A mother in Herentals has developed a washable tattoo for children in danger of wandering off, featuring the mobile phone number of his or her parents. An Dierickx had the idea after she began writing her phone number on the arm of her son Lothar, who she described as “the Belgian champion of wandering away”. Designs are available on her website: www. labelsome1.be

An attack by a Romanian computer hacker on the servers of ING and Dexia banks was “nothing special,” according to specialists. The hacker, known as Unu, used an exploit called SAQL Injection, which experts described as “a basic technique”. No sensitive data was exposed in the attack. Unu claims to be an “ethical” hacker, and maintains that “the hacked banks should be grateful to me” for exposing important security weaknesses.

The police chief of Brussels West zone (Molenbeek, Ganshoren, Berchem Sint-Agathe, Koekelberg) has been committed for trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter and criminal negligence. Johan De Becker is alleged to have returned the service firearm to an officer who was being treated for depression, and whose gun had been withdrawn. The man later shot dead the partner of a woman he was stalking, and turned his weapon on himself. “He ought to be punished for what he should have done, but didn’t do.” the victim’s parents said.

Belgacom is to go live with its new payment system PingPing by the end of the year, the company announced last week at the World Broadband Forum in Paris. Ping- Ping will allow customers of participating businesses to pay for their online purchases by SMS. Belgacom also announced a cooperation agreement with Ogone, which already handles pointof- sale transactions using Visa, MasterCard and Bancontact.

The number of cases of euthanasia rose in Flanders from 1.1% of all deaths to 1.9% between 1998 and 2007 as a direct result of the introduction of a new euthanasia law in 2002, according to a group of researchers from the Free University of Brussels (VUB) writing in the latest issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. But the increase is unlikely to be permanent, the group led by Professor Johan Bilsen said.

Laurens Verbeke, one of the two programme directors of VTM and 2BE, is stepping down after relations with his co-director, Jan Segers, became unworkable. Sources at VTM spoke of serious differences of vision for the two channels. Verbeke joined the Flemish Media Company, parent company of the channels, in 2006 from independent production house Woestijnvis.