Subscribe!function(m,a,i,l,s,t,e,r){m[s]=m[s]||(function(){t=a.createElement(i);r=a.getElementsByTagName(i)[0];t.async=1;t.src=l;r.parentNode.insertBefore(t,r);return !0}())}(window,document,'script','https://tibet.net/wp-content/plugins/mailster/assets/js/button.min.js','MailsterSubscribe'); Tibetans in Aarschot celebrated His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s 89th birthday in the presence of special guest Geshe Lungtok Gedun Director of Tibetan Translation and Research Institute Metok Rinpoche from the Himalayan Dolma Buddhist Institute Geshe Tseten Phuntsok from the Shedrup Tengye Ling Buddhist Centre the regional Tibetan Youth and Women’s Association and the Director of the local Tibetan weekend school also attended the celebration as guests of honour The celebration was organised by Domey Association of Belgium the president of the Domey Association of Belgium greeted the guests and gatherings on the occasion and presented the association’s annual report the special guest delivered introductory remarks on the Tibetan Translation and Research Institute and its primary objectives the institute’s publication containing a collection of His Holiness’ noble orations was launched during the event Certificates were bestowed to a group of Belgium-based Tibetan college graduates as a gesture of appreciation from the organising association a token of appreciation was conferred to the dance teacher and cooks of the celebration The celebration was then wrapped up with a vote of thanks from the vice president of the association His Holiness the Dalai Lama Offers Congratulations to Anthony Albanese on His Re-election as Prime Minister of Australia Sikyong Meets Current and Former Chairs of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee to Discuss Appointment of Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issue His Holiness the Dalai Lama Congratulates Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney on His Party’s General Election Victory Speaker Khenpo Sonam Tenphel offers condolence over the demise of His Holiness Pope Francis Tibet at a Glance Tibetan National Flag Global Tibet Movement Constitution Leadership Judiciary Legislature Executive Election Commission Public Service Commission Auditor General Religion and Culture Home Finance Education Security Information & International Relations Health Issues Facing Tibet Sino Tibetan Dialogue Middle Way Approach Dolgyal-Shugden © Central Tibetan Administration • Privacy Policy • Terms of Service Your browser is out of date and potentially vulnerable to security risks.We recommend switching to one of the following browsers: Pfeiffer Georgi third from chase group in Tielt-Winge The US rider crossed the finish line alone while Mischa Bredewold (SD Worx-Protime) finished second and Pfeiffer Georgi (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL) was third in Tielt-Winge; both riders were part of a chase group that formed in the final I attacked and no one came with me but I was trying to get a group going so that was initially the goal. Alison [Jackson] was huge in helping me get in position at the beginning of the race," said Faulkner who noted how surprised she was to take her first win with EF Education-Cannondale “That’s what happens when you don’t expect it I think that since this race normally wouldn’t suit me I came in feeling really relaxed and I was totally willing to take a risk which celebrated its 19th edition this year Omloop van het Hageland was a 129.2km from Aarschot to Tielt-Winge The route travelled out to a larger loop that included three main climbs over the Driespad before tackling a shorter circuit that included the Roeselberg and Tielt-Winge Faulkner made her winning move after attacking with a group of favourites and then going solo with more than 50km to go and used her powerful time trial strengths to build her lead out to nearly three minutes A chase group formed behind Faulkner in the closing 25km that included Bredewold Sofia Bertizzolo (UAE Team ADQ) and Gladys Verhulst-Wild (FDJ-SUEZ) Faulkner maintained her lead all the way into the final shorter circuits and in the uphill finish at Tielt-Winge to take the victory Results powered by FirstCycling Kirsten has a background in Kinesiology and Health Science She has been involved in cycling from the community and grassroots level to professional cycling's biggest races She began her sports journalism career with Cyclingnews as a North American Correspondent in 2006 Kirsten became Women's Editor – overseeing the content strategy race coverage and growth of women's professional cycling – before becoming Deputy Editor in 2023 This article is part of POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab: Living Cities, a collaborative journalism project exploring the future of cities. Sign up here Public restrooms are stocked with free toilet paper cities are starting to address the problem of period poverty and provide free sanitary pads and tampons on public spaces and schools the question of what basic services and goods local authorities should provide to residents — and what can be considered an essential good — is a thorny one No less when it concerns an overlooked social issue that many policymakers still find awkward to talk about “Period poverty wasn’t discussed — not in politics, not in society, not in schools, not in poverty organizations" because it was "a double taboo," said Dorien Van Haute, deputy director of social service group Caritas Flanders “The first taboo is that we don’t speak about our period and younger people in particular struggle to talk about it,” she said “The second taboo is that if you don’t have money for certain things Because many politicians and policymakers still lack awareness of the issue most efforts to remedy the problem come from activists and NGOs distributing menstrual products in low-income communities they've been joined by a clutch of cities pledging to take action at a local level In Gdańsk, Poland, residents can access free period products from so-called "pink boxes" outside municipal offices social centers and schools throughout the city Aarschot, in the Belgian region of Flanders, became one of the first cities in the country to install vending machines that dispense sanitary pads free of charge in schools in 2021 "Girls who cannot buy menstrual products often stay at home which has an impact on their learning performance while others sometimes forget to bring menstrual products," said Aarschot's mayor "The mental threshold they need to cross to request sanitary napkins from the school administration is often too high: By placing a machine in the girls' toilets The city has since expanded the initiative new vending machines were inaugurated in the city hall and sports center and residents can also pick up menstrual products at the local library cultural center and other public buildings Activists hope this will soon become the norm "Nobody chooses to have a period: There should be period products in every single public building," said Verónica Martínez, founder and director of BruZelle a Brussels-based NGO that distributes menstrual products to people who can't afford them "Cities should make them freely available in municipal offices “You should be able to pick them up on any street."  Pads and tampons may not seem like they would break the bank but the need to stock up monthly can quickly put them out of reach for many people The Wallonian regional government estimates that people who need them spend between €10 and €12 a month According to social service group Caritas, 12 percent of all women aged 12 to 25 living in the neighboring region of Flanders reported not having enough money to buy period products at least once in their lives. That figure is much higher among Flemish women living in poverty, 45 percent of whom reported having that issue. “People affected by period poverty are often forced to choose between buying essential items like food or buying menstrual products,” said Martínez. “They sometimes have no access to a location where they can get changed safely, a toilet with a lock, soap to wash their hands afterward.”  Martínez stressed that not changing a pad or tampon can lead to infection or even toxic shock. She added that not being able to maintain basic hygiene can also be a source of mental distress. “Period poverty isn’t just a women’s issue: It’s a public health issue,” she said.   While some cities have made recent strides, activists and social workers say many are still reluctant to spend public money on addressing period poverty or don't recognize it as an important social issue. Because menstruation is "such a private matter and there’s so much shame surrounding periods and poverty,” many local and regional authorities are wary of addressing the issue or don't consider they may have a role to play, according to Van Haute from Caritas. Authorities often worry about unlikely challenges to setting up schemes to distribute free period projects, like the risk that people will steal from the free vending machines or vandalize them, said BruZelle’s Martínez. “Even if 10 percent of people were abusing the service, it’s still worth having for the other 90 percent who need it,” she said. "We should think of free pads like free toilet paper, like any other essential product that we would expect to find everywhere." This story has been updated with comments from the mayor of Aarschot. Conservatives face accusations of collaborating with far-right parties in NGO funding probe. Privacy regulator’s secretary general traveled on the EU’s dime to Spain, his home country, far more often than to other countries. Brussels is far from meeting its targets to reshore microchips manufacturing. There are major hurdles to overcome for the EU to retaliate against U.S. digital companies. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page. ​CategoriesCategoriesEnglishSOCIETY, HEALTHCovid-19: Five years on how the pandemic evolved in Belgium10 March 2025 Monday marks five years since Belgium recorded its first death from Covid-19. For the next two years, the country and the world would be in the grip of the pandemic. A 90-year-old woman died in Etterbeek on 10 March 2020 after contracting the virus, followed by two more people the next day. At that point, more than 300 infections had already been diagnosed in the country.  In an attempt to contain the virus, the National Security Council – key federal ministers and representatives of the security services – met for the first time. The health protection measures they decided on were minimal compared to what was to come: people were asked to keep their distance from one another and it was recommended that mass events be prohibited, but schools, businesses, shops and restaurants remained open.  Two days later, the Security Council met again. This time, catering establishments were closed, schools were suspended and events were cancelled. The first lockdown was implemented five days later: borders were largely closed and only essential travel was permitted.  A memorial to victims of the pandemic in Aarschot, Flemish Brabant © BELGA PHOTO INE GILLISFrom April, a gradual relaxation of the initial measures began. From June, they were eased further and “contact bubbles” were expanded. But the tide turned in the summer. Infection rates rose sharply, especially in Antwerp, and contacts were restricted again.  The second lockdown came at the end of October: cultural centres, swimming pools, gyms, hairdressers and non-essential shops were all closed. Working from home became compulsory for all those who could. This time, however, schools remained largely open. The Grand Place in Brussels during the pandemic April 2020 © PHOTO BELGIAN FREELANCE The lockdown lasted until the spring of 2021 with Christmas and New Year events and gatherings cancelled further relaxation of restrictions began and on 20 May 2022 more than two years after the crisis began the Consultation Committee met for the last time While a vaccine rollout started in January 2021 it was months before the vaccination rate was high enough to allow most of the security measures to be lifted A Covid Safe Ticket was introduced for events and the booster campaign was stepped up in the autumn More than 30,000 people in Belgium died after contracting coronavirus A study in medical journal The Lancet showed that the pandemic could be linked to more than 18 million deaths around the world between the end of 2020 and the end of 2021 The intensive care Covid-19 unit at the Clinic Saint-Jean in Brussels Copy linkGet updates in your mailboxYour email addressSubscribeBy clicking "Subscribe" I confirm I have read and agree to the Privacy Policy rapid and high-quality information 24 hours a day from Belgium and abroad to all Belgian media not to mention entertainment and lifestyle our journalists and press photographers produce hundreds of photos and news stories Since the end of March 2022 English has been added as a language businesses and various organisations that need reliable information Belga News Agency also offers a comprehensive range of corporate services to meet all their communication needs www.belganewsagency.eu The attackers of a black teenager who was pushed from the platform onto the railway tracks at Aarschot (Flemish Brabant) Station in 2018 have had their appeal rejected The Court of Appeal in Brussels confirmed the sentence issued by the Criminal Court in Leuven (Flemish Brabant) The racist attackers have been given a 12-month custodial sentence suspended for 5 years and ordered to pay 10,000 euro in compensation to their victim the teenager was waiting for a train to Leuven on the platform of Aarschot station when two women and a man attacked him During the fracas one of the two women uttered a racial slur The teenager was then pushed onto the rail tracks The two women continued to make derogatory comments throughout The victim's older sister had tried to intervene to help him back onto the platform The assailants were identified thanks to a video shot by the victim’s sister the Leuven Criminal Court sentenced the assailants and found that the explicitly racist comments that had been made during the attack could not be dissociated from the act of violence perpetrated Two of the three defendants decided to appeal the Court of Appeal in Brussels followed the judgment of the court in Louvain The Inter-federal Ant-Discrimination Centre Unia was a civil party in the case In a press release Unia said that it is satisfied that the racist motive was retained as an aggravating circumstance in the Court of Appeal’s judgement Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker Bike Europe is a part of VMNmedia. The following rules apply to the use of this site: Terms of Use and Privacy / Cookie Statement | Privacy settings His recent work includes a documentary project on landscape and infrastructure commissioned for the Baltic Pavilion at the Venice Biennale to photograph a care home for the elderly designed by Sergison Bates Architects I was met at the train station by a woman called Christine the director of the home I was to visit (and two others in the district) who had kindly offered to take me on the last leg of my journey in her car we talked about the consequences of Europe’s ageing population Christine spoke of an oncoming “tsunami of older people” a seismic demographic shift that must be addressed Making provision for this would not be easy but if the needs of the ageing population were not met The effect of these sobering statements was countered by the optimism that welled up in me on seeing the thoughtfulness with which she dealt with the clients in her care and the dignity afforded to them in their later years I returned to Flanders earlier this year with Daniel Rosbottom to document its recent housing project for older people in the city of Aarschot with the Ghent-based practice Architecten de Vylder Vinck Tallieu Comprising 35 serviced apartments combined with a social centre serving the wider elderly population of the city it provides 5,600 square metres of space in all built for the very economical sum of £6.5m a direct challenge to the often insular nature of this building type It is fortuitously sited at the end of a wide boulevard which marks the line along which the medieval city wall once ran by a 2003 urban plan by Robbrecht & Daem Architects that sought to reinforce the route taken by the wall with a green circuit punctuated by public spaces and significant city buildings at the top of the tree-lined hill that rises above the site To the south of this ring are the Church of our Lady and the Begijnhof – the former home of a women’s religious community – from which the language of the new building has been skilfully and precisely appropriated and transformed Another reference might be found in an  elegant four-storey white-painted brick building that stands alone in the woodland to the north-east of the site The complex is composed of three pitch-roofed ‘bars’ echoing the orientation of much of the adjacent city grain Two of the bars present themselves as three-storey volumes to the street edge stops short of the others to make a south-facing public space This space is intended as a bookend to the market street that extends westward to the city’s central market place At its south-west corner is a similarly scaled volume that may be read as a gatehouse closing an existing terrace of houses and containing a large flat for subsidised rent punctured by windows which are black on the long edges and formed of bronze anodised aluminium where they open onto one of the two courts gently echo the materiality and profiles of adjacent domestic buildings reduced palette of materials and forms is given an enjoyable twist as the middle bar increases from three to four storeys and subtly deviates in plan The pitched roof is subjected to gentle distortions as it rises to accommodate the changes in height and direction This condition is most apparent when viewed from the south The picturesque yet abstract quality of the gables seen against the brow of the hill and the subtle geometric distortions of the building’s profile together give it a gently surreal quality that calls to mind the cool emotional temperament of Thomas Struth’s photographic series ‘Unconscious Places’ The building is entered below a carefully cut vertical niche that extends to the roof drawing light from the east and enabling the deepest part of the plan to be naturally ventilated and daylit It provides for a carefully marked threshold around which communal spaces – cafe The thinking about light and air as a basic tenet of dwelling is extended to the design of the serviced apartments above The loose geometry of the circulation areas determined by the requirements of wheelchair accessibility is sufficiently generous to give the feeling of a narrow street – an idea reinforced by the robust quality of the chamfered calcium silicate blockwork walls that line the public areas To ameliorate the normally abject but functionally efficient condition of the double-loaded corridor the architects have instigated some deft compositional and spatial devices which include open each corridor to all four cardinal points along its length Apartments are clustered around small ‘courts’ with views to the outside fostering a sense of neighbourliness and community Autonomy can be asserted through the opening and closing of the shutters to the kitchen window These shutters – another quotation from the Begijnhof – appear white when closed but present vivid colours (chosen by the artist Willem Cole) to the corridor when they are open At about 55 square metres the apartments are relatively small compared to the Belgian norm but are thoughtfully planned with large hallways and some spaces arranged enfilade to accommodate diminishing mobility and maintain privacy eschewing the vinyl that is the institutional norm This is proudly civic building that achieves urban reach through its materiality As an urban entity it addresses the particularity of place and shows how context may contribute to a design process and the quality of its outcome If not a panacea for all the problems of an ageing population this project does thoughtfully address the pressing question of how our future retirees might want to live understanding its responsibilities both to the users of the building and the city It demonstrates that architecture can have agency © Built Environment and Architecture Media Ltd 2025 We use cookies and other tracking technologies to ensure that we give you the best experience on our website analyse your use of our products and services 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used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant ads on other sites you will not experience our targeted advertising across different websites These cookies are necessary to display content from social networks such as Facebook In such a way that you can share our content with your favourite social networks In Wezemaal in Rotselaar (Flemish Brabant) a teen cyclist was killed yesterday evening as a result of a crash on a closed railway level crossing According to the Leuven public prosecutor's office the young man had ignored the barriers that were down Train traffic between Leuven and Aarschot was at a standstill all evening but has since returned to normal Railtrack operator Infrabel received a first report of the fatal accident around 8.30pm yesterday "The barriers at the level crossing were down and the lights were on red because a train was approaching," explains spokesman Thomas Baeken has reiterated the company’s appeal never to cross a level crossing when the barriers are down According to the Leuven public prosecutor's office a sixteen-year-old had ignored the barriers and was then hit by a train emergency medical team arrived at the scene Train traffic between Leuven and Aarschot was suspended all evening Traffic was diverted and the rail company put on replacement buses