The week in brief: 24 November

The best Gouda cheese in the world is not Dutch, according to judges at the World Cheese Awards in London, who voted for Flandrien Kaas, made in Wervik, West Flanders. The renowned Beemster cheese from the Netherlands came in second this year. Flandrien producer Jan Desmet explained how his cheese contains less acid and uses less salt than other Gouda-style cheeses, giving what the judges called “a perfect structure and flavour”.

397 lecturers at Flemish universities teaching in English still haven’t passed the test that proves their mastery of the language. That is nearly 18% of the 2,243 lecturers who must meet the requirement by February, as stipulated by a Flemish government decree. About two-thirds of those who haven’t passed are from KU Leuven. “That might seem like a lot, but there are 125 new lecturers who didn’t have the chance to take the test yet,” vice-rector Didier Pollefeyt told De Standaard. The test is seen by some academics as an insult and a few have protested by giving up their English-language course rather than taking the test.

The Brussels police had no plan for coping with violent outbreaks at the massive demonstration against government cuts that brought more than 100,000 people onto the streets of the capital on 6 November, according to an internal police report leaked by La Dernière Heure newspaper. The report reveals tactical and technical shortcomings, a lack of co-ordination and a shortage of protective gear. It also reveals the lack of planning for the evacuation of injured officers, of whom there were 110.

King Filip and Queen Mathilde are to be received by Pope Francis at the Vatican on 12 December, a spokesperson for the Holy See revealed. This is the first time the royal couple have had a Papal audience. In 2009, King Albert and Queen Paola were received by Pope Benedict.

Brussels’ annual Christmas tree, which was installed on the Grote Markt last week, broke with tradition this year as it did not come from the forests of the Ardennes but as a gift from the people of Riga, the capital of Latvia and this year’s European Capital of Culture. The tree is a European spruce more than 18 metres tall and selected by mayor of Riga, Nils Ušakovs, himself.

Residents of the Brussels-Capital Region will be able to sort food waste separately from general waste in a brown bag from 2016. Pilot projects are under way in Evere and Etterbeek, where the brown bags are available on a voluntary basis. Two or three municipalities will join them shortly, said waste management minister Fadila Laanan, and the service will extend to the whole region in 2016. Net Brussel estimates half of all unsorted rubbish consists of organic materials.

Online streaming service Netflix is looking for a professional watcher in Flanders or the Netherlands. The first “European tagger” will be a Dutch speaker tasked with watching TV shows and films and attach tags such as romance, violence,  animation, strong language, etc. Taggers in the US and UK are mainly graduates of film school, screenwriters or film critics, the company said.

The much-missed Benelux train linking Brussels and Amsterdam comes back into service on 14 December, after an absence of two years. The train was replaced in 2012 by the ill-fated Fyra, which was soon withdrawn for technical reasons. The Benelux train resumed service but only as far as The Hague. The new service also stops at  Brussels Airport and at Schiphol Airport, for a total journey time of 3h20.

The Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels has cancelled two planned exhibitions for 2016, blaming loss of federal government subsidy. The exhibitions were to feature the sculptor George Minne and the symbolist painter Fernand Khnopff, both Flemish-born artists of international repute. Khnopff was born in Dendermonde in 1858, and Minne was born in Ghent in 1866.

Most fire blankets do not work and may even be counterproductive, according to consumer organisation Test-Aankoop, which found 15 out of 16 tested unsatisfactory. Fire blankets are intended to be used to smother a fire if a fire extinguisher is not available or should not be used, such as a stovetop oil fire. Test-Aankoop found that the blankets not only failed to smother the flames, they caught fire themselves. The organisation has asked federal consumer affairs minister Kris Peeters to order the blankets that did not pass inspection to be withdrawn from sale.