Month: January 2026

shows if there will be turbulence and how intense it will be before takeoff

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It doesn’t matter that you travel very occasionally that airports are almost your second home due to the number of planes you take each year that when the signal lights up and the plane begins to lurch, the tense silence flies over the cabin of the plane. Turbulence is part of the flight experience to a greater or lesser extent, but the less there is, the better for calm. There is an armrest from a Vueling plane that still has marks from my nails from a certain return flight from London to Bilbao a few years ago. There are airports and airports: from the smallest in the world to this other with short runway, mountains and lack of ILS going through the drama of landing on one full of solar panelsbut leaving aside the orography and characteristics of the terrain and facilities, logically time has a lot to say. Or rather, bad weather. Of climate change We don’t even talk. Thus, we can predict that if The next Three Kings night is going to be busy On the peninsula, climatologically speaking, taking a flight from Valencia to Madrid is probably not going to be as difficult as a mild June day can be. There are those who prefer to live in ignorance and deal with these situations when they arise, but you can also get ahead and glimpse the turbulence with this map. The map of the (possible) turbulence of your flight Turbli offers an intuitive interactive map using turbulence graphic guide forecastsan aviation forecasting system that displays atmospheric turbulence in real time and in the future. The data comes from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Serviceboth official entities of the United States, and the Met Office of the United Kingdom. However, the map is global and is updated every six hours. The different options allow you to enter when you want to know what the weather will be like (from now to the next 24 hours) in the air, at what height (both meters and feet) and the origin and destination of your flight. For example, if you want to take a plane Madrid – Malaga it will probably be an Airbus A320 that reaches a maximum cruising altitude from approximately 11,900 to 12,100 meters. Although that is the flight ceiling, logically it rises and falls along the journey. Finally, just tap on ‘Get Forecast’ to clear up any doubts. Turbulence forecast for the Madrid – Malaga flight today The interactive map allows you to view the areas of turbulence that your flight could pass through. Thus, the graph shows the route and a chromatic legend that indicates how intense the turbulence will be depending on the height and what type of event according to SIGMET (Significant Meteorological Information), that is, the aeronautical weather alert message that warns of dangerous phenomena en route such as severe storms, strong turbulence, among others. Although the original resolution of the data is 0.25°, it is presented at 0.5° for faster page loading. However, you can always speed it up by tapping ‘Increase resolution’. The route provided is the one indicated in the pilot’s flight plan or, if not available, the one followed by the previous flight. However, since pilots can modify the route on the fly, it is possible to add waypoints for alternative routes. Although it is a visual and intuitive way to anticipate possible turbulence in general terms, it is simplified in terms of metrics and times, in addition, turbulence affects differently depending on the type of aircraft. In Xataka | The triangles on the plane window are not for decoration: they are a quick way to check that the flight is going well In Xataka | Whenever you wanted to find a cheap flight you opened Skyscanner. Now Google has something to offer you

The problem with animal experimentation is not a lack of ethics, it is that science still does not have a plan B

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Scientific research is very necessary for a society to advance with new treatments to alleviate diseases, for example. But there is a big problem behind it that still lingers and that for many people may be incomprehensible: the use of laboratory animals to test these new advances before doing them in humans. And, as recognized by the Spanish scientific community: “we would use alternative methods if we could.” A paradox. Although we live in a time in which artificial intelligence and bioengineering dominate the current paradigm of society, we continue to depend on a frame designed in 1959 to validate whether a drug is safe or not. This happens for the use of animal experimentationwhich has been a major ethical conflict within science for years. The problem is that despite all the advances that exist, the use, for example, of a laboratory mouse cannot be replaced due to the lack of an alternative that is as complete as this one. The problem. The regulatory framework that is currently on the table focuses on the 3R principle proposed by Russell and Burch more than 60 years ago: Replacement, Reduction and Refinement. A theory that a priori seems quite noble, since In a few words it can be summarized in: if you can not use animals, don’t use them; If you have to use them, use as few as possible; and if you use them, do them as little damage as possible. However, as science itself has analyzed, this framework has become ‘procedural’. That is to say, it has become a list of bureaucratic tasks that legitimizes the use of animals under the pretext that it is a necessary evil that we must assume to continue advancing as a society. The ethics. The bioethical analyzes carried out on this matter focus on the type of studies that are approved to use animals. And it is not analyzed at this point whether it will contribute much or little to scientific knowledge, but rather how the proposed experiment is designed. This way, if an experiment is well designed, it is approved to use animals. All this despite the fact that their contribution to knowledge is marginal or insignificant. Something that creates an “ethical hole”: we continue to assume certain animal harm in exchange for an uncertain or diffuse human benefit. The great promise. If ethics pushes us to change, technology should give us the tool to do so. This is where NAMs (New Approach Methods) come into play, which focus on AI simulations of organisms, organs on a chip or organoids. In this way, we can understand this advance as the cultivation of mini-brains or human kidneys in the laboratory to work with them. Something that on paper seems like a great idea, since we would be testing drugs with human cells directly, eliminating the problem of testing on a different species. The problem. When we go down to the technical detail, we find a large wall in front of us. As the experts explainthese technologies cover specific niches, such as the damage that a drug can do to the liver, but they cannot replicate the entire film. Because an organism is not only the effect on an organ, but how all the systems that we have interconnected influence. The problems encountered They can mainly be summarized in several points: There is no possibility of creating a blood system that cleans the tissue and nourishes it as occurs in the real organism. There is no immune or nervous system that can react to the drug or generate pain in an organ. In a chip with an ‘organ’ inside, the effect of the drug cannot be simulated several years from now. Prohibited areas. With all these points, there are fields as important as autoimmune diseases (when the body attacks its own cells) where These models are irreplaceable. All this because it is necessary to see the simultaneous interaction of all the organs in a living being. Regulation. Currently there are different organizations that try to prevent a drug from killing a person, such as the FDA in the United States and the EMA in Europe. Both agencies to approve a trial of a drug in humans demand massive security data that are taken from the animals themselves. In this way, the alternatives are not used massively because they are not validated by these organizations that require the use of animal models in their standards. An attitude that perpetuates the system, which for many is truly crazy, since science depends on animals if it wants to continue developing drugs that improve the lives of citizens. All this because no committee places more value on the life of a mouse than that of a human. The future. In the short term we will not see a big change in this aspect. Organoids and AI It does not seem that they are going to suddenly replace animal modelsbut will act as complementary systems to reduce the number used in laboratories. Images | Matthew Mejia In Xataka | Researchers removed Instagram and TikTok from 300 young people to see if their anxiety decreased. The results speak for themselves

In the middle of the ocean, 250 passengers on a plane learned that one of them was a stowaway. One shaped like a rat

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There are few things that can surprise you when you fly at 10,000 meters high in the middle of the ocean. The problem (the big problem) is that when something surprises you in that context, it is not usually a pleasant surprise. And much less if what surprises you is a rat. Can you imagine the feeling? We assume that something similar is what the 250 passengers They were flying from Amsterdam to Aruba, a small island in the Caribbean. The return trip, which passed through the nearby island of Bonaire, had to be suspended by the company itself, forcing passengers to wait one more night until the return plane was ready. A rat at 10,000 meters high By the time the plane wanted to arrive in Aruba, each and every one of the passengers on the KLM plane that was making the journey had already found out what was happening. Among his dreams of paradisiacal beaches and days of relaxation, the image of a rat had slipped in. Specifically, the rat shown by the videos recorded by the passengers themselvesmoving between the curtains that separate the seating categories or the overhead compartments, as can be seen in the images of the Dutch media Of Telegraaf. Click on the image to go to the Instagram post Evidently, the Dutch media has echoed the matter. According to RTL“the passengers remained calm and the crew did not lose sight of the animal at any time.” In Dutch News They point out that it took KLM 36 hours to hunt the animal after it was first seen. And that was the main problem why the return flight was cancelled. Once the rat was caught, the company had to leave more than 250 passengers on the ground in order to carry out a thorough cleaning and disinfect the entire interior of the plane. Asked if passengers traveling on board can request some type of compensation, experts pointed out Telegraaf which was complicated since it was an exceptional situation and they would have to prove that the airline was the real culprit for the entry of the rat. They explain that they could request a compensation economic if the study of the facts shows that the rat sneaked onto the plane into the compartments in which the catering is transported, but they affirm that it is complicated that this could have happened like this. Photo | Florian van Duyn and Nikolett Emmert In Xataka | In 2019, Iberia lost a dog before flying. Now the European Justice says that it is worth the same as a suitcase

A planet has just disappeared. NASA’s Hubble telescope has captured a violent cosmic event that changes everything

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Investigating the universe beyond the Solar System we know sometimes brings up more questions than answers. The search for exoplanets has left findings so different from what we know as fascinating. Thus, more than a decade ago the Kepler space telescope identified the Kepler-16ba planet with “two suns” along Star Wars Tatooine and the James Webb telescope stumbled upon a world of boiling lava that paradoxically it’s colder what the theory says. In the process of investigating the universe you can witness the disappearance of a planet, as NASA’s Hubble has monitored, to discover that there was nothing like a planet: they were in front of a violent cosmic phenomenon. First they detected a bright point of light and assumed that it was a planet covered in dust where the brightness of its star was reflected. Then the object disappeared and a different bright source appeared nearby. Finally, this international research team realized that they were not seeing planets at all: the light came from incandescent debris generated by violent collisions, as they later published in Science. A planetesimal collision that changes everything In their observations in time, they captured two different and very powerful impacts that generated large amounts of dust in the same planetary system, which constitutes a magnificent opportunity to understand how planets are formed and what type of materials they are made of. Their main hypothesis: they have glimpsed not one, but two extremely rare events: one (two) planetesimal collisionthat is, a collision between small rocky objects similar to asteroids. Northwestern University astrophysicist Jason Wang explains that it is the first time they have seen a planetesimal collision outside the solar system and that its study is “key to understanding how planets form and can also provide information about the structure of asteroids, something important for planetary defense programs such as the DART test.” Paul Kalas, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley and lead author, insists on the exceptionality of the event: “It is not present in any of our previous Hubble images, which means that we have just witnessed a violent collision between two massive objects and a huge cloud of debris, something that has no parallel in our current solar system.” By NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) These collisions occurred in the planetary system surrounding the star Fomalhautwhich is larger than the Sun, is surrounded by an extensive and dense set of dusty debris belts and located about 25 light years from Earth, in the constellation Pisces Austrinus. That dust belt is so large that it is a real candy for research. Planet it seems, cloud of dust it is In 2008 they detected Fomalhaut b, a bright object of unknown nature that some researchers thought was a planet and others believed it was an expanding cloud of dust from a collision. Back in 2023, a new Hubble observation gave an unexpected twist to everything: the original light source was no longer there and another bright object had appeared in a slightly different area. As explains Wang, first They assumed it was Fomalhaut b, but they got a surprise: “We assumed the bright light was Fomalhaut b because it was the known source of the system. But by carefully comparing the new images with the old ones, we realized that it couldn’t be the same source. It was exciting, but also perplexing” So they had to change perspective and nomenclature: the original object was renamed Fomalhaut cs1 and its disappearance supports the idea that it was a cloud of dust that was slowly dispersing after a collision. They called the second bright source Fomalhaut cs2 and its behavior reinforces the conclusion that neither of the two objects was a planet: everything indicates that they are clouds of debris created when large planetesimals collide with each other. Investigating Fomalhaut cs2 they concluded that it looked very similar to the beginnings of cs1 from two decades ago, both in brightness and location. So the team already estimates the frequency of collisions in this guy in the system: every 100,000 years or even less. After all, in 20 years they have already seen two. Kalas explains that “if you took a movie of the last 3,000 years and sped it up so that each year lasted a fraction of a second, imagine how many flashes you would see. The Fomalhaut planetary system would be full of these crashes.” Fomalhaut cs1 no longer exists, but the research team wants to continue monitoring the system and has its eyes on cs2, which could hide more valuable information about how collisions develop in young planetary systems. Of course, in addition to the old Hubble, they will use the near-infrared camera of the James Webb Space Telescope since the NIRCam can capture detailed information about color, so they can determine the size and composition of dust grainsfor example if they contain water or ice. The confirmation of these collisions put a warning on the table for hunters of planets outside the Solar System: the gLarge clouds of dust can very well imitate the appearance of an exoplanetto by reflecting light from its star, which can lead to error using the reflected light detection system. Kalas sums it up: “What we learned from studying cs1 is that a large dust cloud can masquerade as a planet for many years.” As new observatories point to the sky to obtain direct images of Earth-like planets, differentiating between real planets and temporary dust clouds seems providential. In Xataka | Poland and Spain are the European countries that have increased their contribution to space the most. For very different reasons In Xataka | China reveals its cards for 2030: it will go in search of an “Earth 2.0” on its own Cover | Javier Miranda By ESA, NASA, and L. … Read more

The technology industry has been searching for the “next smartphone” for a decade. Now he thinks he found it with AI

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In the last decade, wearables have become intrinsically associated with health care and sports. And although in 2025 we can make the same association, there are a growing number of companies and devices that have committed themselves to turning them around to turn wearables into vehicles for AI. The leaders of some of the main big tech companies already They have glimpsed the end of the mobile and between the options (in practice, still very green) these wearables with AI appear, which today are more of a complement. In search of the new iPhone. In any case, the industry has been looking for mass hardware after the smartphone for almost two decades. The glasses seem to start by advantage, but the initiatives are many and very varied. In any case, it is no longer just about becoming the winning format, it is about materializing a device that covers needs yet to be defined and where the smartphone has set a very high ceiling. In fact, smartwatches have not come close to overshadowing it. AI glasses have an advantage. Of course, they are the best positioned. In the past CES 2025 we saw ‘smart’ glasses (although that semantics typical of the era of the failed Google Glass has already been banished in favor of the surname ‘with AI’) even in the soup with the promise of immersive and hands-free experiences, but Meta is the one who has landed and sold its product best. Makes perfect sense: Mark Zuckerberg himself has stated who believes that glasses are the ideal format for AI. And for Meta, AI is his new Multiverse. After all, as we have seen, glasses are a discreet and convenient way towards multimodality: visual, through their lenses; and oral, with its integrated microphones and speakers. But it doesn’t matter if we talk about Meta’s glasses or those of Googlethe new glasses smart They no longer look like a hulk, they are designed to be worn all day and their purpose is to interact with AI. Pendants, pins and everything else. Other gadgets that accompany you throughout the day for constant listening come into this mixed bag: from the Bee AI bracelet to the LimitLess pendants or Friend passing through the ring Stream Ring or the difficult to describe Plaud NotePin: it looks like the capsule of Xiaomi bracelets and as such, it can be worn on the wrist, on the neck and even as a tacky pin. These initiatives have not gone unnoticed by the large companies, which have made a move by opening their portfolio: Bee AI bought Amazon in summer and LimitLess did the same Goal just a few weeks ago. old acquaintances. AI is also being integrated into existing devices: Samsung and Google have put Gemini on their WearOS watches, Garmin has a premium subscription to analysis with AI for its watches, Fitbit is testing an AI trainerthe same thing that Apple does with its Watch or the AI translation on AirPods. Even the rings Oura they have their advisor with AI. Every breath you take…We mentioned above that AI glasses were born to be worn all day, something that can be extrapolated to the bulk of the devices that we have been listing. For AI assistants to work well and offer something extra on the mobile, they need to know a lot about the user and there is no better way to do this than on a wearable that is with you 24/7. Disturbing but true. In this field there are unknowns such as what format will be successful and whether it will be as successful or more successful than the smartphone (even if it is buried), but there are two unquestionable facts: that there is a war to have hegemonic AI among big tech and that the industry has seen wearables as the ideal vehicle to implement it. In Xataka | Pendants, bracelets and “buttons” on the forehead: new AI wearables listen to you (and record) all day In Xataka | The voice recorders seemed dead. AI and new hardware are making them irresistible again Cover | Javier Lacort and Applesfera

Their models not only perform just as well but are much cheaper

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Sometimes it is difficult to keep up with the innovations that artificial intelligence is leaving us. However, it is also a good sign that there is voracious competition and that, even if we thought that companies like OpenAI or Google had every chance of completely dominating this sector, not all the fish has been sold yet. And what began as a race to create the most powerful models has become a battle to deliver the best performance at the lowest possible cost. And in this new competition, China leads. Change of third. For years, the conversation in AI focused solely on which model was more capable: who passed more benchmarks, who solved more complex problems, who generated better answers. But that phase is being relegated by another in which price is once again a determining factor in making decisions. This transition marks a turning point, since it is mainly Chinese startups that are demonstrating remarkable ability to produce powerful and extraordinarily economical models. Qwen leads the revolution. As Kai Williams highlights in the ‘Understanding AI’ newsletterAlibaba’s open model ecosystem, known as qwenhas become the most downloaded model family in the world, according to Hugging Face data analyzed by the ATOM Project. “Qwen alone is roughly matching the entire US ecosystem of open models today,” counted Nathan Lambert, researcher at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, at the PyTorch conference. The Chinese company has achieved something that seemed difficult: create competitive models in practically all sizes, from small to 235,000 million parameters, offering options for any business need. Real business adoption. In addition to the technical figures of their models, the use cases also deserve special mention. In October, Brian Chesky, CEO of Airbnb, caused a bit of a stir stating that his company “relies a lot on Alibaba’s Qwen model” because it is fast, cheap and powerful enough. This statement is interesting because of the context, since we are talking about a top American company preferring to use an open Chinese model, something that is powerful enough to change the perception of the industry. Williams points out in the text that, in addition to Airbnb, there are also other companies that would prefer to adopt Qwen’s models, but for reasons of image or regulatory compliance, they cannot. Mainly because they are models from China. And that could be the great barrier for Qwen and the rest of the Chinese models that would make its adoption difficult. So Chinese startups have a big job ahead of them to try to change that perception in an increasingly complicated geopolitical context. Kimi K2 gave the surprise. If Qwen dominates through volume and versatility, Kimi K2 Thinking It stands out for being possibly the best open model in the world in terms of benchmark test scores. Just like share Williams in the newsletter, Artificial Analysis currently ranks it as the most powerful model not created by OpenAI, Google or Anthropic. DeepSeek and the domino effect. The launch of DeepSeek R1 in January was the catalyst that unleashed this wave. It arrived just four months after OpenAI announced your first reasoning model, o1but with a crucial difference: DeepSeek openly published the model parameters. The noise was such that even the DeepSeek app briefly surpassed ChatGPT as the most downloaded app in the iOS App Store, Nvidia shares fell almost 20% days later, and Chinese companies rushed to integrate the model into their products. Today we are still waiting for DeepSeek to speak again with its next deep reasoning model, about which not much is known yet. On the other side, putting out fires. The United States has not sat idly by. When it comes to open weight models, OpenAI launched theirs in AugustIBM published its Granite 4 models in October, and Google, Microsoft, Nvidia and the Allen Institute for AI have also introduced new ‘semi-open’ models this year. But none have reached the level of the main Chinese open models. Lambert, who has led efforts to advance a new generation of American open models, acknowledges that progress has been slow and the gap is widening. Everything indicates that 2026 will be decisive in determining the pace of adoption by companies and, above all, in determining the choice of model in an increasingly immense ocean. Cover image | Xataka with Mockuuups Studio and Kimi AI In Xataka | NVIDIA begins to make moves with China: it is considering increasing production of the H200 in the face of an avalanche of orders, according to Reuters

In the United States you can buy a gun in a supermarket, but a Roscón de Reyes with a surprise inside is illegal

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In the Western collective imagination there is a preconceived idea: that in the United States you can buy anything. And of course, that image from the series and movies of a character buying a gun in a grocery store without much problem (later we will see that in practice this reality has a lot of fine print) and the hodgepodge of different slogans such as “The country of opportunities” or “the land of the free” do not help to think otherwise. However, if you are in the United States these days and the homesickness hits you so hard that you want a roscón de Reyes, you are going to be in for a surprise: although you can buy this popular sweet in some stores, it has lost a good part of the magic of the true ritual of eating a roscón: that someone randomly (more or less, we do not judge your expertise when moving figurines with the knife that splits) touches the figurine. Because although in the United States you can find the “King Cake”, most stores don’t take the risk and put the figurine aside, so that you can put it inside. They do it to comply with the law and avoid fines since, scrupulously speaking, the roscón de Reyes as it is known in Spain is illegal. There are roscones and roscones. First of all, the traditional roscón de Reyes that is consumed in Spain is neither the only one that exists nor is it only consumed here: France and Portugal also have their respective galette des rois with puff pastry or Gâteau des Roiswith almond cream and a figure. In Portugal there is the Bolo Rei with candied fruits and dried fruits. This European celebration was exported to America, adapting with other flavors and customs of each region. Thus, there are the Roscas de Reyes from Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala and there are also in the United States in the form of King Cakea popular candy in Louisiana for the Mardi Gras and also in Quebec, which has its own shades and glazes. In the case of the King Cake, the figurine in question was a baby that was once baked inside. In the past they were made of porcelain (“Frozen Charlotte”), but then they became plastic and generally, to stand outsideleaving the consumer the responsibility of hiding it inside before serving it, so there are those who who is disappointed. But it is better for a consumer to be disappointed than to face a fine or lawsuits. What the law says. The regulations that apply in this case are the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Law (Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act or FD&C Act) in force since 1938. The section that interests us for this matter is in section 402where it details that “confectionery that is partially or completely embedded with any non-nutritive object is adulterated, unless the FDA has issued a regulation that recognizes that the non-nutritive object has practical functional value to the confectionery product and would not render it harmful or dangerous to health.” The most famous example is Kinder eggs. And spoiler: neither the bean nor the roscón figurine is considered to have any practical functional value. Worse than fines are lawsuits. The fine in question for disobeying the law and integrating the figurine into the roscón is moderately low (to give us an idea, that of smuggled Kinder eggs it’s 2,500 dollars), that is why over the years there have been bakeries that have dared to challenge the law, arguing that culturally, whoever buys a Three Kings roscón, you already know that there are objects inside. However, possible cases of suffocation or injuries such as breaking a tooth that lead to lawsuits can be much more expensive. So there are those who deliver the roscón alone, others who place a large warning label and the figure in a separate bag and in plain sightin places like in the center of the cake or sitting on it. This is the most common practice in industrial bakeries or supermarket chains such as Walmart. It is easier to buy a gun than a roscón with a figurine inside. Returning to the purchase of weapons from the intro, sales in physical stores are centralized in gun stores and large stores with a sports and outdoor section. In the case of Walmartthey have stopped marketing pistols and military rifles to focus on hunting rifles and shotguns and in any case, the process is the same: with a separate counter, specialized personnel, you must be 21 years old and you have to fill out the federal form 4473 accompanied by your identification and they will accompany you to the door to make sure that you do not take it out of the box there. In Xataka | There is an eternal struggle between supporters of the roscón with cream and without cream. This is what science says about it In Xataka | The pastry chef’s wet dream (and the customer’s nightmare) has come true: a roscón filled with cream… without cream Cover | Photo of Nejc Soklič in Unsplash and DAP

Europe is months away from registering a demographic milestone that has not occurred since the Black Death: it is literally shrinking

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In June the latest Eurostat data putting the EU median age at 44.7 years (and growing). The reading then seemed more or less clear. Europe’s demographic collapse was bringing it closer to an invisible threshold that was once unthinkable: the Middle Ages. 50 years old. Half a year later, the data has not improved. Historical contraction. Yes, Europe is heading towards a demographic turning point unprecedented since the black plague from the 14th century. After decades of sustained decline in birth rates, the population of the European Union will reach its maximum next year and it will start after a prolonged fallthe first of its kind in centuries. This is not a temporary adjustment, but rather a deep structural change that threatens to redefine the economy, the welfare state and the social balance of the continent. The alarm does not arise only from the total number of inhabitants, but from the aging speed and the thinning of the working-age population, on which the pension, health and care systems built over generations rest. Political panic and a race. counted the Washington Post that, given this panorama, governments of all ideological stripes have entered into a race against time to see if a combination of economic incentives, public policies and cultural messages can reverse (or at least stop) the decline in birth rates. In the Nordic countries, for decades exhibited as a model of conciliation and well-being, commissions of experts have been created to understand why their systems did not prevent the collapse of fertility. In France, the discourse has acquired a almost military tonewith calls for “demographic rearmament” after a drop of 18% in births in just ten years. In the east and south of the continent, especially in countries governed by nationalist forces, the response has been more direct: money, tax advantages and an explicit exaltation of the traditional family as a pillar of the nation. Incentives and results. Italy offers bonuses to working mothers with two or more children. Poland has increased notably the monthly transfers per child and has expanded tax breaks for large families. On paper, these policies seem compelling, even enviable from countries like the United States, where the cost of raising children is systematically cited as the main brake to birth. However, the European experience shows a repeated pattern: even the most ambitious programs barely succeed in slowing the decline, don’t invest it. The problem is not the lack of public effort, but the magnitude of the phenomenon they face. Hungary, the laboratory. No country better embodies the ambitions and limits of this strategy than Hungary. For more than a decade, the government has deployed a support system of a generosity comparable to that of Scandinavia, allocating around 5% of its GDP to family policies, a higher proportion than the United States dedicates to defense. The range of measures it’s wide: leave for grandparents, subsidized mortgages for young married couples, loans of up to $30,000 that become subsidies if the family has three or more children, and lifetime tax exemptions for women with three children, extended to mothers of two children under 40 starting next year. The message is clear: having children is not only desirable, it is a matter of national survival. Initial successes. They remembered in the post that for a time, the data seemed to prove this bet right. Hungary’s fertility rate went from one of the lowest levels in Europe to figures that suggested a sustained recovery. But the relief was short-lived. In recent years, the trend has been reversed and the country has practically returned to the European average. For some demographers, the program did not generate new births, but rather advanced decisions by those who were already planning to have children. Others point out that, although the impact on fertility is limited, the policies have coincided with an increase in marriage, a reduction in child poverty and greater female labor participation. The key question is whether these collateral benefits justify the enormous public spending. State limits. Beyond the checks and exemptions prosecutors, the decision to have children remains deeply personal and increasingly complex. The rise in housing prices, persistent inflation and job insecurity they weigh as much or more than any incentive. Added to this is a factor that is rarely recognized in the political debate: many of the drivers of the decline in birth rates are social advances that no one wants to reverse. Widespread access to contraception, decline in teen pregnancy, and increased education and career opportunities for women have transformed motherhood and fatherhood in a late choice, carefully calculated and, for many, expendable. Modernity as a trap. The fertility drop has spread so widely that many experts interpret it as a consequence inherent to modernity. Parenthood is delayed until one’s thirties, when one has achieved job and economic stability that comes later and later. Social media idealizes a life focused on the individual, travel, and personal freedom. dating apps multiply apparent options, but they make lasting commitment difficult. And a generation raised in small families has less daily contact with babies and children, fueling overly negative perceptions about the sacrifice involved in raising children. A politicized debate. Not everyone considers the population decline to be a tragedy. Some defend assuming it as a gradual transition towards more sustainable societies, questioning apocalyptic visions who talk about “demographic collapse.” In the long term, even in the most pessimistic scenarios, Europe would still have hundreds of millions of inhabitants. But these global figures hide a much more immediate structural problem: the imbalance between workers and retirees. In just a few decades, the ratio of people of working age to each elderly person will increase. will have drastically reducedputting under strain systems designed for a demographic pyramid that no longer exists. The fragility of immigration. For years, immigration has been presented as Europe’s demographic lifeline. However, this option is becomes more uncertain as fertility falls across almost the entire planet. Even countries that until now were large demographic reserves … Read more

Someone bet $30,000 that Maduro would fall the night before he fell. He has won $400,000

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Early on Saturday, January 3, a raid by the United States Delta Force broke into the Fuerte Tiuna military complex, located in the south of Caracas, to arrest Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores, the president of Venezuela and his wife. Shortly after, someone was looking at his account. Polymarket and he rubbed his hands: that same Friday he had invested $30,000 betting on Maduro’s departure. With his arrest on Saturday, he had obtained a profit of $436,759.61. How lucky. A new account and a lucrative “hunch”. Polymarket’s Burdensome-Mix account barely I was a week old on the PolyMarket platform, but in record time it became one of the most fervent and active in “predict”“ Maduro’s departure during the hours before the operation. In a few hours he had gone from injecting money when the bet investment was at bargain prices to skyrocket: his participation had obtained a total return of more than 1,333.33% and a profit of at least 1,233.33% more than what he bet in less than 24 hours. PolyMarket. Tyson Brody Many people may have been caught off guard by Maduro’s arrest, but it certainly wasn’t for everyone: there are people who anticipated events and earned thousands of dollars as a result. Whether for him pizzometer or looking at Polymarket and company, something was brewing. In fact, there are already those has developed a tool to track suspicious activity on Polymarket because yes, there are those who decide to invest in what Elon Musk will become president of the United States and throw away his money like that (spoiler: he is South African and the US Constitution vetoes the presidency to foreigners), but he has long since emerged as one of the best seers of immediate events. As explained one of the creatorsPolymarket API keys are available to everyone and from here, it’s a matter of analyzing new wallets, unusual sizes and repeat entries into certain market niches. Suspicious behavior like the one that took place on Friday, when his tracker flagged five different alerts hours before Operation Absolute Resolve happened. The market that was betting on Maduro’s departure rose strongly before 10 p.m. on Friday after being at very low figures during the previous weeks, as picks up The Wall Street Journal. Polymarket What has happened in Venezuela. Nicolás Maduro was captured by US special forces following Operation Absolute Resolve in an intervention that threatens international lawalthough the United States relies on its domestic jurisdiction. Yesterday he was transferred to Stewart Air National Guard Base, a military airport in New York, and later landed at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, where he will face trial for drug trafficking and weapons possession. Donald Trump gave the details of the operation at the relevant press conference ensuring that “We are going to govern Venezuela until there is a safe transition” and that after the operation, American energy companies will take care of Venezuela’s oil industry. The official White House rapid response support account published a video where Nicolás Maduro was seen detained, being escorted through a hallway while he congratulated the new year to the people who were in his path. Tap to go to the post The insider trading of the prediction market. The Polymarket user’s operation draws so much attention that it seems evident that he knew what was going to happen in some way, which closes the circle to spheres very close to the president insofar as neither Congress nor his Defense Committee knew about this operation (much less had they authorized it, as he complained the governor of New York State on Twitter). Needless to say, what is known in financial markets as insider trading (trafficking of privileged information) It also happens in prediction markets like Polymarket, Kalshi either PredictIt and it is not only that it is allowed, but it is an ecosystem that favors it: Polymarket accounts are anonymous, global and transparent using technology from the blockchainso from there it is not possible to pull the thread of that lucrative operation. Furthermore, they are decentralized systems and operations are in USDCa stablecoin linked to the US dollar to avoid volatility and with very low commissions. The Polymarket phenomenon returns to its old ways. This is not the first time we have talked about Polymarket in terms of striking movements linked to politics, so Maduro’s thing is not something that is new. Without going any further, these markets came to the fore when they were revealed announcing a clear discrepancy in the 2024 United States Presidency elections compared to traditional analyzes and in turn, most accurate with respect to reality. With that move, French investor Freddi9999 struck gold: betting Due to Trump’s victory, his profits amounted to 85 million dollars, according to Bloomberg. Polymarket and company are not a mere betting platform like those for sporting events, but they have changed the discourse from betting to investmentwhich affects both linguistics and regulation. Thus, they are defined as “event contracts”, which allows them to sneak into the traditional financial system with the approval of leading players in the sector. like the owners of the New York Stock Exchange. The idea on paper is simple: as a user, you can express your opinion by buying or selling shares in eventual outcomes of events in operations executed between peers using smart contracts. Markets grow as they have more participants and prices mirror the perceived probability of an event occurring. It is clear that a lot of money can be made by predicting major news events, although we will have to see how long. In Xataka | Five years ago he worked from his bathroom on the brink of ruin. Today he runs a company valued at 8 billion In Xataka | I don’t bet, I invest: Polymarket and company have sophisticated gambling addiction to the point of making it indistinguishable from “investing” Cover | Chancellery of Ecuador from Ecuador, CC BY-SA 2.0 and Hanna Pad

the first pilot line to recycle rare earth magnets

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Europe has learned an uncomfortable lesson in recent years: the energy transition does not depend only on political will or investments in renewables, but on materials that it does not control. After achieving —not without difficulties— reduce its dependence on Russian gas, the European Union is facing now to a deeper, more structural vulnerability: China’s near-absolute dominance over critical metals and, in particular, rare earth permanent magnets. Without these magnets there are no electric cars, no wind turbines, no advanced robotics, nor much of the defense industry. However, France has taken a step that goes beyond political discourse and can turn the tables. The inauguration of a pioneering pilot line. The Orano group and the Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) inaugurated at the CEA-Liten facilities in Grenoble, a pilot line dedicated to the recycling and remanufacturing of high-performance permanent magnets from rare earths. As Orano explained, The infrastructure has a pilot capacity of up to four tons and is equipped with technologies representative of an industrial scale, operated by a joint Orano–CEA team. The technical results of the project are expected by the end of 2026, with a view to subsequent large-scale implementation by an external industrial operator. A response to a critical dependency. The importance of the project goes far beyond its technical dimension. Permanent magnets based on neodymium-iron-boron have become key pieces for the European industrial future, but today the EU matters more than 95% of those you need. and the demand it doesn’t stop growing: The market has grown from around 250,000 tonnes of magnets this year to around 350,000 in 2030, with a growing proportion of high-performance applications. The problem is not only volume, but control of the value chain. China not only concentrates a good part of the world reserves of rare earthsbut between 70% and 90% of its processing and up to 99% in the case of heavy rare earths. This gives it a capacity for geopolitical pressure that has already translated into export restrictions and real supply interruptions for European industries. In this context, the Grenoble pilot line is fully part of the Critical Raw Materials Actwhich sets the goal that at least 25% of critical raw materials are recycled in Europe by 2030. “Short circuit” recycling. This is what the technological core of the project is called. Unlike traditional recycling – the so-called “long loop” – this approach allows rare earths to be recovered directly in metallic form from magnets at the end of their useful life, without going through complex chemical steps of dissolution, reoxidation and reconstitution. “This recycling offers an optimal compromise between magnetic performance, circularity and decarbonization,” explains Benoît Richebé, project manager for Rare Earths and Magnet Recycling at Orano, in statements collected by El Periódico de la Energía. The approach allows critical metals to be directly reused and reconstructed new high-performance magnets, suitable for demanding applications such as electric vehicle traction motors or offshore wind turbines. Orano defends, however, a hybrid approach. According to Richebé, short loop and long loop recycling are complementary, and Europe must be able to have both to build a flexible and resilient industry. The mixture of secondary raw materials with new alloys ensures maximum technical performance. Beyond the pilot. Currently, the recycling rate of rare earth magnets in Europe is just 1%, according to data cited by the German Mineral Resources Agency (DERA). For years, the combination of low prices for Chinese primary products and irregular availability of waste has slowed the development of a large-scale recycling industry. However, how RawMaterials collectsthe largest magnet recycling plant in Eastern Europe, operated by Heraeusand in the south of France the company Caremag plans to establish a rare earth recycling and refining plant in the coming years. However, here comes the key point: the Orano and CEA project is also supported by two collaborative consortia financed by France and the European Union —Magellan 1 and Magnolia 2—, which develop complementary technologies for the manufacture of magnets from recycled critical metals. One of the differentiating elements of the project is the application of Orano’s nuclear know-how to the magnets industry: powder metallurgy, processes in controlled atmospheres, sintering and management of highly regulated facilities. Experiences accumulated in plants such as Orano Melox, dedicated to nuclear fuel recycling, are now transferred to a key sector for electrification. A crack in the monopoly. France is not going to compete with China in production volume of rare earths or magnets in the short term. But with this pilot line, something perhaps more important has begun to be disputed: the control of industrial knowledge and processes. As Benoît Richebé summarizes“mastering the recycling of magnets will be essential for the ecological, digital and technological transitions.” It is not just about materials, but about industrial sovereignty. If the pilot meets its objectives and the processes are successfully transferred to an industrial scale, Europe could recover part of a value chain that it lost decades ago. In a world where critical metals have become instruments of power, recycling magnets is not just an environmental solution: it is a strategic act. Image | Unsplash Xataka | Europe no longer depends on Russian gas: it depends on something more difficult to replace

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