Two brothers who run a fruit farm in Bekkevoort in Flemish Brabant have been given authorisation to sell a brand-new apple. The Robijn (Ruby), according to Guido Robeyns, "shares its qualities with the stone: it is beautifully red and very hard. That has the advantage that it keeps longer." It also ripens about one month before other red apples, like the popular Jonagold.

The nine wooden elephants standing outside the Africa Museum in Tervuren are to get a makeover. Last week the biggest of the troop, the male, went off to have his rear legs reinforced with stainless steel tubes. The elephants are due to move to a new permanent home at Planckendael animal park in about May of next year.

The frigate Marie-Louise last week sailed from Zeebrugge to the Horn of Africa, where she will patrol for four months to protect shipping from pirates. The vessel and her 129-strong crew will patrol between the Gulf of Aden and the Seychelles, an area the size of the Mediterranean that is known for pirate activity. The whole operation, codenamed Atalanta, involves 26 ships from nine countries.

Workers last week laid the last glass pane on the roof of the Plantenpaleis, a one-hectare greenhouse at the Botanical Gardens in Meise (Flanders Today, last week). The Palace, a complex of 13 greenhouses, has been under renovation for 10 years. Work was slowed due to a dispute about which government authority should finance the work. In the end, the Flemish region ended up paying 60% of the bill, and the federal government the rest.

Fears over the import of black widow spiders, apparently brought in by shipments of vintage American cars, have been greatly exaggerated, according to nature minister Joke Schauvliege. She was reacting to press reports that port authorities and medical professionals had been warned that the spider was increasingly making its home in Flanders. "There is no reason to panic," said a ministerial statement.

Convicted terrorist Nizar Trabelsi has started a hunger strike in Bruges prison in protest at the imposition of a stricter regime. Trabelsi was discovered in possession of knives in Lantin prison, and transferred to the high-security wing at Bruges. He is serving ten years for planning a terrorist attack against the US air base at Kleine Brogel, and faces extradition to the US when he is released, to face charges there.

Traffic police last year handed out 540,947 speeding tickets, 4.2% more than in 2007 and an absolute record. The real number of speeding motorists is even higher, as the figure ignores tickets given out by local police. The 2009 figure is expected to be higher still, with 110,000 tickets generated by speed cameras in the first seven months, and 60 new cameras ready to be installed, 40 of them in Flanders.

SMS messages ought to cost no more than 6 cents to bring Belgian tariffs into line with other countries. In a wide-ranging survey of 1,500 mobile phone tariff plans across Europe, Belgium was found to be cheapest in no cases at all, and often the most expensive by a factor of three or four. But enterprise minister Vincent Van Quickenborne said a maximum price was not allowed under EU rules.