absence Archives - usatoday24

After years of absence, Aragón has reintroduced two Iberian lynxes. The question is whether it’s posturing or real help.

March 22, 2026 by usatoday24

Aragón has become the first autonomous community in the northwest of the peninsula to seek to recover the Iberian lynx. And yes, it is a historical milestone that will go down in the annals of conservation manuals; But the question is another: does it make any sense (on an ecological, social or economic level) to continue putting lynxes where there have not been any for decades or are we in the middle of a political marketing operation that will be expensive? The answer is more complex than it seems. What has happened? On March 17, 2026, Jorge Azcón released the first two copies of Iberian lynx on a farm in Torrecilla de Valmadrid (Zaragoza). They are one year old, the female comes from Portugal and the male from Doñana. “The step taken today is a milestone in the recovery of biodiversity in the community,” explained the acting president. And it is, in a way, the general idea in almost all communities in Spain: the Iberian lynx has become our ‘panda bear’, an animal that we are fond of, a symbol of the country and a social aspiration. Does it make sense to reintroduce the lynx? For the lynx, yes. Although we have come a long way since 2002 (when there were just 94 lynxes confined in Andalusia), we have not yet reached “favorable conservation status.” That is, 3,500 specimens (now there are 2,401) and 750 reproductive females (there are 470). Since it started in 2019, the project LIFE LynxConnect has tried to put into practice a very simple idea: Having many lynxes is of no use if those lynxes are confined to just a couple of places. We needed diverse cores and we needed to connect them together. Above all, because climate change is also affecting the entire national territory. The north of the peninsula is increasingly dry and has larger populations of rabbits: therefore, it has become viable for there to be at least two towns (in Cuenca and Palencia) which are completely outside the recent historical distribution of the lynx. And for the areas where it is released? In the short term, it is also good news. In fact, the Aragon movement cannot be understood without a basic fact: the European funds that help these types of programs (920,000 euros in this case) expired this same year. In the medium or long term, it depends on many factors: fundamentally, because everything depends on the rabbits. Rabbits? What about rabbits? Rabbits represent between 80 and 90% of the lynx’s diet. In fact, these rodents are found in the base of the food chain of more than 30 species. The good news is that, as warned A few weeks ago, the Union of Farmers and Ranchers of Castilla la Mancha “the proliferation of rabbits is a problem that has been going on for ten years, they speak of a ‘plague’ that is threatening olive groves and pistachio and almond trees, and they demand that the populations of these animals be controlled.” The bad thing is that they are not where they should be. The history of Spanish rabbits is complex. Its decline is associated with myxomatosisfirst (mid-20th century); continue with the rabbit hemorrhagic disease in the 80s; and is complicated by the arrival in 2012 of a new variant (RHDV2) that affects populations just when they were beginning to recover. To all these health problems, we must add the changes in the landscape and the disappearance of boundaries, fallow lands and traditional shelters. And the result is that the rabbits have looked for a new home. Thus slopes and roadsides have become tremendously favorable habitats (and even in motion vectors) and areas with constant food (irrigation/crops) are natural attractors of these reduced populations. Farmers fear that the arrival of the lynx will not control the pest and, on the other hand, as it will tighten conservation regulations, it may cause rabbit populations to skyrocket. Are they right? It’s hard to say. But we are going to find out. Image | Jorge Azcón – Government of Aragon In Xataka | Spain, land of (threatened) rabbits: the species has gone from “pest” to being endangered

Xi Jinping has reappeared after 16 days of silence. What we did not imagine was what was activated during his absence

June 5, 2025 by usatoday24

Xi Jinping has reappeared after 16 days without public presence. He has done it on June 4 in An official meeting with Belaruso President Alexander Lukashenko In Beijing. His return ends an unusually long absence that, for the moment it has occurred and for the international context, unleashed a wave of speculation about his health, his power within the communist party and the course of the second world economy. Why is it important. The disappearance of XI coincided with a rebound in tensions with the United States, marked by threats of new sanctions and a progressive deterioration of bilateral relations. In that context, the lack of visibility of the maximum Chinese leader has generated uncomfortable questions: was he sick? Were there internal movements against him? Who was making decisions in his place? The facts. Three signals fed the noise, as reported Nikkei Asia: The Politburo did not celebrate its monthly May meeting, or at least it did not communicate it, something stipulated by the Statutes of the party. Although there is no obligation to make it public, its silence was striking. The Defense Minister was absent from the Shangri-La dialogue in Singapore, the most important security conference in Asia. The name of Miao Hua, head of the political department of the Popular Liberation Army, has disappeared from the official website. In parallel, it was confirmed The death of former vice president of the Central Military Commission, Xu Qiliangofficially due to illness. But his death occurred in a context of constant purges in the army and rumors – not verified – of suicides between high controls under investigation for corruption or disloyalty. The opacity of the system, far from containing the conjectures, amplifies them. Between bambalins. As collected NTD —Inly linked to the Falun Gong movement, openly critical of the regime, “three possible scenarios were shuffled: XI could be sick after years of power concentration. He would be orchestrating unprecedented internal reforms. It would face a rebellion of the marginalized factions since 2012. The most drastic hypothesis: that high positions of the party would have agreed to resign, possibly in August. An important nuance: NTD It is not a neutral source. It is convenient to take into account his critical bias with the Communist Party and his militant editorial line. The hypotheses that it raises are not contrasted by independent sources. The context. China lives a especially sensitive moment. The economy slows down, tensions with Taiwan intensify and Trump insists with its tariff war. As I pointed out The Diplomatthe absence of XI just now projects weakness in the worst possible time. It would not be the first time that a Chinese leader responds to questioning with a symbolic gesture: in 1966, when he doubted the health of Mao Zedong, The leader swam publicly through Yangtsé To demonstrate strength. And now what. XI has reappeared, but the episode leaves an uncomfortable conclusion: even a two -week blackout is enough to activate the radar. When power depends on both its image and its actions, any emptiness is perceived as a crack. The next big appointment will be the Fourth Fourth of the Central Committeeplanned for August, and with him the traditional summer retreat in Beidaihe, where a good part of the party’s strategy is drawn. There will be special interest in seeing him again. In Xataka | China promised them very happy monopolizing rare earths. The problem is that he did not think of the smugglers Outstanding image | Chinese Communist Party

In full blackout throughout Spain and confusion among the population, an alert system shone for its absence: Es-Alert

April 29, 2025 by usatoday24

Yesterday we attend an unprecedented event in our country. From one moment to another and in a matter of five seconds, 60% of all energy vanisheddisappeared. The entire peninsula ran out of light. The reasons are unknown how it was unknown in certain points of Spain that the blackout had been general. The light fell, ergo the wifi. Telecommunications, mobile networks fell, and networks were saturated. Contact family and friends to know if they were fine was an odyssey, as was accessing to the media and social networks to inform themselves of the last hour. No one knew what was happening, its reach, the reasons or the state of the situation. In such a context, it is worth asking what happened to Es-alertthe emergency alert system. Who is-alert depends on. The Civil Protection alerts system was launched on February 22, 2023 and serves to send notices to all mobile phones within an affected area. It is integrated into the national alert network and, therefore, is managed by the Ministry of Interior through the National Center for Emergency Monitoring and Coordination (CENEM) of the General Directorate of Civil Protection. Notice example received through the ES-Alert system | Image: mobile xataka This system is known as “112 inverse” and is available in “any part of the Spanish territory with mobile telephony coverage, either 2G (GSM), 3G (UMTS), 4G (LTE) or 5G”, as They explained from Moncloa The day of its launch. Civil protection, meanwhile, exposes that “the ES-ALErt system is available to the Emergency Coordination Centers of the Autonomous Communities in the framework of the National Civil Protection System” and that these centers, together with the aforementioned CENEM, are the “responsible, within their area of competence, to define and issue the alerts when the situation requires it.” In a nutshell, that competition falls to the Autonomous Communities. What situations is used? According to Moncloa, Es-Alert is designed for phenomena such as “floods, fires, adverse meteorological phenomena, volcanic or chemical accidents, among other emergencies.” The question is what happens to this system when there is no electricity, when telecommunications are falling and a very high percentage of the population has no coverage. A mobile will not receive the notice if it has no coverage or is in plane mode, although it will do so when you recover the signal The networks worked (a time). The mobile network remained active for a while thanks, in part, emergency generators. VodafoneMasorange and Telefónica They have confirmed that although the blackout had affected telecommunications services and the mobile network, part of the system had supply thanks to electric generators and batteries. Es -Elert depends on that infrastructure to work, the question is whether it would have been effective. Lights and shadows. While it is true that Es-Alert is practically agnostic to the device and the version of the operating system, its effectiveness depends on the fact that there is electricity and that the receiving phones have coverage. Assuming that the ES-Alert system was available (because as we already know, there was no electricity supply), the reality is that an important thickness of the population would not have received the warning at the time because it did not have coverage. They would have received it when recovering the signal in the event that the emergency remained active in the area, but there is no guarantees that, by then, the notice would have been useful. Image | Fré Sonneveld Social networks. Public entities and organizations, which They urged the user to save battery and limit the use of mobilethey made their official communications through social networks such as X. Access not only to this social network, but to the media that echoed this information, it was not always possible due to the lack of coverage and mobile data network. The always eternal radio. The best informed citizen yesterday was the one who had a ancient operational radio thanks to two AA batteries. The radio works independently that there is coverage, mobile network or wifi. Emergency equipment They do not communicate by Walkie-Talkies By custom, but because in a fire in which everything has fallen, the radio will continue to function. If the broadcaster and the receiving device work, there is communication, and that is what happened precisely yesterday. The radios continued to function and counting the last hour of the blackout, which shows that an invention of the late nineteenth century is still important in the middle of 2025. Cover image | Pere Jury In Xataka | Cercanías, Media and Long Distance, High Speed and Metro: This is the situation of trains in Spain after the blackout

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