Brussels - The European Parliament has set the scene for a showdown with other European institutions and with the rest of the world by approving a strict import and trading ban on seals products.

In a vote held late Monday, a parliamentary committee agreed to limit the exemptions to a ban proposed by the European Commission by 25 votes in favour and seven against. It also ignored the view of their rapporteur, who had proposed a form of labelling rather than an outright ban.

Seal derivatives are found in a variety of products, including bags, motorcyclists' gloves and Omega 3 fatty acid supplements.

Brussels - The 20-year-old man suspected of killing two toddlers and a teacher in a knife attack at a Belgian nursery in January has confessed to the murder of a pensioner.

Kim De Gelder admitted his involvement in the death of 73-year-old Elza Van Raemdonck de Vrasene during a court hearing, the Belga news agency reported Tuesday.

Belgian investigators had linked the young man to the death of the pensioner - found stabbed to death in her home in the East Flemish town of Beveren on the evening of January 16 - not long after his arrest over the January 23 kindergarten massacre.

Liege, Belgium - An old industrial centre in a former coal-mining area, Liege is giving itself a bit of a face-lift these days. Its new Grand Curtius museum complex opens on March 6, and it plans to inaugurate an ultramodern train station this summer.

The first special exhibition at the Grand Curtius, from March 22 to June 28, will be dedicated to Belgian surrealist painter Paul Delvaux (1897-1994). Apart from female nudes, a favourite motif of his, fittingly enough, was trains and train stations.

Brussels - The annual rate of inflation in the 16-member euro

Brussels - The European Court should be allowed to set the standard for asylum decisions across the European Union, and Sweden could push for that when it takes over the bloc's presidency in July, the country's immigration and asylum minister said Friday.

"If you get an asylum application, you need a body that says that this decision should apply to all similar applications," Tobias Billstrom told journalists in Brussels.

Brussels - The European Union is following very closely reports of a new gas row between Russia and Ukraine, officials in Brussels said Thursday, two months after an earlier dispute crippled gas supplies to the bloc.

The EU's executive, the European Commission, is "following very closely the situation in bilateral commercial relations between Ukraine and Russia, because this could have an impact on supplies to the EU," commission spokesman Ferran Tarradellas said.