Crossroads will be taking a summer break as of July 15, 2006.
We will be back on August 14, 2006 with a fresh selection of news and feature articles. In the meantime we wish our readers an excellent summer!

P.S.: Comments to the articles are still welcome but as they are subject […]

On Saturday 15 July, it will be 400 years since Rembrandt, the greatest Dutch 17th-century painter, was born - the perfect opportunity for some of the country’s most important museums to shine the spotlight on his work throughout the year.
Read feature article at Radio Netherlands, 14 July 2006
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Former students can from now on be forced to leave their student accommodation. Housing Minister Sybilla Dekker on Friday announced a law to encourage flow-through on the housing market.
The law comes into effect immediately. It provides that public housing corporations and private house-owners can force ex-students to leave their accommodation if it has been categorised […]

A group of leading entrepreneurs of the Heuvelland area are proposing to name the region “Maastricht Hills” in order to make it more recognisable abroad.
The entrepreneurs argue that the name Heuvelland is largely unknown abroad, whereas Maastricht enjoys worldwide fame.
With the new name “Maastricht Hills”, the region as a whole would benefit from the […]

University of Professional Education Hogeschool Zuyd will in 2007 launch a new course for digital researchers. The training will be a cooperation between Hogeschool Zuyd’s ICT faculty and the Regional Plaftform for Crime Control in South-Limburg in the fight against digital criminality. The training will involve exchange of knowledge between the education institute, public authorities […]

Belvédère is an area of about 280 hectares to the north-west of Maastricht, still largely unknown but definitely worth discovering! [continued…]

UNU-MERIT is hosting the newly established European Policy for Intellectual Property (EPIP) Association. The Association will organize an inaugural Conference on the theme, Policy, Law and Economics of Intellectual Property in Munich, on 7-8 September. This will be followed by a conference on IPR in Developing Countries at UNU-MERIT in early May 2007.
Source: UNU-MERIT, […]

Interesting feature article about the options for international education in the Netherlands in Expatica Netherlands.
See article here.
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A Dutch McDonald’s has been forced to remove a pair of mouth-shaped urinals after a tourist complained.
The branch in the south east of the Netherlands [Heerlen] said it was removing the bright red, mouth-shaped urinals after a disgusted US customer complained to McDonald’s head office in America.
Manager of the fast-food outlet Giel Pijper […]

Women immigrants and refugees - many of whom are Muslims - continue to encounter discrimination in the Netherlands, a United Nations expert said on Thursday.
The expert, who spent 3-11 July on a fact-finding mission to the country, was critical of immigrant women’s access to the jobs market, child care provision, and the Dutch government’s […]

His face is one of the best known in the art world, and as the Netherlands celebrates the 400th anniversary of Rembrandt’s birth, his life and work retain few secrets. But did you know he was once a Nazi icon?
An exhibition at the Dutch Resistance Museum in Amsterdam recalls the Nazis’ largely forgotten mission to […]

The first ‘Tsunami scholarship’ from the University of Maastricht and Q-Park has been awarded to Rosaria Indah of Indonesia, who will be attending a master’s programme at the UM for the next two years.
She plans to apply the knowledge learned to reforming the medical programme at her university in Banda Atjeh based on Problem […]

The European Commission launched a plan on Wednesday to slash the cost of using mobile phones abroad, targeting excessive prices and giving operators a last chance to regulate themselves.
“Our analysis shows that very high international mobile roaming charges currently affect at least 147 million European Union citizens,” Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said.
“We have […]

Irene van den Broek, chair of the Dutch student union LSVB, has been refused entry to Russia. Ms Van den Broek returned to the Netherlands Wednesday after Russian customs officials told her she was an undesirable alien. The student leader is a member of the group Mission to Minsk, which campaigns for democracy in Belarus.
Christian […]

Endless jargon translated by monotonous interpreters characterised most of Tuesday’s first ever web-streamed EU ministers’ meetings. The meeting on Tuesday was the the first to be broadcast live on the internet, after EU leaders last month decided to inject more transparency in the meetings of the EU council - the member states’ decision-making body.
But […]

East Germans know less about the European Union than their fellow Europeans and are have grown disenchanted with democracy, a survey published Tuesday indicated.
The Eurobarometer 2006 poll in Germany, conducted by the German representation of the European Commission, showed that Germans from the former communist east finished last in EU knowledge among 30 countries […]

The EU Member States agreed in June that the open sessions of the Council of Ministers’ meetings will be transmitted live on the Internet. The Economic and Financial Affairs Council (ECOFIN) that convenes on 11 July is the first council meeting which will be webcast on the part of its open sessions in accordance with […]

The European Commission is enthusiastic about a plan by the Dutch town of Hengelo to set up a ‘House for Europe’. The commission intends to subsidise the project and to encourage similar projects across Europe, according to Mayor Frank Kerckhaert.
European Commissioner Margot Wallström is to visit the project in the autumn. Before August, the commission […]

Europe and Africa have drawn up a plan of action to reduce the increasing flow of illegal migrants to Europe. The plan was agreed at the end of a two-day summit in the Moroccan capital Rabat which was attended by nearly 60 European and African nations.
The plan is based on recognition of the fact […]

The number of children born in the Netherlands in 2004 totalled 194 thousand. The probability that children are born on weekdays has been increasing since 1950. Fewer and fewer children are born on Saturdays or Sundays.
Weekend or week day
The percentage of children born on a Saturday or Sunday is much lower than that for weekdays. […]

The number of people attending the lectures organised by Studium Generale Maastricht, an independent department of the University of Maastricht, has increased by almost 3000 in the past academic year. Studium Generale offered 49 lectures (two more than last year) which were attended by 8,286 visitors, compared to 5,950 in 2003-2004.
Lectures this year focused […]

The Dutch student company Motifive’s foldable lunchbox has won the second prize at the Best Student Company 2006 contest that took place on Saturday in Maastricht.
The jury of the European contest for student companies said that Motifive had turned a boring product into something trendy again. Motifive is run by five students from Rijswijk University […]

From Radio Netherlands Press Review:
De Volkskrant reports that students from an immigrant background who want to be teachers are abandoning their studies at a higher rate than non-immigrant students (65 percent as opposed to 43 percent), partly because it is difficult for them to get teacher-training positions.
Meanwhile, we read in Trouw that there has […]

We are pleased to inform our readers that Masaki Takakura’s feature articles about “A Dog of Flanders” have recently been published in Bota Sot, a leading Albanian-language Kosovo newspaper.
As Masaki put it: “It’s fun to act as a bridge between Eastern and Western Europe. Helping to understand each other is something I always dream as […]

Europeans are becoming more disenchanted with EU enlargement, with less than half in support of bringing new members into the 25-nation bloc, according to a Eurobarometer survey released Thursday.
The survey, conducted between March 27 and May 1, found that only 45 percent of the European Union’s citizens support expanding the EU in the next […]

Due to warmer springs in recent years, butterflies appear earlier and birds lay their first egg earlier in the year.
Butterflies appear earlier
Over the past 14 years, the first appearance of early butterflies, such as wall brown, green hairstreak and small white has been advanced by an average 9 days. The green hairstreak’s first appearance was […]

The Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment is granting subsidies to 19 projects aimed at fighting and preventing violence against women. The projects deal with sexual and domestic violence, aggression incited by loss of honour as well as female genital mutilation. 1.5 million euros have been allocated to these projects. 49 applications for subsidies were […]

The number of tolerated cannabis bars or ‘coffee shops’ in the Netherlandsfell slightly last year to 729 from 737 in 2004. The number of municipalities with at least one coffee shop has gone from 103 in 2004 to 105 in 2005. The criteria required for tolerating coffee shops are managed quite well and are also […]

Psychologist Marcus Huibers of the University of Maastricht has won a scholarship for the Beck Institute in Philadelphia.
Huibers is the first European researcher to be granted a scholarship. Only five scholarships are granted each year.
Huibers has carried out research on the value of behavioural therapy in cases of depression.
Source: L1 Nieuws (in Dutch), 4 July […]

The municipality of Maastricht and local businesses have decided to invest EUR 1,3m in city marketing in 2007.
Public authorities (possibly also the Province of Limburg) and local businesses will set up a public-private organisation which will coordinate actions to promote and market Maastricht as a brand name.
Source: Dagblad De Limburger, 1 July 2006
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