May 2026 - Page 74 of 108

The United Kingdom has just activated an unprecedented air mission over a lost island in the Atlantic. There is a hantavirus suspect

May 11, 2026 by usatoday24

In 1961, a nurse had to be urgently evacuated from Tristan da Cunha after a volcanic eruption forced completely vacate to the entire population of the remote island. For weeks, that small territory lost in the middle of the Atlantic remembered something that remains true today: when an emergency occurs there, arriving on time can become an extremely complicated operation even for a country like the United Kingdom. The forgotten island of the Atlantic. While dozens of passengers from the MV Hondius cruise They began to disembark in Tenerife between health checks and repatriation flights for a hantavirus outbreakmuch further south and far from the cameras, the United Kingdom has started an operation completely different on an island that almost no one would know how to locate on a map. Tristan da Cunha, considered the most remote inhabited island on the planet, has suddenly become the scene of a unprecedented air mission for British forces after a british citizen showed symptoms compatible with hantavirus after leaving MV Hondius. With just 221 inhabitants, no airport and almost a week by boat from the nearest major port in South Africa, the island was caught in an extremely delicate situation when oxygen reserves began to run out and the small local medical system found itself unable to face the risk of contagion and isolation alone. An unprecedented military mission. The British response was as extraordinary as the place where he was to be executed. The Royal Air Force mobilized an Airbus A400M Atlas from RAF Brize Norton accompanied by a Voyager tanker plane to carry paratroopers, doctors and tons of medical supplies to the middle of the Atlantic. There was no possible landing strip, so the United Kingdom took a unprecedented decision: drop military doctors by parachute over the island. Six members of the 16 Air Assault Brigade They jumped alongside a doctor and an intensive care nurse in an extremely complex operation marked by strong winds and a minimal margin for error. The jump was made practically over the ocean before to correct the trajectory towards the island, with the real risk of ending up falling directly into the Atlantic if something went wrong. Never before have British forces deployed medical personnel by parachute drop on a humanitarian mission of this type. Medical supplies were dropped on the remote island, which has no landing strip and has a population of just 221. The cruise ship that took the problem to the middle of the ocean. It all began weeks before aboard the MV Hondius, the expedition cruise ship that was sailing through the South Atlantic when it appeared a hantavirus outbreak which would end up leaving several dead and multiple confirmed cases. The case has been of particular concern because the identified variant belonged to the Andean strain, one of the few capable of be transmitted between people. Apparently, the British citizen who ended up isolated in Tristan da Cunha had abandoned ship mid April and began to develop symptoms days later on an island that, as we said, does not have advanced hospital capacity and is normally cared for by just two medical professionals. While some passengers were treated in the Netherlands or South Africa and others were isolated in the United Kingdom After returning from Tenerife, the British health authorities quickly understood that the real problem was no longer on the cruise ship, but in that small isolated community in the middle of the ocean where any worsening could turn into a emergency impossible to manage with conventional means. Geography as a threat. Plus: the operation revealed the extent to which geography continues to condition even to countries with enormous military capabilities. Tristan da Cunha has no airport, no regular air routes and its sea connections are extremely slow and limited. Simply evacuating paratroopers and medics after the mission will require a complex maritime operation carefully planned due to health risk. I was counting a few hours ago BBC that the jump was not made over a large open space either, but rather over a small island buffeted by winds that usually exceed 40 kilometers per hour. The soldiers, in fact, ended up landing at the local golf course while the island’s inhabitants improvised receiving medical equipment and unloading more than three tons of supplies for the hospital. All this to contain a possible contagion in a territory where any logistical failure can take days to correct. The unknown Atlantic. If you will, history also reveals an uncomfortable reality about major modern health and geopolitical crises: almost all the attention tends to be focused on in visible places and connected while huge peripheral spaces remain out of focus until an emergency breaks out. Thus, while the media focus has followed the arrival of the cruise ship to the Canary Islands minute by minute, the hantavirus has ended up activating parachute dropsmilitary doctors and extreme logistical operations on Tristan da Cunha, a place so remote that even a relatively small health emergency forced resources to be mobilized normally associated with war scenarios or major catastrophes. Image | Ministry of Defense In Xataka | It is not so contagious, but it is very lethal: in Argentina the hantavirus went from 17% to 33% in the blink of an eye In Xataka | We believed that hantavirus did not jump between humans. Until someone went to a birthday party in Argentina

Emirates and Oman are building a $3 billion megatrain. The problem is that it crosses a drone battlefield

May 11, 2026 by usatoday24

In the midst of a geopolitical climate where tension cut with a knifean infrastructure megaproject emerges in the Middle East that challenges the context of conflict. It is about the construction of the first cross-border rail network of the region. Promoted by Etihad Rail, Oman Rail and Mubadala, this plan proposes a corridor that will integrate the national network of the United Arab Emirates with the strategic port of Sohar, in the Sultanate of Oman. However, the immense work advances under a dense shadow. While the pillars of this train are being raised, the region is going through what in practice It’s the Third Gulf War. The impact of a commercial revolution. To understand the magnitude of “Hafeet Rail”, just look at their economic projections. This mixed corridor—designed for both passengers and cargo—promises to radically transform the flow of trade in the Gulf and lower logistics costs. The network has a monumental investment which is around 3,000 million dollars, equivalent to about 2,500 million euros. Additionally, the infrastructure will link five major ports and more than fifteen integrated cargo facilities directly. The benefits, however, will not be exclusive to maritime trade. For the average citizen, this line will mean an unprecedented change: the trip between Abu Dhabi and Sohar, which currently takes more than three hours on winding roads, will be reduced to just 100 minutes. In addition, it will offer a reliable alternative that will eliminate the usual and costly delays at border crossings. The challenge of operating in a disputed region. The main route of the project will cover a length of 238 kilometers. On these new generation tracks, passenger trains will be able to reach speeds of up to 200 kilometers per hour, while heavy cargo convoys will circulate at a maximum of 120 km/h to optimize international shipping times. Far from being a mirage in the desert, construction is now a tangible and has reached 40% overall progress. On the rugged terrain, backhoes have completed more than 27 million cubic meters of earthworks, and there are currently 80 key structures in different stages of construction. The big question: can it work? Military analysts warn that the recent proliferation of cheap drone attacks has shown that facilities previously considered untouchable are today extremely vulnerable. The fact that the United Arab Emirates host allied infrastructure and bases It makes them latent targets within this tense regional board, adding enormous operational risk to any large connectivity project. Technological avant-garde. On a technical level, the project does not skimp on innovation. According to the technical documentationthe railway fleet will be equipped with the European Train Control System (ETCS Level 2), considered the most advanced and safest in the world in its category. This system, which will be implemented by a joint venture between Siemens and HAC, will allow absolute digital tracking and control of trains using GPS technology. Regarding the execution of the challenging civil works, these were awarded to an Omani-Emirati consortium led by Trojan Construction Group (NPC) and Galfar Engineering and Contracting. A milestone that the consortia particularly celebrate is the extreme workplace safety achieved: to date, 10 million hours of work have been recorded in the field without reporting serious accidents. Closing a historical gap. Beyond the colossal engineering figures, the project carries a deep cultural weight. The unified network has recently adopted the identity of “Hafeet Rail”, a direct tribute to the Jebel Hafeet, the imposing mountain and limestone formation that extends between the borders of both countries and that has historically served as a geographical bridge. Despite business optimism, the success of the operation will not depend solely on laying tracks. Monumental bureaucratic challenges await ahead, such as regulatory coordination between the two sovereign nations and the fluid articulation of port and customs services. In the end, time will tell if the shared vision of progress prevails. For now, Oman and the United Arab Emirates are committed to full economic integration and the creation of a new artery for global trade; All of this, paradoxically, at a time when its immediate environment is navigating a hybrid war defined by uncertainty, intermittent blockades and air threats. It is, in short, a bullet train making its way through a minefield; the maximum expression of risk and ambition in the heart of the Middle East. Image | Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash Xataka | The US believes that the war in the Persian Gulf is over. Iran believes that it will decide that when it considers

Renfe already calculates how much it will cost to leave its workshops to Iryo

May 11, 2026 by usatoday24

Renfe will have to give up part of its workshops so that Iryo can carry out its heavy maintenance. It is the decision that the CNMC has imposed on the Spanish company and that it will have to comply with until, at the earliest, the National Court rules. But it will have its consequences. What has happened? When Ouigo and Iryo entered to compete in our country, Renfe already knew that it would have to give up part of its workshops so that both companies could carry out maintenance work. In exchange, both the French and Italian companies have to pay the company to be able to operate in their facilities. These maintenance tasks were “level 1”, the name used to define “light maintenance” operations. However, Renfe reported a few months ago that Ouigo was performing heavy maintenance workwhich is outside the agreement. And a few months ago it closed the door on Iryo, because the company planned to do the same. However, the CNMC has forced Renfe to open its doors to the Italian company. According to Competition, failure to do so puts Iryo’s business strategy at risk, which would give Renfe an unfair advantage. The company has filed an appeal against this decision but the National Court has concluded that it will study the case but that, as a precautionary measure, Renfe must open the door to its facilities. What does each one defend? From the Spanish company they assure that Iryo had a project to build its own workshops in our country and thus not having to take their trains to Italy. However, these workshops have not seen the light and Renfe believes that they should not pay the consequences of one of their rivals not complying with its roadmap. For its part, the CNMC assures that forcing Iryo to undergo maintenance in Italy would leave them with less rolling stock available for weeks and, therefore, at a disadvantage in the market. And keeping that rolling stock in operation is a bad decision because the deadlines are met and it would lead the company to have vehicles on Spanish roads that could be unsafe. Iryo’s parent company, Trenitalia, has already experienced this same thing. in France when they had to suspend their services for a month because SNCF prevented access to its workshops to carry out maintenance work. Consequences. Knowing the situation, Renfe has put on the table the consequences that opening its facilities to Iryo may have to carry out heavy maintenance work. And, without that space for their own work, the entry of the Italian company into their space forces them to reduce the number of jobs they can carry out on their own material. That is to say: they would have to reduce the number of trains that are currently in operation. According to the company, in words collected by elDiario.es“the immediate consequence would be fewer trains available each day and, therefore, the suppression of public services in the usual schedule. The lower capacity for heavy maintenance would also have a chain effect and could lead to a progressive paralysis of the fleet in a few weeks.” And in numbers? In total, the company believes that it would affect around thirty daily circulations distributed in different corridors depending on the trains used, which would be the affected by giving space to Ouigo and Iryo in the workshops. They assure that the Madrid-Barcelona (Serie 103), the most profitable corridor today, would have two fewer daily circulations per direction. In total, they would have to reduce 10% of the seats offered and they estimate the impact at 650,000 kilometers per year that would no longer be traveled, some 1,100 circulations eliminated and 450,000 fewer seats on offer. As for the Galician corridor, the trains to Huelva and the Basque Country (Series 120 and 121), together they would add a reduction of 1.5 million fewer kilometers per year, more than 3,300 circulations eliminated and some 800,000 fewer seats available. In total, each day it is estimated that there would be 16 trains inoperative on these lines. And in the Avant of Valladolid they calculate a suppression of six daily trains or the reduction of the double trains that are currently operational during rush hour. In total, Renfe estimates that there are 1.2 million of its own seats at stake. Of them, more than a million are part of what is known as Public Service Obligation (OSP) and they believe that it can impact with a decrease in income of up to 60 million euros. Aggrieved? The feeling of grievance is not new within the company and the Ministry of Transportation. In April 2024 they already made it clear that they considered that the rules were not fair because while Ouigo and Iryo only have to serve where they consider it beneficial to their interests, Renfe is obliged in going to brokers where economic viability is not guaranteed. Added to this is that the company feels doubly harmed. And Renfe has been trying to expand its business in France for some time but Many obstacles have been found in the neighboring country to reach Paris, the most economically juicy link in the neighboring country. And from the Ministry of Transportation they have repeated on several occasions that Ouigo is a company supported by the French State and that it would not be able to operate if it had to face its debts on its own. Diffuse. The problem, explained in Chain Being is that the Directive 2012/34/EU (RECAST) on the single railway space and the standard EN 15380-4:2021 They do not clearly specify what is considered light or heavy maintenance. In the first it is pointed out that heavy maintenance is all those tasks that are not routine and in the second it is defined as the works in which the train has to be dismantled. However, these definitions do not seem to be sufficient for competitors as they have different perspectives of what is and is … Read more

How much coffee can you drink a day? Science has a very clear limit to avoid its harmful effects

May 11, 2026 by usatoday24

For many of us, the starter motor in the morning It has a dark color and a roasted aroma that characterize coffee so much. A drink that is one of the most consumed in the world, but with a popularity that has been accompanied by alarmist headlines about how bad it is to ingest it and the effects it can have directly on the organs. But the truth is that there are lights and shadows. There is good news. For those who love coffee, it will undoubtedly be a relief to know that the literature indicates that consumption is not as catastrophic as they want to sell. But, as in everything, excesses of something can always lead to problems, even if it may seem like something super healthy, such as water. And coffee, obviously, is not exempt. The limit. When it comes to establishing a red line for safe consumption, the clinical reference is not in the WHO, but in the FDA and the EFSAwhich are the food safety regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe, respectively. Here both point to the same figure in coffee consumption: 400 milligrams of caffeine per day. A very relevant figure, since for the vast majority of healthy adults, consuming up to 400 mg daily is not associated with harmful health effectshighlighting that this amount can be part of a perfectly healthy diet and lifestyle. How many coffees is this equivalent to? This is where things get complicated since talking about “cups” is an analytical error, because not all coffees are the same. That is why for the FDA a 355 ml cup, which is a standard size, can contain between 113 and 247 mg of caffeine. But all this depends on the type of preparation, the extraction time or the coffee used, because Robusta coffee has more caffeine than Arabica, for example. But generally speaking, that 400 mg is equivalent to about 3 or 4 cups of standard filter coffee per day. Organic damage. It is easy to see different alarming messages warning that coffee can damage our entire interior if a specific dose is exceeded. But the reality is that the WHO does not send this message to society, since it is too alarming and does not correspond at all to reality. What is true is that excessive daily coffee consumption has important effects on our body, but it will not ‘rot’ our internal organs. Among these stand out insomnia, nervousness, irritability, palpitations, muscle tremors, intestinal irritation, headache… This means that, although we talk about coffee not being contradictory for the population, logically, if there is an underlying problem, it may be better not to drink it, and even less so if it is taken in great excess throughout the day. It has benefits. On other occasions we have talked about coffee and its benefits, because it has more than just keeping us awake in the morning. Here different studies have already pointed out to us the cardiovascular benefits it can have or even improves sports performance. But the metabolism of each person is quite involved here, since there is no single metabolism. In this case, there are people who process caffeine very quickly and its effect disappears quickly, but there are other cases where they metabolize it slowly, so its effects remain in the body and they may, for example, have more problems with insomnia, nervousness or palpitations because they are more “sensitive” to caffeine. This is the explanation, for example, that a person can boast of having a coffee at night and being able to sleep perfectly. There are exceptions. Although we talk about a limit of 400 mg of caffeine, there are people who logically cannot reach this limit, such as pregnant women, where a maximum of 200 mg per day is recommended, since excess caffeine can cross the placenta and affect fetal development. But it also influences, for example, the cholesterol level, since here the Mayo Clinic points out that the consumption of unfiltered coffee, such as Turkish coffee, can raise cholesterol levels due to compounds such as cafestol. Images | Dragana_Gordic in Magnific In Xataka | If the question is “how much caffeine is in each cup of coffee or tea,” this graph offers insightful answers.

Spain has just entered a “polar episode” because of Greenland

May 11, 2026 by usatoday24

It’s May and yes, it’s cold out there. Maybe not “very cold”, but certainly much colder than reasonable. And the fact is that, between Sunday the 10th and Thursday the 14th, the Peninsula and the Balearic Islands will go through a “thermal drop” caused by a mass of maritime polar air with drops of between 5 and 10 degrees compared to normal. What is happening? At a technical level, the cause is found in an anticyclonic ridge that runs from the Azores to Greenland. That has produced a southward undulation of the polar jet. Understanding this pattern is interesting because it is what allows us to have five “extremely cold days for the time” just after the warmest April in the historical series. There will be a sharp thermal drop with drops of up to 15 degrees if we take last week as a reference. In some inland places, the thermometer will drop below zero (-3 degrees in the upper Duero, the Iberian and Central systems; -5 in the Pyrenees). In addition to the showers, AEMET warns of snow, hail storms and frost. Just because it’s rare doesn’t mean it’s unpublished, of course. Late frosts at the end of April, May and even June are common in a large area of the peninsular territory. The worst part of these events, however, will be borne by the countryside. Weren’t we going to have a warmer than normal spring? I said before that the most curious thing may be that this comes after the warmest April on record. Obviously, we are not talking about a “cold wave”: neither by duration, nor by extension, nor (of course) by temperature. But it still draws attention in a context like the current one (with the forecast of AEMET talking about warm spring). However, and it is worth pausing for a moment, there is some scientific debate (what is known as Francis-Vavrus hypothesis) on whether the fact that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet is having paradoxical consequences: as the temperature gradient reduces, zonal winds weaken and undulations increase. It is not something that has been proven, but it is plausible and, even on an intellectual level, it is good to keep it in mind for the coming years. What can we expect? As AEMET saysthis week “probably colder than normal in most of the Peninsula, especially in areas of the west, center and south.” It’s still early to make a wardrobe change. Image | Tropical TidBits In Xataka | We are on the eve of a polar strike in the middle of May. And there is no climate change that protects us from this

If the question is whether using ChatGPT or Claude in English is more efficient and saves tokens, the answer is: yes

May 11, 2026 by usatoday24

You may not have stopped to think about it, but there is a striking reality in the world of chatbots: It is more expensive to speak in Spanish with AI than to do so in English. The reason is simple: AI does not understand words, it understands tokens. And when you talk to GPT, Gemini, Claude or any other LLM, you talk to him in a language, but to understand you he first “translates” what you are telling him and converts it into tokens. And the problem is precisely that: that not all languages ”cost” the same in terms of tokens. There is a very simple example that we can analyze thanks to tools like ClaudeTokenizer: the word “developer”, which in English is “developer” costs few or many tokens depending on the language in which we write it and also (importantly) the version of the AI model used. In the image it is clearly seen, but just in case, we summarize: For ChatGPT (GPT-4o and GPT-5) the word “developer” has three tokens (des-developer-ador), but the word “developer” only costs one. For Claude (Opus 4.7) the word “developer” costs no less than 9 tokens (2 in Opus 4.6), but “developer” costs “only” 6 (1 in Opus 4.6). What is happening here? Well then each language model uses its own “tokenizer”your “translator” from a conventional language to the token language that the language model understands. And those tokenizers favor precisely the languages in which these models are created. This is how AI understands how we speak. Each word is divided into tokens, and English is understood much better. “developer” only costs one token in GPT-5, but “developer” breaks down into three. Bad news for Spanish speakers. In fact, English has become the official language of artificial intelligence, whether we want it or not. The reason is not cultural, but architectural: 95% of the training data of the frontier models (GPT-5, Gemini 3.1, Claude Opus/Sonnet 4.7…) are in that language. That makes the rest of the languages ”foreign languages”, and that makes it necessary to pay extra when using them, an almost invisible toll on every interaction. In practical terms, what happens when we use Spanish to talk to an AI model is simple: we use more tokens, and therefore using Spanish is simply more expensive than using English when working with a large language model. If you want to save tokens, better use English The question, of course, is how much more does it cost us to speak in Spanish than in English with ChatGPT (GPT 5.x) or with Claude Opus 4.7? It is difficult to say because each word and each phrase is a world, but the truth is that English is almost always the most “economical”. We have used one of the first sentences in this article to compare that token consumption, and by translating the sentence into different languages and querying that token consumption for different models, the data is clear. It is important to highlight that these results are not conclusive, but they do make the trend clear: English is the most efficient language in terms of token consumption, but be careful, because Spanish is not that bad, and is usually the second most efficient. It is even more efficient than English in Gemini, at least according to the tool consulted. But on average, it is normal that there is a significant extra cost when using different models. A conversation with Claude Opus 4.7 is already “expensive” because it is one of the most expensive models currently, but in Spanish it is almost 30% more expensive, not to mention in Arabic, 76.3% more expensive. In fact, according to this example, the difference between Claude or GPT-4o in terms of efficiency is clear: OpenAI tokenizer is “cheaper”and although there may be differences with GPT-5.x, what seems clear is that Anthropic has preferred to “spend more” to obtain better results (or that is the objective). Gemini is even more thrifty according to these tests, and that may also have a lot to do with the quality of the answers, although that question is for another topic. We have used one of the paragraphs of this article in Spanish and translated it with Deepl into English, Arabic, Norwegian, French and Chinese to find out how many tokens the phrase “cost” in each language. English is undoubtedly the most efficient Tokenizers advance and evolve. Sometimes they do it to save us tokens, as happened with the GPT-4o tokenizer: at that time OpenAI explained how that tool used 1.1 times fewer tokens when speaking to her in Spanish but up to 2.9 times fewer in Hindi or 3.5 times fewer in Telugu. With Claude Opus 4.7, just the opposite has happened: the tokenizer has been redesigned and consumes more tokens (up to 1.35 times more, they admitted) with the aim of better processing and understanding the text. Your chatbot thinks (and programs) in English Here we must also highlight something important: although we can talk to our favorite chatbot in any language and it will answer us in that language (unless we ask otherwise), AI models “think in English”. That is to say: when you talk to them what they do is translate what you tell them and then reason in English and finally they translate their response into the language in which you were speaking to them. This consumes additional reasoning tokens, but also has some impact on latency (how long it takes to start thinking or answer the model). In complex tasks, this can clearly influence response times for the simple reason that the AI model does not stop translating from “its official language” (English) to our language. This preference for English is also noticeable in the benchmarks: in the Humanity’s Last Examin which the models are asked all kinds of general knowledge questions with several options to answer, it is reasonable to think that the models They answer better in English because that exam is designed in that language. … Read more

While everyone was looking at Hormuz, Russia has found a much bigger secret route. And drones do not stop arriving in Iran

May 11, 2026 by usatoday24

During the Cold War, Western intelligence services came to suspect that some Soviet freighters that apparently transported grain or machinery were actually hiding military equipment and technology sensitive under false covers. The problem was that, once inside certain internal routes controlled by Moscow and its allies, tracking them became extraordinarily difficult even for the greatest naval powers on the planet. While the world watches Hormuz. For months, the Strait of Hormuz has become the perfect symbol of Western pressure on Iran: US aircraft carriers, oil tankers diverting routes, marine insurance fired and constant threats on one of the great energy bottlenecks on the planet. However, while all international attention was focused there, Russia and Iran have been consolidating a much less visible and probably much more uncomfortable route for Washington: the Caspian Sea. It The New York Times said the weekend. This enormous space of inland water in northern Iran, usually ignored in geopolitical analyses, is being transformed into a true strategic highway to move goods, drones, military components and technology away from the direct reach of the United States. The photo. The most revealing image came when Israel bombed the Iranian port of Bandar Anzali, in the heart of the Caspian, in one of the most significant attacks of its campaign against Iran. The target was not in the Persian Gulf or Hormuz, but hundreds of kilometers further north. It was a clear sign that real logistical warfare no longer revolves solely around the most famous strait on the planet. The route that keeps Iran alive. The importance of the Caspian for Tehran has grown spectacularly since the pressure on Hormuz intensified. Russian and Iranian ships now transport wheat, corn, sunflower oil, animal feed and all kinds of of essential supplies who previously arrived via more vulnerable routes. Four Iranian Caspian ports are working at full capacity to absorb this growing traffic, while Moscow has begun to redirect millions of tons of goods that previously crossed the Black Sea. It turns out that the true strategic core is not in the cereal. According to US officials, Russia is using that route to send drone components to Iran to help it rebuild part of the arsenal lost during the last fighting with Israel and the United States. The relationship is especially symbolic because for years It was Iran that supplied Russia with Shahed drones for the war in Ukraine. Now the flow has partially reversed: Moscow manufactures its own versions under license and returns technology, components and military expertise to Tehran using the Caspian as a protected corridor. A perfect sea to avoid sanctions. The great advantage of the Caspian for Russia and Iran is that it is an extraordinarily difficult to control from outside. Unlike the Persian Gulf, where the US naval presence dominates much of the maritime traffic, in the Caspian they can only operate the five coastal countries. The United States cannot intercept ships there or impose direct blockades. Furthermore, a large part of the ships sail with transponders offdisappearing from satellite tracking systems and feeding an increasingly opaque network of “ghost ships.” In fact, Western analysts describe the Caspian as the ideal place for discreet military transfers and sanctions evasion. Dark shipping traffic has skyrocketed since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and both Moscow and Tehran have perfected methods to hide real shipments, routes and operators. It is no coincidence that Ukraine attacked the Russian port of Olya in 2024, accusing it of being a logistics center for the transfer of Iranian drone components. Nor that Israel Bandar Anzali will hit. Everyone seems to have understood that a logistical rearguard is being built there that is much more resistant than it appears. Moscow’s strategic obsession. Plus: for the Kremlin, the Caspian is not just a temporary solution derived from sanctions or the war in Ukraine. Russia and Iran have two decades imagining a gigantic trade corridor that connects the Baltic with the Indian Ocean, crossing Russia, the Caspian and Iran to avoid routes controlled by the West. The project includes new portsrailway lines and renewal of aging fleets, although many of these plans remain on paper due to lack of resources and the geographical difficulties of the Caspian. Still, the war has accelerated the strategic logic behind that idea: creating an alternative system of commercial and military circulation outside the reach of Western sanctions. For Putin, furthermore, the balance is delicate. Needs to support Iran as a regional ally and military partner, but do so in an all-too-visible way could deteriorate even more so its relationship with Washington and with several Arab countries important for Russian energy trade. The Caspian offers precisely that: sufficient support, but far from the media and military focus that Hormuz dominates. America’s great blind spot. Much of the Western concern arises from a very uncomfortable feeling: for years, the Caspian hardly occupied any space in American strategic planning. Experts in Washington recognize that the region functions almost like a black hole diplomat divided between different military commands and bureaucratic departments. Thus, while the world observed aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf or drones over Ukraine, Russia and Iran took advantage of an immense, opaque and difficult to monitor geographic space to weave a logistics network that connects both conflicts. The problem for the United States is not that the Caspian completely replaces Hormuz, because it cannot do so, especially in massive oil exports. The real problem is that even under extreme military pressure, sanctions and naval blockades, Iran continues to find ways to stay connectedrearm and receive outside support. And each drone, each component and each shipment that silently crosses the Caspian reinforces an increasingly evident idea: while everyone was looking at the Strait of Hormuz, Russia and Iran they were building an alternative route much more difficult to stop. Image | PexelsNASA In Xataka | We sensed that Iran’s attacks on the US had been important. In reality, they were devastating In Xataka | While the whole world looks at … Read more

AEG has discounts of up to 46% this May

May 11, 2026 by usatoday24

Are you looking to renew any of your appliances? It doesn’t matter if you need a new vacuum cleaner, a washing machine or a refrigerator: right now we have a very good option with AEG’s May offers. Beyond the discounts (which there are and are quite interesting), the official store of this brand delivers in 48 or 72 hours, picks up your old appliance, has free shipping and, in addition, YoIncludes installation (except socket). 177 cm Series 9000 MultiChill American free-standing refrigerator The price could vary. We earn commission from these links And what about the offers? We have discounts ranging up to 46%, but we can also save an additional 10% if we use the code ‘10DOWNLOAD‘. Although there is a lot to choose from, we have selected five offers that we find especially interesting: Cordless vacuum cleaner 6000 by 144.50 eurosan option with good suction power and autonomy. 7000 Series Dishwasher by 539.10 euroswith third tray and satellite sprinkler. Series 6000 Freestanding Washing Machine by 426.65 euroswith 9 kg capacity and automatic adjustment of time and consumption. 5000 Series Induction Hob by 305.10 eurosa hob with four independent cooking zones. Series 5000 multifunction oven by 298.40 euroswith multilevel cooking. American free-standing refrigerator Series 9000 by 1,169.10 euroswith 594 total liters of capacity. Cordless vacuum cleaner 6000 The first offer that we bring you is starring this 6000 series cordless vacuum cleaner, an option with a very good quality-price ratio now that it costs 144.50 euros (to do this, you must apply the coupon ’10DESCAEG’). It has autonomy for 40 minutes, enough for a small or medium-sized home. In addition, it has a brush with LED lights to better see dirt and comes with several accessories. Cordless vacuum cleaner 6000 with 40 min autonomy The price could vary. We earn commission from these links 7000 Series Dishwasher If you need a dishwasher, this Series 7000 dishwasher might fit you, available for 539.10 euros if we use the code that we have already mentioned several times above. It has a third tray that allows you to have enough space for cutlery and other “odd” shaped utensils. In addition, since it has a satellite spray arm, the water reaches the entire load better. 60 cm Series 7000 GlassCare dishwasher for 14 place settings The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Series 6000 Freestanding Washing Machine This Series 6000 washing machine also has a good price, which costs 426.65 euros with the code ’10DESCAEG’. It has 9 kg capacity and reaches a spin speed of 1,400 RPMvery interesting so that your clothes come out almost dry if you live in an area where there is humidity and it is difficult for you to dry them. In addition, it has technology that allows you to adjust both the washing time and the water consumption depending on the load we put inside. ProSense® Series 6000 9.0kg Freestanding Washer The price could vary. We earn commission from these links 5000 Series Induction Hob We now move on to this Series 5000 induction hob, available for 305.10 euros If we use the code that gives us an additional 10% discount. It has four cooking zones and a function called ‘Powerboost’, which allows each zone to heat up faster. In addition, it has very intuitive and easy-to-use touch controls. 60 cm Series 5000 Induction induction hob The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Series 5000 multifunction oven We have an oven with a very good price right now: this Series 5000, available for 298.40 euros using the code ’10DESCAEG’. It has 72 liters of capacity and a multi-level cooking system that allows us to cook up to three trays at the same time, obtaining uniform cooking in all of them. This is not only helpful in saving time but also energy. Multifunction oven Series 5000 SurroundCook with LED Display The price could vary. We earn commission from these links American free-standing refrigerator Series 9000 And we come to the last offer of this selection, which is the American 9000 Series refrigerator. Its RRP is 1,599 euros, but right now it is available for 1,169.10 euros using the discount code that we show you for the entire article. Its capacity is 594 total liters and it measures 177 centimeters high. The refrigerator allows you to adjust the temperature of the drawers, thus being able to store different types of food and ensure that they are better preserved. 177 cm Series 9000 MultiChill American free-standing refrigerator The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Some of the links in this article are affiliated and may provide a benefit to Xataka. In case of non-availability, offers may vary. Images | AEG In Xataka | American refrigerator or 70 cm Combi? Be careful with making mistakes when buying liters that you may not be able to use In Xataka | With the fashion of American kitchens, a refrigerator that makes noise can be torture when watching TV. How to choose well to avoid it

a macro study reveals the exact heart rate to minimize the risk of stroke

May 11, 2026 by usatoday24

Nowadays we monitor our vital signs, such as heart rateon the wrist itself thanks to smartwatches and activity bracelets that constantly tell us how many beats per minute our heart beats at rest. This information is vital, since traditionally it is believed that having an excessively high number is an indication that something bad is happening in the heart. The middle point is the best. In medicine, both due to excess and scarcity, we can find a scenario that is pathological, and that is why, although we relate high heart rate as something very negative, we must keep in mind that having them excessively low It is not always positive. This is the main conclusion of a pioneering research presented at the European Stroke Organization Conference, and although it has yet to undergo review, its foundations are extraordinarily solid, based on the analysis of 460,000 participants over 14 years. Crossing data. Of all these people analyzed, the researchers were especially interested in their medical histories and the diseases they presented, highlighting the registration of a total of 12,290 cases of stroke during the decade and a half of follow-up. But what is truly important here is when these records were crossed with the resting heart rate data of the participants, discovering a very clear pattern by showing a risk graph in the shape of a ‘U’ and not a straight line. Its meaning. The fact that a graph with this shape has been generated tells us that the optimal heart rate level is between 60 and 69 beats per minute, since these people were the ones with the lowest risk of suffering from a stroke. The problem is that, when the heart rate at rest exceeds 90 bpm, the risk of suffering a stroke increases by up to 45%, both ischemic and hemorrhagic. But in the case of having excessively low heart rate, the risk also increases, so we cannot be completely calm if we have 50 bpm at rest. Atrial fibrillation. Until now, medicine was very clear that severe arrhythmias such as atrial fibrillation They were determining risk factors for suffering a stroke. But now this study adjusted the data specifically to separate people with and without atrial fibrillation, showing that resting heart rate is, on its own, an independent prognostic marker. Because? Although this study gives us a lot of information, the reality is that previous medical literature already offered a fairly rigorous explanation as to why a low or high heart rate had implications for strokes. In this case, an excessively low frequency can alter cerebral hemodynamics, causing blood to pass too slowly through the brain, and facilitating the formation of thrombi in certain contexts, especially when there are more risk factors. On the other side of the scale, when the frequency is chronically high, we have the layer of our blood vessels exposed to blood flow, exposed to constant mechanical stress that favors inflammation, hypertension and vascular damage, as has been shown in previous studies. Preventive medicine. These findings are good news for patients, especially older patients, since it is a new parameter that can predict the possibility of something as serious as a stroke occurring. This allows, especially in primary care, to better control the heart rate and not miss when it goes too fast or too slow, since the consequences can be fatal. Images | freepik In Xataka | We cannot predict a stroke, but we can avoid its main risk factors: reducing the danger is in our power

The chip crisis is leaving no stone unturned. Motherboards seemed untouchable, but their time has come

May 11, 2026 by usatoday24

The RAM memory crisis is no longer a RAM memory crisis. Emulating what happened at the end of 2020, we are immersed in a new component crisis that, unlike that of five years ago, has not been caused by a combination of factors but by something very specific, the AI industry. It is very difficult to buy any component with a NAND chip at a fair price and it is something that It is affecting all devices. The PC was already affected, but now the four largest motherboard manufacturers predict the worst. A shipment contraction of almost 30% on motherboards. Focused away from consumption. To understand why the crisis is impacting motherboards when, a priori, they could continue to be produced at the normal price, you have to look a little further. Nvidia and AMD are fully focused on the artificial intelligence segment, pausing their consumer GPU renewal plans for 2060. For example, the RTX 50 Super series neither is nor expected for this year and already speaks of some RTX 60 that would be released by 2028. Intel, for its part, also recently confirmed that consumer processors were taking a back seat in its priorities, since They were going to focus on the Xeon for servers and data centers. It is a strategy aligned with the great objective: become the great American foundry and sneak into the conversation they dominate TSMC and, at a good distance, Samsung. Update paused. With three manufacturers of the three key components having the focus away from the user and with the three main memory manufacturers (Samsung, Micron and SK Hynix) focused on memory for AI, what had to happen is happening: not only is buying new parts for a PC very expensive, but sometimes there is no stock, and the enthusiastic user who renews a PC every generation has no reason to do so, even if he had the deepest pockets in the world. That is why they are putting these PC updates on hold, clinging to current devices that they will have to get more out of because the market, directly, is broken. motherboards. And if PCs cannot be built and the companies that build computers themselves have already reported that they are having problems due to the price of RAM and storage, the foundation of the computer stops making sense. That’s where motherboards come in as those ‘foundations’. As we read in Tom’s Hardwarethe four main ones in the market (Taiwanese, too) are shipping units well below expectations. According to the media, ASRock will ship 37% fewer boards, Asus 33% less, MSI 24% less and Gigabyte 22% less. In total, the big four in this segment will ship 28% fewer units than they moved last year, which will push prices up for components that had not yet suffered the blow. In fact, the fact that the four companies are reviewing its shipping and sales predictions for this period could cause a parallel crisis. In a hypothetical scenario (because at the rate we are going it is very difficult for the crisis to be resolved in two days), if tomorrow it is possible to buy RAM and SSD memory at their normal price and people start building PCs again, what would be missing would be motherboards, so the shortage would cause price spikes. No end in sight. But hey, I already say that it is a hypothetical scenario because everything indicates that the NAND chip crisis is not even close to being resolved in the short term. The hyperscalers have the vast majority of the team unemployed full time, but they continue to demand new platforms to continue developing AI. That is why the entire segment has turned its head to look only at a market that is guaranteeing them an unprecedented peak in income. And no, don’t think that Asus, MSI, ASRock or Gigabyte are having a hard time, since they point that manufacturers are also offsetting declining profits in the user segment with growth in data center platforms. In the end, although ‘rare’, they are computers that need motherboards. When will the storm pass? Namely. There are sources that point to 2027 to start seeing green shoots, but others go to 2030 and Nvidia, which in the end has some hand in this mess, considers that there are seven or eight years of wild investment left. Image | Sitraka, Luis Gonzalez In Xataka | There is a shortage of RAM because of AI. That will make your next console much more expensive.

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