OchtendKrant: news for Friday 30 October 2026
Audit office puts the full i-Police bill at 139 million euros, including licences nobody uses
The audit nearly doubles the figure circulating until now and describes a project that was poorly managed from the outset; pressure on Annelies Verlinden is mounting.
Toledo rail disaster: controllers cleared a train to run at full speed, and Iryo had raised the alarm
8 sources · La Libre, RTBF, Het Nieuwsblad +Energy pushes Belgian prices 5.26 percent higher in October, with wage indexation due in January
6 sources · Business AM, Trends, La Libre +Apple finally puts the Mac within finger reach: OLED MacBook Pro starts at 2,899 dollars
5 sources · 9to5Mac, Ars Technica, Heise +Rubin telescope spots an icy world beyond Pluto that could become the sixth dwarf planet
4 sources · VRT NWS, University of Washington, NSF +Belgium
All of BelgiumSenior ministers now meet every day on the budget, but no breakthrough yet
After another session without major progress, the core cabinet resumes talks today; without a deal early next week, an emergency budget looms.
5 sources · RTBF, VRT NWS, La Libre +Audit office maps the teacher shortfall in Flemish secondary schools, with Brussels and disadvantaged schools worst hit
Counting every absence, one teacher in sixteen is missing; schools cope with stopgap measures that the audit office says threaten quality.
3 sources · Bruzz, De Tijd, La LibreAfter Council of State rebuke, Knokke-Heist resets every beach bar award, leaving operators in the dark
The municipality withdraws the award of 24 beach bars and a playground, less than five months before setup for the new season.
5 sources · VRT NWS, La Libre, De TijdOpen letter asks De Wever to scrap Reza Pahlavi's talk at the Royal Military Academy
Former ministers and MPs from several parties argue that Minister Francken's invitation to the son of the last shah is not politically neutral.
3 sources · La Libre, La DH, De TijdWorld
All of WorldIsrael's final count leaves the right-wing camp on 53 seats as Arab lists take 19
Neither bloc has a majority, and accusations from Netanyahu's camp against the Arab parties are hardening the tone.
7 sources · RTBF, HLN, Het Nieuwsblad +Member states strike 'associate membership' for Canada from the Montréal summit text
At the summit in Montréal the EU promises Canada ever closer ties, but Germany blocked the label Ursula von der Leyen had championed.
6 sources · Knack, Business AM, HLN +France readies 70,000 officers for another Saturday of protest as Trappes suspect is held in custody
After rioting and looting at earlier protests, France faces a tense weekend, and in Belgium too there are fresh calls for action.
6 sources · La Libre, VRT NWS, RTBF +Economy
All of EconomyLagarde announces an early exit on the day the ECB keeps rates on hold
The deposit rate stays at 2.5 percent, but a December hike is on the table; the search for a successor starts at once.
10 sources · Trends, Business AM, De Tijd +Investors punish Alphabet over softer ad revenue, and Amazon slides after hours
A record drop for Google's parent drags the Nasdaq lower, a day after the Fed left rates untouched.
11 sources · Trends, De Tijd, HLN +Oil majors post record profits as China weighs on AB InBev and ING cuts jobs
A busy results day shows how the energy crisis is creating winners and losers; Volkswagen also slumped deep into the red.
11 sources · La Libre, Business AM, RTBF +Tech
All of TechAI & LLMs
Mistral releases its largest model and pitches cyber defence that nobody can switch off
The French AI company has put the weights of Mistral Large 4, a model with a trillion parameters, online and presents it as Europe's answer to Chinese open models.
3 sources · TechCrunch, Heise, WiredGemini 4 Carbon shines on security tests, but a broad rollout is still some way off
Two weeks after Argon, Google is already presenting a stronger successor, which will first go only to selected cyber defenders.
3 sources · Ars Technica, The Register, HeiseAI search earns Google less and sends fewer readers onward, while Reddit moves to require a login
Google admits that AI Mode queries bring in less advertising revenue, and Reddit is seeing its traffic from Google fall by more than a million visits a week.
5 sources · Ars Technica, The Register, Heise +Programming languages
Attackers pair PHP2Shell with a Linux flaw and break into internal networks through firewalls
Researchers describe how 25 servers were taken over, including at organisations linked to the US government.
3 sources · The Register, Unite.AI, Help Net SecurityRust gets a place in systemd, and the creator of Tokio wants to bring the language to everyday web apps
New components of the Linux init system may now be written in Rust, while the Topcoat framework puts Rust to work for server-side web applications.
4 sources · The Register, Phoronix, LinuxiacOther tech
Belgian tax authority takes MyMinfin offline after a cyberattack, some filing deadlines move to 16 November
The Federal Public Service Finance says the attack was stopped within hours and there are no signs that data was stolen, but restoring services will take time.
3 sources · VRT NWS, The Register, ITdailyBinance loses billions, probably through an engineer's laptop, and halts all transactions
The world's largest crypto exchange puts the haul at 6.3 billion dollars and says it has already frozen roughly half of it.
3 sources · VRT NWS, TechCrunch, La LibreScience
All of ScienceUN tallies restoration work on 252 million hectares, but seas and rivers trail far behind
A new UN report presented at the biodiversity summit in Yerevan finds a record area under restoration, but its authors say the pace must still triple.
3 sources · VRT NWS, La Libre, RTÉHeat killed more people than malaria in 2023, Lancet researchers call for a global emergency
For the first time, the annual Lancet Countdown report attributes a concrete number of heat deaths to global warming: almost three million between 2016 and 2023.
3 sources · La Libre, Reformatorisch Dagblad, Medical DailySport
All of SportZverev beats Griekspoor in Vienna and will top the ATP rankings for the first time on Monday
The 29-year-old German, winner of Roland Garros and the US Open this year, displaces the injured Jannik Sinner from first place.
3 sources · Sporza, RTBF, La DHKompany recovers at home from a brain lining condition, Bayern return not expected until after the international break
Bayern said on Wednesday that the Belgian coach had been allowed to leave hospital. According to Bild, he will miss at least the games against Dortmund, Atlético and Mainz.
4 sources · Sporza, La DHWithout a team for next season, Teuns calls time on his career as two Belgians make the Vélo d'Or shortlist
The Limburg climber won the Flèche Wallonne and two Tour stages among other races. Evenepoel and Van Aert are on the shortlist for the prestigious cycling award, Kopecky is not.
5 sources · Sporza, RTBF, La DH