Month: March 2026

India wants to build a mammoth airport for 120 million passengers a year. The problem is that it accumulates years of delays

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India is building one of the most ambitious airport infrastructures on the continent. The Noida International Airport, built in Jewar, in the state of Uttar Pradesh, has the potential to become one of the largest hubs in Asia with a planned maximum capacity of between 60 and 120 million passengers per year. We tell you all the details of this mammoth project. A project with decades of history behind it. The idea of ​​building a large airport in this area has been brewing for years. The original proposal dates back to 2001, when the then Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Rajnath Singh, proposed an aeronautical hub geared towards Taj Mahal tourism. After years of political changes, disputes over the location and administrative stoppages, the project was relaunched in 2014. The central government gave its final approval in 2015, and in November 2021, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation stone of the first phase. Who builds it and how. The development is carried out by Noida International Airport Limited (NIAL) under a public-private partnership model. In 2019, Flughafen Zürich AG, the operating company of Zurich Airport, won the tender to build and manage it for 40 years. Civil construction was awarded in 2022 to Tata Projects Limited, with a stated target of net zero emissions. What will be there when it opens. The first phase includes a terminal (T1) with capacity for 12 million passengers per year and a 3,900-meter runway, already operational. The basic infrastructure is practically ready: control tower, baggage management systems, ten boarding bridges and security services. According to account The Sun, the interior design opts for an open-plan aesthetic with an undulating roof that imitates the flow of a river, large air-conditioned waiting areas, self-check-in kiosks, prayer rooms and children’s areas. There will also be a central area open to the outside with vegetation and shade. A phased deployment until 2050. The airport will grow in four phases. To the first terminal and initial runway, three more terminals and up to six runways in total will be added progressively, reaching a combined capacity of between 60 and 120 million passengers per year by 2050, according to the data collected by The Times India. That would put him in the same league as the Beijing Daxing International Airport either the one in dubai. Its great advantage: the Taj Mahal within reach. Agra, home to the Taj Mahal and which receives up to eight million visitors a year, is now almost four hours’ drive from New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport. With the new airport, that trip would be reduced to just over two hours. The project is also designed as an alternative to the overcrowded Indira Gandhi, the main hub of the Delhi metropolitan area. Beyond the passengers. The airport also aspires to become an important cargo node for northern India, relying on its proximity to the Delhi-Mumbai Express Corridor and Dedicated Freight Corridors, as point the Time Out medium. The airlines that have already committed. IndiGo and Akasa Air have confirmed operations at the airport, mainly on domestic routes. Among the destinations mentioned are Bombay, Hyderabad and Calcutta. International routes, including possible connections to Zurich or Dubai, are still pending confirmation. Delays, the big problem. The opening was initially planned for 2022, then for September 2024, and later there was talk of October 30 of that year. The works continue and given the history of delays, there is no choice but to wait for a definitive opening date, which should be shortly. Images | Noida International Airport In Xataka | A megastructure was built 1,700 years ago for eternity: today it continues to dominate Sri Lanka

All the money in the world won’t satisfy AI’s RAM hunger

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There is no RAM for so much AI. At this point in the film, no one can ignore that we are fully immersed in a new component crisis. Unlike the perfect storm that shook the technology industry in 2020, the new crisis is due to something very specific: the voracity of data centers and the artificial intelligence. In recent weeks we have seen negativity everywhere, but now one of the main people responsible for the lack of RAM comes to say that things are not going to stay the same. They are going to get worse. 30% of the goal. Chey Tae-won is not just anyone. This is the CEO of SK groupone of the largest conglomerates in the world and a South Korean giant that controls everything from the energy industry to chemicals and telephony. In addition, it has SK Hynix, one of the largest manufacturers of memories from around the world. If there is an authorized voice in this crisisof course it is yours. And what did he say? Well, there’s still a RAM storm left for a while. In a recent interview, stated that memory supply will be more than 30% below AI demand for this year. That is, by turning all their production to high-performance memory for AI, completely abandoning the consumer sector, they will be far from be able to satisfy what companies like NVIDIA they are claiming. structural problem. As we say, we have been talking about the state of the industry for weeks, but now we understand the extent to which the consumer sector has taken a backseat to memory manufacturers. That “we have given everything and we are going to fall within 30% of the goal” is tremendously revealing and explains the reason why everything with a memory chip is rising in price. Micron, SK Hynix and Samsung are the three companies that lead production by memory. They make both consumer memory (that of the mobile phone, the PC, the routerTV or car) as a professional (high-bandwidth HBMs), but their production is not unlimited: if they want to increase performance in one type of memory, they must lower that of the other. And that’s what’s happening: the AI ​​business is memory hungry, and for every unit of high-bandwidth memory produced, several units of standard memory must be sacrificed for other devices. This creates a bottleneck and an “unprecedented” shortage, according to Micron’s vice president, as the AI ​​industry is consuming all memory production capacity, creating a tremendous shortage in the conventional branch. All sold. As consumers, buy an SSD, a RAM module and a Large capacity HDD is a luxury right now, but to those who control chip production, it’s going well for them because they are selling all production before starting to “print” chips. Chey Tae-won himself has commented that the profit margins on his HBM4 chips are stratospheric, around 60%. Micron has already commented that all of its HBM memory production capacity for 2026 is already sold, and These are statements similar to those of Western Digital a few days ago. This implies that they have already sold components that do not exist for graphics cards that do not exist and that will power data centers that do not yet exist. abandoning ship. Samsung, SK and Micron are expanding their production lines and opening factories, but getting clean rooms It’s a slow process for them to start making chips, and Micron’s new plants, for example, aren’t expected to start making RAM until 2028. And when they do, it’ll likely be memory for data centers, not consumer price relief. In the end, there are only a few suppliers for many manufacturers, and that has another consequence: there will be brands that they have to get out of the car. The CEO of the SK group has commented that “there will probably be PC and smartphone manufacturers that will end up abandoning their businesses”, but he has not been the only one. A few days ago, the boss of Phison, a company that makes memory controllers, pointed in the same line. And it is easy to understand: if a manufacturer with low volume costs much more for memory, it has two options: sell a PC/mobile with less RAM or sell that same product much more expensive. Neither is a good idea. The price of 32 GB of DDR5 RAM from Crucial. Micron’s Crucial no longer exists Not very hopeful forecasts. The big question is when this solution will end. From SMIC, the large Chinese foundry, it is estimated that storm remains for a while because everyone wants to build their infrastructure for the next decade over the next two years. There are analysts who estimate that manufacturers – such as those in the automotive sector – are stockpiling AI out of “panic” that it will run out and now HBM4 memory is being produced, but in a few years there will be superior technology that will make AI faster and more capable… and the industry will turn to it again if the bubble doesn’t burst first. Domino. Meanwhile, companies like TeslaIntel or the Japanese giant SoftBank They want to get fully into the DRAM market and the companies Chinese companies like CXMT have an opportunity to meet the demand for AI for devices such as laptops. And, although we now see how it has impacted the price of loose components, we have to wait to see what happens in already assembled devices. Lenovo has pointed that the price of laptops is going to rise, but there are also warnings about important price increases in mobile phones, above all in low and mid-range devices, where the price of RAM represents a large part of the product cost. As I have said before, we have to cross our fingers so that the mobile phone or PC does not break, since once it is time to change it, paying the price will not be something pleasant. Images | Xataka, Bananovaya In Xataka | We … Read more

Spain is letting the lisp die in Andalusia without knowing that the /θ/ sound is a global rarity that we are losing

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In recent days, the University of Granada has presented a macroatlas with almost half a million audios that shows how the way of speaking of Andalusians has changed. The research is very interesting for many reasons, but today I want to focus on something specific: the slow, but inexorable agony of lisp. What is lisp. While the distinction between ‘s”https://www.xataka.com/”z’ and seseo gains ground in the south, lisping is losing speakers in the only place where lisping is used. It is a sociological question, yes: researchers are clear that stigma is the main force against this phonetic subsystem. But there is something else Because, in reality, what we are seeing is not just the death of the lisp, it is the end of the sound (θ) itself: one of the most unknown oddities of the Spanish language. A Spanish oddity? Although it is not something that is often explained much, the ‘c’ sound (/θ/) is relatively rare in the world — only in 43 of 566 languages ​​(7.6%) in the world. WALS sampling appears and only in 4% of the counts in typological databases (UPSID: 3.99%; PHOIBLE: ~4%). That is, very few living languages ​​have that sound among their phonetic repertoires. To give us an idea, the phoneme of the ñ (ɲ), quintessence of Spanish, appears in 35% of the world’s languages. But… what about the ‘c’? The usual explanation Why (θ)/(ð) are less frequent and why they are disappearing is simple: they are “soft” fricatives; That is, they are less strident sounds than (s)/(z) and, therefore, have less perceptual salience. This is what makes them tend to be lost or transformed easily over time. That does not mean that the Spaniard of the future is going to be sesante; but there is a high probability that it is sesante. The heritage of a language in the trash. It is clear that it cannot be argued from a philological point of view that the disappearance of (θ) is a bad thing. The Earth turns, languages ​​change. But it is striking that in a society in which historical heritage continues to be “valued”, the progressive loss of a sound does not set off alarm bells. And that it does so because we are not capable of accepting the diversity of our own language, normalizing it and defending it in the public sphere, is perhaps worse. Image | Wiebrig Krakau (Modified) In Xataka | “The most serious attack since there is memory”: Pérez-Reverte has started a crusade against the RAE from within the RAE

Chargebacks are the silent hemorrhage of e-commerce. A Catalan startup is making money by covering it

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Yesterday Paco bought a product on Wallapop and received it. Then came the problem. Paco called the bank and lied saying that it was not the product he expected or that he did not receive it, thus managing to keep the product and recover his money. Free product for him, headache for Wallapop. This is where a promising Catalan startup called Kloutit comes in. Fictional situation, real problem. Paco does not exist as such and the situation is fictitious, but it is the reflection of a very palpable reality among e-commerce companies: many are affected to a greater or lesser extent by the so-called chargebacks or chargebacks. Kloutit has an AI to solve it. The Catalan startup Kloutit has created an AI tool to manage these chargebacks on e-commerce platforms. Founded in 2024 by Albert Algarra (CEO), Alexis Pairetti and Adrián Algarra, the company already has almost 200 active clients and operates in nine countries, as indicated in CincoDías. Among those clients are Wallapop, Cabify, Playtomic, Factorial, or TaxDown. A problem that they manage to mitigate. The phenomenon of chargebacks negatively impacts 30% of the gross operating profit (ebitda) of companies, according to Kloutit. However, thanks to their AI system, companies multiply the amount of money lost and later recovered by 5.5. Not only that: as those responsible for CincoDías indicate, “Reducing chargebacks not only protects income, but also improves the relationship with payment service providers, and avoids penalties for high ratios.” They may be legitimate, but they may not be.. Unlike a normal return in which you go to the store, deliver the product and receive your money back, in a chargeback the bank withdraws the money directly from the merchant’s account and returns it to the customer while it investigates what happened. Chargebacks typically occur in three cases: Real fraud: someone has stolen your card and made purchases, so you notify the bank indicating that it was not you, and the bank returns your money. Problems with service: you bought something that never arrived, or the product that arrives is broken or the service (hotels, flights) was not as promised. “Friendly fraud”: This is where the problem lies for companies, and it is the fictitious case we have described. A chargeback is not just about losing a sale. For a business it implies a double loss: both the product they already sent and the money from the sale. In fact, after the chargeback the nightmare begins, because the implications are several: Penalty: Banks charge a penalty fee to the merchant for each chargeback received regardless of who is right. Blacklist: If the store has many chargebacks, Visa or Mastercard can blacklist you and prohibit card payments. Expensive defense: defending against a chargeback is a cumbersome bureaucratic process: you have to demonstrate with evidence (delivery notes, screenshots, emails) that the customer did receive the service. AI vs. obsolete systems. The platform developed by Kloutit promises a much more effective alternative to traditional systems that they describe as obsolete: manual processes, a lot of time investment and disappointing success rates. The Catalan startup’s AI system promises to automate these processes and free teams from this burden. That they have more and more clients is a promising sign that they are doing something right. Images | Nathana Rebouças In Xataka | Online commerce was supposed to kill shopping malls. The reality has been just the opposite.

‘Heat’ has become a cult film for many men. Now they get what they have been waiting for for years.

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Michael Mann has officially announced ‘Heat 2’, the sequel/prequel to the 1995 film that, over the years, has become much more than a police thriller: it is a cultural code, a cult film that defines a certain masculine sensibility very attached to its time. Its arrival just now and with this cast is not exactly a coincidence. A cult process. ‘Heat’ it was notat its premiere, the film loved by everyone that it is today. When it hit theaters in 1995, it received good reviews but also had a modest commercial reception: it grossed $67 million at the domestic box office against a budget of $60 million. It was in international markets (where Michael Mann was better regarded) where the film doubled those figures. From there, ‘Heat’ grew, gaining fame as one of the great American thrillers of recent decades, at a time when, on the verge of the bombing of ‘Matrix‘, the pyrotechnic spectacle was going to become a priority in action cinema. The origin. Everything that surrounds the film has ended up acquiring a special aura. For example, its origin. Mann wrote the original screenplay in 1979, based on Chicago detective Chuck Adamson’s real-life manhunt for professional thief Neil McCauley. The two men met face to face in a parking lot and instead of shooting each other they went to have a coffee. McCauley died in a shootout with police in 1964. Mann it took fifteen years in being able to bring it to the big screen with the budget and cast that he considered appropriate. The Pacino-De Niro clash. The most iconic scene of the film has done a lot to give it a special packaging. The coffee scene between the two actors was the first in history in which both actors shared a shot, since in ‘The Godfather II’ their characters existed in different timelines and never interacted. Mann built the entire narrative of ‘Heat’ as an inevitable path toward that moment, and when it arrives, the encounter is neither a fight nor a chase: it’s two men talking about mundane topics. And it has remained an idealized model of male conversation in which things are not said directly but are understood. That masculinity (contained, professional, stoic) is one of the keys to the cult that ‘Heat’ has earned. As it has been saidwhat Mann explores is not crime but its cost: the loneliness of men who don’t know how to live outside of their work, who come to love too late or with too much baggage. That tension between the professional world and personal life resonates with a certain generation of men, and explains the devoted following he has gained over the years. From that point of view, that films like Christopher Nolan’s trilogy of Batman films, Mann’s own ‘Collateral’ or Ben Affleck’s ‘The Town’ owe so much to ‘Heat’ and generate follow-ups with comparable audiences explains everything. Work for men. Mann described his own film as a “symphonic drama.” That operatic tone (a “nothing” of passion: men who do not tell what they feel, who channel their entire emotional life into work, who arrive late or do not arrive at love) is combined with the definition that Mark Kermode made Man’s cinema: hypermasculinity that tends towards implosion, destroying the social relations around it not out of malice, but out of inability. The theme of the film is male alienation, and it is what has resonated with so many men. McCauley’s code (don’t tie yourself to anything you can’t get away from in thirty seconds) is self-help in reverse, and also a fantasy of radical autonomy that a certain sector of men has been claiming for years. He totem paper of ‘Heat’ makes all the sense in the world: these men in one piece, which Mann describes without judging, had not yet been deactivated by the irony of post-heroes like The Rock or the fragile Marvel characters, full of flaws and nuances. Only with films are experiments like the podcast possible’One Heat Minute’which dissects the film minute by minute. And now, ‘Heat 2’. The sequel carries a gestation process which promises to be comparable to its predecessor. It has taken more than three years to find financing, it has changed studios in the midst of budget negotiations and it has seen how the director reduced the budget from an initial $200 million to $150 million that United Artists (a division of Amazon) has approved. The starting point is a novel that Mann published in 2022 with Meg Gardiner. It works as a prequel and sequel, with a non-linear structure that jumps between 1988, 1995 (immediately after the first film) and the year 2000. Although McCauley has been dead since 1995, the novel goes back to his formative years and moves forward with the survivor played by Val Kilmer. Leonardo DiCaprio and Christian Bale have been confirmed in the cast, and this is also a declaration of intentions: there are few actors as loved and respected by the male audience as them (among other things, for the devotion that manosphere towards films as ridiculously misinterpreted as ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’ and ‘American Psycho’). Filming will begin in August of this year and the premiere is scheduled for 2027. Great expectations. Since 2004’s ‘Collateral,’ Mann has had a few punctures at the box office: ‘Blackhat’ cost 70 million dollars and grossed 19.6, and ‘Ferrari’ cost 95 and barely made it to 16. It is an opportunity to make amends and also to meet his audience: the one at the center of a cultural debate on masculinity that has charged the original film with a meaning that it did not have in 1995. All this, if we season it with the inevitable nineties nostalgia, there we have it: one of the possible next box office phenomena. In Xataka | On TikTok there are men shaving their eyelashes to look more masculine. Science has bad news for them

Japan’s problem is not that it is stopping having babies at a record speed. It’s just that he did it 17 years earlier than he should have.

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If there is a way out of demographic pitJapan still hasn’t found it. And not for lack of effort. Although all your effortsof the imagination and million-dollar investment that has been allocated to birth policies, its balance of births continues to be disastrous. The last one has just been published by the Government and shows that in 2025 they were born in Japan 15,179 fewer babies than in 2024. It is the tenth consecutive year of decline, a new historical low and above all a scenario in which Japan did not expect to find itself until 2042. The question is: Is Tokyo willing to cover this birth rate disaster with a greater migratory flow, the demographic table that keeps afloat other countries? What has happened? that Japan has received a hard bath of demographic reality, something that is beginning to be common. The Ministry of Health has just published the birth rate for 2025, a document that leaves little room for optimism. Throughout last year, 705,809 babies were born in the country, a bad figure no matter how you look at it. It represents the lowest record since statistics began to be compiled in 1899, and above all it confirms that the birth rate has been declining for ten consecutive years… with no prospect of improvement. In annual terms, these 705,809 births represent a decrease of 2.1% compared to 2024. If we look further back, to the last decade, the drop is around 30%. The only good news is that the data improves (slightly) some forecasts launched by the Japanese press a few months ago and that the speed at which the birth rate falls seems to be slowing down little by little. At least it is lower than that of the 2022-2024 period, when it exceeded 5% annually. Is it that bad news? Yes. For several reasons. The main one is that the Japanese demographic crisis is worsening much faster than the Government believed, which years ago prepared for a pessimistic scenario. In 2023 the National Population and Security Research Institute and Social Security (IPSS) published a report in which it calculated that the number of annual births would not decrease to 700,000 until 2042. The reality is that the country has already moved within that range in 2025, 17 years than expected. What’s more, the IPSS estimated that 774,000 babies would be born in 2025. The actual data that we know today (705,809) is closer to its most pessimistic projection (681,000). Why is it a problem? Because Japan is proving that, despite its multiple attempts, it has not managed to close its demographic gap. It is not just that their birth rate is falling, it is that vegetative growth (difference between births and deaths) gives clear alarm signals. Although the deaths have decreased by 0.8%the Japanese population shrank by 899,845 people last year. Media like Nikkei either The Japan Times In recent hours, they have published analyzes that warn of the gradual aging of the country and (above all) the pressure it puts on its social security system and pensions. There will be something positive, right? More or less. The statistics leave some positive readings or that show possible paths to follow, although with nuances. For example, in 2025 marriages increased slightly compared to the previous year (1.1%) to reach 505,656. The question is whether this rebound is the result of the hangover from the pandemic, when many couples postponed their weddings. Another curious fact is that there are territories that seem to have hit the right demographic key: in Tokyo the births increased by about 1.3% last year, reaching 88,518, and it is estimated that its metropolitan area accounts for almost a third (30%) of all births registered in the country. What is the solution? The big question. The difficult thing is to answer it. Japan has tried with economic and labor incentives, programs for pair…Everything to boost your birth rate, a goal to which you have dedicated millions and millions. It has been of little use to him. There are those who believe that in this scenario a possible salvation is to rethink the national immigration policy. “Refusing to accept an adequate flow of migrants is not only ignoring economic reality, but giving up on our collective future,” pointed recently to The World Akito Tanaka, from the Migrant Solidarity Network. “Policies that are increasingly limiting the entry of foreign workers are exacerbating precisely this problem,” Tanaka insists.who warns that Japan faces “an unprecedented demographic crossroads.” The latest data from the Ministry of Health actually leaves an interesting idea: the 705,809 babies registered in Japan in 2025 not only correspond to births to parents of Japanese origin, but also include foreigners. What is Tokyo’s position? It does not seem very willing to bet on foreigners to revive its population. In fact just yesterday transcended that Japan’s immigration agency has tightened the guidelines that applicants for permanent residence must comply with. In practice the changes make it more difficult meet the requirements to obtain the visa, for which it is key to demonstrate good conduct and financial self-sufficiency, among other conditions. It’s not exactly new. It has been known for months that the government of the conservative Sanae Takaichi was planning double the time minimum stay that foreigners must remain in Japan to qualify for citizenship. Can it change? In the midst of an avalanche of international tourism (which has generated multiple tensions between foreign visitors and the native population) the presence of foreigners has become a relevant issue in Japanese politics. In fact, after taking the reins of the Government, Takaichi did not take long to promote an immigration policy that revolves around regulations with an eloquent name: “Law for a society of orderly coexistence with foreigners.” His last results at the polls They show that their position does not upset the electorate. Image | Andrew Leu (Unsplash) In Xataka | If Korea believes it is experiencing a demographic crisis, it is because it does not … Read more

We don’t know what to do with the old coal mines. Switzerland’s idea is to turn them into a giant “battery”

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In the bowels of the Bierzo region of León, where coal was the absolute king for decades, the silence of the abandoned and flooded galleries is about to be broken. But this time there will be no pickaxes, no minecarts, no black ore. The new gold of the mining basin is water, and those in charge of extracting its potential come from the Alps. The Swiss energy company Alpiq has set its eyes on this ruined industrial legacy to transform it into a colossal natural “battery” that promises to be the energy engine of the future in Spain. A million-dollar purchase in El Bierzo. The news that has shaken the local and international energy panorama is the acquisition of the “CDR Navaleo” macroproject by the Swiss multinational Alpiq, as detailed in their press release. However, as local media describethis pumped hydroelectric energy storage project had initially been developed by Erbiergía, a company promoted and controlled by the well-known mining businessman Manuel Lamelas Viloria. Despite the sale, the Bercian promoter will maintain a stake in the company to continue collaborating and supporting its development on the ground. The project figures are colossal. Although two years ago the project has already obtained a powerful grant Of 35.5 million euros from the Ministry for the Ecological Transition (Miteco), the total investment necessary to build this megastructure is much greater. Now, as advanced in ElDiario.esthe estimated budget exceeds 300 million euros, but other sources raise the investment figure above 400 million, placing it in a range of between 420 and 450 million euros. And why Spain? To understand the magnitude of Navaleo, you have to look at the sky. Spain has very ambitious goals of penetration of renewable energies, such as solar and wind, but these sources are intermittent: it is not always sunny or the wind blows when we turn on the switch at home. Therefore, the electrical system urgently needs “storage and flexibility to guarantee the stability of the network,” explained by the Swiss company. That is where this plant comes in, which will contribute 535 megawatts (MW) of flexible capacity to the Spanish grid, according to local media. To get an idea of ​​its size, the current third vice president, Sara Aagesen, noted during a visit to the area that “all residential buildings in the province of León could be supplied with the annual production of this CDR from Navaleo”, as they have collected in The Economist. The impact transcends Spanish borders. To understand the phenomenon, the importance of infrastructure must be configured. The European Commission has included Navaleo on its list of Projects of Common Interest (PCI)highlighting its strategic value for the energy security of the entire continent, which also opens the door to better financing through the European Investment Bank. For the Swiss company, which has been operating in the Spanish market for 25 years, this is a major milestone: This is its first large-scale hydroelectric project outside of Switzerland. The engineering behind the “battery”. The technical mechanism is as fascinating as it is colossal. The facility will operate through a closed-circuit pumped hydroelectric energy storage system. In practice, it consists of taking advantage of groundwater from old mining operations, as explained in the local media. The system will pump water from the Tremor River area to a higher elevation, where it will be stored in a pond. When the country needs electricity, that water will be released through a large pipe so that it passes through a turbine and generates energy. This closed-loop design will provide the electrical grid with at least eight hours of uninterrupted energy storage, literally acting as an immense rechargeable water battery. But an abandoned mine? Used old coal mine poses obvious doubts about toxicity. Currently, abandoned mines are flooded and their waters contain minerals and contaminants. Far from being a problem, this is one of the greatest added values ​​of the project. The plant is called “CDR” precisely because it is a Reversible Treatment Plant. “Through our asset we are going to offer flexibility and storage, but we are also going to offer an environmental benefit. We are going to drain the contaminated water from the mines and purify it,” explains Amédée Murisier, director of Alpiq in statements to The Economist. In this way, an environmental liability and degraded land is transformed into a clean energy asset. Furthermore, viability is assured: the company already has a water concession granted for a period of 75 years, which guarantees long-term operational continuity. Forecasts and deadlines. The macroproject will extend through the Bercian municipalities of Torre del Bierzo, Castropodame, Congosto and Molinaseca, areas hard hit by the closure of mining. As for the deadlines, there are certain nuances. While the Viloria Group I hoped to start construction this year, the new Swiss owners apply their well-known precision and caution. Amédée Murisier warns that there is still a year and a half of work ahead to refine the geological studies and detailed engineering before making the final investment decision. What is certain, and what all actors agree on, is that the plant will enter commercial operation in the early 2030s. Where before Leonese miners went down into the bowels of the earth to extract coal with their pickaxes, in a few years thousands of liters of purified water will flow, pushed by Swiss technology. The Navaleo project is not only a work of pharaonic engineering; It is the perfect metaphor for the energy transition. A textbook circular economy that demonstrates how the old industrial ghosts of Bierzo can be reconverted, given a facelift and end up being the master key to ensuring the green and electric future of Spain. Image | freepik Xataka | Far from Grazalema and the reservoirs, Andalusia has another serious problem: completely collapsed mining ponds

features, price and technical sheet

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Honor has been one of the big stars of the MWC. The Chinese firm has taken advantage of the fair that is taking place these days in Barcelona to show its new products, namely the Honor MagicPad 4the peculiar Honor Robot Phone and its new foldable, the Honor Magic V6. This is the product that concerns us in these lines and its proposal is clear: more battery and better performance without sacrificing thickness or durability, at least on paper. The terminal will be launched during the second half of the year, so we will still have to wait to get our hands on it. With the introductions made, let’s get to know him a little better. Honor Magic V6 technical sheet honor magic v6 Dimensions and weight Displayed: 156.7 x 145.5 x 4mm Folding: 156.7 x 74.5 x 8.75mm 224 grams EXTERNAL screen 6.52 inch LTPO OLED Resolution 2,420 x 1,080 pixels Refresh rate: 1-120Hz Peak brightness: 6,000 nits PWM Dimming: 4,320 Hz 100% DCI-P3 Anti-reflective coating Anti-Scratch Glass NanoCrystal Shield INTERNAL SCREEN 7.95-inch LTPO OLED Resolution 2,352 x 2,172 pixels Refresh rate: 1-120Hz Anti-reflective coating 100% DCI-P3 PWM Dimming: 4,320 Hz Peak brightness: 5,000 nits processor Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 Honor C1+ Chip Honor E2 Chip ram memory 16 GB internal storage 512GB rear camera Wide 50 MP, f/1.6, OIS Wide angle 50 MP, f/2.2 Periscope 64 MP, f/2.7, OIS front camera Internal screen: 20 MP, f/2.2 External screen: 20 MP, f/2.2 battery 6,600 mAh Wired fast charging: 80W Wireless fast charging: 66W operating system Android 16 with MAgicOS 10 Connectivity66W 5G SA/NSA Wi-Fi 7 Bluetooth NFC GPS USB type C others Resistance IP68, IP69 price To be determined Yes, it can be made slimmer Honor Magic V6 | Image: Honor Honor has managed to further reduce the thickness of its terminal. It is not a spectacular figure, but it is striking that the company has managed to reduce it by 4.1 millimeters. Magic V5 to four millimeters in the Magic V6. That is the thickness unfolded, but the dynamics are the same with the mobile folded. From 8.8 mm we went to 8.75 millimeters, a change that, without being spectacular or excessively noticeable, is a statement of intent on the part of the company. The internal screen has won over and is, undoubtedly, the main protagonist. The panel has SGS Minimized Crease certification and, according to the firm, reduces fold depth by 44% Compared to the previous generation, which was already really good. Beyond that, the panel remains more or less the same, that is, the firm has iterated where there is the most room for improvement: in the fold. The external screen, for its part, grows slightly diagonally and maintains many of the specifications. The striking part, which in fact shares with the internal part, is the anti-reflective layer. Samsung has shown that this technology works and is useful when viewing the panel in strong light situations, and now Honor has implemented it on both screens. According to the company, it reduces reflectivity by up to 1.5%. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 reaches foldables Honor Magic V6 | Image: Honor As expected, Honor has chosen to put the latest in chips into its device. Thus, the Honor Magic V6 incorporates the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 516 GB of RAM and 512 GB of internal storage. Roughly speaking, it is the configuration to be expected in every high-end terminal of 2026. The entire connectivity suite, needless to say, is more than guaranteed. The most interesting change is in the battery. Honor has once again collaborated with ATL for its fifth-generation silicon-carbon batteries. These have a silicon content of 25% and a 6,600 mAh capacitysomething that attracts attention in a device that is barely four millimeters thick. Fast charging amounts to 80% and wireless fast charging remains at 66W. When it comes to cameras, the Chinese firm has opted for a configuration similar to last year. Few changes here: 50 megapixel main and wide-angle sensor, 64 megapixel periscope with optical zoom and 20 megapixel internal cameras. The key, of course, is to be able to use the rear camera for selfies thanks to the foldable format. Versions and price of the Honor Magic V6 Honor Magic V6 | Image: Honor Honor has not revealed the price of the device, it has simply confirmed that it will be launched in the second half. We will have to wait until then to find out the price. We also do not know exact RAM memory configurations or colors. Images | Honor In Xataka | HONOR Magic8 Pro, analysis: it fulfills what a premium range should fulfill. It excels in something specific: its telephoto

We tend to think that the war of extermination was invented by the modern State. A mass grave from 2,800 years ago has just destroyed the myth

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There is an almost romantic tendency to idealize the remote past. Perhaps, inspired by the myth of the “noble savage” they often let’s imagine prehistory and the first societies as peaceful environments where extreme violence and systematic was an aberration or, in any case, an invention that came with the help of more modern times. But the reality is that if we had a time machine, this would be one of the few places where we would have to travel. A reality. Archeology has an uncomfortable habit of unearthing truths that do not fit our prejudices. The latest blow to this idyllic vision that some may have comes from the Balkans, specifically from a mass grave in Gomolava from 2,800 years ago that reveals a calculated, selective and brutal massacre against women and children. A mystery. In the 9th century BC, during the first Iron Age, the Carpathian and Balkan region was inhabited by societies that we today consider primitive. Specifically, they could be found semi-nomadic groups and sedentary communities who were beginning to clash for control of the territory. But here there were neither states nor regular armies. In this way, when archaeologists found a huge mass grave with the remains of 77 individuals at the Gomolava site, the first hypothesis was the most logical for the time: a catastrophic epidemic devastated everyone. However, a new study published in the magazine Naturehas completely rewritten the history of this site, combining forensic, genetic and isotopic analyses. Annihilation. Here the DNA was clear, since there was no trace of deadly pathogens. In this case, people died not from a disease, but from an outbreak of deliberate violence that has shocked the scientific community. Not only because of the violence, but because of the demographic profile, since 70.8% of the adults were women and 66% of the total were children and adolescents. Here the forensic analyzes revealed a terrifying pattern, since the vast majority had injuries at the time of death in the skull. Thus, they were forceful blows inflicted from above, suggesting that the attackers could have been on horseback or executing the victims while they were kneeling or subdued. Why children and women? The answer is pure strategic calculation, since the study of isotopes and DNA revealed that, with the exception of a mother and her two daughters, the victims were not related to each other and came from various regions with varied diets. But it was not a simple robbery gone wrong, but rather an interregional selective annihilation designed to wipe the reproductive future of rival groups off the map. And, in a context of profound social restructuring and territorial conflicts in the Carpathian Basin, eliminating offspring and those people who can produce even more offspring, such as women, was the most brutal and effective way to assert power in an area. Without a doubt, a great strategy to prevent anyone from claiming rights in that area. Ritual. To add another layer of complexity to this dark episode, the burial was not improvised. Contrary to what happens in many mass graves that are quickly made to throw the corpses, andIn this case they took their time. Investigators saw that the victims were buried next to bronze jewelry, ceramics and even sacrificed animals, so it was quite taken care of. Here the theory proposed is that it is a “macabre demonstration of power”: an act where the brutality of the massacre coexists with the socioeconomic value of the victims and the need to maintain the funeral customs of the time. Image | Sarah Nylund (Nature) In Xataka | When did human beings start “cooking”? The answer lies in some carp from 780,000 years ago.

The Ebro is filling with brown prawns, an invasive species that we are going to find more and more on our plates.

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When a fisherman from Vinaròs arrives at the fish market with his catch of the day, he finds more and more specimens of a crustacean that should not be there: the brown shrimp. Four years ago there were barely one or two per boat. Today there are days when up to 40 kilos are caught. This invasive species has arrived in the Mediterranean, has reproduced, and has no intention of leaving. The presentations. Its scientific name is Penaeus aztecus and comes from the Gulf of Mexico and the east coast of the United States. Although for the non-expert eye, the one who finds a plate of prawns on the table on Christmas Day, at first glance there is not much aesthetic difference with the normal one, there is. Thus, it has a uniform brown color that tends to be yellowish, it lacks those bands characteristic of the native, its body is more stylized and its head is pointed, and its antennae have a characteristic reddish tone. BioInvasions Records. Authors from the Institute of Marine Sciences (CSIC, Barcelona) Chronology of an invasion. The first time They detected the brown shrimp in the Mediterranean It was in Turkish waters in 2009. It possibly arrived as a stowaway in the ballast water of large ships that load water in the Caribbean to stabilize and then release it in Mediterranean ports along with larvae of this invasive species. From there, it has expanded rapidly westward. In 2023 the CSIC confirmed with morphological and genetic analyzes its presence on the Catalan coast and in the area of ​​the Ebro delta. Later, it has been seen in other ports of the Valencian Community and in the Mar Menor (Murcia) in record time. A perfect invasion. But the clearest proof of its expansion is not geographical but biological: the discovery of mature females in the Ebro delta confirms that the species is capable of completing its reproductive cycle in Spanish waters. It is already an established population. The testimony of the fishermen’s brotherhood of the Vinaroz fish market It constitutes a good alarm thermometer, detailing that in just four years they have gone from encountering a unit to capturing 40 kilos and the curve does not stabilize: each campaign surpasses the previous one. The brown shrimp is a thermophilic species. If it has found an ideal new home in the Mediterranean, it is partly because the sea is warming and its waters are already more and more similar to its original habitat. What’s wrong with the shrimp here? At the moment there is no data that shows the collapse of the native shrimp, but there is a reality: it is competing with the brown shrimp for space and food. And there is a mirror in which to look: in the Gulf of Taranto in Italy, the presence of the native shrimp has already reversed. And a reminder: the one with the blue crab. Is it eaten? The “good news” is that brown shrimp is edible and, in fact, gastronomically speaking, it is tasty. However, its market price is noticeably lower: 12-13 euros per kilo compared to more than 40 euros per kilo for native shrimp. But there is an underlying problem: they can give you a hard time and pay for brown shrimp at the price of native shrimp, since it is sold mixed and unlabeled. This is a traceability problem for the consumer. What can be done. Converting the consumption of brown shrimp as a way to control its population is a possibility, either directly or with preparations, although it is imperative to establish regulation in the fish market to differentiate it. In Xataka | The US has such a big problem with Asian carp in its rivers that it has decided something extreme: electrocute them In Xataka | The Iberian Peninsula is being invaded: more than 1,200 exotic species have come to stay Cover | BioInvasions Records and Natural History Sciences

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