26/10/10 - The municipal council has decided that starting next year all new or renovated roofs in Antwerp will have to be "green roofs" with plants or grass.

26/10/10 - The new saliva test used by the police appears to react to medicines including Ritalin that is used to treat ADHD.

The number of asylum seekers that are going to court to ensure that they receive food and accommodation has risen sharply in recent months.

More and more Flemish students are applying for a place on the Erasmus exchange scheme. So many in fact that the budget to pay for courses abroad is coming under increasing pressure.

Belgian customs have staged special checks targeting foreign drivers domiciled in Belgium to make sure that they have paid their car tax. In all 1,400 vehicles were checked. 60 drivers appeared to be flouting the regulations.

26/10/10 - Police in Antwerp have detained a thief who stole 623 bicycles over a 78 day period.

The Flemish Culture Minister Joke Schauvliege has defended plans to merge the Royal Ballet of Flanders with the Flemish Opera insisting that the artistic merit will not be affected.

The Belgian tennis diva Kim Clijsters is ready for the WTA Championships in Doha. The so-called Masters only see the best 8 players of the past season taking part.

Appointed Royal Mediator last week, the Flemish socialist has taken soundings from the different political parties involved in the negotiations on a state reform.

Els Clottemans, who was found guilty of the murder by the Court of Assizes, is to take the matter to the Court of Cassation.

25/10/10 - At a meeting of European Foreign Ministers, chaired by Belgium's Steven Vanackere, it was decided to send the Serbian application to the European Commission for detailed review. The effort Serbia will make to arrest Ratko Mladic, who is accused of war crimes, will play a decisive role in Europe's decision.

The 13, including four major banks, will have to report to a new watchdog before taking any major decisions.

According to the Belgian Primate, paedophile priests who have retired should not be taken to court.

25/10/10 - Australia's Kathryn Bennetts, who has resigned from the post of Artistic Director of the Royal Ballet of Flanders, has lashed out against the Flemish Culture Minister Joke Schauvliege. Ms Schauvliege announced that the Flemish Ballet would become a part of the Flemish Opera in a restructuring operation to save money, but this would have serious consequences, Ms Bennetts warns, adding that the minister knows nothing about arts.

25/10/10 - 50 lorries in Belgium are trying out a new device to reduce the number of fatal accidents caused by a blind spot in the rear view mirror. Every year, 60 cyclists and pedestrians are killed in this type of accidents. The introduction of so-called blind spot mirrors in 2003 did not help.

Flanders Investment and Trade (FIT) has succeeded as one of only a few Flemish government services to up its budget (by 1.1 million euros). FIT focuses on assistance to Flemish businesses with their export activities and the boosting of foreign investment in Flanders. At a time when Flanders is struggling with a cut in subsidy budgets, frozen expenditure and wage budget shrinkages in the civil service, this achievement is most impressive, and will see FIT’s 48-million euro budget jump by 2.3 percent next year.

The biggest share of the new budget will go to SME subsidies, according to a memo released by Minister-President Kris Peeters (CD&V), also tasked with the portfolio Economy and Foreign Trade. As  mentioned, FIT currently assists businesses with their export plans, facilitating business missions outside Europe, including trade fairs outside the Belgian borders or registration and sanctioning of products abroad. This budget is set to increase by 450,000 euros.

On the flipside, FIT also encourages foreign investments in Flanders, and Peeters hopes to identify weaknesses in the Flemish industrial fibre with the compilation of an annual list of about thirty well-known industries or technologies which should invest their reputation or expertise in the region. To this end, he is planning to invite reputable business leaders to Flanders. On these site trips, foreign businesses will be given all the relative data in respect of legal procedures, taxes, available sites or existing technological clusters. Moreover, they will receive subsidies to gather information on the consumer market in Western Europe, for which Flanders could act as a key base. Despite austerity measures, 280,000 euros will be allocated to employ additional staff at FIT as well.    

The Brazilian Companhia Brasileira de Logistica (CBL) is set to invest 70 million euros in the construction of a terminal for the storage of liquid bulk (biodiesel, diesel oil, petrol, ethanol and vegetable oils) in the Ghent harbour. This heralds one of the biggest investments of the past few years, says managing director Daan Schalk of the Ghent Port Company, confirming that the arrival of this new kid on the block will strengthen the position of Ghent harbour as European biocluster hub. The new terminal will ensure a 875,000 ton increase in shipping as from 2013 to 2014 and 35 additional jobs, with the long-term prospect that traffic from Brazil will constitute a fifth of all shipments in Ghent.

Brazil’s interest in the Ghent harbour has grown phenomenally since its first arrival of iron ore destined for ArcelorMittal in Ghent. Fifteen years ago investments in fruit juices set the ball rolling,  positioning Ghent as one of the major export ports for fruit juices in Europe and even the biggest port for the import of bulk orange juice in the world. The terminals of the Brazilian Citrosuco and the French Louis Dreyfus, which also imports from Brazil, handled 600,000 tons of orange juice concentrate and fresh orange juice last year.

The arrival of CBL and its sugarcane-based biofuel is set to strengthen Ghent's position as European leader in the production of biofuels. The harbour currently ships 1.3 million tons of biofuels per annum, with companies like Bioro (the biggest diesel factory in the country based on cole seed), Alco Bio Fuel (bio-ethanol plant), Oleon (oleo-chemical products) and local specialists which invested more than 250 million euros during the past few years. Schalk hopes to see this business grow to 5 million tons by 2020, believing the compulsory share of biofuels in Europe will grow much higher than the current 4 to 5 percent. He further believes CBL chose Ghent because of the fact that it’s one of the few ports in Europe with available quay space.

The exhibition ‘Van Eyck to Dürer’ currently on in Bruges will be showing off more than 300 works on loan, among them paintings, miniatures, drawings, etchings and a few sculptures from various museums and private collections throughout Europe and the US. According to curator Till-Holger Borchert, who is in fact conservator of the Groeninge Museum, the radiance of the Flemish Primitives in Central Europe could be attributed to various factors. It’s interesting to note how the culture was influenced by the economy. From the late 13th century trade relations flourished between the commercial hubs of the Lower Countries, the major German cities and Northern and Eastern Europe for two centuries, with the art trade following in the wake of the commercial trade. Rich foreigners commissioned religious paintings  from painters like Rogier van der Weyden en Hans Memling.

Another aspect that added to the fame of Flemish painting was the development of the pictoral art in Germany, especially woodcarvings and copper etchings, during the first quarter of the 15th century. Some of these artists from Central Europe travelled to Flanders to learn more about the trade. One of them was Martin Schongauer (1450-1491) who, after a working residence in Flanders, returned to Germany and promoted Flemish painting with his collection of highly admired etchings. His works were mostly based on the work of Rogier van der Weyden. Years later, in 1521, Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) also visited Flanders, highlighting numerous aspects of Flemish art in his work. A number of other artists who trained in the Southern Lower Countries formed a key link for the introduction of the Flemish Primitives in the international art world, promoting their technical and artistic innovations within Central Europe and boosting a cross-pollination between Flemish and local art.

Offshore wind farm developers are desperately seeking  large sites for the assembly and storage of heavy windmill parts before they are taken out to sea to be installed. The port management company in Ostend, believing the harbour has the infrastructure and capacity to position itself as a hub for renewable energy at sea, has established a subsidiary, Renewable Energy Base Oostende (Rebo). Rebo will develop 10 hectares for wind energy industries  in the Ostend outport, next to the C-Power site. The site will contain two quays with the capacity  to support heavy loads which will be 200 and 50 metres long respectively. This will make the Ostend harbour the only port with a suitable infrastructure in a radius of 200 kilometres. The objective is not to limit clients interested in the building of wind farms along the Belgian coast, but also wind farm developers elsewhere in Northeast Europe.

Participatiemaatschappij Vlaanderen (PMV) will act as one of Rebo’s key financiers. Other shareholders will include the Ostend construction group Artes, a specialist in marine works, and two companies within the Antwerp DEME dredging group (Offshore Wind Assistance and DEME Blue Energy).

Flanders Investment & Trade (FIT) est l'un des rares services publics flamands qui soit parvenus à augmenter son budget de 1,1 million. FIT aide les entreprises flamandes dans leurs activités à l'exportation, tout en s'efforçant d'attirer les investisseurs étrangers vers la Flandre. A un moment où les pouvoirs publics flamands ont tendance à rogner sur les subsides, à geler les dépenses et à ébarber les budgets salariaux, c'est une décision digne d'attention dans la mesure où elle permettra au budget de FIT (48 millions) d'augmenter de 2,3% l'an prochain.

 Le gros de ce supplément ira à des subsides pour les PME, comme l'annonce une note du Ministre-président flamand Kris Peeters (CD&V), qui est également compétent pour l'Economie et le Commerce extérieur. FIT soutient déjà les entreprises qui prévoient d'exporter, et ses subsides leur permettent de réduire les coûts de voyages de prospection hors d'Europe, de participation à des salons commerciaux hors de Belgique, ou liés à l'enregistrement et à l'homologation de leurs produits à l'étranger. Le budget lié à ce type de subsides va augmenter de 450.000 euros.

 Mais des efforts seront également faits pour attirer les investissements d'entreprises étrangères en Flandre. Peeters veut mieux identifier les hiatus dans le tissu industriel flamand, de manière à pouvoir dresser chaque année une liste reprenant une trentaine d'entreprises ou de technologies qui, en vertu de leur renommée ou de leur savoir métier, devraient s'implanter en Flandre. Dans la même logique, Peeters prévoit aussi des visites bien encadrées de la Région flamande. Ce type d'initiative permettrait aux entreprises étrangères de tout savoir sur les procédures juridiques, les taxes, les terrains disponibles ou les clusters technologiques disponibles. De même, les entreprises étrangères obtiendraient des subsides leur permettant d'accéder à des conseils sur le marché des consommateurs en Europe de l'Ouest, pour lequel la Flandre constitue une excellente tête de pont. Une dernière tranche de 280.000 euros servira à engager quelques personnes supplémentaires au sein de FIT, à l'encontre de l'esprit des directives prônant les économies.