US expats collect record sum to fight breast cancer
March 13, 2006 Leave a Comment
The American Women’s Club of The Hague (AWC) raised a record EUR 250,000 during its fourth annual Pink Gala charity event on Saturday.
The money goes to organisations and programmes involved in research, education and advocacy to fight breast cancer in The Netherlands. Breast cancer is the biggest killer of Dutch women aged 35 to [...]
Employers seek tweaks to knowledge migrant system
March 12, 2006 Leave a Comment
It must be made easier for highly-educated expats to come and work in the Netherlands, employers’ groups VNO-NCW and MKB Nederland said on Friday.
In a letter to Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk, the organisations acknowledged the introduction do the knowledge migrant system last year led to a “breakthrough in the admittance of highly-skilled migrants”. On the [...]
Till deportation do us part
March 12, 2006 Leave a Comment
Taida Pasic’s hand in marriage is possibly the most sought-after in the world. In the past two months, the 18-year-old has received more than 100 proposals: all from strangers who know little more than that she is a beautiful damsel in distress who faces deportation from Holland, the country she calls home.
As she flicks through [...]
Free software developers do it to learn new skills
March 10, 2006 Leave a Comment
Most free and open source developers participate in FOSS projects to learn and develop new skills, Rishab Ghosh of Maastricht University, told the Idlelo2 conference in Kenya on February 23, 2006.
Ghosh, FLOSS programme leader at the Maastricht Economic Research Institute Innovation and Technology, said that in a recent survey of 3000 free software developers [...]
Unexpected masterpieces at Maastricht fair
March 10, 2006 Leave a Comment
The two bombshells that broke out at the European Fine Art Fair, which opened to the public Friday and continues until March 19, prove that this has now become the most important art-selling show in the world.
When such a legendary art gallery as Wildenstein, whose owners prided themselves for decades on operating in the strictest [...]
Maastricht Business Days
March 10, 2006 Leave a Comment
Heineken, Lufthansa, Unilever and more than thirty other international companies will give presentations, hold workshops and have discussions with Maastricht students of economics during the Maastricht Business Days. Two student associations at economics, FS Focus and 3MA, were responsible for the organisation. The event will take place on 15 and 16 March in the Golden [...]
‘Special cocktails for the ladies with nuts’
March 10, 2006 3 Comments
English is undisputedly the language of communication in business administration and management science around the world. This is fine, as long as one does not lose sight of the cultural background of the speaker. This is what departing professor Casper Vroom will argue on 17 March in his farewell speech “Do we understand each other?”
First [...]
What the real estate market can learn from the Amsterdam ‘Herengracht’
March 9, 2006 Leave a Comment
Prof. Dr. Piet Eichholtz, professor of Real Estate Finance at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, was extensively quoted on 3 and 5 March in the American quality newspapers International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. Eichholtz studied the value of real estate on the ‘Herengracht’ (one of Amsterdam’s famous canals) [...]
Major influence of immigrant voters on results
March 9, 2006 Leave a Comment
Immigrant voters have had a big influence on the results of the local elections. No less than 80 percent of them voted Labour (PvdA), according to the University of Amsterdam’s Institute for Migration and Ethnic Studies.
“The immigrant voters form a power factor of which you must take account,” said researcher J. Tillie. He questioned nearly [...]
Labour, Socialists big winners in Dutch local elections
March 9, 2006 Leave a Comment
The Labour Party (PvdA) and the Socialist Party (SP) were the biggest winners in the Dutch local elections on Tuesday.
The PvdA won 1,988 seats, 670 more than its disastrous showing in the 2002 municipal elections. This puts Labour ahead of the Christian Democrats (CDA) of Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende as the party with the [...]
Poor education disadvantages Dutch women
March 7, 2006 Leave a Comment
A report by the Social and Cultural Planning Office indicates that about two-thirds of Dutch women of Turkish or Moroccan origin have only received the most basic education. Many have never attended school. Women of Surinamese or of Netherlands-Antilles origin do better, with less than 25 percent having only received very basic education. Ten percent [...]
Muslim schools in the Netherlands face closure
March 7, 2006 Leave a Comment
A quarter of Islamic primary schools in the Netherlands may have to close their doors because they have been unable to attract sufficient pupils. The schools blame the - as they see it - tough requirements they are expected to meet, and also say they are struggling with a negative image.
However, Professor Sjoerd van Koningsveld [...]
An Aladdin’s cave of art
March 5, 2006 Leave a Comment
Maastricht is a phenomenon. How an art fair in a small Dutch town few had heard of until the eponymous European Union treaty could come to eclipse the long-established and dazzling fairs of Paris, London and New York is one of the (collecting) mysteries of our age. The European Fine Art Fair, now known by [...]
Dutch schools strip Nobel laureate’s name
March 5, 2006 Leave a Comment
Two Dutch universities have stripped a late Nobel chemistry laureate of honors, citing new evidence that he collaborated with the Nazis to oust Jews from academic positions.
The information about Dutch-born Peter Debye, who won the Nobel in 1936, emerged a month ago in a book, “Albert Einstein in the Netherlands.”
The book, by Berlin-based author Sybe [...]
Heading to Bruges? Be sure to follow the signs for Brugge
March 5, 2006 Leave a Comment
Britons on their way to the spectacular canals of Bruges will be forced to follow signs for “Brugge” in future because French city names are to be banned in favour of obscure Flemish versions.
Thirty-eight cities will be known exclusively by their Flemish names on road signs and in all official documentation when the Flemish regional [...]
IND error denies 100s of foreigners right to vote
March 5, 2006 Leave a Comment
Thanks to administrative faults made by the Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND), hundreds of immigrants have wrongly not been sent voting cards for the municipal elections being held next Tuesday.
According to the IND, up to 1,200 have had their right to vote ignored, spread over 150 municipal councils. The problem came to light when Hilversum [...]
Expatriate community: Are EU residents being considered in Maastricht’s upcoming local council elections?
March 3, 2006 Leave a Comment
The treaty of Maastricht gave European citizens the right to vote and stand in local government and European Parliament elections in their country of residence. So how are EU expatriates in Maastricht going to make use of their right to vote on March 7? [continued...]
Radicalisation reporting centre for Amsterdam teachers
March 1, 2006 Leave a Comment
Amsterdam city council is setting up a centre to which schools can report radicalising pupils. The measure stems from research last year into ‘intercultural relations’ at schools in the capital.
School boards, teachers and supporting staff from all schools in primary and further education in the capital will shortly be able to report to the Amsterdam [...]
Netherlands opens Education Support Office in Vietnam
March 1, 2006 Leave a Comment
A representative office of the Netherlands Organsation for International Cooperation in Higher Education (NUFFIC), the fourth of its kind in Asia, was officially inaugurated in Ho Chi Minh City on March 1.
The office, which is called “the Netherlands Education Support Office” (NESO), was set up to provide Vietnamese students interested in studying in the Netherlands [...]
Is the Netherlands swinging to the right?
March 1, 2006 Leave a Comment
The publication of derogatory cartoons of Prophet Muhammad has brought attention once again on to the religious and cultural tensions growing in the Netherlands.
After the murder of Theo van Gogh, a libertarian Dutch filmmaker and controversial critic of Islam in 2004, opposition to immigrants rose rapidly in this traditionally tolerant country.
The fact that Van Gogh’s [...]
