Belgians voted on Sunday in general elections that are widely seen as a vote on an orderly breakup of this country where 6.5 million Dutch and four million French speakers are locked in a quarrelsome union.
Polls closed at 1 pm amid expectations of a strong performance for a mainstream Flemish party whose leader wants Dutch-speaking Flanders to sever its unhappy ties with Francophone Wallonia and eventually join the EU as a separate country. This is a nightmare scenario for poorer Wallonia, which greatly depends on Flemish funds, and shows how linguistic disputes dominate national politics. Elections were called one year early after Premier Yves Leterme’s five-party coalition fell apart April 26 in a dispute over a bilingual voting district.
That spat has gone unresolved since 2003 and pushed the New Flemish Alliance — a tiny, centrist party only a few years ago — into pole position. Its leader and perhaps Belgium’s next Premier Bart de Wever wants an orderly breakup of Belgium by shifting the government’s remaining powers to Flanders and Wallonia.
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21 nails in excreta of Chinese girl
Beijing : An 18-month-old girl in northwestern China has baffled doctors after she repeatedly excreted nails.
The girl had excreted 21 nails and a steel pin in the past one month, but has no signs of illness. She is eating and drinking as usual.
Paediatricians who are observing the toddler suspect that she suffers from pica, an eating disorder marked by the craving for and eating of non-food items, but are puzzled by where she gets the nails from, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
“Pica is likely, but we need to carry out further research. It’s very strange where she got all these nails,” professor Gao Ya from the hospital affiliated to Xi’an Jiaotong University said. Pica is a severe eating disorder that is often caused by deficiency of zinc, iron or other trace elements. It can result in serious problems such as lead poisoning. —PTI