cast

Argentina and Taiwan have hundreds of Chinese fishing boats in front of them. And no one has cast their nets into the sea to fish

by

In January 2026, a NASA satellite captured off the Argentine coast a strange image: a huge luminous spot floating in the middle of the South Atlantic, so bright that it looked like a city that had suddenly appeared on the ocean. From the ground nothing could be seen, but from space, however, it was impossible to ignore it. The new floating wall. Last February we count what was seen through satellites, and since then it has not stopped repeating itself. For years, the world assumed that Chinese fishing boats were just that: boats dedicated to fishing. In 2026 that perception is changing rapidly. From the South China Sea to the South Atlantic, different governments are observing the same phenomenon: enormous chinese civil fleets remaining for weeks in strategic areas without clear fishing activity. To be more exact, Argentina and Taiwan, separated by half a planet, now face a surprisingly similar situation: hundreds of Chinese vessels off their coasts whose function seems to go far beyond catching fish. What is disturbing is not only their presence, but the growing suspicion that Beijing is using apparently civilian ships like tools permanent geopolitical pressure and maritime surveillance. Get paid to occupy the sea. I counted last April the ABC chain that investigations into the so-called Chinese “maritime militia” have shown the extent to which Beijing has professionalized this strategy. In the South China Sea, many ships receive state subsidies simply by staying in certain disputed areas. The crews spend entire days at anchor, with hardly any fishing activity, while they help consolidate the Chinese presence around reefs, maritime routes or foreign military exercises such as Balikatan. For Western analysts, the goal is clear: physically saturate the sea with civilian vessels to intimidate rivals without the need to directly deploy traditional military units. Taiwan discovers that anyone can be a problem. The pressure on Taiwan has made this tactic much more visible. This same month of May, Taipei expelled to the Chinese scientific vessel Tongji after detecting suspicious operations near the island. Officially he was carrying out oceanographic studies, but Taiwanese authorities suspect that collected strategic information on the seabed and nearby waters. The incident reflected the great problem what Taiwan faces: It is already difficult to distinguish between civil ships, scientific ships, coast guard ships or military support platforms. That is why the island has even begun to adapt its coast guard patrol vessels to carry anti-ship missiles and act as part of national defense in the event of conflict. Argentina sees the same pattern. Also in May, Reuters reported an extensive report. Thousands of kilometers from Asia, Argentina has been observing another enormous concentration of Chinese ships in front of its waters for years. Every season, about 200 fishing boats illuminate the South Atlantic during squid fishing, forming a gigantic floating city visible from space. Although they officially carry out legal fishing activity outside the Argentine EEZ, Washington and part of the Argentine defense apparatus suspect that many of these vessels could be gathering intelligencemapping the seabed or measuring local surveillance capacity. The context makes the issue especially sensitive for a reason: the area is close to the Strait of Magellan and the access to Antarctica, two strategic areas of enormous geopolitical value. Master the sea without shooting. For its part, China denies that there is any military use of these fleets and maintains that their ships act according to the law international. However, it is becoming evident to many countries that Beijing has found a very effective way to expand its maritime influence without resorting to open war. In other words, the real change does not seem to be in the Chinese destroyers or aircraft carriers, but in the ability to bind a huge number of civilian ships in the ocean until the border between fishing, surveillance or strategic intimidation becomes unrecognizable. Meanwhile, Argentina and Taiwan are already seeing the same reality: one where there are hundreds of Chinese boats off its coast, and with each passing day it seems more strange that everyone has gone there so as not to cast their fishing nets. Image | CSIS/AMTI/Vantor In Xataka | Satellite images leave no doubt: China has concentrated thousands of fishing boats off Japan In Xataka | China’s best weapon doesn’t fire a single bullet: 300km ‘moving wall’ to close sea routes instantly

15 billion minutes watched, modest budget and no stars in the cast

by

No Hollywood stars in the cast. No epic battles or expanded universes. With a budget that, by current industry standards, can be described as modest. ‘The Pitt‘has just become the most watched series on global streaming. A production about hospital emergencies in Pittsburgh that does not fit into any of the models that the industry has been perfecting for a decade. And that surprise factor may be one of the reasons for its success. The figures. The second season closed its broadcast very recently with more than 15 billion minutes watchedaccording to Nielsen metrics. On April 16, its season finale attracted 9.7 million viewers in its opening weekend alone, the best result in the series’ two-year life. According to Warner, the season averaged 15.4 million viewers per episode50% more than the first. We can compare with other successful series: in the week of March 30 to April 5, ‘The Pitt’ topped the Nielsen ranking with 1.16 billion minutes, becoming the only one of the top ten to surpass the billion barrier. ‘The Boys’, which concludes its run on Prime Video this year, came second with 889 million. ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, with decades of accumulated catalog and also a medical theme, appeared fourth in the general ranking. The secret of his success. The series was created by R. Scott Gemmill, with Noah Wyle and John Wells as executive producers: the same team that gave us ‘ER’ on NBC for years. And they have learned a lot from that experience: ‘The Pitt’ follows the 15-hour shift in the Emergency Department in real time, with one episode per hour on call. There are no time jumps, multiple scenarios, or subplots that drag on for seasons without resolving. And while other HBO productions like ‘The Last of Us‘ either ‘The House of the Dragon‘ show budgets of between 15 and 20 million dollars per episode, ‘The Pitt’ is pulling with just over 4 million per chapter. The cast’s salary model reflects that same economic philosophy: the nine main actors with a permanent contract earn between $35,000 and $50,000 per episode, amounts in the low-mid range of the sector that, however, represented attractive treatment for unknown actors at a time of contraction in the television market. The awards. In 2025, the series won five Emmy Awards, including Best Drama, becoming the first medical series to win. since ‘Emergency’ won it in 1996. Wyle won for leading actor and Katherine LaNasa won for supporting actress, in a ceremony in which the series defeated ‘Severance’, despite the fact that it had a bag of 27 nominations. How it looks. Another point that distinguishes the series from its competitors and that has done a lot for its success is its programming strategy: fifteen episodes per season, weekly broadcast and annual return every January. The first season premiered in January 2025, the second in January 2026. The third will try to reach January 2027. HBO CEO Casey Bloys has already spoken of ‘The Pitt’ as the equivalent of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’, a procedural that may be active for decades. It seems too ambitious, but everything points in that direction: the weekly rhythm has allowed both to build fan loyalty and facilitate late additions of audiences with the season started, something that the TV series binge-watching Netflix type they don’t get. The dramatic structure also moves in that direction: the series has no problems incorporating and eliminating characters, even of great importance (as happens in a real ER) so that the cast and conflicts do not stagnate. ‘The Pitt’ doesn’t invent anything. And maybe that’s the mother of the lamb. Its cadence of weekly cases is typical of 1990s television and its cast is full of very little-known faces, so that nothing distracts us from the plots, which pile up in each episode at a frenetic pace. It is impossible to know if we are witnessing a broader trend, the return of a way of making television that was thought to be forgotten, or whether ‘The Pitt’ is going to be an isolated triumph. In any case, it is a refreshing slap in the face to series that mechanically stretch out for ten episodes what should be solved in one of fifty minutes. In Xataka | The big problem with the ‘Harry Potter’ series for HBO is also its main hook: it is identical to the movies

For 45 years we thought we understood how stars like our Sun rotate. A Japanese supercomputer has just cast doubt on it

by

Understanding how stars rotate may seem like a technical detail, but it is actually a central piece to understanding their evolution. For 45 years, theoretical models held that Sun-like stars would eventually change the way they rotate as they aged. The idea was that, as it lost speed over billions of years, the spin pattern would reverse and the poles would rotate faster than the equator. Now, new research from Nagoya University suggests that that prediction might not come true. The findings. The work, published in Nature Astronomysuggests that solar-type stars could maintain the same rotation pattern that we observe in the current Sun throughout their lives. That is, the equator would continue to rotate faster than the polar regions even as the star slows down with age. The simulations carried out by the team indicate that magnetic fields play a decisive role and could prevent this regime change that was taken for granted in theoretical models for decades. How a star like the Sun actually rotates. Unlike the Earth, which rotates as a solid body, the Sun is made of extremely hot plasma. That causes different regions to spin at different speeds. In the case of the Sun, the equator completes one revolution approximately every 25 days, while the regions near the poles take about 35 days. This phenomenon is known as solar-type differential rotation. For decades, theoretical simulations predicted that this pattern would not be permanent. As stars age and their global rotation slows over billions of years, the plasma flows within them should reorganize. Predictions indicate that there would come a time when the behavior would be reversed: the equator would rotate more slowly and the poles would rotate faster, a regime that the researchers called differential anti-solar rotation. The unexpected role of magnetism. The new simulations suggest that the scenario predicted by theoretical models for decades may not come to pass. According to the results of the study, stars similar to the Sun would maintain the same type of differential rotation throughout their lives. Even if the star slows down with age, the equator would continue to rotate faster than the poles, rather than reversing the pattern as proposed in previous simulations. A supercomputer on stage. To reach that conclusion, the team turned to FugakuJapan’s most powerful supercomputer, installed at the RIKEN research center in Kobe and operational for shared use since March 2021. With its help, researchers carried out an extremely detailed simulation of the interior of solar-type stars. Each simulated star was divided into about 5.4 billion calculation points, a much higher resolution than that used in previous work. This level of detail is important because previous simulations worked at much lower resolutions. Under these conditions, the magnetic fields tended to disappear artificially within the model, which led to underestimating their influence on the internal dynamics of the star. In the new simulation, however, the magnetic fields remained stable and showed a clear effect: they help prevent the reversal of the rotation pattern. The implications. Understanding more precisely how Sun-like stars rotate is key to interpreting their magnetic activity over time. This aspect is related to well-known phenomena on our own star, such as the approximately 11-year solar cycle that regulates the appearance of sunspots and episodes of magnetic activity. A better understanding of these processes could also help improve stellar evolution models used by astronomers to study distant stars. Images | POT In Xataka | PLD Space has raised 180 million euros with Mitsubishi at the helm: the Spanish space startup grows with Japanese money

He has cast a giant in his beer industry

by

The origins of what is today Asashi Group They date back to Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, but much of their future passes through the West and more specifically through Europe. And it has enough logic. The brewing group is no stranger to the serious demographic crisis that its country is going through, which translates into a local local market and the need to look beyond bars and Izayaka Japanese. Now, after years of bet and expansion, the brewer invoice thousands of millions of dollars in the old continent, its largest market after Japan, with More than 25% of its sales. In her own way, the Japanese birth crisis has led Asashi to become an outstanding figure in the beer sector European, in which it is not easy to open hollow. A silent advance. The news gave it A few days ago Fortune Taking the balances of the Japanese company itself: silently and without generating noise, Asashi has become one of the big names of the European beer industry. And that has merit. First because the origins of what today is the holding Asashi Group They are quite far, in Japan. Second, because although he had already harvested success in his country it is not easy to open a hole in the European market. What do the figures say? The accounts Asashi Group shows that in 2024 it registered total income in Europe of 5.4 billion of dollars, almost 27% of the total. These figures place the continent as their second billing market, only behind the Japanese already distance from Oceania or Southeast Asia. The volume of income in Europe also grew by 13% while in Japan it barely varied. The forecasts for 2025 It shows that, although a decrease can be registered, the weight of the European market will continue to be key in its accounting. Expanding borders. Those figures are not the result of chance. And it is not explained only by the expansion of its Premium Asashi Super Dry beer, increasingly present in the pubs of Europe. Over the last years the holding company has been expanding with new acquisitions until consolidating in the continent. The Japanese company incorporates other recognized brands For European clients: Peroni Nastro Azzuro, Kozel, Pilsner Urqell and Grolsch. In its catalog also includes Great Northern, Victoria Bitter, Carltron Draught, Tyskie, Ursus, Radegast, Fuller’s London Pride and Asashi Nama, in addition to without alcohol, soft drinks and other drinks, such as the Nikka whiskeyfounded 90 years ago. Pulling a carrier. It arrives with a quick search in the newspaper library to follow the track of that commercial expansion. In 2016 it reached A first agreement With the Belgian origin AB Inbev origin to get three of its best -known brands, Peroni, Grolsch and Meantine, for 2,550 million euros. Some time later, in 2019, Fuller, Smith & Turner accepted another millionaire offer, of almost 300 million of euros, which allowed the Japanese group to be among others with its flagship brand, London Pride. To those operations others are added Centered in Australia, New Zealand or China. In March and despite the tariff war, The Wall Street Journal revealed that the group wants to consolidate its presence in the US with Asashi Super Dry. For that purpose acquired A plant in Wisconsin. They are business … and demography. Some time ago Atsushi Katsuki, general director of Asashi, acknowledged Fortune That the bet of the Japanese company for the Complex Market of Europe was not accidental. And partly it is explained by the population crisis that drags For decades Japan. With birth in historical minimumsdeaths in record values ​​and a population increasingly agedmathematics does not make it easy for companies like Asashi. Yes in the 90s almost 70% Of its population was between 15 and 64 years old, in 2023 that percentage did not reach 59%. For a company like Asashi the implications of that evolution are evident. “If we observe the Japanese beer market, since 1995 it has contracted at a 1-2% annual rate. And we believe that it is likely to continue,” Katsuki comments. Europe also faces His own challengesbut with that backdrop his alcohol market It has aroused interest. Opportunities … and challenges. Of course, the market presents its own challenges. Asashi herself Point out that its goal is to continue betting on premium drinks and alcohol beer, a business segment on the rise and to which the Japanese firm wants to give greater weight in its results account. Its objective is that in 2030 the without alcohol or low graduation suppose 20% of their global sales, several points above the current data or from which they handle in Japan. Another challenge for Asashi is to compete with great weight and rooted rivals in Europe, such as AB Inbev or Danish Carlsberg, which move Milmillionaire Business Figures. That without counting the challenges that the holding of Japanese roots has been found throughout its international expansion, such as the effect of the Ukraine War on the supply of grain, inflation or Commercial War. Images | Norimutsu Nogami (Flickr) In Xataka | Japan is suffering a bankruptcy record from Ramen. And in part it is the result of the “1,000 yen barrier”

An overwhelming cast with second season already announced, and already in streaming

by

Eye to this cast: Michael Fassbender, Richard Gere and Jeffrey Wright, accompanied by secondary schools such as Jodie Turner-Smith, Katherine Waterston and John Magaro. A luxury squad for one of the most anticipated thrillers of this 2025 start: ‘The agency‘, who has aroused so much expectation that his second season has already been announced and that you can see now In Skyshowtime and In Movistar Plus+. In it we will meet An undercover agent of the CIA who receives the order to abandon his normal life to return to work in London. But when he falls in love, he is willing to sacrifice his work and his own identity to safeguard his private life, which will precipitate an international intrigue where they are involved, among others, a veteran agent of the organization. Behind ‘The Agency’ are the brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, screenwriters of ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’. Signing the first two episodes is Joe Wright (‘The darkest moment’), which makes it very clear that we are facing a high -budget product, which is noticed in its action sequences (although the series has a rhythm that is cooked over low heat, and where intrigues abound in offices than the thrilling persecutions) and cinematographic finishing. At the moment, Skyshowtime (which presumes this series, rightly, as one of the most outstanding elements among its premieres this month) It has only released the first two episodes of ‘The Agency’. The issuance of the same will last to the ten chapters, so we will have time to get the meticulous rhythm and the oppressive atmosphere of this new spy epic. Header | Skyshowtime In Xataka | This is how US spies cheated Russia in the 80s and sold savage chips to the Soviets

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.