Better safe than sorry, eh?

Police closed Brussels’ Merode metro station for four hours on the morning of Saturday, September 25, after finding suspect white powder on the platforms. It turned out to be dust left behind from the installation of new signs the previous day.

Gastronomy at its worst.

Belgian prisoners transferred to Dutch prisons have complained about poor-tasting food, according to Flemish daily Het Laatste Nieuws. Because of overcrowding in the nation’s prisons, Belgium sent inmates to the Tilburg prison in Holland. A spokesperson said the Tilburg meals are no different than what’s served in other Dutch prisons.

Vangheluwe.

The world-class judo trainer and founder of the populist Lijst Dedecker party Jean-Marie Dedecker said he would castrate the confessed paedophile former Bishop of Bruges Roger Vangheluwe. “As a notorious paedophile, he should be arrested, imprisoned and castrated. I’m ready to take on this last task with the help of two bricks,” he said to Het Nieuwsblad op Zondag. He also raised suspicions of collusion between the Catholic Church and the justice system.

Follow the leader.

Six hundred sheep turned up in Brussels’ Bois de la Cambre on September 14 after being herded 160 kilometres from a farm in Limburg. Shepherd Johan Schouteden brought the sheep to town to raise awareness of biodiversity and to coincide with an informal meeting of EU agriculture ministers in the capital. The flock set off from Berlin on June 5 and Schouteden took it over from Dutch colleagues in Maaseik last month.

Three cheers for unity!

A principal of a Lokeren primary school was accused of creating apartheid conditions by putting all Flemish children into the same class and all the remaining children of immigrant descent into separate classes. Seventy percent of the school’s children are of non-European origin. The principal defended the policy by saying that the aim was to stop the flight of local children, who would find themselves with few classmates to socialise with outside school.