Belgian news in brief, 15 September 2005

Three Belgian films up for awards

Three Belgian films are in the running for the European ‘Oscars’ – the European Film Academy Awards which will be announced in December in Berlin. The Dardenne brothers’ L’enfant (The Child), which scooped this year’s Cannes best picture award, has been nominated along with Bouli Lanners’ Ultranova and Greg Zglinski’s Tout un hiver sans feu.

A thief near Charleroi made off with a mountain bike by driving it out of the store in front of a shop assistant and a security guard. On Wednesday, the criminal asked to be shown the most expensive bike at sports store Décathlon in Châtelineau and said he wanted to try it out. Once on the bike, he raced towards the exit, almost knocked the security guard over and disappeared into the countryside.

Around 65,000 drivers in the transport industry in Belgium are threatening to strike from 26 September after talks with bosses broke down. Members of the Belgian Union of Transport Workers want better pensions and a pay rise for working nights and holidays and claim their employers are using the spiralling petrol prices and competition from new EU countries as an excuse.

Belgium is one of just three countries where boys perform better than girls in secondary school exams. This week’s report ‘Education at a glance’ by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, which studied results in 21 countries, found girls outperformed boys in all the countries except Belgium, Switzerland and Turkey.

[Copyright Expatica News 2005]

Subject: Belgian news