Princess Eleonore and Queen Mathilde were the most stylish mother and daughter duo as they stepped out for a night at the opera today.

The royal duo were photographed attending ‘Cassandra’ the opera at La Monnaie Opera House in Brussels, alongside its director Peter De Caluwe.

Queen Mathilde, 50, looked elegant in a structured gold top with black floral detailing and black flared trousers to match.

She accessorised the look with a dazzling pair of gold floral drop earrings, a gold clutch bag and pointed black pumps.

For her make-up, a bold red lip was the perfect choice for the evening festivities, as was her black eyeliner and perfectly coiffed blonde bob.

Meanwhile her daughter Princess Eleonore, who marked her 15th birthday in April, scaled back the glamour ever so slightly.

She opted for a black sleeveless top and trousers, which she teamed with black patent leather flats.

Unlike her mother, she chose to keep things casual by omitting accessories, jewellry or a matching bag.

Her make-up was subtle in nature, allowing her natural beauty to shine through.

Queen Mathilde’s appearance comes around a week after she visited the Vatican City with her husband King Philippe for a private audience with Pope Francis.    

There, the queen, wore a modest white dress for the occasion, which came to just below the knee, paired with a white mantilla, which she wore draped over her head. 

Black lace is customary when visiting the Pope – only a handful of people are permitted to wear white around the religious figure when visiting the Vatican. 

Only seven women in the world are permitted to wear white in front of the Pope. 

They include Charlene, Princess of Monaco, Queen Letizia of Spain, Queen Mathilde of Belgium and Maria Teresa, The Grand Duchess of Luxembourg. 

‘The privilege of the white’ also extends to Belgium’s Queen Paola and Princess Marina of Naples.

The privilege only extends to these royals because they are the seven Catholic Queens, Princesses and Duchesses. 

This meant that when Queen Camilla visited the Pope, she had to wear all-black, as she never converted to Roman Catholic, despite growing up in a Catholic household.

Instead, she is an Anglican. 

A Belgian cyclist who went viral after he was filmed kneeing a little girl and knocking her to the ground as he rode past her has won his court case against her father for posting the footage online.

A court will determine in April next year how much compensation he is entitled to after he successfully argued he was defamed. He previously demanded €4,500 – roughly the price of his bike.

The footage was filmed by five-year-old Neia’s dad, Patrick Mpasa, during their family walk in a nature reserve in Baraque Michel, Liege Province on Christmas Day 2020.

The cyclist was originally taken to court in Verviers for kneeing the child, only to be given a suspended sentence on the grounds that he had been criticised enough on social media. He was ordered to pay the girl’s family a pitiful €1 in compensation.

The video shows him knocking into the youngster, causing her to topple over. 

But the 62-year-old cyclist – reportedly a father and grandfather of seven grandchildren, who has not been named publicly – sued Mpasa for defamation.

In the video, the five-year-old girl is seen walking by her mother’s side on the snow-covered path as the cyclist approaches them from behind.

Just as he rides alongside the girl, he extends his knee out, hitting the little girl and knocking her to the ground before continuing on his way unbothered.

The family believed it was not an accident, as the man did not stop to check if the girl was okay and carried on cycling down the path.

However, the court decided the cyclist was free to go because he had incurred enough criticism on social media over the incident.

But the story did not end there. Almost a year after the incident, the cyclist went back to court to sue the girl’s father for defamation.

He did so on the grounds that the backlash the video received resulted in him feeling so threatened by the public he was scared to leave his own house.

Jacques Englebert, Mpasa’s lawyer, said in response to the defamation suit at the time: ‘We have the right to express ourselves. We have the right to post or have posted a video on the internet. In this case, we must check whether we have exceeded the limits of this freedom of expression.’

However, Englebert’s arguments were not strong enough in court, and Mpasa has lost the case and could be ordered to pay compensation.

In the footage, which went viral online, the cyclist was seen emerging from a bend in the snowy road before knocking into the young girl and sending her toppling into the snow.  

Furious father Patrick Mpasa, who had been filming his wife and two children, later shared the video on social media asking if people agreed that he was right to complain to the police.   

Mpasa said he had chased after the man and managed to make him stop but the cyclist had been unrepentant.  

‘He explained what happened and asked us to withdraw the police complaint, but he showed no remorse and did not apologise,’ said Mpasa at the time.

‘A lot of people tell me that I should have hit him, but I don’t agree and, in any case, I was in front of my children, which would have made things even worse for them. I also don’t want a witch hunt, I just want him to apologise.’

The family soon filed a complaint with police and both the cyclist and any witnesses were asked to come forward. The cyclist was reported to have come forward by contacting the parents of the child.

During a court hearing on February 3, 2021, the cyclist claimed that the incident had happened because he had tried to keep his balance.

He said: ‘When I was riding close to the girl, I felt my rear wheel sliding. To avoid a fall, I balanced myself with a movement of my knee. I felt that I might have hit the girl, but did not immediately realise she had been knocked over.’

But the prosecution argued his statement seemed very unlikely.

‘He was simply annoyed by the people on the path whom he had to swerve around all the time,’ they said. ‘He gave the child a ”knee punch” out of sheer annoyance because an obstacle was in his way for the umpteenth time.’ 

The local cyclist association described the man’s behaviour as ‘unacceptable’, but the judge opted for lenient treatment, arguing that the man had no intention of harming the girl, the incident was minor and he had already been criticised on social media.

The judge went on to say that the cyclist had already spent time in custody when he was arrested, and ruled that the unnamed man must pay the girl’s family a symbolic €1 (86p) in compensation for the incident.   

While the cyclist had faced up to a year in prison, the court decided to hand him a suspended sentence, meaning he will not face any penalties for his actions so long as he does not reoffend.

Sun-seeking Brits could soon turn to Poland or the Nordic coast for their summer getaways, Europe’s biggest travel agents has predicted, as traditional holiday hotspots in the Mediterranean and Algarve continue to be plagued by wildfires. 

Sebastian Ebel, chief executive of Tui, said European destinations like the Nordics, Belgium and Poland could become the next holiday meccas for British tourists seeking to steer clear of areas recently ravaged by extreme heat and infernos. 

The travel boss insisted climate change and rising global temperatures could force families into seeking new holiday locations – with Tui expecting travellers to book more holidays at cooler times of the year when visiting hotspots in the Med.

The company is rolling out new tour packages covering the north of the continent, including Scandinavia, the Netherlands and Belgium, with a particular emphasis on taking bookings in the spring and autumn.

Mr Ebel also believes that already-popular destinations with more moderate climates, such as the Canary Islands, will experience a boom in popularity as countries such as Spain, Greece and Portugal swelter and deal with a rising number of wildfire incidents at the peak of summer.

Last month saw 8,000 holidaymakers being evacuated by Tui from the Greek island of Rhodes after it was engulfed in a huge wildfire. The disruption cost the travel giant about £21milllion.  

However, destinations around the Mediterranean are likely to benefit from a longer holiday season too, with Tui mulling over whether to extend the season for hotter countries to include more spring and autumn months.

‘There will be changes,’ Mr Ebel said of the German firm’s future package offerings, reports the Financial Times.

‘The Canary Islands…will benefit from a more moderate climate. We will [also] focus on new destinations like the Nordics, Belgium and Holland.’

Tui believes that more cautious tourists may opt for lesser-visited destinations in the wake of terrifying wildfires that wreaked havoc in southern Europe this summer.

However, Mr Ebel does not believe that everyone will be put off.

‘Is that [change to our business] a threat to the business around the Mediterranean? No, it gives us more opportunities for growth,’ he said.

‘We will go into Greece to the middle of November,’ he said, adding that Tui could even take bookings ‘until or after Christmas’.

‘It gives us more opportunities for growth,’ he insisted.

His comments came after apocalyptic scenes continued to play out in Spain and Portugal as fresh wildfires sprouted – weeks after Tui cancelled flights to the Greek island of Rhodes as blazes spread close to holiday hotspots.

The company says it could face €25 million (£21.5m) of costs following the fires on Rhodes, where a days-long state of emergency was declared by the Greek government. 

Tui splashed out to evacuate 8,000 customers from the island as flames drew dangerously close to tourist hotspots. 

It maintains that 80 percent of its guests on the island were unaffected by the fires, but admitted that it had seen a slight decline in bookings following the terrifying scenes of burning forests and pictures of fed-up travellers in sports halls and airports.

Mr Ebel added: ‘We had a small slip during the wildfires and the heat. This has now normalised again.

‘We are looking very positive into the winter and [the rest of] the summer despite the consumer climate.’

The company reported pre-tax earnings of €169.4m (£146.2m) in the three months to the end of June, up from a loss of €27m (£23.3m) for the same period last year.

It is TUI’s first profitable early summer quarter since before the Covid-19 pandemic, suggesting a return to normality for holidaymakers. 

Other European nations are continuing to contend with wildfires of their own amid record temperatures. 

July was declared the hottest month on Earth on record – 1.5C warmer than the average between 1850 and 1900. 

Over 1,000 firefighters were deployed to tackle blazes in Portugal as more than thousands of acres of woodland were destroyed.

Hundreds of tourists have been forced to flee resorts in the Alentejo region after the fire took hold, but fire chiefs have since said that the fire is now under control, reports Reuters.

Spanish weather services have warned that temperatures were expected to top 44C on Wednesday, prompting fears of further wildfires after a huge blaze on the island of La Palma in July.

‘This will probably be the hottest five August days in 73 years,’ AEMET, the state meteorological agency, told the AFP news agency. 

Almost the entire country remains on a red weather alert. 

Belgium’s former King Albert II was hospitalised earlier today with signs of dehydration, a palace spokesman has said.

The ex-king, 89, ‘was admitted to hospital as a precautionary measure,’ the spokesman, Xavier Vaert, told AFP, confirming reports by state broadcasters VRT and RTBF.

‘Examinations are being done. He is conscious,’ Vaert said.

Albert II, the father of Belgium’s current King Philippe, was the third and youngest child of King Leopold III.

He became monarch on August 9, 1993 at the age of 59, taking over after his brother Baudouin died without children.

Albert II reigned until his abdication on July 21, 2013, handing the crown to Philippe, who today is aged 63. The former king and his wife, Queen Paola, 85, have spaced out their public appearances in recent years.

King Philippe  cancelled his planned engagement at the University of Ghent in order to visit his father in the hospital, according to People. 

Other relatives including Prince Laurent, King Albert’s younger son, and Prince Emmanuel were reportedly spotted arriving at the Saint-Luc hospital in Brussels to be by his side.

Speaking to the BBC at the time of his abdication, King Albert said: ‘I realise that my age and my health are no longer allowing me to carry out my duties as I would like to.    Prince Philippe is well prepared to succeed me.’

At the time of his abdication his love child Princess Delphine launched a legal bid to be officially recognised as Albert’s daughter – which she won in October 2020.

After Princess Delphine was born in 1968, the King initially remained in frequent contact with his child and her mother. But when Delphine reached her 16th birthday, the King began to distance himself.

Now the 55-year-old has the right to bear the royal name de Saxe-Cobourg and is formally recognised as a member of the Belgian royal family as are her two children Princess Joséphine of Belgium, 19, and Prince Oscar of Belgium, 14, who she shares with partner James O’Hare.

Speaking to Tatler last year, the princess, who is an artist, revealed her father’s rejection when she was young still hurts, but added she doesn’t blame him and holds no ill-will towards him.

She argued that royal life is ‘isolating’ and she believed her father had been badly advised at the time.

However, she said: ‘You don’t just have a child and kick it.’

Reflecting on her seven-year legal battle, Delphine said the action she brought was not about money or status but ‘principles’.

Now Delphine has attended royal engagements and says her relationship with her father has healed after years of bitterness.

When she launched her legal action in 2013, she told Belgian radio show Matin Premiere: ‘I feel like I have a right to exist. Not to exist in the royal family but as me.

‘My decision to call for help through the law, I feel today that it was the right thing to do… The judicial system said that I was right and that I had the right to exist.’

Since the legal action has been settled, Princess Delphine has slowly become integrated in the Belgian royal family.

She met her brother, King Philippe of Belgium who is one of 20 Belgian royals she is related to – in 2020, where they posted a socially distanced picture to Facebook, describing it as a ‘warm meeting.’ Her other royal half-siblings are Princess Astrid and Prince Laurent.

A Dutch man has been left fighting for his life after a petanque ball exploded when it was left near a fire pit.

The man was part of a 14-person bachelor party in the Belgian region of Walloon Stavelot, and had been enjoying some drinks when the boule exploded.

It is understood that the young man suffered severe shrapnel wounds to the head in the incident at a holiday home near the Amblève river on Saturday night.

While the exact circumstances are still being investigated, initial reports said the petanque ball was either in or under a fire pit when it exploded due to the heat.

According to the police, the effect was comparable to the explosion of a grenade, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reported today.

As a result of the blast, one of the men present at the party took a metal shard to the head and was rushed to the hospital in a critical condition.

‘As it exploded, someone got pieces in the back of the skull. His days are endangered,’ Belgian publication Sudinfo quoted a police source as saying.

Sudinfo implied that someone at the party had the ‘stupid idea’ of putting the  metal petanque balls in a brazier at their gîte, or holiday cottage.

Petanque, one of the most popular games in France and Belgium, is a form of boules that involves tossing metal balls as close to a smaller wooden ball as possible.

Competition boules are hollow, made by welding two steel half-spheres together before they are heated to around 900 degrees and then finished.

However, cheap boules with metal walls tend to be filled with a sand-like mixture to give them the weight steel-made equivalents would have, and are at risk of exploding when heated to high temperatures.

The tragic incident is not the first time someone has been either seriously injured or even killed in such circumstances.

In 2018, a Frenchman was killed when a petanque ball exploded and sent shrapnel into his skull. The ball was left near a barbecue. At the time, it was reported that paramedics rushed to the scene but were unable to save the 31-year-old. 

And in 2009, a new unsold set of leisure boules sitting on a shelf in a shop’s storeroom in Switzerland spontaneously exploded.

An investigation was launched into the explosion, with the Swiss department store chain Co-op – which sold the sets – issuing an urgent recall.

The incident prompted the German government to issue a statement warning people of the danger of cheaply made boules reaching high temperatures.

The German Petanque Federation (DPA) recommended buying certified boules, and shopping for them in specific petanque shops, as opposed to supermarkets.

The Swiss Federal Laboratory for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA) analysed the remaining set, and found they were cheaply made.

EMPA found they had poorly welded seams, and were filled with a sand-like mixture (referred to as ‘mortar’ in some news reports at the time).

The organisation found the sand was damp and contaminated with metal filings, which had become corroded over time. This chemical reaction produced hydrogen gas, which built up inside one of the boules – creating a great deal of pressure. 

Finally, the seam failed, and the ball dramatically exploded, the EMPA reported.

There have been other reported incidents. In 2016, in a German town near Düsseldorf, a petanque ball exploded in the middle of a marquee. The explosion ripped a hole on the tent’s roof, and left a crater in the ground.

A German bomb squad responded, removed the remaining seven boules in the set, and safely detonated them. 

A year later, in 2017, a Thai man became the first known person to be killed by an exploding boule. Reports suggested the players thought soaking the boule in water and then heating them up would help with their performance.

It is understood the man was heating boules when one exploded, sending a metal shard flying that pierced his skull and instantly killed him.