More than half of all families in Flanders have no idea how much water they use in a year, according to a poll by the motoring organisation VAB, which also has a home insurance department. And with only 42% knowing how much they consume, VAB said, most households are not making use of some simple tricks to keep water bills down: use economy shower-heads, fix leaking toilets and dripping taps, wash the car with a bucket of water instead of the hose, etc.

Six doctors and two nurses from the Bruges and Ostend area have been cleared of involuntary manslaughter by a court in Bruges. The eight were charged in connection with the death from a morphine overdose in 2001 of a 39-year-old former gendarme, who was found to have eight morphine plasters on his body. The plasters had been legally prescribed by a series of doctors, but while the court found there had been insufficient communication between the doctors, they had acted in good faith and within the law.

The start of the winter season at Brussels Airport last week saw the introduction of seven new destinations: Mombasa, Zanzibar, Costa Rica, Bratislava, Poprad (Slovakia), Kuusamo (Finland) and Boston. Other routes will see an increase in frequency.

Unions representing rail workers have announced strike action to take place this Thursday, 5 November, in protest at plans by the rail authority NMBS to hive off the lossmaking freight service B-Cargo and make it an autonomous company. Unions say staff have been given no information about their futures once the divestment is carried out. B-Cargo lost €85 million last year, and is expected to lose €124m this year.

A hacker who threatened Belgacom that he would release the logins and passwords of thousands of internet subscribers if they did not review download limits (see Flanders Today, last week) has posted another 500 sets of confidential details on the web. The man, who calls himself Vendetta, has given the company until 30 November to comply and plans to publish more details weekly.

In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres has been named one of the world’s “12 coolest museums” by the Sunday Times newspaper. The museum, which looks at the First World War from a number of different angles, said it was “proud that our name has been included in this prestigious list”. Other winners include the Science Museum in London and the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In Flanders Fields attracts 215,000 visitors a year, 40% of them British.

www.inflandersfields.be