Governments are ratcheting up the pressure on a mechanism some see as gambling

Frank Van Den Bleeken, a Belgian sex offender, will be euthanized, as he has demanded over the years, his lawyer said on Monday. He was incarcerated for several rapes and a murder. But after 30 years behind bars, he claims to be suffering from "unbearable mental pain." After several denied requests, the Belgian court of Appeal has finally approved his demand.

An underground pipe is being built in Bruges, Belgium that will carry 1,500 gallons of beer an hour underground, according to UK news website Sky News. The pipe is the brainchild of the De Halve Maan brewery, and will be built to take the company’s beer from its historic brewery location to a nearby bottling plant.

The offices of a Belgian newspaper that republished cartoons from the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo were evacuated on Sunday after receiving an anonymous bomb threat, its staff said. The evacuation of Le Soir, a French-language daily, came as thousands of people marched through Brussels in solidarity with France following Islamist attacks on Charlie Hebdo and other sites.

Belgian Justice Minister Koen Geens has revealed details of his new Justice Plan. Under the plan all jail sentences under one year will disappear from the Belgian penal code. The plan is intended to get the wheels of Belgian justice to turn more efficiently. Mr Geens presented the plan to lawmakers today. The idea is to turn the plan's proposals into law in coming years.

A video of a short concert given by a mostly forgotten French-speaking a cappella band from Belgium with humorous lyrics, the songs are from their one and only album titled “Libertés conditionnelles”.

Spot the similarities between the logos for the 2020 Summer Olympics and a theater.

The world's oldest living twin brothers, Paulus (L) and Pieter Langerock from Belgium, 102, toast while sitting in their living room at the Ter Venne care home in Sint-Martens-Latem, Belgium, Aug.11, 2015.

Facebook acted like the US’s National Security Agency, spying without authority on European users, lawyers representing the Belgian data protection authority said on Monday. In opening arguments in a closely watched case being brought against the social network company, Frederic Debussere, representing the Belgian privacy commission (BPC), referred to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about...

A Belgian data protection watchdog has compared Facebook with the National Security Agency in terms of “spying on people all around the world.” The Belgian Privacy Commission filed a lawsuit against Facebook after having accused the social networking website of breaching privacy rights of users and breaching EU law. The BPC Lawyer Frederic Debussere said at a court hearing Monday that Facebook was doing the “very same thing”...

The condiment is the center of a heated battle.

Controversial church could face ban if convicted of offences relating to privacy violations and recruitment practices

Until now, European security services largely ignored the growth of extremism in the Muslim neighbourhoods of Brussels

Front 242 is a Belgian electronic music group that came into prominence during the 1980s. Pioneering the style they called electronic body music, they were a profound influence on the electronic and industrial music genres.

Public advised to avoid crowds at shopping centres, concerts and large events where possible, after terrorism threat raised to level four in wake of Paris attacks

Brussels will stay on the highest level of terror alert, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel says, amid a manhunt for suspects linked to the Paris attacks. Schools, universities and the metro in the Belgian capital will remain closed on Monday, Mr Michel said.

Brussels will stay on the highest level of terror alert because of the "serious and imminent" threat of Paris-style attacks, Belgium's prime minister says. Charles Michel added that universities, schools and the metro would stay shut. Brussels has been on lockdown all weekend, amid a manhunt for suspected Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam.

Maysa, a teenager from Brussels, was a music fan and a ‘ray of sunshine’ at school. But an encounter on social media had changed her within a year

Police are seeking two new suspects accused of aiding Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam, the Belgian prosecutor's office says. The pair are "armed and dangerous" and are thought to have helped Abdeslam travel to Hungary in September. Investigators say Abdeslam may have driven the suicide bombers at the Stade de France to their target on the night of the Paris attacks. The assaults on 13 November left 130 people dead and more than 350 wounded.

Two policewomen and eight soldiers alleged to have engaged in group sex while colleagues hunted for Paris terror attack suspects. By David Batty.

Street art in Belgium (Hasselt)

A 24-year-old Belgian woman who suffers from depression and has had a "death wish" since childhood has been granted the right to die — even though she's not terminally ill. Doctors gave the young woman, identified only as Laura, the go-ahead to be euthanized by lethal injection after she spent her life battling suicidal thoughts, she told Belgian newspaper De Morgen. "Life, that's not for me," she said. "Death feels to me not as a choice.

Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam has been wounded and arrested in an anti-terrorism raid in Brussels, officials say.

Thirty-four people were killed in attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital on Tuesday, according to public broadcaster VRT, triggering security alerts across Europe and bringing some cross-border traffic to a halt.

Poland abandoned a pledge to shelter migrants under a European Union relocation agreement, Prime Minister Beata Szydlo said, shifting her country’s stance a day after suicide bombers killed dozens of people in the bloc’s de-facto capital. Poland’s previous government agreed to host several thousand migrants under a deal forged by the EU’s 28 member states to address the hundreds of thousands of mostly...

As a dragnet aimed at Islamic State operatives spiraled across Brussels and into at least five European countries on Friday, the authorities were also focusing on a narrower but increasingly alarming threat: the vulnerability of Belgium’s nuclear installations. The investigation into this week’s deadly attacks in Brussels has prompted worries that the Islamic State is seeking to attack, infiltrate or sabotage nuclear installations...

The old-line extremist networks have no connection to today's “jihadist cool” aficionados.

Belgian police briefly used water cannon to control several hundred rowdy protesters in central Brussels on Sunday after they ignored an official call for marches to be postponed following Tuesday's bombings. Amid fears of further attacks, officials wanted to give police the scope to focus on investigations which have widened to other countries, leading to the arrest of an Algerian in Italy and intelligence cooperation...

A man known as Faycal C, the only person arrested and charged with involvement in the Brussels attacks, has been released for lack of evidence. Belgian media said the man had been suspected of being the mystery third man in CCTV footage of the bombers. But a judge found there was no evidence to justify holding him, the prosecutor's office said. Last Tuesday's attacks on the airport and the city's metro system killed 35 people and injured more than 300.

The key remaining suspect in November's Paris terror attacks, Mohamed Abrini, has been arrested, Belgian media say.

Report says Ignacio Jesús Matellanes Martínez made no contact with Belgian government during his tenure

The terrorist cell that killed 32 people in attacks on Brussels last month had initially intended to strike France again, but swiftly decided to target the Belgian capital because the police investigation was closing in on them, prosecutors have said. Belgium’s federal state prosecutor said on Sunday that “numerous elements” in the investigation showed the group “initially had the intention to strike in France again” following November’s Islamic State attacks on Paris that killed 130.

Khaled Zerkani has been given 15 years in jail by a Belgian appeal court for recruiting Islamists, including some of the Paris and Brussels attackers. He was jailed last July for 12 years but prosecutors called for a longer sentence, arguing he had corrupted entire communities of youth. Among his recruits were Paris attackers Abdelhamid Abaaoud and Chakib Akrouh, and Brussels bomber Najim Laachraoui. Zerkani's fellow recruiter Fatima Aberkane was also given 15 years.