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We believed that cities were a desert for bees, but 5.5 million live under this cemetery in New York

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Although cities have their own fauna, the reality is that one could reasonably think that for animals of all kinds the urban environment is far behind the countryside in diversity and quality of life: there is a lot of asphalt, noise, pollutants… well yes, but no, because there is a place where bees have found a true residential paradise: a cemetery in IthacaNew York. Where you see a cemetery, the bees see paradise. It turns out that a laboratory technique called Rachel Fordyce had a trick to get to your work at Cornell University without paying for parking: park on the other side and take a walk through the East Lawn Cemetery. In spring 2022 he arrived at his post with a jar full of bees that he had found along the way: that was the beginning of it all. The bees inside were Andrena regularis, known as the “common mining bee,” a wild, solitary species that nests underground. That is, it does not have a queen and it does not build hives either. Each female digs her own tunnel, lays her eggs, supplies them with food, and seals them. And under the ground of the Ithaca cemetery there are millions, more specifically 5.56 million in just over 6,000 square meterswhich come out every spring to pollinate the surrounding apple trees. Why is it important. Because it is the largest population of wild bees with a nest in the ground ever documented and very far of the secondof 1.6 million individuals of a different species in Arizona. And their work is essential: pollinators in general are responsible for the production of approximately 75% of the world’s food crops. according to the FAO. As explains Bryan Danforthprofessor of entomology at Cornell University, they must be protected: “If we don’t preserve nesting sites and someone paves them, we could instantly lose 5.5 million bees that are important pollinators.” The most striking thing of all is that this enormous population was there, in the midst of civilization and next to one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Context. Contrary to popular belief, the most common way of life for bees is solitary and with a nest on the ground: approximately 75% of the bees on the planet live like this. Those bees that produce honey and live in hives may be the most famous, but they are an absolute minority. Solitary wild bees are not as well known, but their pollination work is key in nature and in food. Thus, this enormous population lives independently but concentrated in that place because the substrate conditions are optimal. The bad news is that pollinators are in decline: according to the report of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Servicesmore than 40% of pollinating insect species are threatened. In this scenario, finding such a large population in a city shows that there are more refuges for biodiversity than we thought and we must find them before they disappear (and if possible, avoid it). In detail. We knew about the presence of Andrena regularis in that cemetery since 1935, but it was not until 2021 when the scientific community began to intuit what was underground. To estimate the population, the team installed mesh traps at 10 points in the cemetery between March 30 and May 16, 2023. The result was extraordinary: as explains the press release from the New York university, is the equivalent of 200 honey bee hives on just 0.6 hectares of land and more than triple the population of Manhattan. Yes, but. The study has important limitations, such as that the population data is from a single spring (2023) and that the figure is a statistical estimate and not a real inventory, so we do not know if the population is rising, falling, remaining stable or how climate change affects it, which is advancing the flowering of apple trees and therefore altering the life calendar of the bees. And although it is the largest aggregation of wild nesting bees documented to date, its presence in a cemetery suggests that there may be others whose existence we are unaware of. In Xataka | We have a serious problem with the extinction of bees. The United Kingdom wants to solve it with bricks In Xataka | If the question is how to protect bees and other insects, in Peru they are clear: recognizing their legal rights Cover | Marisol Benitez, Chad Madden and Damien TUPINIER

Claude Guillemot, the co-founder of Ubisoft who turned a store in Brittany into a video game empire, dies

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Claude Guillemot, one of the five brothers who founded Ubisoft in 1986 and until now current executive vice president of operations of the company, died yesterday, June 19, 2026 at the age of 69 when his Cessna 421 plane crashed in a field near the La Baule airfield, in the department of Loire-Atlantique, as reported by France 3. The other fatality is a flight instructor from Rennes whose identity has not yet been confirmed. Ubisoft’s silent architect. Although his brother Yves Guillemot is the most visible face of the company as CEO, Claude’s role in the birth of Ubisoft was essential: according to 3DJuegoswas the one who opened Guillemot Informatique in Carentoir in 1984, the original computer store that served as the base for Ubisoft that would be born just a couple of years later. Until his death he was an active member of the Board of Directors and, according to your company filebrought to the board his international experience in Asia and his in-depth knowledge of video game hardware and distribution technologies. He was also CEO of Guillemot Corporation since 1997, a company specialized in video game peripherals under the Thrustmaster and Hercules brands, present in more than 140 countries. At Ubisoft’s worst moment. Guillemot’s death hits a company that is going through a difficult time: Ubisoft has recorded record losses of 1.3 billion euros in the 2025-26 fiscal year, with a drop in income of 17.4%. The crisis has specific causes: has canceled six gamesincluding the remake of ‘Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time‘, and delayed another seven, assuming as lost the 650 million already spent on development. To achieve liquidity, has transferred 25% of Vantage Studios to Tencent for 1,160 million euros. The company foresees that the next year will also be in the red, with an additional estimated drop in sales of between 8% and 9% and does not expect to return to profitability until the 2027-28 financial year. Yves Guillemot himself advertisement in January 2026 a large-scale “reset”, describing the company’s momentum as an opportunity to return to sustainable growth. The end of an era. In the absence of the Bureau d’Enquêtes et d’Analyses completing the investigation into the accident, what is already definitive is the loss of one of the five architects of the only major European video game multinational capable of competing with the major North American and Japanese studios for four decades. The Guillemot family controls around 14% of Ubisoft’s capital through Guillemot Brothers SE (according to data from Euronext Paris), and the reorganization of that control structure will be one of the first issues that the market will monitor in the coming weeks. In Xataka | What’s happening with Ubisoft: after canceling six games and adjusting its structure, this is the plan of the great French studio In Xataka | A single programmer, simple mechanics, crappy graphics and Paint interface. And he has earned ten million in a week Cover | Shuichi Aizawa

“I would rather 20,000 employees be happy and well fed than a few become millionaires”

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Three Kings’ Eve in 1914 appeared in The New York Times a surprising announcement: Henry Ford, Head of Ford Motor Company, will distribute ten million dollars among his employees throughout 1914. He will do so semi-annually and it will be an addition to the salary of each of the workers. The figure of 10 million dollarsas Henry Ford himself would confirm to the newspaper in an edition a few days later, was an estimate. He planned to distribute that amount at the end of the year but it could rise to 12 million dollars. Or it could be less. Those 10 million represented half of the profits expected at the end of the year. The day after the publication of the announcement, The New York Times echoed the madness: 10,000 employees showed up at the door of the Ford factory in Detroit to get a new job. That day, the company was already paying another 15,000 employees for whom entering the factory was more complicated than ever. “I think it is better for the nation, and much better for humanity, for 20,000 or 30,000 people to be happy and well fed than for a few to become millionaires,” Ford himself assured the journalist who went to cover the news. The announcement caused such commotion at the time that many changed jobs to form lines on the Ford Model T assembly line, as explained at the beginning of that same article in which the case of a 16-year-old boy who changed fields from the factory is told. But it also raised eyebrows among the competition to the point that it was questioned whether the owner of the company was not engaging in some type of anti-competitive action, they state in Barrons. “If Ford wants to have fun, so be it. He can afford it. Others can’t,” noted rival automaker Joseph J. Cole on Five Dollar Day. Five Dollar Day On Three Kings’ Day 1914, the day following the appearance of the aforementioned advertisement in The New York Timeshe Detroit Free-Press He referred to it as “Five Dollar Day”. This exemplified that Ford would pay at least five dollars to its employees with this new measure, double what it had been doing until now. As we said and as Henry Ford himself tried to explain in the article in The New York Times, It was not a salary increase. The worker continued to earn the same amount but, he calculated, this is what he would earn if a dividend of 10 million dollars was distributed among everyone. Ford was asked if he was a “socialist” for distributing profits among his employees, which was immediately denied. But he presented his theory: if workers performed at a good level, they should enjoy part of those benefits. And if they had the incentive to win it, they would work better. Furthermore, no exceptions were made, the sweeper and the person in charge of his line would collect the dividends that corresponded to them. That is, a payment strategy for objectives without distinctions. What Henry Ford discovered is that chain assembly was essential to impose his car on the competition. The higher the production volume, the lower the cost for the brand and the lower the cost for the customer. If the worker was attracted by the salary, there were more possibilities of attracting workers and continuing to feed the production chain. The result is that in a market where no one else could produce their cars at that rate and price, the Ford Model T became the best-selling car in the world. In fact, It is still among the 10 best-selling cars in history despite the fact that the production process has been perfected to the point of satiety. Car mass production completely changed the industry. He fordism It laid its foundations by rewarding workers. Much has been written about it, about Henry Ford’s intention to create a new middle class and for them to be the consumers of the products they manufactured. In Forbes They cast doubt on this theory repeated over time. By increasing the money to be received, they explain, what Henry Ford intended was to establish a workforce committed to the company and with a very low turnover. Employment was tough and in 1913 alone more than 52,000 people passed through the company despite the fact that 13,000 people worked in the factory. This high turnover prevented the assembly line from operating at full capacity because replacements had to be found and employees had to be retrained. They even claim that the assembly line came to a standstill due to the number of employees who left their jobs in search of a different job even though at that time charging just over two dollars was already good money. Doubling them and growing them to five dollars was a promise that was difficult to believe but also difficult to reject. Forbes He points out that Ford even hired people who went to employees’ homes to certify that the worker was behaving “in the American way.” That is to say, he kept himself from bad company and from getting drunk outside of office hours. And alcoholism was one of the biggest problems that the company’s assembly line was dealing with. Whether or not the corresponding part of the bonus was delivered depended on the verdict of these people. What they explain in this medium is that the theory that Ford wanted its own employees to buy its products is not true because, simply, it would have a very small impact on the company’s final accounts, but they do highlight that, sometimes, the quickest way to reduce costs is to increase salary costs, as paradoxical as it may sound. They say that John R. Lee, Ford’s advisor, defended his position by pointing out that “a man who comes from a well-balanced home, who does not fear for the basic necessities of life of those he cares for, who does not live in constant … Read more

90 years ago a Basque company decided to manufacture the “Rolls-Royce of staplers”. It hasn’t gone particularly well

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What do they have in common the MoMA, Vladimir Putinthe former Colombian president Andres Pastrana and the veteran reporter Gillian de Bonowho for decades dedicated himself to advising wealthy readers of Financial Times How to spend your money in style? The answer is only two characters long: M5the Basque brand stapler The Helmet. His name may not ring a bell, but it sure does. your imageneat, efficient, sophisticated. So much so that it has elevated the stapler to the category of art worthy of the desks of leaders and museums. Despite all that and its centuries-old history, El Casco has not managed to avoid bankruptcy. After declare bankruptcynow his legacy is sold to the highest bidder. The art of putting together pages. Life offers us many kinds of pleasures, but there is one that we did not know about until the Basque company El Casco got to work: collecting papers. This was recognized a few years ago, Gillian de Bonothe veteran reporter of the How I spend it (‘How I spend it’) from the diary Financial Times. In 2017, after testing the M5 stapler from the Guipuzcoan company, recognized to his readers that he had never enjoyed stapling papers so much. It hasn’t been the only one. The design, efficiency and above all the elegance of El Casco staplers (the M5 is perhaps the most famous and exclusive, but in the catalog of the company there are many more models) has led them to such unexpected places such as the collection of the MoMA museum in New York or the desks of Vladimir Putin and Andrés Pastrana, as well as the offices of executives from around the world. After all, stapling report sheets may be a mundane task, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done glamorously. “The Roll-Royce of staplers”. Perhaps the best definition of the M5 was given years ago by designer Juli Capella. For him, remember The Countrythe Basque creation is something like “the Rolls-Royce of staplers.” It may sound like an exaggeration, but the phrase is better understood if several factors are taken into account. First, the design of the article, which has allowed it to be passed from parents to children in many cases and continue to fulfill its function. just like decades ago. Second, its history: the company behind it traces its origins to before the Civil War. Third, its exclusivity (and prices): in its online catalog You can find different models ranging from 150 to almost 400 euros. And yet… All of the above guarantees El Casco staplers a privileged place in the history of national design, but that does not mean that at a business level they have to do well. On the contrary. The passing of the decades, the change of habits, digitalization and competition of articles low cost Asia is over taking its toll to the company, unable to balance its accounts. At the beginning of the year, Tuncalya, the Eibar-based company behind the El Casco brand, declared bankruptcy and months later, in May, was auctioned most of the machinery and facilities that allowed it to manufacture its staplers. Brands, domains and know-how. Now comes the second (and final) chapter of its corporate epilogue. As I remembered a few days ago The Mailthis week the other part of his business legacy is auctioned: around twenty trademark registrations in different countries, the know-how accumulated after decades of activity, its commercial fund and a series of web domains that will remain valid at least until October 2026 or 2030. The bid is organized by Pacelma Auctions, it comes out in a single Lope with a starting price of 50,000 euros and is part of the bankruptcy procedure supervised by a court in San Sebastián. More than just design. Although what probably made Putin, Pastrana and Bono fall in love with it is the design of the staplers, El Casco stands out for another reason: its history. The roots of the company must be found in the Basque Country of the 20when Juan Olave and Juan Solozabal (former Orbea employees) founded a business in Éibar that was initially dedicated to weapons. After a few years marked by the Great Depression and the Civil War, the company decided to focus on office supplies. What didn’t change was his mentality. “A staple should move through the stapler with the same precision as a bullet through the barrel of a revolver,” explains Joan Solozábal, grandson of the founder. Against all odds. Throughout its extensive history, the firm has encountered the occasional crisis. In 1937, just a few years after it began manufacturing stationery, the business suffered the blow of the Civil War: the town suffered bombings that left the company damaged. Over time, it was able to resume its activity, it was equipped with a larger factory and, already in the 60s, it gathered around 200 employees. The crises of the following decades, digitalization and competition from low cost However, they undermined his business. In 2014 the company was forced to bankruptcya delicate situation that was saved thanks to the Turkish investor (and former client of the firm) Bayrak Vedak. Their disembarkation gave a boost of oxygen to the Gipuzkoan company, but it has not allowed them to fully weather the storm. Twelve years after that critical episode and despite attempts to refocus the business, the firm declared bankruptcy at the beginning of 2026. Now its future remains in the air. Images | The Helmet and Wikipedia In Xataka | What happened to Barreiros, the Spanish automotive company that manufactured Dodges “made in Spain” in the second half of the 20th century

how to enter this game to fly over any part of the world

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Let’s explain to you how to access the secret Google Earth video gamea flight simulator with which you can fly over any part of the world. This is a flight mode that until recently was exclusive to the desktop version, but now you can also use it in the web version. So that you can explore it, we are going to tell you step by step how to enter this mode through the web version of Google Earth. Then, the game controls are quite simple, you can play with the mouse or the directional keys on your keyboard. Flight mode in Google Earth The first thing you have to do is enter the Google Earth page, with the address earth.google.com. Sometimes a home screen may appear instead of the maps. If so, click Explore Earthand you will directly access the maps website. Now, you have to Click on the down arrow button in the top bar. It is the one that appears on the far right, and is used to display the Google Earth menu bar. Once the toolbar is displayed at the top, you have to click on the tab Tools. This will open a drop-down menu with several options, and in it you must click on the option flight simulator. And that’s it, with this you will open the flight simulator, and you can start flying over the area you want. Remember that The simulator will open in the area you are exploring within the maps, so it is advisable to first go to the area you want to fly over and then open it. Here, the game has controls that can easily get out of control if you have never used it. Just remember that you can crashand if this happens it will simply tell you that you can start again. In Xataka Basics | How to have the maps of your area downloaded on your Android or iPhone and be able to use them without an Internet connection

Arab Emirates has oil and desert in abundance. Now they have discovered how to take advantage of sand: turning it into brick

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Although transport or energy are the sectors that first come to mind when we talk about emissions, there is a third industry with a comparable share of responsibility: construction, responsible for 34% of global CO₂ emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. The problem is in the materials: manufacturing a ton of Portland cement emits between 0.6 and 0.8 tons of CO₂ both due to the energy consumed in the process and the chemical reaction that produces it. So any idea to replace classic construction materials such as concrete and brick is good to decarbonize the industry. We have already seen alternatives such as the shells on the beachbut to a company in Dubai Another idea has occurred to him: instead of importing materials, manufacture them with abundant resources in the area. More specifically, with sand and date seeds. The invention. The star product of ARDH Collective, which is the name of the Dubai company formed by Alhaan Ahmed, Alyina Ahmed and Máximo Tettamanzi, is DuneCrete: An alternative to concrete made from locally sourced desert sand, which reduces cement content by 50%. From there they manufacture the DuneBlockthe building blocks. In their product catalog they also have the Dateforma material that reuses 1,000 date seeds per square meter. Why is it important. Because after water, sand is the second resource we consume the most. The United Nations Environment Program esteem that up to 50,000 million tons of sand and gravel are consumed annually worldwide. Removing sand from rivers and coastal ecosystems causes erosion, damages water supplies, harms biodiversity and reduces storm protection, so replacing it with underused desert sand would be a turning point. DuneCrete reduces cement content by 50%, which according to its founders represents approximately half the carbon dioxide emissions compared to conventional concrete. It makes sense: Portland cement alone is responsible for 8% of global emissions and its footprint does not disappear using renewable energy, since much of it comes from a chemical reaction, not from burning fuel. Context. Paradoxically, the UAE has to import sand even though it is basically a desert. The underlying problem is that desert sand particles are rounded due to wind erosion, which makes their adhesion in conventional concrete mixtures difficult, while river sand has more angular particles that favor compaction and resistance. In detail. This project arose during a master’s degree at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. After obtaining a couple of grants totaling $8,000, they began research in a laboratory that they set up in the garage of one of their homes in Dubai during the pandemic. That was where they found the formula that stabilized the mixture with desert sand. Laboratory tests confirmed that the material met the resistance standards necessary for commercial development. The company start production in 2021. Yes, but. Once the problem of the geometry of desert sand has been solved, there is another obstacle to solve to scale the project: its morphology varies enormously by region and is not homogeneous. ARDHCollective affirms DuneCrete is “just as strong” as conventional concrete, but there are no academic publications or third-party test reports to support its mechanical properties. Simply put, the transformative potential of this DuneCrete remains to be seen. In Xataka | A young woman from Kenya has developed brick 2.0: the main ingredient is the plastic of the shampoo bottle In Xataka | We have just reinvented the brick. It is just as it was millennia ago Cover | ARDHCollective and Fredrik Öhlander

cell phones, computers, TVs and more

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PcComponentes has a section with refurbished devicesand the truth is that there is plenty to choose from with categories dedicated to mobile phones, computers, televisions and much more. For this reason, in this article we are going to review five of the best deals that are available right now. MacBook Neo by 599.45 eurosan even tighter price for Apple’s cheap laptop. Google Pixel 9a by 391.98 eurosa good price for the economical mobile phone of the previous generation of Google. Samsung Q7F by 261.70 eurosa QLED television with a 43-inch screen. Google Pixel 10 by 527 eurosthe current generation mobile phone from Google. Aisens Support by 20.30 eurosideal if you want to place a pair of monitors on a desk. Samsung Q7F (43 inches) – Condition like new The price could vary. We earn commission from these links MacBook Neo He MacBook Neo has caused great interest due to its quality-price ratio and PcComponentes has it refurbished for 599.45 euros. And be careful because it is in like-new condition. Includes 256 GB of internal storage (SSD) and 8 GB of RAM, The processor is powerful enough to study and work with text, browsers and some image editing and it is also quite light at 1.23 kg. MacBook Neo (256 GB) – Condition like new The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Google Pixel 9a PcComponentes also has the Google Pixel 9a very cheap for a price of 391.98 euros in like new condition. Perhaps it is not the most current because it is a mobile phone from the previous generation, but we are talking about a model that It is still an excellent purchase option because of its screen, the photographic section and because it will be updated for many years. Google Pixel 9a (128 GB) – Condition like new The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Samsung Q7F If you are looking for a television for the bedroom or for a second home, or if your living room is small, PcComponentes has the television Samsung Q7F by 261.70 euros in like new condition. It is a TV that mounts a panel with QLED technology of, in this case, 43 inches. Supports content in HDR10+comes with Filmmaker mode and has the voice assistant Alexa. Samsung Q7F (43 inches) – Condition like new The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Google Pixel 10 On the other hand, if what you are looking for is a more recent mobile phone, and of much better quality, PcComponentes has the Google Pixel 10 by 527 euros in pre-owned condition. It is a compact 6.3-inch mobile phone that incorporates the Google Tensor G5, a good processor for regular use. Its screen is excellent and the cameras are at a high level. Google Pixel 10 (128 GB) – Pre-owned condition The price could vary. We earn commission from these links Aisens Support Finally, PcComponentes has a Aisens support by 20.30 euros in like new condition. It is a stand that allows you to place two monitors between 17 and 32 inches with a maximum of 9 kilos each. It is made of steel, is installed using a clamp to avoid drilling holes in the desk and allows you to adjust the inclination angle of each monitor, as well as the swivel and rotation angle. Aisens Support – Condition like new 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 | PcComponentes and Compradicción (header), Apple, Google, Samsung, Aisens In Xataka | Best laptops in quality price. Which one to buy based on use and eight recommended models In Xataka | Best mobile phones 2026. Which one to buy based on use and six recommended models

If he wins, the Italians will have to pay

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One of the first measures that the US and Europe adopted when the war in Ukraine broke out was to confiscate the assets of Russian oligarchs all over the world. This included the blocking of bank accounts and funds, mansions located in European countries and, of course, also all those superyachts that were moored in ports around the world. What at first seemed a succulent booty which was to be used to cover Ukraine’s support and defense costs, soon became a poisoned candy for the countries that had seized them for the enormous expense that it entailed keep them afloat. An example is found in the impressive Sailing Yacht Aby Russian tycoon Andrey Melnichenko, who has been stranded since March 2022 in the port of Trieste. Italy seized it as a measure of pressure, and four years later, the accumulated bill is close to 47 million dollars. Now, Melnichenko has decided to sue the country who has been paying for yacht maintenance and, if the lawsuit wins, he can take the boat and maintenance for free. That millionaire you told me about He Sailing Yacht A is considered as the largest private sailing boat in the world and, for four years, it has become the most famous in Trieste, where it acts as unintentional tourist attraction for visitors to the small town in northeastern Italy. At 143 meters in length and its avant-garde design, its appearance is closer to that of a futuristic submarine with sails than to a conventional superyacht. Its owner paid some 600 million dollars. The legal problem is that the ship, technically, it’s not Melnichenko’s. As usually happens in these cases, the Sailing Yacht A It is not registered directly to de Melnichenko, but is owned by a Bermuda-based company called Valla Yachts, which in turn owns it within a trust (corporate asset management instrument) managed by a Swiss company. Fishermen in the port of Trieste with Sailing Yacht A in the background In May 2024, the Lazio Regional Administrative Court (TAR) suspended its own trial and asked the EU Court of Justice to clarify something basic: can an asset be frozen when it is in the hands of a trust, not the one directly sanctioned? The European court said yes: It is compatible with European law to freeze these assets, as long as it is demonstrated that the sanctioned party has real control over them or effective access to their resources. The beneficiary of this trust is Aleksandra Melnichenko, the wife of the Russian tycoon. For Italy and the EU, this corporate network also ends with the Melnichenkos. As and how he published the italian Il GazzettinoFor the Melnichenko family’s lawyers, the yacht belongs to a legitimate and independent corporate structure, so the blockade on it had to be lifted since it was not proven that the sailboat is actually Melnichenko’s property. Maintaining a yacht is not cheap When Russia invaded Ukraine, the EU and its allies immediately reacted by imposing sanctions on the core of millionaires close to Putin. One of the most spectacular maneuvers It was the seizure of yachts, to send a clear message to the Russian power circle: touch their pockets. The problem is that no one stopped to think about the consequences of those confiscations and the expenses that those assets were going to cause them. Keeping a luxury superyacht afloat costs money. Big money. According to the most conservative estimates, the cost of annual maintenance of a yacht It is 10% of its purchase value. That is, if a yacht costs 500 million, the 10% rule It already anticipates that the annual maintenance expense will be about 50 million dollars a year. It is true that this calculation is based on a yacht that is used, but even when the yacht remains immobilized in a port, the expense account does not stop running. They know it well on the Caribbean island of Antigua, where the US authorities ordered the seizure of Alpha Black attributed to Russian oligarch Andrey Guryev. Sailing Yacht A anchored off Trieste During its stay in port, the yacht consumed a whopping $2,000 a day only on fuel necessary to keep the air conditioning running to prevent sea salt from damaging the materials and wood inside the yacht. If they did not sell the yacht, already complicated for legal purposes due to not knowing with certainty the identity of its true owner, it would be almost impossible. And returning it is not an option either because it would be a political defeat against Russia. In the case of Sailing Yacht AItaly appointed the Agenzia del Demanio to manage the ship. According to Reutersthe maintenance costs in these cases are borne by the State, which You can claim them later from the owner or recover them by selling the yacht. But to sell the largest sailboat in the world buyers are needed who are willing to embark on a long judicial process and who have enough assets to buy it…and those are not plentiful. So the mayor of Trieste has been wondering out loud Who is going to pay the 30,000 euros a day that it is costing them to maintain the Sailing Yacht A afloat. According to the specialized portal, Megayacht News The yacht will remain in Trieste and the maintenance costs will continue to be covered by the Italian treasury. The lawsuit may take months, or years, to resolve. If the Italian justice finally decides that the sanctions against the Sailing Yacht Athe Russian millionaire will be able to sail on it again and Italy will have paid him four years of maintenance free. In Xataka | We already knew that superyachts were floating mansions: Roman Abramovich’s is a fortress with an anti-missile shield Image | Flickr (Paul Fenton, adrianovero), Wikimedia Commons (Maximo Marmur)

“We don’t want to reinvent space travel. What we have to do is make it profitable”

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Although AI gurus, former prime ministers of Italy and the United Kingdom and CEOs of giant companies are passing through the Vivatech stages, the figure that has attracted the most attention is Jeff Bezos. The main theater of the event was packed as has not happened with any other speaker. Even Yann LeCun, the so-called ‘godfather of AI‘, he had to speak to some empty seats. On that stage, alongside Bezos were David Limp, CEO of Blue Origin, and Mike Massiminoformer NASA astronaut and the one who asked the questions. The first was obvious: the feeling behind the explosion of the brand new New Glenn rocket of Bezos. The answer was not so obvious, with the tycoon pointing out that the team ‘celebrated’ it in a rather curious way. And the conversation soon focused on the main point of the talk: build the roads to go to space. Because Blue Origin is in the same race as SpaceXbut also in the same competition as Chinathe race to find a way to reduce launch costs so much that it is viable to constantly put things into orbit. And, apart from infinite money, you only need one thing that Rajoy already said at the time, finding a way to make more of those machines that make the machines that make rockets. And this is where Prometheus, Bezos’s new AI company, has to do. so much controversy is awakening. The Moon as a space gas station “People underestimate (whatever)” was a phrase that was repeated up to three times during the talk. Because Bezos and Limp came to Paris to make it clear that what they are doing is very difficult, but that it is a great leap for humanity. After talking about the New Glenn explosion, Massimino said “everyone wants to go to the Moon”, and there Bezos expanded because the phrase touches on one of the three key points of Blue Origin’s objective in space exploration (and the rest of the countries and companies that are on the same path). “We will go to Mars and do other things, but the Moon is the first step, the first base“he commented. There are several reasons. The first, according to the businessman, is that “it is close and we can go in three and a half days and also return in three and a half days. We do not have to wait for it to align with the Earth as happens with Mars. And the reason why we would want to go (and to stay, no less) is because, although he did not say it explicitly, it was printed in the message: the Moon is a space gas station. We have already said on several occasions that our satellite has a lot of resources that we can use, and the most recent missions have focused, in part, on collecting and studying samples of lunar soil to see what can be done with that material called regolith. “Now that we are going to go to the Moon to stay, not just to visit it, we need to build fuel with materials that are on the Moon. With electrolysis we can create liquid hydrogen and that is the goal: to create fuel from raw materials on the Moon“, commented Bezos. Because that is the first step to, from there, launch missions further away, such as to Mars. The reason is that it is ‘cheaper’ to launch rockets from the Moon than from the Earth due to gravity. The rocket does not need as much fuel to take off or as much force, so it is much easier and costs are greatly reduced. The problem is that loading the tanks with liquid hydrogen to go to Mars has the disadvantage that it is a fuel that takes up a lot of space and it is not feasible to leave so loaded from Earth. “If we want to explore space and make colonies on Mars, the Moon is the first step” That’s where the Moon comes into play again. Because that’s what this is all about: “We don’t want to reinvent space travel. These trips were surpassed 60 years ago. What we want to do is make them profitable. That’s what Blue Origin is focusing on.” Extracting the materials also comes into play. “The Moon’s gravity is much lower, so you can extract those materials using 28 times less energy per kilo than you would need on Earth.” What keeps a billionaire who wants to play with rockets up at night But we must not lose sight of something: this is a business, and Bezos points out that there are many players who want to go to space, but not all of them can make rockets. And there are companies like yours or Musk’s. “Neoconstellations of satellites, resources on the Moon and in low orbit – solar panels, space data centers -, missions on the Moon to stay… there is a lot of demand. I think people greatly underestimate the demand for space travel,” he said. Beyond the Moon and that Martian objective, he is right in pointing out that low orbit is looking like an electric station during Easter. United States and China are launching military and communication satellites, but Europe does not want to be left behind and Russia, India and Japan are in the same competition. The law of “who comes first, gets the spot” prevails here, and everyone wants to get there first. “We are in the golden age to achieve the objective. It already happened years ago with the US getting ahead of the Soviets. Now it is going to happen again” The point is that, as Bezos comments, “if the launches are very expensive, the satellites must have a very long life and remain behind technologically, but if we make upload is cheaperwe can speed up times. Limp went on to say that reusable rockets are the way to create these mega satellite constellations, but beyond the problem of fuel, … Read more

the graph showing which countries suffer the most from FIFA schedules

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I don’t know about you, but there are sports broadcasts that I have saved in the calendar of my mobile phone, like the Barcelona Masters Finals of paddle tennis or the Tour de France. There is one that is much longer, more variable and also almost obligatory viewing: the World Cup. Although it is essentially always played on these dates, the venues change and that is sometimes a real chore… if you want to see it live. This 2026 edition is played in the United States, Canada and Mexico and that means it takes up my afternoons, but there are places in Asia and the Middle East where it is literally stealing their sleep: if they want to watch the games live, it is better to leave sleeping for another day. Is the “dream fee” to pay if you like football. When FIFA awarded the 2026 World Cup to North America, it implicitly set prime time in the Eastern time zone of the United States. That is equivalent to between 00:00 and 04:00 in the Maghreb, between 01:00 and 05:00 in Saudi Arabia and between 02:00 and 06:00 in Pakistan. As we have already suffered in our flesh, such as in the last finals of the King’s Cup in Spain, the schedule of the host state is taken into account and the rest of the global audience there manages. That the World Cup headquarters is traveling is a way to publicize football throughout the planet, but also to make a profit from a lucrative business in addition to sports tourism: broadcasts (there is another indirect one in the impressive infrastructures that are built). According to the official FIFA financial report For the 2023-2026 cycle, total income from television rights amounts to $4,264 million. And in that scenario there is a clear winner: Europe is the most valuable individual market with nearly 1.4 billion. It is followed by North America, which exceeds 1,000 million. Both regions concentrate more than 60% of the total, according to SVG Europe with data from the consulting firm Caretta Research. So someone on Reddit has decided to calculate that “Sleep Tax” with the 48 teams participating in the World Cup ordered by the cost of sleep that their fans will accumulate during the group stage. From FIFA match schedulethe IANA time zone database, WikipediaPython and little else. The result is what you see below these lines: The sleep rate of the 2026 World Cup. tohigh12 via Reddit How have you calculated it? This sleep rate assigns a weight to each minute of the game based on which time zone it is in, taking into account the start time in the local time of each team’s fans and using a visualization model that takes into account the start of the game + 120 minutes. Thus, the minutes between 22:00 and midnight are worth 1x, between 0:00 and 02:00 they are worth 2x, between 02:00 and 06:00 they are worth 3x and between 06:00 and 08:00, 1.5x. Those periods in which most people sleep are worth more (although it is a simplification, because maybe I go to bed at 11 p.m. and you at 1 a.m.): the more points, the less you sleep. The final score is obtained by dividing the weighted minutes by 60. An example: a match that starts at 23:00 local time accumulates 3 points: 60 minutes at 1x plus 60 minutes at 2x. It is true that this Sleep Tax method has obvious limitations such as assuming that the fans follow the three group stage matches, it does not distinguish between work days and holidays and that fixed window of 120 minutes may fall short between overtime and the pre-match, but it is a clear, transparent and reproducible methodology. Which country is sleeping the least following its team in the 2026 World Cup The longer the bar, the worse the fans sleep: Their matches fall at late night or early morning hours. Algeria leads the ranking with 18 points and seven countries, including Mexico and Canada, have 0.0: they do not lose a minute of sleep. But this is not something new: without going any further, the last World Cups steal those hours of sleep in other latitudes. Thus, in Brazil 2014 those who paid this most expensive fee were the fans from Asian countries. In Qatar 2022, geographical concentration benefited Europe and Africa, which followed the matches in the evening. Sleep deprivation has real and measurable consequences: executive functions deteriorate if there are lack of hours of rest, something that we pay in decision making, impulse control, behavior or memory, which affects our day-to-day tasks such as driving, working or interacting. In fact, according to the study Sleep Duration and Executive Function in Adultscognitive impairment after a single night of poor sleep is equivalent to having a blood alcohol level comparable to the legal limit for driving. Stringing together a couple of weeks of early morning matches is more than a sacrifice: in a football country that is also excelling in the tournament, it can become a public health problem. Who wins and who loses. Thus, the big dream losers of this edition of the 2026 World Cup are the countries of North Africa and the Middle East: Algeria (18.0), Tunisia (14.5), the Czech Republic and Scotland (12.0), Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Norway and Iraq (11.0). Spain obtains a 6.0, with a match starting at 02:00 peninsular time. The hosts Mexico and Canada, along with Ecuador, Panama and South Korea, score 0.0: they play at schedules completely aligned with their daily lives. In Xataka | Where you can watch the 2026 World Cup depending on the operator you have In Xataka | The good news is that there is a World Cup this summer. The bad news is that the exams are going to be worse Cover | Data is Beautiful

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