Two Belgians are among the 83 candidates at the start of this year’s Queen Elisabeth Music Competition. Jolente De Maeyer and Lorenzo Gatto will begin the first round of the violin competition on 4 May. In all, 26 nationalities are represented, with 42 women and 41 men taking part. (See Face of Flanders, next week.)

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Belgians are not particularly racist, but not especially tolerant either, according to a study conducted by the Centre for Equal Opportunities and the Fight Against Racism. Dutch-speakers were highly regarded, not surprisingly, in Flanders and Brussels, but also in Wallonia (71.3%) and Belgium as a whole. Wallonia felt negatively towards people of Western European origin and Asians, and both Wallonia and Flanders had negative views on black Africans, North Africans, Turks and Eastern Europeans. Only Brussels felt good about everyone, ranging from 54.8% in favour of North Africans to 88.7% in favour of French-speaking Belgians. Some other key figures:

24% of women would cross the street to avoid a man of a different ethnicity

79% would accept a person of another race as a co-worker

33% think some races are more gifted than others

42% think long-term unemployed minorities ought to be deported

68% think racist statements in public should be banned

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Regional business airline VLM is to offer daily flights from Antwerp to London during the 2012 Olympic Games in London, promoting the port city as a sleepover for visitors to the Games put off by high prices in the British capital. According to the company, a trip from central Antwerp to one of the Olympic venues could also be faster than a trip across London from hotel to stadium.

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The city of Antwerp has launched its own bottled water, straight from the tap. The city is to sell special carafes which can be filled at home to take the place of energy-hungry plastic bottles. The A-Water carafes cost €5, and cut the daily cost of drinking water to 25c, according to mayor Patrick Janssens.

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Publicly-owned building land in 67 Flemish municipalities will be sold first to people with a “strong link” to the area, under a new land and housing regulation agreed last week in the Flemish Parliament. Flemish Brabant with 28 participating municipalities, and Antwerp with 24, lead the region, while Limburg so far has no participants. The measure has provoked the ire of French-speaking residents of the areas surrounding Brussels, who argue it is discriminatory.

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Calls for better police training in the handling of psychiatric patients have followed the shooting dead of a 67-year-old man in Ghent who had attacked three police officers with a kitchen knife. The police were at the home of Amallar Hamza to escort him to the University hospital when he lashed out. Although the man has a history of dangerous outbursts, the officers were “completely taken by surprise,” according to the local police chief.

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A former bank manager in Bruges has been charged with forgery and breach of trust after it was alleged he stole money from the accounts of people he thought could afford it, to help pay off the loans of more disadvantaged customers. The latter-day Robin Hood is thought to have disposed of about €1 million in clients’ money.

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In only five years time, Brussels will require an additional 3,100 places in the Dutch-speaking school system, according to a calculation by Free University VUB researcher Rudi Janssens. Dutch-speaking schools in the capital are currently at 98% of capacity, with parents reduced to queuing for places at the more coveted schools, sometimes for weeks. There are now 23,407 children in the capital’s Dutch-speaking schools.