The week in brief: 6 July

Following up on his food truck serving high-end hot dogs, TV chef Jeroen Meus opened his new restaurant last week in Leuven. Wurst serves gourmet hot dogs (pictured) – or hautedogs, as he refers to them. Meus stopped in the fine-dining restaurant Luzine, which he co-founded, last autumn.

Consumer organisation Test-Aankoop is going ahead with a class-action suit against rail authority NMBS over compensation for strike action, following the breakdown of talks. Test-Aankoop claims the procedure whereby pass holders can claim compensation for the inability to travel due to strikes – seven days in the last eight months – is too complex. The lawsuit is the first class-action suit ever in Belgium and has attracted 43,000 members of the public. Last year NMBS paid out €1.6 million in compensation for lost days. 

Flemish employment and training agency VDAB has signed a co-operation agreement with its Brussels counterpart, Actiris, to allow VDAB to offer job-hunting support to the unemployed in Brussels. Some 10% of the Brussels workforce commutes daily to jobs in the Flemish region, while about the same proportion of job-seekers claims a good-to-elementary knowledge of Dutch.

Limburg logistics company H Essers plans to start testing drones in the surveillance of its warehouses for the auditing of the company’s stock of one million palettes, among other jobs. “We are working with the PXL University College and are looking with some other partners into launching a project,” CEO Gert Bervoets told Trends. 

The national rail authority NMBS has extended its social media presence to Facebook to answer questions from users. The Facebook page will be operated  by the same team that operates the successful Twitter accounts.

Flemish public broadcaster VRT is relatively good value for money, according to a study carried out by digital research platform iMinds. The study was presented to Flemish parliament, which is currently debating a new management accord for the broadcaster. iMinds looked at 10 public broadcasters in Europe and found that the VRT produces a high proportion of its own and of European programmes – less than the BBC but more than broadcasters in Ireland and France. The VRT is also highly efficient, it said, employing only 226 staff per million inhabitants, second only to the Netherlands on 205.

Fire services from Antwerp and surrounding areas battled a fire in Hooge Maey, a large rubbish dump in the northern part of the port of Antwerp, all night and part of the following day last week. The fire broke out at 23.30 on Thursday and soon covered an area of 5,000 square metres. Since the waste is household rubbish, there was no danger of toxic substances, and the area is sparsely populated.

A 38-year-old man currently interned in the psychiatric wing of Vorst prison in Brussels should have been released in 2008, when he was acquitted on charges of breaking into cars, lawyers said. The mistake went unnoticed until it was discovered accidently by a researcher. The man was immediately released by the Directorate-General for Penal Institutions but arrested two days later and returned to prison by a decision of the Commission for the Protection of Society. According to the Brussels prosecutor’s office, the man was acquitted in one part of the judgement, but according to the judge’s motivation of the case, it was clear she intended him to be interned. Lawyers now intend to bring an emergency motion before the Cassation Court to have the situation clarified.

Memnon, the Brussels-based archiving company, which manages VRT’s archives as well as all recordings of the Queen Elisabeth Competition, has been acquired by electronics giant Sony. The acquisition gives Memnon access to a worldwide customer network, founder Michel Marten said. Sony has given pledges the company will retain its autonomy.

Greta Van Langendonck, a familiar face in Flemish households from TV series such as Ons geluk and Wittekerke, has died at the age of 71. Born in Leuven, Van Langendonck was a graduate of the Herman Teirlinck theatre school in Antwerp and also had a long career in theatre, with works for NTG in Ghent, KVS in Brussels and the Royal Dutch Theatre (KNS) in Antwerp, now Het Toneelhuis.

Six hotels in the centre of Brussels were evacuated and the traditional Ommegang parade was diverted from its usual route after police received a bomb alert on Thursday evening. The hotels, including the Royal Windsor, were searched using sniffer dogs, but no explosives were found. Hotel guests were allowed to return to their rooms at 1.30.