In fact, police do find a lot of stolen bicycles back. In many cases, thieves, in a spirit of easy come, easy go, just dump them. Two-thirds of those found, however, never make it back to their owners because they have not been reported stolen in the first place.

Flanders is getting 10,000 trees from the Avatar Home Tree initiative of movie studio 20th Century Fox and director James Cameron, named after their 2009 blockbuster film. The initiative calls for one million trees to be planted worldwide. Flanders’ will be planted in the areas of Waasmunster in East Flanders and Tongeren in Limburg, in cooperation with Flemish groups Association for Forests and Flanders and Agency for Nature and Forests. The trees will make up part of Flanders’ “One Million Trees” initiative, which has already seen more than 700,000 trees planted.

Last week, investors in Tom Dice learned that the shares they had bought for only €10 were attracting a dividend of €26 - a return on investment of a staggering 260%. Dice, you will recall, is the Eeklo-born young man who last May represented Belgium in the Eurovision Song Festival in Oslo, achieving a very respectable sixth place. He performed the rather soppy ballad "Me and My Guitar", which appealed greatly to young girls.

Peter Carmeliet of the Vesalius Research Centre, part of the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (VIB), was awarded the grant for his work on the supply of energy to blood vessels, an important new avenue in the fight against cancer. In cancer, the body's cells mutate and undergo unrestrained growth. If blood supply to the cancer cells could be cut off, the tumours themselves would die.

Carmeliet was recently awarded a "Flemish Nobel prize" with five other researchers by the Fund for Scientific Research for work in the same area.