The week in brief: 7 April

Celebrity chef Jeroen Meus is opening a new restaurant in a former pharmacy in the centre of Leuven. “Not a gastronomic restaurant where you have to reserve in advance, but something more accessible,” he said. The business will be jointly run by Meus (pictured) and his former business partner, Nico Viaene, owner of Leuven’s Bar Louis. 

A man who tried to murder his ex-partner by shooting her in the street in Hasselt in 2012 has been sentenced to 25 years for attempted murder. Victim Didi Swiers, then aged 20, was wounded in the head and back but survived. Davy Simons, now 25, pleaded with the jury for another chance. “I am not yet lost to society,” he said. According to the law, and the time he has already spent in prison, he could be free again by 2020.

Seven people were taken to hospital last week and others treated onsite by emergency services in the port of Antwerp, when a toxic product based on chlorine escaped into the water purification system at chemical company Evonik, releasing chlorine gas into the atmosphere. Chlorine, a commonly used element in industry, especially as a disinfectant, has been used as a weapon in war; the chemical reacts with water in the lungs to form hydrochloric acid.

Former Genk striker Christian Benteke will miss the World Cup with Belgium amid fears he could be out for eight months with a torn Achilles tendon. His current team, England’s Aston Villa, have confirmed that he will undergo surgery after suffering the injury in training and say he is out until at least September. It means that Benteke, who has been outstanding since joining Villa in 2012, will not be part of the Red Devils squad in Brazil this summer.

The 50th comic strip mural in Brussels, due to be completed in Laken by this summer, will be dedicated to Jommeke, the comic character of Jef Nys. The fresco will appear in the Lokvogelstraat, and will be painted by an artist from the strip’s publisher, Ballon Media. Nys died in 2009.

The Vooruit culture centre in Ghent inaugurated a special depository for abandoned instruments, where anyone can deposit an unwanted musical instrument, which will then be cleaned up, repaired and sent on to budding musicians in Burundi. The effort was launched by musicians, including Lady Linn, who donated a piano, and Johannes Verschaeve from The Van Jets, who gave a guitar. In May the depository – lovingly referred to as a “foundling drawer” after the special drawer in Antwerp where newborn babies can be left rather than abandoned – moves to the Ancienne Belgique in Brussels and later to the city's Warandepark.

The public prosecutor in the Swiss canton of Valais has agreed to a request by some of the parents of the victims of the Sierre school bus crash to investigate a second mobile phone owned by one of the two drivers of the bus. The drivers were among the 28 victims of the crash in March 2012. The man’s widow has said that he did not have a second phone with him at the time of the accident. The second phone lay at home at the time and was later handed over to police. The driver’s laptop and main phone have already been examined and offered no evidence.

Stefaan Engels, the Ghent-based athlete known as Marathon Man for his extreme athletic achievements, is out to win a new record by running 100 kilometres a day for eight straight days. Engels, 53, will attempt the record as a closure to his 2,272km run across Belgium taking place in May. He will be accompanied by a medical team equipped with a new instrument able to tell if runners are reaching their limit.

The sole owner of the Antwerp logistics giant Katoen Natie, Fernand Huts, has won his case before the European Commission against the so-called Major Law, which in Belgium obliges all workers in the port area to be given the special status of dock workers. Huts claims employees of his subsidiary Logisport are not dock workers but regular employees. The Commission agreed and gave to government two months to make its case. Huts was less fortunate with an action before the Antwerp court of appeal against fines imposed on his company for not reaching agreed tonnage targets. Other companies in the same situation had received lesser fines, Huts claimed, reductions which should be struck down and the full fines imposed. The court did not agree. 

The Brussels-Capital Region has appointed economist Julie Lumen as its new school facilitator to co-ordinate the development of extra places in Brussels schools. Lumen will work for the Agency for Territorial Development and will assist both the Dutch- and the French-speaking networks in carrying out new projects. Lumen was instrumental in the development of the region’s first educational plan, which created thousands of new places in schools.

Photo by VRT / Lies Willaert