Terrorism will cast a continuing shadow over future generations and government electronic surveillance is a small price to pay to combat it, a leading historian said Wednesday, a day after the carnage in Brussels.

British author and journalist Sir Max Hastings gave a robust defense of electronic intelligence-gathering in what he called a new world that would never know absolute security.

Brussels has become infamous as a hotbed of Islamic extremism because of links to a series of recent attacks in Europe, and now the Belgian capital itself has suffered the worst ever terror attack in its history.

The attacks on the Brussels airport and metro system which killed around 35 people on Tuesday came just days after Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in November's Paris attacks, was captured in the city after four months on the run.

The carnage unleashed in Brussels on Tuesday shows that jihadist networks in Belgium and across Europe are still capable of staging mass-casualty attacks despite an intensifying security crackdown, experts say.

A senior French counter-terrorism official said the attacks were unlikely to be a direct response to the arrest in Brussels just four days ago of Saleh Abdeslam, suspected of being the last surviving member of the jihadist team that struck Paris in November.

Tintin wept.

Deadly attacks Tuesday at the Brussels airport and a metro station in the city are the latest in a string of attacks in Europe in recent years. Here are some of the most recent major ones:

— Nov. 13, 2015: Islamic State-linked extremists attack the Bataclan concert hall and other sites across Paris, killing 130 people. A key suspect in the attack, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, is arrested in Brussels on March 18, 2016.

Here is a summary of latest developments in the probe into the November 13 terror attacks in Paris:

Rolling up the sleeves of their gowns, Brazil's judges have been dropping one bombshell after another onto the political scene, drawing accusations from some of trying to further destabilize the crisis-hit government.

The explosive corruption investigation that has upended Brazilian politics all started two years ago, when a brash judge named Sergio Moro ordered the arrest of a money-changer and veteran con-man, Alberto Youssef, in a money laundering case.

Brussels-based lawyer Sven Mary, who stepped into the spotlight this weekend by taking on the defense of Europe's most wanted terror suspect Salah Abdeslam, is a seasoned legal veteran unfazed by political pressure.

The International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement have issued the below statement to mark the fifth year of the Syrian conflict:

“Syria: How Much Longer?

A string of mass protests culminating in an ongoing sit-in at the gates of Baghdad's Green Zone have thrust the mercurial Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr back on to center stage.

The scion of an influential clerical family from the holy city of Najaf, he first made a name for himself at the age of 30 as a vociferous anti-American cleric who raised a rebellion.