Belgium's Tom Boonen won the Tour of Flanders for the third time yesterday, beating Filippo Pozzato and Alessandro Ballan in a three-way sprint.

Slice Of The City: Antwerp - Back in 1988, a group of young designers took London by storm. William Cook picks up the trail of the Antwerp Six

He knows better than anyone the way to crush enterprise is to have them register for VAT

City Slicker - Ghent: This historic Belgian city is making its mark on the winter calendar. David Atkinson offers some tips for visitors

Happily married to the same lady for 70 years, Lance Errington – it did not occur to us to call such an unpompous and witty man Lancelot – was a hugely effective civil servant who devoted his working life to welfare and his social life to keeping friendships in first-class repair.

Belgium hit a new milestone today — 450 days without a government — but still no one appears to be in any big hurry to resolve the situation.

Reading this epic dissection of 19th-century murder and the fascination it held for the Victorian public, you are reminded of the odd ways in which the names of perpetrators and victims continue to resonate. The expression "Sweet Fanny Adams" stems from a grisly case of 1867 when the dismembered body of nine-year-old Fanny Adams was found near Alton, Hampshire. Myles-na-Gopaleen, the pen-name used by Flann O'Brien, was a character in Dion Boucicault's drama The Colleen Bawn - derived from the real-life murder of 15-year-old Ellen Hanley, drowned in 1819. Thomas Hood's poem "Eugene Aram", repeatedly used for comic effect by PG Wodehouse – in Bertie Wooster's mangled recollection, it goes, "Tum-tum tum-tumpty mist (I think it's mist),/ And Eugene Aram walked between,/ With gyves upon his wrist" – concerned a Knaresborough man hanged for the murder of a shoemaker in 1749.

Breast cancer screening has had little impact on falling death rates from the disease, new research indicates.

The leader of Belgium's French-speaking socialists is starting his search for a coalition government, seeking to unblock an 11-month stalemate.

The Belgian Nick Nuyens stunned pre-race favourite Fabian Cancellara to prevail in a three-man sprint and win the Tour of Flanders yesterday.

What would be a humiliation for many turned into a party for Belgium today as the country's citizens marked 249 days without a government, a figure that they are treating as a world record in political waffling.