Flemish environment minister Joke Schauvliege has reached an agreement with the cinema sector on a new system to control noise levels during the screening of digital films. “The goal is to protect the cinema viewer – and in particular children,” she said. The government of Flanders has already...

What do you do? For about five years I’ve been working as a credit manager at a BMW garage. In concrete terms, that means I follow up on clients who can’t make their payments. Every month I send out a reminder. If they don’t contact me, I call them up the following week. No two work days are the...

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has completed a study to find out how EU member states fare when it comes to weight. The findings show Belgium doing well amongst their EU neighbours, with the average Belgian weighing in at 68.8 kilograms. This puts the country slightly behind the...

The Belgian film The Broken Circle Breakdown has been nominated for an Academy Award in the category Best Foreign Language Film. The nominations were announced in Beverly Hills yesterday afternoon Belgian time. “I just got done crying,” said the film’s director Felix Van Groeningen at a press...

Consumers need to be introduced to more unfamiliar species of fish to help prevent waste, the Flemish Fisheries Association (VVV) said yesterday, when it was revealed that more than 300 tonnes of fresh fish was discarded in 2012 for lack of sales. “People buy the fish they already know, like cod,...

Last year showed a major decline in the number of passports issued to ‘new Belgians.’ As previously reported in the Bulletin, the number of new passports dropped significantly to only 5,000 in 2013, compared to 45,000 the year before. The reduction is directly linked to tougher measures implemented...

Even when turned off, it is possible for hackers to see all through the eye of your webcam without you knowing it. This is why Belgium’s Federal Computer Crime Unit is encouraging people to cover their webcams when not in use. Authorities have cited a few cases in Belgium where hackers have easily...

Tickets are still available for the American Theatre Company ’ show Sylvia , a touching and funny tale about marriage and middle age with a canine twist. Greg and Kate move to Manhattan from the ‘burbs once their children have flown the nest. When Greg returns home with a dog he has ‘found’ in the...

Federal employment minister Monica De Coninck wants to introduce “work cheques” to help youths with few job skills to find work. She calculates that a scheme could reduce unemployment figures by 15,000. In an interview with De Tijd newspaper, De Coninck said that the 23% youth unemployment rate in...