The first cat cafe in Belgium will soon open its doors in the Brussels commune of Saint-Gilles. The concept of a cafe filled with cats for clients to pet and enjoy comes from Japan. The Brussels cafe is scheduled to open within two weeks, reports Brusselnieuws.be. The name of the cafe is Le Chat...

US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power was in Brussels yesterday to meet development cooperation minister Alexander De Croo, health minister Maggie De Block and the newly appointed Ebola coordinator, Dr Erika Vlieghe. Power praised Belgium for its efforts in the fight against Ebola, referring to...

Stan Lauryssens, whose book about the late Belgian actor Julien Schoenaerts incited a court action by Julien’s son, Matthias Schoenaerts, has withdrawn the book from sale rather than comply with an interim judgement handed down yesterday. The judgement required a quote from Matthias that appears on...

Researcher Marc De Meyer, entomologist at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Tervuren, has contributed to an international study that demonstrates that four species of fruit flies are in fact one and the same species. This insight has important consequences for global plant health and food...

With Halloween tomorrow, feel free to ring in the holiday at the witching hour with one of Belgium’s best contributions to the horror genre. 1. Welp The top spot goes to Welp (2014, English title: Cub ), a horror-meets-adventure story by Flemish director Jonas Govaerts in cinemas now. One of the...

Atrium, the Brussels Capital-Region’s commercial agency, is cancelling its Afterwork Shopping campaign, which saw many shops open until 20.00 on Thursdays. The number of customers decreased, the agency said, which led many shops to drop out of the programme. That, in turn, caused an even bigger...

Belgium’s three regions today submitted a joint application to Unesco in Bonn for recognition of the Sonian Forest ( Forêt de Soignes ) as a Natural World Heritage site . Brussels, Flanders and Wallonia joined forces to apply for the protected status under the United Nations Educational, Scientific...

Ten percent of Belgian employees under the age of 30 are overqualified for their job, reports De Standaard . The phenomenon of overqualified workers – such as an engineer who works in retail, for example – is on the rise across Europe since the start of the economic crisis, according to a study by...

Brussels has no plans to cut investment in its public transport network MIVB/STIB, the Capital Region’s transport minister, Pascal Smet, said. Smet was responding to reports in the dailies L’Echo and De Tijd that MIVB/STIB would lose €5 million from its 2014 budget and €37 million from next year’s...

The fight against illegal online gambling in Belgium is not easy, with 21 of the 94 blacklisted gambling sites still active, according to research by De Morgen . It is technically difficult to block the sites, according to Belgium’s Gambling Commission. It is still possible, for example, to play...