It's a Saturday, the sky is clear, and it's already 9 a.m. On the seafront in the town of Oostduinkerke (Flanders, Belgium), fishermen Bruno Mertens and Marius Dugardein hitch their carts to their horses—a powerful, high harness that will take them out into the North Sea. From September to December, they start early because that's when the tide is low, and the horses wade in until the water covers half their bodies; only their heads and rumps stay dry. Two hours later, at 11 a.m., the tide will begin to rise, and the fishermen will pack up their gear and catch and head home. "Always on a Saturday, because that's when people can come and watch us. We put on public demonstrations for everyone, and the little ones have a great time watching," explains Bruno.

Dozens of trucks loaded with brand-new contraceptives are waiting in warehouses—one of them in Belgium—to be incinerated. These are implants, IUDs, and birth control pills that the US administration had purchased through the USAID program, the US Agency for International Development, and were destined for countries in the Global South. But now the Donald Trump administration has decided to destroy them, a US government spokesperson confirmed to the newspaper The Guardian at the end of July.

Brussels is the only part of Belgium that is officially bilingual, and it has two distinct educational systems in the same city: French-speaking and Flemish-speaking. Studying in one educational system or the other doesn't vary much in terms of teaching methods, but the dominant language is obviously decisive, as strict language immersion is the norm. In fact, teacher Núria Borràs asserts that "more importance is placed on languages" than in our country—in both French and Flemish, as well as English—and emphasizes that "there is even still a strong tradition of studying Greek or Classical Latin."

The Majorcan rapper Valtònyc was happy and also emotional as he left Ghent's Court of Appeal of Ghent this Tuesday after a very short hearing. The Belgian court again rejected his extradition to Spain, as the Spanish High Court has demanded for the last four years. The court had to examine his case for the second time, after the Brussels Court of Cassation upheld in part the appeal by the Spanish Prosecutor's Office. And that is why Valtònyc had to stand trial again in Ghent, this time by a different set of judges. The court only heard the case for insults against the Crown. Being a reconfirmation of a previous sentence, everything indicates it should be final. Nevertheless, the Belgian Prosecutor's Office can still appeal again in cassation, and that is why the musician has struggled to hold back tears during his statements to the press.

The last instance of the Belgian judicial system will decide on Tuesday, January 18 on the extradition of the Majorcan rapper Josep Miquel Arenas, alias Valtònyc, to Spain. The Court of Cassation in Brussels has therefore delayed the decision on the rapper, who is wanted by Spain for glorification of terrorism, insults to the Crown and threats, for another week. The Ghent Court of Appeal had already overturned the European arrest warrant at the end of December, but the Belgian prosecutor's office, on behalf of the Spanish one, decided to appeal to the last judicial instance, which is the one that will decide next Tuesday.