
The Netherlands seems to be saturated with social media. Especially Facebook and Twitter see their growth stagnate; social network Hyves saw its numbers tumble and it is now positioned behind twitter and LinkedIn. Newcom Research and Technology su
My name is Ameera Groeneveldt and this is my story about what happened to me at my former job at SZV. Since day one it has always been a challenge to be respected and accepted by my former SZV employer, Ms. Esther Recio-Halley, and newly appointed
Before 10/10/10 Winair was owned for 100% by the government of the former Netherlands Antilles. Airfares to and from Saba and St. Eustatius were dictated by the shareholder and promised subsidies were few and far between. Effective October 10, 2010,
Remarkably, the Netherlands is struggling with a situation that nibbles at the core of the constitutional state. Philosopher Ab Gietelink tackled the sensitive issue in a column in the Volkskrant. He notes that the number of people in preventive cust
Last week there was some symposium about race, slavery, archeology etc. etc. I do not go to symposiums, for two reasons. 1 I know already what they are going to say and 2 they speak very long sentences with foreign words in order to prove that they d
I understand that the Statia Agriculture/LVV Department is/was responsible for the capture and penning of the donkeys that previously roamed free on the island. However, there has been almost no care for or management of the captured donkeys and the
It is with great pleasure that I learned of the initiative by the Department of Tourism, Epic, St. Maarten Pride and the Ministry of Vromi/ Public Works to place garbage bins along the beaches of Mullet Bay and Kim Sha beach. For years these beaches,
There remains no doubt that sports contributes to a healthy life and that it is the core obligation of any government to provide facilities to promote such. Such facilities should be built by government (as is the case) and must be run privately.
There was a time when a workweek of 48 hours was pretty much standard. That was in the time that children still went to school on Saturdays. But with the introduction of the 5-day work week the numbers dropped to 40 and kids got an extra day off on S
There is one restaurant concept we still do not have in St. Maarten. With a large American clientele all through the year it could be worth considering the establishment of a Caribbean version of the notorious Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas. The
What is it with our town centers that they just do not flourish after sunset? In Philipsburg the explanation seems rather simple. Front Street is crammed with jewelry stores and these retailers go home at the beginning of the evening. Same for Back S
Big Tobacco has had a bad name for a long time, but now it has company of, one could say, Big Food and Big Alcohol. The three sectors use the same tactics and strategies to undermine public health – at least such is the conclusion from a global ana
Not all the time many words are needed to get a point across. So, this time a short article from our side. Actions speak sometimes louder than words. We all know the example of the twig that can easily be snapped once alone, but which is hard to bre
The frustration of harbor Chief Mark Mingo is understandable. While the port pays at least a concession fee to the government, other government-owned companies keep their money in their accounts. The airport just refinanced its debts with a bond i
Living happily forever after is not given to every married couple. On the contrary, statistics suggest that marriage is nothing more than a proven failure. If we look at the crude divorce rate versus the crude marriage rate in the twelve countries
Online journalism is moving in a new direction at high speed. With the start of DNP - De Nieuwe Pers (The New Press), the successor of the failed free daily newspaper De Pers, readers have the option to take a subscription on individual journalists.
Maybe we’re a bit slow on the uptake, but it has finally hit us: the sub culture called hipster. What are hipsters? According to a brief but rather painful description in the culture section of NRC Handelsblad these are the boys and girls between t
We don’t know exactly how many police officers chased the guy who stabbed a tourist on Friday evening and stole her car. What we do know is that the man who combined robbing, stealing and joy-riding into a new art form escaped. And that while his r
How dangerous are social media and the free flow of information over the internet? Jean-Pierre Geelen, a TV-critic for the Volkskrant notes what we are experiencing here in St. Maarten as well: “Through social media surfaces what was already brewin
We know that language is a bit of a bottleneck for our students overseas. Their Dutch is not good enough to get the best out of their studies and because they do not speak the language very well, they also become the butt of jokes among their fellow-
Dear Editors, February is, as we know, Black History Month. I’d like to relay what I believe is a little known piece of black history, one that I always found intriguing. It’s the story of the first black African to have stepped on Japanese so
Opinion, St. Maarten News - Posted by admin on February 8, 2013
Yesterday, two brothers were in court because they had manipulated the electricity meter of their supermarket with wonderful results: their electricity bill dropped by a third. The scam was made possible by a disgruntled former employee of utiliti
Dear Editor, I cannot help but feel that the recent decision taken by the Council of Ministers to initiate court proceedings against the Dutch government in order to secure some 120 million guilders in debt relief is putting the cart before the ho
Marcel Loor, the fallen head of immigration, made the front page again today, after a court ruling ordered him and his girlfriend Charlene Craig to pay 460,000 guilders each to the state. The alternative is three years in prison. The seizure of Lo
Anthony Ray Spencer was acquitted of the murder on Christian Lloyd on Wednesday and not everybody is happy with it. Spencer was dumbfounded after the ruling and the jury is still out on the question whether the prosecution will take the case to the S
When police officers ticketed gossip writer Bibi Saliva Shaw for using a cell phone while she was driving her car on October 30 of last year on the A.J.C. Brouwers Road, it seemed an open and shut case. Not with Shaw, of course. First, the queen o
Opinion, St. Maarten News - Posted by admin on February 7, 2013
There is nothing wrong with parliamentarians criticizing the government, but there comes a moment when even the most eager reader starts wondering: what’s the point? We read with increasing bewilderment the statement of U-MP Dr. Ruth Douglass �
I agree with Minister De Weever who does not want to appoint Mr. Willemsberg as director of SZV and that he wants to start a new selection process. Minister de Weever wants change and in order to make a change you need a visionary leader and it’
When is something news? The old school taught us: dog bites man is no news. Man bites dog is. These days the definition of news is not that simple anymore. Psychiatrist Bram Bakker notes in an interesting op-ed in the Volkskrant that the news value o
The word “integrity” has been used quite a lot lately when it comes to our local politics and politicians. There are several politicians under police investigation as well as high ranked civil servants with one politician in parliament recently b
A U.S. report entitled, “Preventing a Security Crisis in the Caribbean,” issued by the U.S. Congress last year says that despite impressive gains, drug trafficking, local drug consumption and the U.S. demand for illegal drugs remain major causes
The truth does not exist in the absolute sense of the word. It is an interesting philosophical question. In journalism, we do not deal with absolute truth but with relative truth. We deal with facts, and you’d think it’s easy to make the differen
