The practical necessities of travel usually allow us only rushed and distracted impressions of train stations, airports and bus depots. The true character of these transit hubs often remains obscured regardless of the frequency with which we pass through them. Some of them manage nevertheless to...

Secretary of state for mobility Melchior Wathelet wants to reform the driving school system. This will include limiting the validity of provisional licences and taking strict action against ‘pseudo’ driving schools, he told De Morgen today. These schools are not illegal at present in Belgium, which...

A century of wind and weather has worn the surfaces of the 12,000 headstones of Tyne Cot cemetery in Zonnebeke, rendering the names hard to read, writes Associated Press’s Don Melvin . Some gravestones are chipped or cracked and the stones are no longer perfectly aligned. Workers are using diamond...

Secretary of state for public service Hendrik Bogaert has warned against a wave of cyber-attacks in today’s De Standaard. “Now is the time to invest in the security of our networks and systems,” he said. “We must prepare for a wave of cyber-attacks by allocating an appropriate budget. To me, €20...

US secretary of state John Kerry has arrived in Brussels to participate in a meeting of Nato foreign ministers. He was greeted on arrival by US ambassador Howard Gutman and Pierre Labouverie, chief of protocol of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Nato foreign ministers will also meet in the Nato-...

Last week’s fatal bomb attack at the Boston marathon was in the minds of runners in Antwerp yesterday, reports Flanders News . Participants in the marathon spoke of “runner solidarity” and wanting to show that nothing can stop runners, following the blasts that killed three people and left more...

I moved to Antwerp in the 1990s and had no intention of buying property in Belgium, even though I expected to stay here at least for the duration of our children’s education. As the kids were infants, this was a 20-year-plus commitment. What put me off buying property in Belgium was the outrageous...

The use of seatbelts is stagnating in Belgium, according to the latest study by the Belgian Institute for Road Safety (IBSR). The findings, published in today’s Sudpresse newspapers, also reveal that women are less likely than in the past to wear seatbelts and that the Walloons are the worst at...

One in four Belgian workers is at risk of burnout, a survey reveals. The higher the pressure and the emotional stress in the workplace, the more significant the risk is, according to a survey by the IDEWE Group. The survey was conducted among 2,029 workers in Flanders and 842 in Wallonia. More than...

Four young people have died after a car careered off a bridge over the canal in Brussels yesterday evening, Flanders News reports. Three died at the scene and the fourth, a passenger, died of his injuries in a Brussels hospital. The accident happened at around 21.00 last night on the Van Praet...