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horse racing doped with mafia Kalashnikov rifles

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

A few years ago, the Italian police in Sicily arrested several members of the mafia who used illegal horse racing to send coded messages and resolve internal disputes over bets and territories. The researchers discovered that some animals were better known in certain neighborhoods than many local politicians. Sicily and another postcard. When you think of Sicily, beaches, baroque towns, volcanoes or tourists visiting Palermo and Catania usually appear. But on some secondary roads on the island it is still there being another Sicily much darker and difficult to eradicate: one with illegal horse racing organized by mafia networks where dozens of motorcycles escort the animals while armed men shoot pistols and Kalashnikov rifles in the air in broad daylight. He last recorded video recently near Palagonia has once again shown the extent to which these clandestine races are not simply an illegal business or a case of animal abuse. They function primarily as public displays of power. The message transmitted by those who participate is deliberately evident: we are in charge here. Racing as a spectacle of control. The recorded scene on the outskirts of Catania it seems almost an absurd mix between rural tradition, organized crime and narco aesthetics. Two horses pulling carts at high speed on open roads, dozens of scooters surrounding them and men firing automatic weapons while recording videos for social networks. It happens that behind the show there is a mafia logic very clear. According to researchers and animal organizations Italian, these races they have been decades being used by Cosa Nostra, the Camorra and the ‘Ndrangheta as a way to symbolically occupy territory, block public streets and demonstrate that they can act in plain sight without real fear of the authorities. They are not clandestine events hidden in the countryside. Many times they occur directly in front of everyone precisely because impunity is part of the message. A lot of money and few consequences. The business moves huge amounts of black money through illegal bets that can reach thousands of euros per race. Police investigations take years discovering clandestine stablesdoped horses and networks linked to organized crime, but the phenomenon continues to grow because the judicial consequences remain relatively limited. To give us an idea, only in 2024 were 70 people investigated and dozens of animals were intervened, but the activists themselves denounce that Italian legislation continues making it difficult to infiltrate these networks or detain participants during the races. Many organizers receive only minor sanctions and quickly return to activity. That’s why the images are constantly repeated in Sicily, Calabria or Campania despite periodic police raids. The horses are the least important thing. Although animal abuse is brutal (local media reported that horses are doped, beaten and forced to run in extreme conditions), the real objective of these races is not the animals. They are the people who observe them. The mafia uses these events as a ritual display of authority in marginal neighborhoods and areas where the State appears weak or absent. The videos broadcast on social networks fulfill exactly that function: glorify the challenge open to the police, reinforce criminal prestige and build a kind of mafia popular culture around racing. Many horses are even named after historical mafia bosses, notorious criminals, or violent figures who have become symbols within certain local environments. Between tradition and modern crime. Perhaps the most disturbing thing is how these races combine elements extremely ancient with others completely contemporary. The horse-drawn carts refer to a rural Sicily that seems straight out of a century ago, but around them appear motorcycles without license plates, viral videos, automatic weapons and neomelodic music spread through social networks. The mafia has turned a local tradition into a modern tool intimidation and propaganda. And that explains why the problem continues to persist despite decades of operations police. For many criminal groups, these races are not simply illegal entertainment. They are a way of publicly remembering who still has the ability to close roads, mobilize armed people and act as if certain parts of Sicily were still under their own control. Image | x In Xataka | The restaurant chain ‘La Mafia’ promised them happiness with its brand. Until he came across the Republic of Italy In Xataka | In 2024, Venice invented an entrance fee for tourists: it has turned out so well that it has doubled and expanded it

Castilla-La Mancha accuses the Southeast of “watering wildly”, while irrigators find it impossible to survive what is coming

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

On May 20, just before the Supreme Court will definitively close the door to the aspirations of irrigators to maintain the Tajo-Segura transfer as until now, the spokesperson for the Junta de Castilla – La Mancha He stood in front of the media and said it: water cannot be limited to the irrigators of the region while in the Levant “it is watered freely”, he came to say. That’s the gossip, but that’s not the news. The news is that, 47 years after the inauguration of the transfer and after a decade of judicial conflictthe battle for the water of the Tagus returns to the negotiating table. Not because of ecological flows; That (barring a surprise) has already been decided: he has returned to the table because the most difficult thing remains. Say who pays the bill. Whose water is it? Because that is the heart of the matter and where Castilla – La Mancha is wrong. As I have explained the Supremethe arguments of the Central Union of Irrigators of the Tajo-Segura Aqueduct do not apply, precisely, because it is not about taking water from ‘someone’ to give it to another ‘someone’. The ecological flows (which taxes come by the jurisprudence of the same court and by the EU directive) cannot have “a use character, and must be considered as a restriction that is generally imposed on exploitation systems.” The problem is that these flows represent, according to the technical reports, a water loss of around 40% for the irrigators of the east. Irrigators who, let us remember, have the right to that water according to the current transfer rules, who have made investments and have built businesses (‘livelihoods’) counting on that water that the State had granted them. Rules that do not apply. Due to the court battle, the new flows have not come into force and, at this time, the old rules continue to be used to send water to the Segura basin. In fact, for the April-June quarter There are 180hm3 authorized (a much larger amount than would correspond to the new standard). And the irrigators are nervous. With sense, too: the Administrations’ alternative (desalination) is lost in combat. And, in any case, that is water is between three and ten times more expensive. This is important because (as explained by the Community of Irrigators of Campo de Cartagena) “The irrigable surface has not expanded by one square meter since 2017“. It is no longer a question that without water they cannot grow; it is a question that without water they cannot “maintain what we already cultivate.” And that would lead us to a more than considerable industrial reconversion throughout the region. But there doesn’t seem to be any other solution. Because, as we see, the cuts are due to legal imperative. The administrations have little else to do: they have already been delaying the application of ecological flows for years and the situation has not improved one bit. It doesn’t mean that all this is over. It is likely that the Union will appeal to the European Court, but the reorientation of the agrarian model in the southeast cannot be extended if we want it to remain alive. That is to say: the hour of truth arrives. For decades, politicians have been passing the buck without taking the necessary measures (no matter how painful they may be). That is the economic, ecological and social bill that we are paying now. The only reasonable question is whether we have learned our lesson. Image | David Algas Oroquieta In Xataka | The Tagus reservoirs have reached their maximum level. The response of the authorities has been to empty them immediately

LaLiga wanted to fine VPNs that did not block IPs during matches. A court has been set up

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

LaLiga has been waging an all-out war against football piracy for months and, with the support of a court ruling obtained in 2025, LaLiga had the power to ask operators to block certain IP addresses. The result? Websites that stumbled on match days due to some locks which were a clear example of kill flies with cannon shots. In a process in which it seemed that no one could stop these actions, LaLiga They got it in February of this year what seemed like another victory: a court in Córdoba ordered NordVPN and ProtonVPN Block certain IPs. Not even the judges themselves They knew if that could be done. and VPN tools evidently responded. Now another court in Córdoba has put some sense into all this, dismissing LaLiga’s request to impose fines on VPN platforms for failing to comply with the indiscriminate blocking order. The twist in the story of LaLiga and VPN blocks Through a release On its website, one of the companies affected by the initial ruling (NordVPN) has commented on the result of the ruling of the Commercial Court of Córdoba in what they have described as the dismissal of the request to impose coercive fines on NordVPN. The statement they have shared is the following: On May 19, 2026, the Commercial Court of Córdoba rejected LaLiga’s request to impose coercive fines on NordVPN for alleged non-compliance with the precautionary blocking order issued in February 2026. NordVPN had already warned at the time that the order was not technically viable without harming thousands of legitimate websites in Spain and abroad. Now, the court has accepted the independent technical evidence presented by NordVPN and ruled that it cannot be concluded that the company violated the order deliberately and without justification. The order issued in February required NordVPN to block a list of IP addresses that allegedly hosted unauthorized La Liga broadcasts. NordVPN’s technical experts have shown that target IP addresses change constantly, often within hours, meaning that the lists supplied do not correspond to the actual addresses at the time the blocking can be implemented. It was also demonstrated that the massive blocking at the IP level would have left thousands of completely legitimate websites without access for users in Spain and outside of it. After considering the conflicting expert reports, the court found a genuine technical dispute and ruled that the fines were not justified. It goes on to detail that this is a procedural resolution in the preliminary phase, so it does not resolve the underlying issue: the entire procedure that is still ongoing. nordVPN points out that it will continue to collaborate with the Spanish courts and points out that cloudflareone of the most affected in all this, also follows its own path of collaboration with the courts. What CloudVPN points out is that they are committed to the legitimate protection of intellectual property and the application of measures, but those measures must be proportionate, technically sound and respectful of both users and services that depend on the shared Internet infrastructure, stating that this massive IP blocking imposed on VPN providers, precisely, lacks all of these aspects. And most importantly, NordVPN points out something that is obvious: these measures “do not stop violators, who adapt in a matter of minutes while imposing real costs on legitimate users, companies and services that have no relation to the dispute.” In Xataka | LaLiga’s massive IP blocks are making life impossible for users, companies and developers. So you can claim

the restaurant had to close in 2020

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

There are bills that are paid before leaving a restaurant and there are other bills that end up being paid in the Supreme Court. This case is about one of the second. Amancio Ortega, at the time greatest fortune in Spain and owner of the building where it operates RoganoGlasgow’s oldest restaurant. This establishment has not reached an agreement with its landlord for six years about who should pay for the repair of the premises after flooding that left it unusable. According what was published According to the Scottish press, the dispute over who should pay the reparations has gone through three judicial instances and has reached the highest court in the United Kingdom. The main argument of the lawsuit is an account of 789,000 pounds sterling (about 913,000 euros at the exchange rate) in losses due to not having been able to open it during the last six years. The curious thing about the case is that, after all this time of litigation, both parties have reached an agreement just the night before the case was to be heard before the Supreme Court. A restaurant that is worth much more than its menu. To understand why an apparent discrepancy between a landlord and his tenant has reached the Supreme Court, it is necessary to know what Rogano is. In 1935, while the Queen Mary ocean liner took shape on the Clyde, the restaurant was decorated in the same art deco style as the great Cunard ship, and thus a classic of Glasgow hospitality was born. Just as they say local mediathe restaurant has been operating continuously for the last 84 years, serving a clientele ranging from neighborhood residents to celebrities such as Elizabeth Taylor, Rod Stewart, Jude Law, Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Harvey Keitel among many others. In 2020 its lights went out. In March 2020, Rogano lowered the blinds like everyone else due to the restrictions derived from the pandemic, thinking that the closure would be a matter of a few weeks. Between December 2020 and January 2021, the building suffered several serious floods that led to an electrical fire that caused serious damage to the premises, leaving it uninhabitable and forcing its owner to leave the blinds down for longer than expected. That’s where the real problem began: the works were never carried out, and the emblematic restaurant has been boarded up since then. The legal mess begins by knowing who the tenant is. According what was published for the BBCthe building where the popular restaurant is located belongs to Pontegadea UK, the British subsidiary of the Amancio Ortega’s real estate holding company. Precisely, thanks to the Pontegadea real estate investments in buildings like the one in dispute, the Spanish millionaire has just become the biggest real estate tycoon on the planet. Having a restaurant closed and boarded up in Glasgow is not exactly a drama for your bottom line, but it is a legal problem that has gotten out of hand. The parent company that operates the Rogano, Forthwell Limited, argued in its lawsuit that flooding was a risk covered by the landlord’s insurance, and that Pontegadea had an obligation to repair the property. The claim included compensation of £789,000 for lost profits due to the prolonged closure resulting from the Pontegadea’s refusal to make reforms. Pontegadea responded that Forthwell could not claim those losses because the restaurant was not operated by them but by a subsidiary, Lynnet Leisure Rogano Limited, under an occupation license for which they paid £1 a year, and that subsidiary was a third party that did not appear in the original contract. A case that was going to create a precedent. After six years of legal disputes, the case escalated through three different judicial instances. In June 2024, the High Court of Scotland ruled in favor of the Rogano, but at the end of that same year The Court of Appeal overturned part of that decision, and the dispute ended landing in the Supreme. The high court of the United Kingdom had transferred his sessions in Glasgow to review this case, something unusual since he usually resides in London, which gave the case a new dimension: the ruling of this court could set a precedent for how responsibilities are distributed between landlords and tenants in similar situations. But there was no failure. The “in extremis” pact that left the judges with the word in their mouths. At the beginning of the hearing scheduled for May 20, Forthwell’s lawyer informed the five judges that the parties had reached an agreement at 11:30 p.m. the previous night. The lawyer acknowledged that closing the agreement on the eve of the hearing was “extremely unsatisfactory,” to which the president of the court responded dryly: “Yes, that is an understatement, frustrating the lost opportunity to define the responsibilities in future disputes. The terms of the agreement remain unmade public, as does the future of the Rogano. Pontegadea’s obstinacy. Pontegadea’s business model is not the usual one among real estate companies. Pontegadea invests in the best buildings on the main streets of cities around the world. Its main objective is not to buy cheap buildings to renovate them and obtain a capital gain from their sale, they are real estate. already with solvent tenants. In this way, Amancio Ortega begins to amortize his purchase from the first minute. That is why it is surprising that Pontegadea has become embroiled in this legal dispute in which, whether to allow the Rogano to reopen or to rent it to any other tenant, the premises were going to need that the damage be repaired. Which destroys the argument of a dispute over reparations and strengthens the interest in obtaining a large compensation from one of the largest fortunes in the world. In Xataka | Amancio Ortega: the billionaire who lives like a neighbor (except for private jets and superyachts) Image | GTRES

Just Eat knows that we Spaniards are hooked on Delivery. This is how they have closed an agreement so that you can order on WhatsApp

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

Spain it is delivery countryand Just Eat knows it. We are one of the European markets where food delivery has grown the most in the last decade. So much so, Just Eat has decided to make Spain one of the only two countries—along with the Netherlands—where it will debut in Europe something that no delivery platform had done before: allowing you to order food directly from WhatsApp. The alliance. Just Eat has become the first platform in Europe to enable an integrated ordering experience through WhatsApp in which the entire search and selection process occurs within the chat itself. The Just Eat app only comes into play for the last step: secure payment. WhatsApp is not going to replace the service app, but rather it is going to become one of the main entry channels. “With the launch of the first ordering system via WhatsApp in Europe, at Just Eat we are not just including a new channel: we are redefining the concept of convenience. This innovation is a key element in our evolution, going from being a menu-based transactional application to becoming a true intelligent assistant powered by AI, capable of understanding user intent in real time.” Mert Öztekin, CTO of Just Eat How it will work. Using a QR code or link, we will enter WhatsApp, we will start a conversation with the AI agent from Just Eat, and we can complete practically the entire experience from the messaging app. Unlike the existing WhatsApp chat options, aimed at customer assistance channels, the company ensures that its AI will be able to understand natural language, to talk with us about what we want to eat, what restaurants there are, what they have on the menu and their prices. The promise is clear: this is not a support chatbot or anything similar to what we have used so far. The buts. The proposal is striking, but it is inevitable to ask some questions. The first is a simple “why”. Explaining to an AI agent what you want for dinner when Just Eat has a highly optimized app in which you can order food in five or six touches of the screen, a priori, does not seem more comfortable. The second is that Goal is Goaland every WhatsApp conversation goes through its servers. That Just Eat has the necessary data for our order is logical, but all this information Now passing through Meta may not be so attractive. When. Just Eat has not given a final date for this service, although it assures that it will begin its trial in 2026. They will start in Spain and the Netherlands and, if it is a success, expand to more countries in the European Union. In Xataka | The delivery war is no longer about bringing pizzas home, it is about delivering in 10 minutes: ‘Q-commerce’

In Nepal they have begun to fill their streets with tons of plastic waste. Their goal: to be more sustainable

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

In Nepal they have begun to fill their streets with garbage. Kilos and more kilos of discarded plastic, old open noodle packages, cookie containers and other synthetic waste that (due to their characteristics) it’s not always easy recycle. The prospect of walking or driving on trash-strewn asphalt may not seem too appealing, but it makes perfect sense and is something that has been done before (or at least tried out) in other parts of the world. Asia, Europe, Africa either America. Of course, usually in a timid way. The key is that plastic waste is not dispersed directly on the pavement. No. They are part of it, of its structure. Even there are those who maintain that improves it. Pavement with garbage? Exact. If every year we produce more than 400 million tons of plastic, much of it destined for single-use packaging and which is then difficult to recycle, and we also build (and repave) kilometers and kilometers of roads every year… Why not connect both things? What if we used the most difficult to recycle synthetic waste to make pavement? What if this material was also better than conventional asphalt? The idea It’s not entirely new and there are those who question whether it is really as sustainable and good as it seems, but the truth is that over the last few years it has attracted the interest of entrepreneurs and institutions from different countries. Usually (not always) in a timid, almost experimental way, with pilot projects and in more or less short periods, but it has managed to stay in the limelight. Click on the image to go to the tweet. Where has it been tested? A quick search on Google shows that over the last five years, “plastic paving” has convinced a few entrepreneurs and institutions from around the world. We see examples in Philippines, Thailand, South Africa, Netherlands, USA, Singapore either Indiaone of the countries that has opted most decisively for this solution. In 2024 Business Standard informed that in the Asian country they had built almost 40,000 kilometers of rural tracks that included plastic waste, 13,000 of them completed in recent years. In Singapore the idea too seems to have curdled and has received the endorsement of the Public Works area. And Nepal arrived. Nepal is one of the latest to join the list. In 2025 the AFP agency published an extensive report in which he explained how the idea has reached the Asian republic, where it has already been used on at least one highway in Pokharaa city of 600,000 inhabitants that serves as the capital of Gandaki province. There the plastic flooring formula has the support of Green Road Waste Managementan organization that is trying to expand it in Nepal. Step by step. In 2025, the founder of the entity, Bimal Bastola, he assured AFP who had completed around a dozen projects totaling just over a mile. It’s not much, but the organization maintains that each kilometer of pavement uses about two metric tons of shredded plastic to build. Bastola advocates going further and carrying out projects at the government level. “We try to collaborate with the highway office.” A priori it seems that the Government does not take a dim view of the measure. Arjun Nepal, an engineer at the capital’s highway department recognize that the country “is interested in testing the technology in pilot projects,” but warns that to move forward it is necessary to first guarantee a series of quality standards. Hence the authorities wanted to carry out a test in Kathmandu. “We saw possibilities”. Bastola defends the virtues of paving with synthetic waste and remembers that it even allows lower value waste to be reused. “We saw possibilities in using these plastics as raw materials, partially replacing tar in road construction,” argues to AFP. The new system does not dispense with this material, but first covers the pavement components with crushed plastic. In addition to providing an outlet for part of the tons of plastic that are generated every day in Nepalese urban areas, Bastola assures that the system saves certain materials, reduces costs and has extra advantages for the pavement itself. “It prevents water infiltration and increases the useful life of the track,” claims. There are studies that endorse These surfaces can last longer than normal ones. Perfect, right? Depends. Although the system has sparked interest in several countries, including Nepal and its neighbors Bhutan and Bangladesh, not everyone is sure it is such a good option. Or at least it has proven to be so. From the World Bank have admitted that there are “promising” pilot studies, but they lack more research: What and how many emissions are produced during the production of the pavement? How does it actually behave in practice? Does it release microplastics? What is their impact once the plastic tracks are removed? “Garbage in for garbage out”, they warned in 2020 at GAIA on solutions such as asphalt and cement with crushed plastic remains. Images | Laurentiu Morariu (Unsplash) In Xataka | We have been thinking for decades that plastic recycling was worth something. Maybe we were wrong

Oviedo has already broken its heat record for May and AEMET warns that this has only just begun

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

Let’s stay with a figure: 34.3. It is, almost certainly, the most important data of the week. On Thursday, May 21, 2026, the thermometers of the city of Oviedo They recorded a temperature of 34.3 degrees. 1.8 ºC more than the highest temperature ever recorded in May in the capital of the Principality. AEMET is convinced that between today and the weekend will be reached again (or even exceeded) this temperature. And yet, this is only a tiny part of the story. Because the real story is that, in a region structurally protected by its oceanic climate, records are being broken in ways we would not have been able to imagine. And that’s without the country being in a ‘heat wave’. What is happening? Although There is some controversy with the namewhat is happening is called ‘heat dome‘. That is, a subtropical anticyclonic ridge, anomalously powerful for this time of year, which is trapping very warm air above our heads. Europe is bearing the brunt, it is true. Countries such as France, Germany, the Netherlands and the British Isles they are seeing temperatures between 10 and 15 degrees above normal. If everything goes as predicted by the models, the May records of half of Europe are going to explode on the 25th of this month. And, of course, we are noticing that. As the haze falls on the Canary Islands (right at the eastern vertex of the dome), a good part of the country will suffer considerable heat. We talk about more than 34 degrees in Asturias and the Basque Country and 38 in the Guadiana valleys. The Guadalquivir valley is already above 35. And, as I say, all this without heat waves. Despite the magnitude of the episode, AEMET does not rate it like a heat wave in peninsular Spain. It is not. We already know that the operational definition requires exceeding the 95th percentile of daily maximum temperatures for the July-August quarter for at least three days and, of course, we are not going to go to that extreme. What does all this heat tell us? Let’s be honest. For Andújar or Badajoz to reach 38 degrees on May 21 is rare, but not exceptional. But for Oviedo to reach 34.3 is a very different thing. It shows, above all, that the Cantabrian coast is beginning to stop being a “climate refuge.” Why is all this important? In addition to an underlying climate issue, this warm episode is important because it is dangerous. The first extreme heat of the year is the deadliest because the population has not gone through the period of physiological acclimatization produced by progressive exposure to summer heat. That is, because it is May and the Iberian summer has truly begun. Image | Tropical TidBits In Xataka | The Gulf Stream is dying. Someone’s idea to solve it dates back to the 1950s: closing the Bering Strait

Antena 3 has been broadcasting the Rosco from ‘Pasapalabra’ for 26 years as if it were theirs. And justice has just put an end to it

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

Is the most watched program on Spanish television. And he faces a considerable problem. It is a topic that affects not its mechanics, but its most iconic and recognizable moment: those final minutes in which two contestants review the alphabet against the clock. The Supreme Court has ratified that this circle of letters was never owned by Antena 3, and in fact, its true owners have been waiting for decades for the courts to agree with them. The time has come. The sentence. The Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court issued its resolution on April 30 and made it public on May 21, 2026. The ruling confirms the ruling of the Provincial Court of Barcelona and dismisses the appeals of Atresmedia and ITV Studios, producer of the program, concluding that El Rosco is a work protected by intellectual property whose ownership corresponds to the Dutch company MC&F Broadcasting Production and Distribution CV The sentence requires the cessation of broadcast of Rosco and a compensation of 50,000 euros for moral damages. Delete ‘Pasapalabra’. In fact, there are a detail in the sentence which is more impressive on practical levels for the average viewer than the fine itself: the sentence imposes the destruction of all recordings of programs that include El Rosco. Although this “destruction” comes from article 139 of the Spanish Intellectual Property Law, whose purpose is to remove copies from commercial exploitation (DVDs, platform licenses, sales to third parties), it does not necessarily refer to the chain’s internal archive, that is, ‘Pasapalabra’ is not going to become lost media. In practice, however, you cannot license, sell or distribute the program in streaming. If Antena 3 had, for example, episodes available on Atresplayer, they would have to be removed. The defense of Atresmedia. According to Atresmedia, El Rosco was a generic idea (questions ordered by the letters of the alphabet), and the ideas are not protectable by law. However, the Supreme Court, in reaching its decision, emphasizes that the test enjoys “sufficient originality” because it reflects free creative decisions of its authors, a “own uniqueness” that distinguishes it from other games based on the alphabet, and above all, it alludes to its visual configuration: the circular donut, the dynamic of passing and returning to unanswered questions and the final stopwatch. This idea was born in the Italian version of ‘Pasapalabra’, in 1999. As arrive El Rosco to Spain without rights. It is to that point in history that we must go back to understand the dispute. The game was created by two Italians, Reto Luigi Pianta and René Mauricio Loeb, as part of a program called ‘End Game 21×100’, which was later merged with the Italian version of ‘The Alphabet Game’, called ‘Passaparola’, at the end of that decade. The creators assigned their rights to the Dutch production company MC&F. Until then, no conflict. The problem came when ITV began licensing Pasapalabra to other European networks, including El Rosco in the package, as if it were part of the original format, something that MC&F has been calling illegal for decades. That is to say, Antena 3 has broadcast for 26 years a format that included a piece that was not its own, nor the person who sold it to it. When Telecinco also lost ‘Pasapalabra’. It is not the first time that the Supreme Court has reorganized the Spanish television map on account of this program. In 2019, the Supreme Court forced Telecinco to stop broadcasting ‘Pasapalabra’ following the lawsuit brought by ITV in 2010 over the rights to the full format. Following its victory in court, ITV assigned the rights to Atresmedia, and Antena 3 resumed broadcasting on May 13, 2020. Since then the program has not stopped growing. The importance of ‘Pasapalabra’. The contest is the cornerstone on which all of Antena 3’s late-night programming is based, currently the most viewed chain of Spanish television. In the 2024/2025 season, ‘Pasapalabra’ reached an average share of 18.3% of sharewith a maximum of 21.1% in June 2025, consolidating itself for the sixth consecutive year as the most watched daily program on Spanish television. And from there people do not turn away from television: El Rosco is the anchor that drags viewers towards the nightly news and towards the prime time of ‘The Anthill‘. What is the future of ‘Pasapalabra’. The ruling does not eliminate ‘Pasapalabra’ from Antena 3. ITV’s contract with Atresmedia remains in force and the program can continue on the air. What it cannot do is include El Rosco. Program sources have confirmed that Atresmedia will maintain the broadcast “normally” until receiving official notification of the ruling and knowing the deadlines for the process. From there, the possible paths are to negotiate directly with MC&F to obtain a use license, design a new final test to replace the Rosco or wait for ITV to reach an agreement with MC&F. Problem: None of the three options are quick and all involve altering a program that, as it stands right now, is working like a charm. Mediaset’s trick. And here comes the twist: apparently Approximately a year ago, Mediaset closed an agreement with MC&F to acquire the rights to Rosco, conditional on the Supreme Court resolving the dispute in the terms that have finally become known. With the sentence now final, Mediaset can create a program around Rosco. But that program cannot be called ‘Pasapalabra’ nor have the mechanics of the Antena 3 program. In other words, if it is confirmed that Mediaset can use Rosco, the most famous program on television is now divided: its name and structure is from one network, its best-known test from another. In any case, we are going to see changes in the future, predictably in Access that Antena 3 now dominates. And whoever controls Access… controls the audiences. In Xataka | Four years of historic audience lows: Telecinco is looking for oxygen this summer and its idea is to recycle presenters and formats

Uber has spent its annual AI budget in four months because AI is making us addicted to it

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

Uber CTO Praveen Neppalli Naga recently explained how his company decided to deploy Claude Code to its 5,000 engineers. Adoption of the tool skyrocketed from 32% to 84% in one month, and everyone started using it so much that Uber ran into a problem: the real cost went from $500 to $2,000 per month per programmer, which destroyed the company’s spending forecasts: In four months the entire annual budget was spent to implement AI in the company. Welcome to the end of AI grants. Microsoft will also control spending. The Uber case is not an isolated event. Microsoft has virtually unlimited computing resources with Azure. However, has made the decision to withdraw Claude Code’s internal licenses from its developers in the Experiences + Devices division. The reason is twofold: first, they want to curb operating spending before the end of their fiscal year. Secondly, they want to force the use of their own tools with GitHub Copilot as the clear protagonist. GitHub ends its flat rate. This company, owned by Microsoft, also wants to prepare for the future, and from June 1, 2026 all GitHub Copilot plans abandon their “flat rate” option to move to a usage-based billing model. The base subscription price remains the same, but is converted into “AI credits” that will be consumed as the model is used. If developers use GitHub Copilot intensively, the credits will run out quickly and the system will stop unless we pay extra to continue working. On GitHub they pointed out that “charging a flat rate for autonomous agents is no longer sustainable.” Source: Hedgie (X). The graphic that explains it all. An X user named Hedgie warned that this is just the beginning and added a useful image to understand what is happening. The traditional SaaS (Software as a Service) software model works in a straight line. You pay a monthly fee and the server costs barely vary whether you use that app or service for ten minutes or ten hours: the profit margin is predictable, and the load is manageable. This is what happens with “flat rates” for streaming services, for example. Whether you watch more or fewer hours of Netflix doesn’t make a big difference to Netflix’s infrastructure. But agentic AI operates under an exponential curve. As seen in the image, when a programming AI agent like Claude Code starts working, it can use thousands or even millions of calls to the provider’s API (in this case, Anthropic) to receive, process and redeem millions of tokens. The flat rates offered by ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro are adequate for conversational use of AI, but AI agents devour tokens and consumption skyrockets. That’s why Anthropic, OpenAI, and others put limits on their flat rates and even prohibit their use for agentic tasks (such as those provided by OpenClaw or scheduling agents). There they ask you to pay per use with the API, and that increases the costs. Crossroads. This situation puts companies like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google in a dilemma. If their clients (like Uber) begin to cut back on the use of AI to protect their budgets, these companies’ revenues may be dampened and that will affect their valuations. The other potential solution is to artificially lower prices to keep those customers happy, but that means absorbing significant operating losses that would harm your profitability. AI dependence and addiction. These companies are realizing that using AI can be really beneficial, but also expensive. Anthropic or OpenAI’s business model is not new, and we have seen that pattern in the past. A company launches a product or service, often free or very cheap, but after gaining a sufficient volume of users it ends up changing its conditions to charge you more and more for that product or service. It’s already happened. We have a good example in Google Photos or streaming services, which trapped us and then squeezed us with increasingly higher monthly fees. With AI the scenario is the same: catch us now with reduced costs and then cover the free service and make us pay if we really want to take advantage of it. There will always be alternatives such as using local models or opting for cheaper platforms, of course, but for those who offer the most advanced models and features the strategy is clear. In Xataka | Nvidia’s financial results are simply dizzying. And it still hasn’t sold a single chip in China

why high blood pressure is triggering before 30

May 22, 2026 by usatoday24

Irene is 32 years old and she repeats a phrase almost like a daily mantra: “It doesn’t give me life”. Between work demands, the bombardment of notifications and the constant feeling of being left behind when compared to other people’s achievements —the dreaded FOMO—, their routine is a race without a finish line. Lately he has been sleeping little, living with overwhelming stress and experiencing a persistent helmet-shaped headache, accompanied by fatigue and insomnia, symptoms that experts in Efe Health associate with a silent evil. What she justified as the typical exhaustion of our generation, in the medical consultation, translated into an unexpected diagnosis: high blood pressure. A disease, a priori almost invisible and associated with the elderly, which is gaining more ground every day in the lives of the youngest. We are witnessing the collapse of an entire generation trapped in an epidemic of chronic stress and burnout. From an evolutionary point of view, stress is a mechanism designed to save our lives. in the face of imminent dangers. The problem arises when the threat is not a predator, but precariousness and toxic perfectionism. This continuous “allostatic load” triggers cortisol, suppresses the immune system and silently damages the cardiovascular system. Faced with this emotional discomfort, the body demands a neurochemical rescue. Stress pushes us to the refrigerator looking for a binge on sugars and fats, foods that activate the brain’s reward system and temporarily act as a buffer from anguish. This sedentary lifestyle, added to poor emotional management and high consumption of ultra-processed foods and sodium, has created the perfect vicious circle in the last 20 years. Furthermore, recent research published in Frontiers in Cardiovascular Medicine have identified using artificial intelligence that sleep disorders (such as waking up short of breath) and energy drink consumption emerge as key modifiable risk factors for early-onset hypertension. All this is critically reflected in the university stage: a cross-sectional investigation in students showed that 68% smoke, 54% sleep less than six hours, 42% are sedentary and 46% report high stress. An underdiagnosed epidemic At a global level, the World Health Organization (WHO) alert that 1.4 billion people suffer from high blood pressure, and only one in five has it under control. In Spain, the data published by the portal iHealth They place some 9.8 million adults affected (32% of the population between 30 and 79 years old), achieving control in only 37% of cases. However, the figures in the young and middle-aged population are alarming. According to the national study Di@bet.esthe global prevalence of hypertension in Spanish adults is 42.6%. However, the most worrying thing is the underdiagnosis of young people: more than 15% of men under 30 years of age, and 27.3% of those between 31 and 45 years of age, have high blood pressure. In fact, young men (18-30 years old) They are the demographic group with the highest percentage of undiagnosed hypertension. The basic problem is that almost no one suspects a blood pressure problem at age 30. As Dr. José Antonio García Donaire points outpresident of SEHLELHA, the body’s warnings are so diffuse—a headache in the back of the neck, fatigue or some isolated palpitation—that neither the patient nor his doctor thinks of hypertension as the first option. In fact, there is a huge disconnection with reality: the vast majority of university students have heard about the disease, but only 20% really understand the risk to which they are exposed. As if that were not enough, young people who already have a family history come up against an invisible wall: the anxiety and chronic stress they suffer daily dynamite any attempt to keep their heart rate at bay. The paradox of anxiety and false cures on TikTok Despite this gloomy outlook, science surprises us with the “paradox of anxiety.” From a biological and evolutionary prism, high levels of neuroticism in its “worried-vulnerable” facet can reduce mortality. These hypervigilant people become less seriously ill because they go to the doctor at the slightest symptom, achieving early diagnoses. Surprisingly, a longitudinal analysis of young and middle-aged adults found that a prior diagnosis of anxiety is significantly associated with a lower risk of developing incident hypertension, underscoring this potential protective effect derived from closer monitoring of one’s health. Precisely because of this anxiety and constant overstimulation, young people look for desperate remedies on the internet. Some are dangerous, like the radical “dopamine fast” which promotes extreme social isolation and can lead to anxiety and malnutrition. Other trends are purely commercial, like him cozymaxxing, that commodifies our need for mental peace by inciting us to buy very expensive blankets and lamps on TikTok so that our rest is aesthetic. Neuroscience clarifies that the real solution is “slow dopamine”: re-educating the brain with sustained pleasures over time, such as cooking or reading, and not through radical deprivation or impulsive purchases. To prevent in time, specialists warn of the critical importance that the young population adopts the habit of taking their blood pressure at home, especially if they have genetic factors. The protocol is clear: use a validated arm device, rest thirty minutes beforehand and take several shots on the dominant arm to deliver the stocking to the doctor. In short, the cardiovascular crisis of young people will not be cured with pills alone. Burnout is systemic. In the face of a paradigm that rewards toxic self-demand, rest, learn to disconnect and allow yourself to “do nothing” have become in the most radical and political preventive acts of our time. Image | Magnificent Xataka | When you are anxious or sad you turn to foods with a very specific flavor and texture. And science knows why

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