By Hilbert Haar Seemingly inconsequential events at times make quite an impression on me. Such was the case on Wednesday, when I was on my way to pay a visit to the bathrooms in Holland House where I was having lunch. Just ahead of me was a woman – an obvious tourist – who went in the same direction. At the top of the stairs that lead down to the bathrooms there is a neat sign announcing that the price for visiting these bathrooms is a dollar. When the woman saw the sign she stopped dead and exclaimed: “A dollar?”…
Author: The Publisher
PHILIPSBURG – The Court in First Instance acquitted a man on Wednesday of the possession of counterfeit money, a firearm and ammunition. Levy W., 39, was at the parking lot of the Westin Hotel on May 29, 2016 were a rip deal resulted in a shooting and a fight. At the scene of the shooting, police found close to 50,000 counterfeited American dollars, a gun and ammunition. Levy W. was in the car where these items were found. W., a security guard who worked at the time for Checkmate Security, told the court that he had been attacked and stabbed…
PHILIPSBURG – A man who was caught with counterfeit American dollars on March 13 of 2017 was acquitted of that charge due to an unlawful search by the police, but he received a 150 guilders fine in the Court in First Instance on Wednesday for the possession of a knuckle duster; a second suspect got off with a 40 hours of community service because he was found guilty of other charges. Police officers stopped Francisco Francois Felicte Artsen in March of last year while he was driving on a scooter in Cay Bay because his passenger, Alberto Leonardo Lake, was…
PHILIPSBURG – Checkmate Security director O’Neal A. was released from custody on Tuesday after he was arrested a week earlier on Wednesday as a suspect in the Squid-investigation. The director remains a suspect in the case. Squid is an investigation into vote buying during the 2016 parliamentary elections. “A number of suspects and witnesses are still to be questioned and confiscated items are being carefully analyzed,” spokeswoman Hazel Durand stated. Earlier this month, a week before the elections, Frans Richardson, leader of the United St. Maarten party (USp) was also arrested as a suspect in this case. On the Friday…
PHLIPSBURG – The prosecutor’s office ordered on Wednesday the release from pretrial custody of a father and son who were involved in a ruckus after a head on collision that took place on Sunday around 1.45 a.m. near the Dale Extra supermarket in Cole Bay. The father, identified by the prosecutor’s office’s spokeswoman Hazel Durand as R. P. (56) and his son R.A.P. (27) uttered threats and committed public violence against a police officer who fired a warning shot to get the situation under control. There were many people present at the place of the accident on Sunday. The prosecutor’s…
by Wycliffe Smith On February 26th the people of Sint Maarten spoke by means of the ballot. They said that they do not trust one party with an outright majority and that they still prefer to have a national parliamentary coalition. With the 15 parliamentary seats now distributed among four parties in a 7-5-2-1 composition, the voters have given the political parties a tall order. Listening to the general public, I am hearing that the people of Sint Maarten would prefer a national government, which includes all parties. The Governor, in his assignment to the “informateurs”, referred to the broadest…
Port de Plaisance — In her very brief remarks when she was invited on stage to assist with one of the very important presentations at the conclusion of the 38th St. Maarten Heineken Regatta, Prime Minister of St. Maarten, Leona Marlin-Romeo told the gathering that the island is open for business. “Yes, we had a very rough time during and after hurricane Irma, but that did not let us stop there. We are open for business and looking forward to seeing each of you here next year,” she said. Before leaving the stage, Prime Minister Leona Marlin-Romeo had the distinct…
COLE BAY — The St. Maarten Nature Foundation is again warning of a potential influx of Sargassum seaweed in the coming weeks: “We have been coordinating our monitoring efforts with our partners in the region and based on weather predictions and aerial surveys there is a significant amount of the seaweed headed in our general vicinity. “We have been really trying to work both with our partners in the region and with local stakeholders to monitor the situation and to find a way to control the amount of the weed washing up on beaches in the case of a significant…
Dear Editor, Two weeks before the NBA All-Star Game which took place last February a storm without peer broke loose in the basketball world and arguably also in the larger field of international sports and such especially because of the turn it took. The first swing in what became like a heated debate was taken by the duo of LeBron James and Kevin Durant, two of the most famous basketball players of their generation. In an interview they had a couple of days before the All-Star Game they had expressed very sharp criticism on the actual president of the US,…
By Chris Morvan, With all the rebuilding and repairing that has been going on here since Irma, there has no doubt been a collective surge in blood pressure, a lot of bad language and a mixed bag of results as people honed their DIY skills.
