As Brussels expands its network of supervised drug consumption rooms—known euphemistically as “safe injection sites”—the city risks entrenching a failed policy that prioritizes harm management over true recovery, mirroring disastrous outcomes seen in New York City and reported by Freedom Mag​

Escalating Use, Not Recovery

Brussels’ first such facility, GATE, opened in 2022 near the Midi station, followed by LINKup on December 15, 2025, with a larger integrated centre planned for 2026 along the canal. Proponents claim these sites reduce street drug use by providing sterile needles, on-site medical intervention, and a “social” space for injecting heroin, snorting cocaine, or smoking crack. Yet New York City’s OnPoint centres, operational since 2021, reveal the reality: daily visits surged over 100%, overdoses rose 7% from 2022 to 2023 (636 to 683), and at least 46 users suffered life-threatening cardiac arrests, strokes, or heart attacks requiring ambulance transport—outcomes operators fail to track long-term. In Brussels, where over 1,000 users (half homeless) have flocked to GATE by mid-2024, this model normalizes addiction rather than dismantling it, boasting “thousands of uses off the streets” while ignoring sustained recovery rates.​

Threat to Public Health and Children

Far from safeguarding health, these rooms facilitate repeated exposure to destructive substances, undermining personal and public well-being. New York’s 3,156 users logged 61,184 visits in 2023 alone, including 177 daily “clients” (up 108% year-over-year), with staff intervening in over 1,700 overdoses amid tens of thousands of heroin injections, crack smokes, and speedball hits. Brussels’ sites, clustered near transport hubs and neighbourhoods like the halted Molenbeek project (suspended by the Council of State over safety and nuisance fears), expose children to drug paraphernalia, dealers, and overdoses in family areas with schools. US Representative Nicole Malliotakis calls them “heroin shooting galleries” that attract crime and erode quality of life, a warning echoed in Brussels’ narco-violence linked to Antwerp cocaine floods. Children’s security demands zero-tolerance zones, not state-sanctioned drug dens.​

Economic Drain on a Productive Nation

Belgium’s legal grey zone—under a 1921 law criminalizing premises for illegal drugs—allows these experiments via prosecutorial tolerance, but at what cost to taxpayers and society? Funding sterile booths, naloxone, and staff diverts resources from prevention, while fostering dependency that erodes workforce productivity: addicts cycle through welfare, missing education and jobs essential for a competitive Europe. Former DEA official Jim Crotty insists the goal cannot be mere survival; drugs’ destructiveness demands cessation, not facilitation. Manhattan Institute expert Charles Lehman notes operators ignore long-term outcomes, prioritizing visit counts over cures. For Brussels, a hub of EU institutions, this signals resignation, weakening the productive nation needed for innovation and growth.​

The Proven Alternative: Education Over Enablement

Supervised consumption confuses overdose patches with policy success, condemning users to endless highs in “safe” havens while Europe debates shutdowns amid rising crime. True progress lies in education campaigns exposing drugs’ full toll, as proven by initiatives like the Church of Scientology’s Truth About Drugs, distributed to 170 million worldwide and adopted by over 1,000 law enforcement agencies to prevent youth addiction. Liège’s room since 2018 and Brussels’ expansions lack federal backing or outcome data, urging a pivot to demand reduction: school programs, early interventions, and recovery-focused treatment. Policymakers must reject this surrender, protecting health, children, and Belgium’s future through proactive prevention, not permissive drug dens.​

The local weather forecast tells us if we need to bundle up or bring an umbrella. National and global reports alert us to instances of extreme weather – and the need for assistance in affected regions. But what about the weather in space? How do events like solar wind – originating at a distance of about 150 million kilometres – affect our daily lives?

“Studies show that solar storms can cause massive problems. The worry is that a big one will knock out the power systems that our modern society so highly depends on,” says Glenn Hussey, principal investigator and director at the Super Dual Auroral Radar Network (SuperDARN) Canada. “We could be in the dark for weeks or months.”

In addition to impacting power grids, solar activity like flares and coronal mass ejections can degrade pipelines, disrupt or damage satellites, interfere with navigation and communication signals and endanger high-altitude air travel, which makes predicting and mitigating these effects critical, says Dr. Hussey, adding that this is part of SuperDARN’s objective: to provide scientific insights into space weather to help guard against detrimental impact.

SuperDARN Canada, headquartered in the Institute of Space and Atmospheric Studies (ISAS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), is Canada’s contribution to the SuperDARN program, a global network of scientific radars monitoring conditions in the near-Earth space environment.

There is a clear link between “studying the physics interactions that happen at the boundary between the atmosphere and space – and understanding the outcomes,” says Daniel Billett, assistant director at SuperDARN Canada. “We’re ionospheric physicists who conduct fundamental research. We run the radars and gather the data. From there, we collaborate with people who use this information to model forecasting – or to mitigate effects like power outages or satellite signal disruptions.”

A legacy of leadership

2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the SuperDARN program, which officially started in 1995 with the signing of the principal investigators’ agreement. Two years prior to that event, in 1993, the first SuperDARN Canada radar was switched on in Saskatoon, which served as a meeting place for the original SuperDARN partners: Canada, France and the U.S.

While the SuperDARN network has grown significantly over the past three decades to now include 10 countries, Canada has continued to play a leadership role that builds on USask’s long history of atmospheric research.

In addition, Canada has the largest land mass under the auroral oval, making it an ideal place to study solar-terrestrial interactions, says Dr. Hussey, explaining the connection between solar wind and the colourful lights we experience as auroras.

Solar wind is the result of the sun streaming charged particles outward from its corona at high speeds. The resulting plasma travels through the solar system, interacting with planets and other celestial bodies. Coming up against the natural protection of the Earth’s magnetic field, these particles are channelled along magnetic field lines toward the polar regions. There, they collide with atmospheric gases, resulting in the glow of the aurora borealis in the north and the aurora australis in the south.

Ionospheric research is looking to understand “how the Earth’s atmosphere responds to the violent bombardment of charged particles from the sun, and where all that energy goes,” says Dr Hussey. “A pilot would refer to the range we’re looking at – about 200 to 300 kilometres up – as space. But if you ask us, we see it as part of our atmosphere. We want to know what the weather is in space – and how it affects us on Earth.”

Made-in-Canada technology advancements

Of the over 40 SuperDARN radars worldwide, Canada operates five, located in Saskatchewan, B.C., the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

SuperDARN radars emit high-frequency radio waves that refract in the upper atmosphere, bounce off targets made up of dense spots of plasma and return to radar receivers. Also called over-the-horizon radars, they can travel long distances parallel to the curvature of the Earth.

“When SuperDARN first started, everything was analog. Even today, many radars still use such systems,” says Dr. Billett, adding that SuperDARN Canada’s move from analog to digital came through a shift from aging hardware to modern software-defined radios (SDR) and digital signal processing.

Resulting technology advances come with improved data quality and reliability – as well as the ability to perform sophisticated tasks like full-field-of-view imaging and simultaneous multi-frequency operations.

“Previously, the signals from the 20 antennas were collapsed into only two data streams,” says Dr. Hussey. “The new system, which we call Borealis, processes all raw data streams independently. This very modern version of SuperDARN was developed by Kathryn McWilliams.

“Kathryn was a great scientist, and it is her legacy we’re continuing,” says Dr. Hussey of his predecessor, a trailblazing engineering physics professor at USask, who took over from Dr. Sofko as principal investigator and led SuperDARN Canada from 2012 until earlier this year.

Since it was designed with user-friendliness in mind, the Borealis system makes it easier to write experiments and use data, further enhancing accessibility for researchers, says Dr. Hussey. “We also have this mode, where we can capture 16 times more data, from once per minute to once every 3.7 seconds. This makes us very popular: lots of people want access to this information.”

An open-data policy ensures that data from all radars worldwide are shared by all SuperDARN partners and available to the public, he explains. “Combining data from all these radars – along with information from other types of instruments that study the aurora – allows us to picture what is happening globally.”

From big picture to local impact

The collaborative nature of the work at SuperDARN Canada illustrates one of the major strengths of the University of Saskatchewan, the Canadian lead for the international network, says Baljit Singh, the university’s vice-president, research. “We’re known for extensive international collaboration – and we focus on leadership in areas that address major global challenges, such as water and food security, vaccine development, public health, defence and sustainability.”

Canada’s contribution to SuperDARN is considerable, with five radars each scanning more than three million square kilometres every minute, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This continuous surveillance not only offers granular insights into how electromagnetic forces in space affect the Earth but also carries significant implications for defence and security in the Arctic.

Radars play a key role in monitoring aircraft signatures. In the polar regions, however, space weather – along with other radar signals – can make identifying and tracking targets more challenging, says Dr. Hussey. This resulted in a collaboration with Defence Research and Development Canada a few years ago, which continued periodically in the intervening years. A long-term goal is to continue this collaboration and implement AI-tools that will help filter radar data and provide easier identification in the High Arctic.

For Dr. Singh, SuperDARN Canada research also has implications at the community level. “The technologically driven world we live in is vulnerable to the effects of space weather, which can damage power grids and pipelines, degrade satellite navigation – and disrupt communications,” he says. “All of this can impact our daily lives and lead to loss of business and livelihoods, even loss of life in extreme situations.”

Some impacts of space weather have been well-documented. An example is the geomagnetic storm that led to the extensive failure of electrical systems on March 13, 1989, in Quebec, an event accompanied by intense auroras that could be seen as far south as Texas and Florida.

Dr. Hussey also recalls recent consequences affecting agricultural processes. “Due to a geomagnetic storm, radio signal transmissions from satellites were being distorted. It meant that precision-farming equipment that relies on GPS didn’t function well,” he says. “This can cause major disruptions, especially during planting or seeding times.”

Such examples inspire the question, “What can we do to better protect the digital communication assets and other infrastructure our society depends on?” says Dr. Singh. “That’s where research can provide valuable answers.”

The goal is not only to monitor space weather – but develop predictive capabilities that can minimize negative consequences, according to Dr. Hussey. Collaborations with SuperDARN scientists can allow satellite operators and space missions to take preventative measures in preparation of storms, such as putting satellites into low-energy mode to prevent damage to the electronics, he says. “Once satellites are in space, they’re very hard to fix.”

Yet despite significant advancements, “prediction remains very difficult in our field,” notes Dr. Billett. “We’re about 40 years behind weather forecasting on the ground, because we have much less information.

“We all have to work together to improve and ingest the data to try to understand the near-Earth space environment better,” he adds. And in this mission, SuperDARN Canada is leading the way.

Source: University of Saskatchewan

At ICAM, Martínez-Torrón explained why Spain stopped signing new religious agreements—and what that means for equality, funding, and rights.

At a commemorative session marking the seventh anniversary of the Canon Law Section of Madrid’s Bar Association (ICAM), a legal question cut through the celebratory tone: if Spain’s Constitution calls for cooperation with religious communities, why does cooperation still look so uneven in practice? Streamed online to viewers well beyond Spain, the event blended institutional pride with a pointed assessment of how Spain manages neutrality, cooperation and equality in the field of religious freedom.

An anniversary with scale—and growing public relevance

Opening the event, Mónica Montero Casillas underscored the section’s momentum: nearly fifty sessions organised in seven years and 734 registered lawyers within the ICAM section. The scene matters because it signals a broader shift: what is often treated as a specialist branch of law—church-state relations—now touches everyday governance, from public services and education to taxation, prisons, hospitals and, increasingly, technology.

That practical frame shaped the keynote lecture by Professor Javier Martínez-Torrón, titled “State agreements with religious denominations: between neutrality, cooperation and equality.”

The constitutional anchor: neutrality is not indifference

Martínez-Torrón’s starting point was Article 16.3 of Spain’s Constitution: the State has no official religion, yet public authorities must take account of society’s religious beliefs and maintain “appropriate relations of cooperation” with the Catholic Church and other denominations.

His core argument was consistent throughout the session: cooperation is not a privilege. Properly understood, it is a way to make religious freedom workable when it operates collectively and socially—chaplaincy, worship spaces, rites, education, or reasonable accommodations within public institutions.

In that light, he pushed back against a political trope that treats the 1979 agreements with the Holy See as mere historical favouritism. For him, the legal logic is the opposite: cooperation, neutrality and equality are tools that shape the practical content of religious freedom.

Bilateralism: the system Spain chose—and then paused

One striking moment was the speaker’s candid shift from earlier academic positions. While he once considered more unilateral state regulation, he now sees Spain’s context differently: where there is a long tradition of bilateral arrangements, abandoning them overnight in favour of a purely state-designed framework could become legally destabilising and politically divisive.

The deeper problem, he argued, is not the existence of agreements, but their stagnation. After the 1992 cooperation laws with the Evangelical, Jewish and Muslim representative bodies, Spain has not meaningfully advanced new agreements with other communities, even when they have been recognised as having “notorio arraigo” (well-established presence).

“Lots of religious freedom—too little specific cooperation”

Technically, one of his sharpest critiques concerned the content of the 1992 agreements themselves: much of what they regulate looks less like “cooperation” and more like baseline religious-freedom protections.

That distinction matters in real administration. When rights are treated as pact-based “benefits,” they can be managed like exceptions rather than as guarantees. The Q&A made the point concrete with a topic that often surfaces in litigation and daily practice: religious diets in public institutions. Martínez-Torrón argued that a cooperative state should provide predictable procedures so reasonable accommodations do not depend on ad-hoc goodwill.

Funding: the issue policymakers avoid naming

Financing quickly became the heart of the session. Spain’s IRPF tax allocation mechanism allows taxpayers to direct 0.7% to the Catholic Church. The dispute, as framed in the conference, is that other socially rooted communities have not been offered an equivalent choice.

Here the discussion turned to the Pluralism and Coexistence Foundation. Martínez-Torrón portrayed it as a workaround created after governments repeatedly refused to extend the tax-allocation model beyond the Catholic Church. His criticism was not that the foundation is unlawful; rather, he warned of two risks: reduced transparency and structural dependency when funding decisions are essentially administrative.

In his view, a fairer approach would be to let taxpayers decide—while keeping the foundation focused on cultural, social and academic programmes rather than acting as a substitute “church funding channel.”

The debate also connected with recent state action: Spain has announced steps to align the fiscal treatment of well-established denominations, and in 2025 adopted a framework for direct subsidies to minority faith bodies that hold cooperation agreements. The policy reality, then, is not “no public money,” but an ongoing conflict over criteria, equality and democratic accountability.

“Notorio arraigo”: recognition without a pathway

Another thread ran through the lecture: once the State chooses to implement cooperation through agreements, it cannot apply cooperation in an arbitrary or discriminatory manner. For Martínez-Torrón, recognising a community as “well-established” while keeping it indefinitely outside negotiated instruments leaves it in a legal limbo.

The implication was strategic as well as constitutional: if equality is a guiding principle, the system cannot rely on permanent provisional fixes.

Spain and Italy: two commissions, two political cultures

A comparative exchange with Rafael Navarro-Valls sharpened the contrast with Italy, where numerous intese exist and more are negotiated. Martínez-Torrón pointed to two factors: Italy lacks a broad religious-freedom law like Spain’s, pushing more issues into agreements; and, crucially, institutional design matters. He described Spain’s advisory structures as heavily dependent on political will to convene, while portraying Italy’s mechanisms as more autonomous and technically driven—able to keep initiatives alive across changing governments.

The takeaway: cooperation needs predictable rules

The session ended with thanks, but its underlying conclusion was clear: Spain’s cooperative model is operational, but uneven—and politically underpowered when it comes to updating itself. Neutrality may be constitutional doctrine, yet equality in practice requires predictable rules, transparent criteria and a long-term commitment that does not fluctuate with political cycles.

An international team of researchers led by Lancaster University has discovered a highly efficient mechanism for shaking magnets using very short light pulses, shorter than a trillionth of a second.

Their research is published in the prestigious journal Physics Review Letters.

The discovery of new fundamental properties and phenomena in magnetic materials is essential for the development of faster and energy-efficient devices.

Using a very short electromagnetic pulse to shake the magnetization, researchers investigated its effect on the magnetization steering angle in two similar magnetic materials with different electronic orbitals. After shaking the magnet and subsequently analysing its magnetic state, they found that interaction between orbital motion and spinning enables a 10-fold larger spin deflection by the light pulse than the one without such interactions.

Lead author Dr Rostislav Mikhaylovskiy said: “We believe that this exciting discovery will stimulate further studies of the mechanisms governing the efficient and rapid control of magnetization for future quantum technologies.”

Magnetic materials remain a significant part of our everyday lives, from refrigerator magnets memorabilia to compasses and magnetometers in our cell phones and personal computers. Large data centers rely on magnetic materials as data storage media, in which bits of information (i.e., “0” or “1”) are encoded by the magnetization direction (i.e., “up” or “down”).

The term “magnet” describes materials that can attract or repel other magnetic objects without touching them directly. In the simplest terms, the emergence of magnetism can be described by a model in which electrons orbit the atomic nucleus, analogous to planets orbiting the Sun. As the planets gyrate their rotational axes, the electrons exhibit a similar spinning. Due to the spinning, an electron behaves as an elementary magnet, called a “spin”. The symmetry of electron orbital motion determines the direction of their spins, which can be thought of as a small “needle of a compass” pointing to “North” or “South” depending on the spin’s polarity.

In materials, orbiting electrons of one atom interact with one another and with the electrons of neighboring atoms. These interactions determine the magnetization direction and the degree to which it is sensitive to the external stimulus. To steer the magnetization away from its steady-state direction, one may modify the electron orbital or the spin state directly. With strong enough steering, the magnetization direction can be reversed.

Source: Lancaster University