The Belgian Privacy Commission has no objection to the government’s plans to give the National Employment Office (ONEM) authority to visit the homes of the unemployed should there be any suspicion of domicile fraud - or giving a false family situation to get a higher benefit, according to the...

Flemish minister-president Geert Bourgeois opened an archaeological site in Lanaken, Limburg, at the weekend that contains one of the oldest forms of human settlement found in Belgium. The special historic value of the site is illustrated through three clay walls, with layers providing an overview...

Listen to some intriguing flute playing by Breton and Nigerian musicians at Muziekpublique tonight (Friday). The group Serendou consists of two flautists (Yacouba Moumouni and Jean-Luc Thomas), accompanied by percussionist Boubacar Souleymane. We are giving away two tickets to the concert on our...

In 1815 the municipality of Waterloo consisted of a burgeoning cluster of hamlets. Set amid rolling hills, the rural community lay 17km south of Brussels, a city revelling in a prosperous textile trade. Belgium was then part of the French Empire, and Waterloo was a strategic location for an army of...

A Belgian law that obliges internet service providers and telecom companies to store data on customer communications has been struck down by the Constitutional Court. The action against the data retention law was filed by the League for Human Rights and the French-speaking bar council. The law...

Flanders scores better than Wallonia in terms of premature death, or people who die before 75 years of age, according to figures released today by the Scientific Institute of Public Health (WIV-ISP) and the Free University of Brussels (VUB). The figures relate to the period 2003-2009, and show...

Next Sunday, 21 June, hundreds of people will roll out their mats in the Bois de la Cambre for an enormous fresh-air yoga session to celebrate of the first International Day of Yoga . Spearheaded by India and declared a holiday by the United Nations General Assembly in December, the International...

Flemish culture minister Sven Gatz and Brussels minister Pascal Smet ( pictured ) have joined forces to seek a solution to the dispute over the closure of radio station FM Brussel, which was announced earlier this week. “We have asked the board of directors to look at the whole restructuring of...

In 2014, about 7 million Belgians made a purchase over the Internet, or 64%. The number of online customers in the country has grown substantially since 2011, when there were 2 million customers, according to the fifth e-commerce survey by Belgian retail federation Comeos. For the study, Comeos...

Leuven will soon be home to two new restaurants, coincidentally both run by celebrity chefs Wim Ballieu and Jeroen Meus, writes Het Laatste Nieuws . Popular chef Jeroen Meus, of TV channel Eén, plans to serve his “haute dogs”, or gourmet hotdogs, in the student city at his new restaurant Würst. To...