Flanders has some of the ugliest buildings in the country, according to visitors to a website designed to find Belgium’s ugliest building. The site is the idea of demolition company Jan Stallaert, which is offering to raze the winner to the ground for free. Current leaders at the time of going to press were Den Bosuil stadium in Antwerp; the Vanden Stock stadium in Anderlecht; and the Astrid Hotel in Antwerp. Among the top 10, five are in Flanders, three in Brussels and two in Wallonia.

www. hetlelijkstegebouw.be or www.lebatimentlepluslaid.be

Police in Ghent pursued a wild stag through the night-time streets last week, but the beast evaded capture and escaped along the railway line in the direction of the outer ring. According to a veterinarian called in by police, shooting the stag with a tranquilliser dart is not an option, as it has to be fired from closer than three metres, with the risk of attack. “Shooting the deer dead is the only possibility,” the vet said. It’s not yet clear where the stag came from.

Work begins this week (26 October) on the new Holocaust and human rights museum in Mechelen, to be built facing the site of the Dossin barracks. During the Second World War, some 25,000 people were deported from the barracks to the Nazi concentration camps. The new museum, designed by architect bOb van Reeth, is due to open in July 2012 and is expected to attract 100,000 visitors a year. The Flemish government has invested €25 million in the project.

Bruges is the most expensive location in the Benelux for hotel accommodation, according to a survey by online booking site hotels.com. Bruges overtakes Amsterdam for the first time, where hotel prices fell by 16% in the first half of the year, to an average of €103. Prices in Bruges went up 3% to €110 a night.

The medical faculty of the Free University of Brussels (VUB) has developed a website that they claim will be able to tell whether you have swine flu. The site is intended to prevent doctors’ surgeries from being overrun by people who mistakenly think they have the disease, as well as to provide advice and information for anyone who has it. The faculty stresses that the site is not a substitute for a doctor’s visit. www.testuwgriep.be.

Animal rights protestors last week scattered 20,000 pink balls at the headquarters of the Farmers’ Union in Leuven, in protest at the castration of male piglets without anaesthetic. The action group Gaia claims the painful procedure is carried out on 5.6 million pigs a year. The Farmers’ Union said it supported research into alternatives and pointed out that neither the meat industry nor pork consumers wanted pig meat from uncastrated animals.

Visits to the school medical service “lack discretion and respect for pupils,” according to the association of Flemish school students. The group says regular visits to the medical service, in which students are forced to wait in their underwear in full view of others, are old-fashioned and humiliating. The Centre for Student Support, which carries out the examinations in its 73 centres in the region, said it would hold talks with the students’ representatives to look into the problem.