Month: April 2026

We believed that tons of feces were the big problem with the touristification of Everest. Until the scam rescue arrived

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Everest may be the roof of the world, but it has long ceased to be the remote and isolated place they found themselves seven decades ago. Edmund Hollary and Tenzing Norgaythe first to summit its icy summit. The best proof was left to us just before the pandemic by Nirmal Purja, the author of one of the most famous (and striking) snapshots of the mountain: in it we see a very long row with dozens and dozens of tourists climbing in single file towards the summit, just as if they were queuing to enter the Louvre or board a cruise ship. That Everest has become a monster touristified It’s no surprise. What is curious is that there are people (presumably) breaking the laws to take advantage of that demand and defraud the insurers. A huge theme park. One would expect the highest place on the planet to be an inhospitable place, reserved for the most intrepid locals and adventurers. Perhaps it was like this in the 1950s, when Hollary and Norgay ascended to more than 8,800 meters of altitude to reach its summit. Not today. The photography that Purja took in 2019 is just the graphic verification of a phenomenon that can be measured in figures… and even in feces: Everest is a tourist icon that they visit every year hundreds and hundreds of climbers, leaving behind millions of dollars and a trail of tons of waste. You will find more infographics at Statista Where there is tourism… There is business, of course. That universal truth is applicable both in Amsterdam, Florence either Barcelona such as in the remote Himalayas, which over the last few decades has seen a thriving industry take shape dedicated to serving those who visit Everest. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTC), in 2023 alone Nepal’s tourism sector generated revenue worth about 2.5 billion of dollars and boosted hundreds of thousands of jobs, both direct and indirect. Even Nepal has considered shoot 40% the fees he charges mountaineers, a source of income that among other things helps him clean the region. Where is the problem? Beyond the environmental impact that this overcrowding has in the mountain range, there is actually no problem in travel agencies, Sherpas, transportation companies, hotels and other businesses oriented to Nepalese tourism trying to make money. Climbing Everest doesn’t come cheap, but at the end of the day, whoever wants to pay for it. The problem is that not all of these professionals respect the law when looking for ways to make money. What’s more, there are those who have no qualms about cheatfalsify and commit millionaire frauds. Mountaineering and picaresque. The news I advanced it a few days ago The Kathmandu Postone of the largest English-language newspapers in Nepal. The Central Investigation Bureau of the Nepalese Police (CIB) has revealed a network dedicated to deceiving insurers who cover mountaineers in the Himalayas. Their modus operandi may vary, but the idea is always the same: alleged scammers make fraudulent ransoms to claim compensation. It may sound rudimentary, but the scam takes advantage of two circumstances that work in its favor. First, in rescue operations speed prevails, so there is no room to wait for the approval of the experts. Second, deceived insurers are often based thousands of kilometers away (in London or Paris), making it difficult for them to confirm what is happening on the ground. One goal, two methods. How do you prepare the scam? The CIB has identified two methods. The first is quite simple and requires the tourist to participate in the deception. If a climber is exhausted after days (or even weeks) of hiking and wants to save the trip back to camp, his guide can offer him a way out that is as comfortable as it is ethically questionable: faking an illness so that the insurance company can mobilize a rescue operation. The second method is a little more complicated, but the end result is the same. The guides or accommodations take advantage of the client’s ignorance to make them believe that the symptoms of altitude sickness (which are usually resolved with rest, hydration and a gradual descent) are actually signs that they are at serious risk, even of death. The key is to suggest the hiker enough so that he ends up asking to be evacuated by a charter helicopter. And where is the business? In the cost of the operation. It is not just that the company that provides that service charges the insurer for a helicopter that was not really necessary, it is that, precise The Kathmandu Postoften manages to expand its profit margin. As? It carries several passengers on the same flight and then sends separate invoices to their insurance companies. In practice that means that a single $4,000 charter flight can end up giving rise to three separate claims worth $12,000. Added to this are alleged treatments in the hospital, even when the client in question did not need assistance. For example, the Nepalese newspaper talks about cases in which treatment is claimed for hikers who were actually in the cafeteria. Not all people who are involved in this mess have to participate in the deception. He post speaks of falsifications of flight manifests or reports with digital signatures of completely unrelated doctors. One figure: 20 million dollars. At the end of March the CIB accused 32 people for this type of crimes, which according to the AFP agency amounted to a total scam 19.69 million of dollars. It may seem like a lot, but the figures revealed by the CIB investigation are eloquent: between 2022 and 2025, it identified 4,782 foreign patients treated in the investigated hospitals. Of these, inspectors believe that 171 corresponded to simulated evacuations. During that period some health centers received deposits worth millions of dollars related to those services. The older ones are the helicopters. Poisoning? The CIB investigation has attracted the attention of the media everyonealthough their headlines often focus on another … Read more

expensive literary retreats to overcome mobile addiction

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February weekend, Welsh coast. A group of women sits around a table accompanied by appetizing portions of pasta and fruit. They ignore each other very politely. Nobody looks at their cell phones, but at the voluminous books they carry with them. They open them, begin to read their own in silence, and pay 1,200 euros (or more) for that strange privilege. Expanding business. In the United States and the United Kingdom, a new category of travel experience has been born: reading retreats. A group of people meets in a rural house or hotel boutique during a weekend to advance their personal readings, in friendly silence and without obligation to read a common book, as happens with reading clubs. Very expensive and exclusive, prices vary from company to company Page Break (between $1,000 and $1,200 per weekend) up to Ladies Who Lit (£3,450 for four days in Mallorca) or Bad Bitch Book Club (between $950 and $1,750). It’s his thing. Although today it is perceived as a solitary activity, reading as something introspective is a historically anomalous perception. For centuries, reading was a social practice: families gathered by the warmth of the fireplace to listen to loud sermons, women sharing stories while they sewed, travelers exchanging books in train cars. In fact, the appearance of the railway in the 19th century generated an entire industry: the publisher Henry Walton Smith began selling cheap novels on the platforms of London stations, and Allen Lane installed a vending machine for books from the Penguin publishing house (the Penguincubator) in the subway lobbies. It is read less.The decline in reading rates is well documented. From 2003 to 2023, the share of Americans who read for pleasure daily fell from 28% to 16%, approximately 3% annually. The report from which these data come, prepared from more than 236,000 participants, indicates that the drop is more pronounced among the population with the lowest income and lowest educational level, although the decline affects all demographic groups. Teleworking has also affected a historical reading space: the commute to work. The importance of BookTok. But in the face of this general decline in reading rates, especially in more modest classes, there is a demand for reading as a form of leisure that disconnects from the connected and hyperactive rhythm in which we live. Paradoxically (coming from a social network), the TikTok reading community has a lot to do with this new vision of reading: with 200,000 million views under the hashtag booktokthis social network is already a sales engine that rescues titles from oblivion and catapults works by independent authors to the best-seller lists. According to the founder of The Literary LeagueAccording to Gabi Valladares, who has organized reading retreats at the Scribner’s Lodge resort in the Catskills, “book vacations offer a built-in connection point,” adding that they are “undemanding,” combining time with authors and other fans with free hours to simply read. It disconnects. The idea, even though the Internet is the platform for disseminating this type of retreat and its philosophy, is to disconnect from the online world, in search of recovering uninterrupted reading. As Leah Price points outauthor of ‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Books’, the current problem is not work, historically the main competitor to reading, but “the competition from short-form digital content.” The year 2018, when Wi-Fi reached the entire New York subway network, was described as “horrible” for reading in the subway by Uli Beutter Cohen, who interviews travelers about their reading for his Instagram account Subway Book Review. Some clubs. Bad Bitch Book Club was born in 2018 as a Facebook group of friends with common interests. By 2020, confinement boosted the page to 38,000 members worldwide, receiving income of around $200,000 annually through a Patreon subscription of 14 per month. Their summer camps in The Forks, Maine, received 500 applications for 240 spots spread over three weekends. Page Breakfounded in 2024 by Mikey Friedman, has a different proposal: participants read aloud (in turns, we imagine) the same novel throughout the weekend, interspersed with frugal meals and themed games, getting closer to the idea of ​​a traditional book club. For a recent retreat in the Joshua Tree, California desert, the company received 50 applications for 15 spots, which were assigned by lottery. Your goal: millennials and zetas too busy to commit to a conventional book club. Women. The profile of attendees is overwhelmingly female. Emma Donaldson, founder of Boutique Book Breaks (spa hotel retreats in the English countryside), notes that to date she has only had one male guest. The organizers attribute this bias to the feminization of the publishing industry in recent decades and to marketing for these retreats that adopts the language of well-being: candles, bath salts, non-alcoholic cocktails… Theorist DeNel Rehberg Sedo connects the popularity of these women’s reading clubs with the awareness groups of the 1960s and 1970s, speaking of spaces that “continue the training of women and distance them from domestic responsibilities.” The metaphor of well-being is not accidental. When the debate Often focused on choosing between reading as accelerated consumerism or as a reflective practice, these retreats offer a middle ground. The possibility of reading slowly, without being accountable to any algorithm, in the company of other people who also do not understand why the hell reading a book has become something that costs so much work these days. Header | Photo of Michael Kyule in Unsplash

Intel seemed like an exiled company. Then April came.

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Intel stock has spent most of the year so far trading at between 42 and 48 dollars. At the time of writing these lines it is worth 65. A vertical rise of more than 50% in just nine sessions that allows it to once again be above 300,000 million dollars. Nothing like this had ever happened before in the company’s stock market history. Why is it important. The market has been punishing Intel for years. It went from $65 per share to less than $20 in four years. Now it is resurrected after losing technological leadership to TSMC, after seeing how AMD took away share in servers and after several years selling assets to survive. What has happened in this month of April is a change of narrative. And in markets, narrative is almost everything. The three catalysts. The story has been built on three pieces of news that arrived in a few days: On April 1, Intel announced the repurchase of the 49% that Apollo Global Management had in its factory in Leixlip (Ireland) for 14.2 billion dollars. Apollo had paid 11.2 billion for that stake in 2024. That Intel now recovers it with a 27% premium It says a lot: Intel has stopped selling assets to survive and has started buying and expanding. The market interpreted it as a sign of strength and the stock rose almost 9% that day. On April 7, Intel confirmed its participation in Terafabthe chip manufacturing macro project promoted by Elon Musk together with Tesla, SpaceX and xAI. The goal of the complex, located in Austin, is to produce one terawatt per year of computing capacity to drive advances in AI and robotics. On April 9 it was announced a multi-year agreement with Google to deploy future generations of Xeon processors and IPUs in their AI data centers. The following days saw the accumulated increases: Intel closed on April 8 at $58.95, with an increase in a single session (11.4%) and a volume of shares (179.7 million, 64% above its average for the previous three months) skyrocketed. Between the lines. The buyback of the Irish factory is a declaration of intentions on industrial sovereignty. The facility produces chips with the processes Intel 4 and Intel 3both essential for advanced manufacturing in Europe. Regaining full control of that factory, just when geopolitics has turned dependence on TSMC into a strategic problem for the West, gives Intel an argument that it did not have two years ago. Surprises life gives you. Yes, but. It’s often a great idea to respond with a cold read to market enthusiasm. The analyst consensus remains cautious, with a median price target of between $47 and $48well below where it is trading now. Furthermore, the debt has increased with the purchase of Ireland, Terafab is still a project in a very early stage and the first quarter results, scheduled for the 23rd, will test whether the stock market euphoria has a solid basis or if it has been too far ahead of operational reality. The big question. Can Intel support this narrative with real numbers? The CEO, Lip-Bu Tanhas been at the helm for just over a year and has already managed to stabilize the ship: the 18A process It went into volume production in January, there are more than 200 PC designs based on it, and he himself admitted in the fourth quarter earnings presentation that Intel had underestimated demand. But Intel has not yet won the battle of foundry: that is to come, and TSMC will not wait quietly for someone to overtake it. In Xataka | In the midst of the RAM crisis, Intel counterattacks with ZAM. It is the chip to break South Korean hegemony Featured image | Xataka with Mockuuups Studio

Mova Rover X10, the “what do you want me to beat you” of pool robots

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Mova has just landed in Spain con a lot of devices. One of them is the Mova Rover X10, a pool cleaning robot that costs more than 2,000 euros, but that is a lot more than just a ‘Roomba’ for the pool: It is a cleaning submarine. Last year we already analyzed the Dreame Z1 Pro (Mova’s sister company) and although it made my life much easier with pool maintenance, there were things that could be improved to make the experience better, such as the control system and charging. And here comes Mova with the “what do you want me to beat you” of pool cleaning robots. Let’s go with the main features and get into detail. Mova Rover X10 technical sheet Mova rover x10 Dimensions and weight 540 x 460 x 320mm 15.8kg Mapping and navigation 29 sensors Surface and wall mapping Real time control Obstacle Avoidance Dynamic Suction power Maximum of 38,000 L/h Cleaning surface Up to 500 m2 Brush type Two central rollers Two side rollers Filter 3 micron particles 5 liter capacity Control With mobile Battery 6 hours of floor cleaning 12 hours of surface cleaning 6.5 hours of charge Wireless charging Price 2,099 euros Design with multiple brushes There is not much room for innovation when it comes to pool cleaning robots. It’s like the robot vacuum cleaner: There is an almost standardized design because it is ideal for attaching brushes, moles, navigation system and tank. In the case of a pool robot, the same thing happens, although with some extra elements such as the propulsion system. However, Mova has gone all out and he thought that two central brushes for the background were not enough and he attached two smaller ones to the sides. With them you make a first pass by scratching the wall, but they have another function that we will get into later. Something fundamental in a robot vacuum cleaner is the navigation system. The more complete it is, the fewer passes it makes over the surface and the more efficient it is in cleaning. Mova calls theirs ‘360-degree AquaScan’, but basically it is a front sensor, one top and one side to know at all times both the distance from the walls and if there are any obstacles. In the upper backpack we have the reusable filter and Mova ensures that a load of its 15,000 mAh battery It allows six hours of floor cleaning, being compatible with fiberglass, tile, concrete, marble, stainless steel, ceramic and PVC pools. Submarine So far, a “conventional” robot vacuum cleaner. However, there are three features that are really crazy and that we can’t wait to try. One is the propulsion system. The pool cleaner robot has jet propulsion, as this is what allows it to both move forward and stick to the surface and walls. However, the Mova adds another four propellers at the base. So that? To make a ‘jump’ and go up to another platform. Instead of going up, moving close to the wall, he directly pushes himself off. That’s it, an underwater ‘rover’ that solves a problem that some of the competition has: underwater navigation. Other robots have an app that allows very intuitive control and mapping, but once they are submerged, the connection is lost. Some have a knob for basic control, but depending on the water conditions, it may go… or not. What the Rover X10 includes is a beacon. It is connected by WiFi and allows us to have constant communication with the robot. If we want to pause work or change the plan, we simply do it from the app without having to go to the edge of the pool to try to get the remote control right. It also, obviously, allows us to see the work in real time. Surface vacuum cleaner And those two side brushes that we mentioned before are the last trick of this model. Because It is not just a pool cleaner robot, but a surface cleaner. It has a front nozzle that works like a home robot vacuum cleaner: it sucks up dirt thanks to both its advance and what the side brushes attract. According to the manufacturer, it has 12 hours of autonomy in this mode. To charge it, instead of by cable, we have an IPX8 certified base for wireless charging. Mova Rober X10, price and availability Given the characteristics of the Mova Rover X10, it’s time to talk about the price. And as you’d expect, packaging all this technology doesn’t come cheap. The device can now be purchased for 2,099 euros on your website. In the end and as happens with other similar ones such as lawnmower robotsit all depends on the desire you have to automate unpleasant tasks that are not usually pleasant. In Xataka | 3D printing has three big problems. Mova has solved them in a very curious way: with a nozzle roulette

this single fact is enough to understand this spring

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Roller coaster, they call it; but, in reality, it is simply spring. Although, of course, what a spring: the first two weeks of April have chained at least three thermal oscillations of great amplitude: drops of up to 20 degrees in a matter of hours, very rapid ascents and starting again. And the heat is back, but what everyone is wondering is something else: are we already on the slow road towards summer or will there be more relapses? We have an answer. The answer is obviously not simple and, in fact, is very speculative; but the elements are there. To begin with, the AEMET’s seasonal forecast places April, May and June in the upper tertile of temperatures. We know that the months can give us surprises (as has happened with this January 2026), but we also know that forecasting is generally strong. Furthermore, as we have explained, the transition to El Niño is underway. It is true that the impact of the phenomenon in Spain is ambiguous and that, if anything, the strongest trend has to do with rainfall. But it is clear that, given what we have seen in the data, it is another argument in favor of heat. Of course, the behavior of the polar jet can still give us some cold episodes (April is usually the month with the greatest undulation of the jet). However, the space of possibilities is increasingly narrow and limited. Spain is an increasingly warmer place. AEMET data they leave no room for doubt: The last cold record in mainland Spain was the night of April 2 to 3, 2022. Since then, in the last four years, we have not had any more. Instead, we have had 100 records of warm days. This is not normal: in a world without climate change, five cold and five warm records are expected each year. That is, we would expect 2o from January 2022 and we have only seen two. Both in April of that year. This is the context in which 2026 takes place. So this heat is now definitive? With all this, the short answer is probably yes. Above all, because even if the cold air intrusions return… they will be increasingly weaker and briefer. And that, in the middle of a spring that tends to be warmer than normal, paints a fairly predictable scenario. The chips are on the table. All that’s left is for them to start falling. Image | BenBaso | Xataka In Xataka | Castilla-La Mancha and Murcia have been in a battle for years for the water of the Tagus: once again, Murcia is winning

with a nozzle roulette

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The world of 3D printing It stopped being monochrome a long time ago. Nowadays, there is a rare brand of printer that does not have a multi-color system that allows its machines to print in multiple colors. The next natural step was to offer multi-material, that is, combining different types of plastics in the same print. All of this is already possible, but it involves sacrifices in terms of time, waste and quality. These are three of the great evils of 3D printing. current at consumption level. There are solutions, of course, but they all have flaws. Mova, Dreame’s new brand, wants to solve it. The Chinese firm has brought the AtomForm Palette 300 to Europe, a 3D printer that, at least on paper, solves these three big problems in a truly spectacular way: with a nozzle roulette. Let’s go in parts. The printer next to the RFD-6 | Image: Xataka A previous note. All 3D printers work exactly the same: they push a plastic through a very hot extruder that melts it and deposits it in lines and layers on a hot base through a nozzle. The plastic is called filament and the nozzle is called nozzle. To date, the most normal thing is for 3D printers to have a single nozzle, although we are seeing innovations that allow two, four and even six nozzles through different mechanisms. Problem number 1: waste. When we change color or material during a print, the machine has to retract the filament from the nozzle, load the new filament, purge the remains of the previous filament and extrude the new filament to deposit it in the figure. This residue of old and new filament is known as “poo” and, in some cases, the residue may cost more than the filament used in the figure itself. We saw it here in much more detail. Waste generated during the purge | Image: Xataka Problem number 2: time. This process of changing filament is slow, very slow. So much so that a printout that could be just a few hours if printed in a single color could last up to a day or several days if we use multicolor. Problem number 3: quality. When changing filament or material and doing this purge, it is possible that, if we have not adjusted it well, there will be a color mixture that completely ruins the print. If you ever go to a market where 3D prints are sold, look at the dolls’ eyes. If they have a shift towards black it is precisely because of this. It should be noted that these three problems have been partially solved with some solutions, such as the multiple extruders of the Prusa XL or the Snapmaker U1; or the Vortex system of the Bambu Lab H2C. Mova wants to achieve it too, but taking its system much further, to where the others, at least for the moment, have not gone. Mova OmniElement System | Image: Mova A roulette wheel with 12 nozzles. Mova has come up with a system called OmniElement, which basically consists of a roulette wheel with 12 independent nozzles linked to a color or material. During a multi-color or multi-material print, this system does not have to purge the filament. Let’s imagine, for that matter, that we want to change from black to white. Instead of cutting the black filament, retracting it, loading the white, purging the black and extruding the white (costing time and generating waste, remember), what the OmniElement system does is link one nozzle on the spinner to the white filament and another to the black filament. This way, when switching from one to the other, you don’t have to waste time purging or switching between coils. Change the nozzle directly and that’s it. Well, we can do this with up to 12 nozzles and 36 colors, but not only that. We can also combine different materials, such as PLA and PETG to achieve better supports. According to Mova, the system is capable of achieving 50% faster changes and reducing waste by 90%. Interchangeable nozzle | Image: Mova Another key: various diameters. On the other hand, the brand has confirmed to Xataka that it is possible to combine nozzles of different diameters in the same print. That is, we can use 0.4 millimeter nozzles in some parts, 0.2 nozzles where we need to refine detail and 0.6 or 0.8 nozzles when we need speed. This is something that we have not seen to date and that represents a step forward in 3D printing. We could print the outer lines with 0.2 millimeter nozzles to ensure the best possible detail, but fill in with 0.8 millimeter nozzles to save time on what won’t be seen. At least that is the theory, of course, we will have to see how it is implemented in practice. Your own color module with dryer. The printer can be obtained in a combo version with its own AMS, the RFD-6. This allows up to six colors to be stored and allows them to be dried at a temperature of up to 85ºC. Up to six RFD-6s can be connected to the machine, so the maximum number of colors is 36. The rest. For the rest, the machine promises an automatic calibration and adjustment system that guarantees a maximum deviation of 0.02 millimeters when changing nozzles, a maximum acceleration of 25,000 mm/s², up to 800 mm/s maximum printing speed (theoretical, needless to say) and a printing volume of 300 x 300 x 300 millimeters. The noozle reaches 350ºC, the chamber can be heated to 65ºC and the extruder is made of hardened steel, ergo it supports technical materials such as carbon fiber. The nozzle roulette is in the blue glowing area | Image: Xataka As it could not be otherwise, the printer has all kinds of automatic pre-calibrations, vibration compensation, automatic calibration of linear pressure advance and real-time monitoring of printing defects, such as warping or spaghetti. It comes with its … Read more

The Government’s bottleneck slows down its exports to China

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The US Department of Commerce does not give the slightest respite to chip designers to artificial intelligence (AI) Americans. And the largest are NVIDIA and AMD. When these companies receive an order from one of their Chinese clients must apply for an export license to this government entity and indicate which GPU they intend to send to China, their specifications and which client is going to use them, among other relevant information. Once the bureaucracy has been put in place, the Department of Commerce technicians analyze the export requests in the framework established by current regulation and approve or deny the sale of integrated circuits to China. This is the usual procedure, so there is nothing new up to this point. However, as stated BloombergNVIDIA, AMD and other American AI chip designers face a very serious problem: the Commerce Department takes several months to process their export licenses. The US bureaucracy is torpedoing NVIDIA and AMD The staffing of the Department of Commerce has been drastically reduced in recent months, and in the current context this scenario represents a very serious problem. The Industry and Security Office of this entity is not only responsible for processing export licenses linked to AI chips; It is also in charge of carrying out investigations into the tariffs deployed by the Administration led by Donald Trump. And with fewer personnel than in 2024 and 2025 it cannot cope. The Office of Industry and Security has lost 101 employees in recent months According to Bloombergthe Office of Industry and Security has lost 101 employees in recent months, which represents a 19% reduction in staff compared to what it had in 2024. Curiously, the staff who are specifically dedicated to developing regulations linked to the semiconductor industry and reviewing applications for export licenses has decreased by 20%although it has not been revealed at the moment what this personnel flight is due to. Jeffrey Kessler, the Undersecretary of Commerce, wants, according to Tom’s Hardwarepersonally examine all license applications linked to AI chips. Here lies the bottleneck. Many of its office staff are busy with issues arising from the Iran war, and meanwhile NVIDIA has still not been able to send to China not a single H200 GPU. Officially it can do so, but before delivering this chip to its Chinese clients it must receive express approval from Kessler. AMD is in the same situation. It has not yet been able to deliver its MI308 AI GPU to its Chinese customers. However, this problem is not only suffocating exports to China. NVIDIA is still waiting to receive approval from the Department of Commerce to be able to deliver the latest orders it has received from its clients in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. During 2025, the Office of Industry and Security took an average of 76 days to resolve export requests, but this period is increasing in 2026. Very bad news for AMD and NVIDIA. Image | Generated by Xataka with Gemini More information | Tom’s Hardware | Bloomberg In Xataka | We already know what the chips that will arrive until 2039 will be like. The machine that will allow them to be manufactured is close

The US already has the first response to its blockade in the Strait of Hormuz. A boomerang of unpredictable consequences: China

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During a crisis with Japan in 2019, China constantly sent patrol boats and government vessels to the disputed waters of the senkaku islandsmaintaining an almost daily presence without completely crossing the line of direct confrontation. That strategy, based on sustained pressure without shock frontal, showed how Beijing can protect its interests at sea by playing on an ambiguous terrain where every move counts. The block changes the board. USA has finally activated the naval blockade of Iranian ports in response to the failure of negotiations, deploying ships, special forces and interdiction capabilities to cut off the flow of oil and economically suffocate Tehran. The operation does not seek to completely close the Strait of Hormuz, but to control who enters and who leaves of the Iranian energy system, which involves intercepting, diverting or even boarding ships in transit. This movement, long studied by the Pentagon, marks a qualitative leap in war, since it transfers pressure from the air and land to the sea, where the legal, military and commercial implications are much more diffuse. and potentially explosive. The reality of global trade. The fundamental problem of the blockade is not only in its military execution, but in its fit with the global system of energy transport, where the majority of the ships are not Iranian, but from third countries such as India, Iraq or, especially China. Intercepting or pressuring these ships in international waters introduces an entirely different dimension, one where the line between military action and global economic conflict is blurred.becomes extremely thin. Thus, each attempt to stop this flow not only affects Iran, but also removes more crude oil from the market, raises prices and transfers the political and economic cost to the blocker himself. Iran and the long term. I remembered the weekend the new york times that, far from collapsing, Iran has demonstrated remarkable strategic resilience, relying on alternative routes, land trade with Asia and financial networks that include Asian, especially Chinese, banks and partners. Its economy, although under pressure, continues to function thanks to indirect exports, accumulated income and access to credit, while control of the strait allows it to continue conditioning the global energy market. In this context, the time plays in your favor: The longer the crisis continues, the greater the wear and tear on the United States and its allies, both in economic and political terms. Permanent military friction point. The blockade forces the US navy to operate in a extremely delicate environmentone where any interaction with suspicious vessels can escalate quickly. The need to board oil tankers, manage crews or redirect cargo turns each operation into a possible international incidentespecially if those ships are protected or linked to state actors. Added to this is the latent threat from Iran, which maintains sufficient capacity (missiles, drones, fast boats) to turn any mistake or specific confrontation into a major climb. The boomerang effect: China. The great consequence of the blockade at this time has not been long in coming, and it is China’s reactionthe main buyer of Iranian oil and a key player in the region. Beijing has made it clear through a statement that it will continue to defend its energy and commercial interests, keeping its routes open and warning against any external interference. There is no doubt, this introduces a completely new risk to the conflict: that of a direct or indirect shock between US forces and assets linked to China, whether in the form of tankers, escorts or diplomatic and economic pressure. Furthermore, the Asian giant has response tools that go beyond the military sphere, from the use of its commercial weight to the control of critical resources. Dead end scenario. The result is a situation in which the attempt to strangle Iran It becomes a system of crossed tensions with multiple actors, where each movement generates new frictions. Blocking does not guarantee a quick resolutionbut it does increase the chances of miscalculations, incidents at sea and escalations that are difficult to contain. Precisely in this unstable balance, the United States not only faces Iran, but an environment where the consequences rebound outside the region, with China as the actor who turns a regional operation into a first order global problem. Image | US Navy In Xataka | The problem in Hormuz is not that it is closed: it is that Iran has “lost the keys” and without them the balance is broken In Xataka | The most buoyant market right now is selling streaming and satellite images of US movements to Iran.

We have been searching for a cure for HIV for decades. The tenth cured patient in the world gives us a starting point

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Receiving an HIV diagnosis several decades ago was practically a death sentence for many patients who saw that there was no possible treatment to eradicate this virus and that sooner or later would develop the disease. But little by little, treatments for prophylaxisof attenuation, reaching an undetectable viral load, and now we are seeing the first cases of complete eradication. There are several cases. We are facing a new historical milestone in medicine, and it is no wonder, since an international consortium of researchers has documented the tenth case in the world of a person who has managed to be cured of HIV, or rather, who has managed to eliminate the virus from their body so as not to develop the disease. The latter is known as the ‘Oslo patient’. A 62-year-old man who has not taken antiretroviral treatment for four years and has no trace of the virus, which has led to a published article in Nature where a great research process is recounted, something that has been possible thanks to the work of the international consortium IciStem 2.0, led by the Oslo University Hospital and with a fundamental participation of Spanish science through the center IrsiCaixa. His story. The clinical history of the ‘Oslo patient’ follows a pattern that is increasingly familiar to scientists, similar to that of the famous ‘Berlin patient’ in 2009. Diagnosed with HIV at the age of 44, the patient developed severe hematological cancer in 2020, for which he had to receive a stem cell transplant with the aim of regaining normal blood cell genesis. But here the key to success was that the donor of these stem cells was his own brother, who had a rare and coveted genetic alteration known as the CCR5-delta32 mutation. Because. When we see the term ‘mutation’ we automatically go to the negative meaning and all the diseases that having a mutation in the DNA can cause. But the reality here is that the CCR5-delta32 mutation acts as a cellular “shield” by modifying the receptors of a type of defense cell, T lymphocytes, so that HIV be unable to anchor to them and infect them causing its destruction. In this way, by replacing the patient’s immune system with his brother’s cells, doctors not only treated the cancer, but “rebooted” their defenses, making them immune to the virus. From here, HIV could not access its defensive cells, which is the mechanism it uses to become chronic and become ‘undetectable’ to the immune system. What happened next? As the researchers report, two years after performing the transplant, the medical team decided to withdraw antiretroviral therapy under strict monitoring, since it is a truly critical moment for patients. From here, and several analyzes later, it was seen that there was no sign that the virus was multiplying again. In the end, viral DNA was not detected either in peripheral blood tests or in biopsies of intestinal tissue, which usually acts as a “reservoir” where the virus hides. And this is where the Spanish group, through IrsiCaixa, has had a lot to say, since its research teams are currently monitoring 40 participants in similar conditions. What does it mean? Although it seems that we have achieved the definitive cure, the reality is that this is not the case. Right now we must understand that hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is a very high-risk and extremely clinically aggressive procedure that initially leaves the patient without any defenses and then they trust that the transplant will work and they will not reject it. All of this makes its mortality rate very high, so it is only ethically and medically justified in patients suffering from a potentially fatal blood cancer, not as a standard therapy for people living with HIV, who today can lead a normal and healthy life thanks to daily antiretroviral treatments. It’s the way. Although it is not the definitive therapy, it does open the way to developing genetic therapies such as CRISPR or cellular treatments such as therapies CAR-T that manage to imitate this immunity in the patient’s own body in a safe, scalable way and without the need to undergo a transplant from an external donor. Although to get here there is still a long way to go for science. Images | National Institute of Allergy In Xataka | The HIV epidemic never left Africa. Now a new treatment wants to make a difference

While half the world wants to distance itself commercially from China, there is a country that is increasingly doing just the opposite: Spain

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Pedro Sanchez Yesterday he took a selfie with the CEO of Xiaomi as part of his official visit to China. In it he has taken advantage of visit also Tsinghua University in BeijingAI talent pool— and of course for meet with the president of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping. But what this official visit tells us is something important about Spain and Europe: we want to depend less on China, but the data says that we are becoming more dependent. The narrative of decoupling. The discourse that we are seeing in general media or in news programs on television networks is usually the same: The West is reducing its dependence on China. There is talk about how supply chains are diversifying or how geopolitics are reordering global trade. Although the message is coherent and is usually supported by European and North American leaders, the reality is different. The numbers simply do not match. The data that dismantles everything. Between 2014 and 2024, EU imports from China increased by 101.9%, while European exports to China grew by only 47%. The relationship between both economic powers is not cooling, but quite the opposite: it is intensifying and, furthermore, becoming unbalanced. In 2024, the EU exported goods worth 213.3 billion euros to China, and imported 517.8 billion euros with a trade deficit of 304.5 billion euros. China remains by far the largest supplier to the EU and represents 21.3% of all extra-EU imports. Behind her are the US with 13.7% and the United Kingdom with 6.8%. Who “buys” more. The three largest importers of Chinese products within the EU in 2024 were Netherlands (109 billion euros), Germany (96 billion) and Italy (50 billion). The only countries with a trade surplus with China in the EU were Ireland and Luxembourg. The case of Germany is paradoxical, because this country leads this discourse of “reducing strategic dependencies”, but at the same time it is the second largest European buyer of Chinese products. One thing is the political message, and another is the commercial reality. Spain has a deficit, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The case of Spain is also special not because of the figures, but because of how it communicates them. In 2024, Spain imported Chinese goods worth 45,174 million euros, only behind Germany. What is striking is that the trade deficit of this exchange was enormous for Spain: 37,706 million, because Spanish exports to China were 7,467 million euros. That is to say: Spain buys China almost seven times more than what it sells. In 2025, imports grew even more, to 50.25 billion euros, but Spain’s discourse is not that of Germany: it does not seem to have any problem with increasing this commercial dependence. The Bank of Spain warns. The products most imported from China were industrial machinery, telecommunications equipment and motors, that is, goods that feed Spanish production. The Bank of Spain warned in 2024 that China is the great commercial weak point for both Spain and the EU. It is due to the volume of imports as well as their concentration and nature. The problem is that this dependency cannot be resolved with speeches: we would need alternative supply chains that are not being created at the moment, at least on the scale necessary to reduce this strategic dependency. Four visits in four years. Pedro Sánchez has visited China in March 2023, September 2024, April 2025 and April 2026. No other European leader has visited the Asian giant with that frequency in this period. It is true that all the presidents of the Government since Felipe González have traveled to China at least once, but none had done so four years in a row. Zapatero also made four trips, but he made them between 2005 and 2011. What Sánchez has done has no Spanish or European precedents. But Europe also builds ties with China. This movement towards rapprochement with China in 2025 and 2026 is not exclusive to Spain. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have visited China in recent months. All these movements are a clear consequence of the tariffs that Donald Trump activated in 2025 and that have accelerated this European conversation about the need to reduce dependence on Washington. Which difference to Spain from the rest of its European partners is that he has been forging that alliance for years. Many visits, but the deficit grows. Although the relations between China and Spain are notable, the trade deficit has been at historic highs for years and Pedro Sánchez’s visits have not only failed to correct them, but have aggravated them. What grows with each trip are the cooperation agreements or investment statements in renewable energy, but that still does not affect the short-term trade imbalance. Not only that: while Spain sells to China automotive components, chemicals or serrano hamChina sells to us our industrial future. There is an asymmetry not only of volume, but also of structure. To reduce strategic dependence, nothing. The conclusion after analyzing the data is uncomfortable. The rhetoric of decoupling, digital sovereignty and the reduction of strategic dependence collide head-on with that commercial reality in which Europe imports products from China as if there were no tomorrow. The difference between Spain and the rest of Europe is that Spain does not maintain this fiction of distance, and this “honesty” may have strategic value. We will see if that ends up serving to reduce the enormous trade deficit with China. In Xataka | We thought that US tariffs would prohibit Chinese cars from entering. BYD wants to challenge them

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