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When Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, no one dared to cross it. Nobody except a 300 million Russian superyacht

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For months now, the Strait of Hormuz has been one of the places more dangerous of the world to navigate. Oil tankers anchored for weeks, freighters turning around with their empty warehouses and marine insurance with unattainable prices due to the high risk of receiving a missile strike from the coasts of Iran. No one wants to cross those waters while Iran and the United States launch cross-threats and naval mines at each other. In the midst of this chaotic scenario and without warning, a superyacht shaped like a futuristic submarine set sail from Dubai. It crossed one of the most guarded maritime stretches on the planet at the moment and, as if nothing had happened, set course to the paradisiacal coasts of the Maldives islands. A yacht with a single letter. The ship that challenged the maritime blockade of the ayatollahs and the United States is called Motor Yacht A or simply TOin honor of the initial of its owner: the Russian coal oligarch Andrey Melnichenko and that of his wife Aleksandra. The superyacht does not exactly go unnoticed. It measures 129 meters in length and its designer Philippe Starck, who also designed he Venus by Steve Jobs, he had in an interview for Boat International which took just a few seconds to sketch the first strokes of the yacht’s futuristic design TO. “Sometimes a design takes me only 30 seconds,” the designer acknowledged. A floating mansion with all the luxuries. He Motor Yacht A It combines a futuristic exterior with an interior of excessive luxury with capacity for 14 guests in seven cabins and up to 42 crew members. As and how he shelled Robb Reportthe superyacht has three outdoor pools in the aft area (one of them with a glass bottom over its own yacht club), a jacuzzi with aqua massage seats and a helipad. Inside, a large silver-lined staircase with a railing valued at $60,000 stands out, while the master suite, measuring more than 240 m2, incorporates televisions that descend from the ceiling, a rotating bed and bulletproof glass in the windows. In addition, the owner’s suite includes a private bathroom with a bathtub and shower also covered in silver. Altogether, a 2,200 m2 floating mansion worth approximately $300 million, according to the specialized medium SuperYatch Fan. The feat that no one saw coming. As indicated by the last location of your AIS beaconhe Motor Yatch A still was found at Dubai’s Rashid Port on July 4. Something that confirms the specialized YouTube channel The Yacht Reportwhich tracked his movements. According to the information obtained, the TO It sailed along the coast of the United Arab Emirates and took the safe corridor provided by Omani waters, not the Iranian corridor used by tankers and cargo ships, to reach an Omani port the next day. He stayed there for ten days. On July 14, he set sail again, crossed the US military blockade and entered the open waters of the Arabian Sea. Their declared destination, according to your AIS signal, They are the Maldives. The choice of destination is not accidental. In addition to transparent waters and fine white sand, the country serves as a refuge for the yachts of Russian tycoons who want to avoid confiscation of your assets due to sanctions for the war in Ukraine. He Motor Yatch A He was saved, his brother was not.. Melnichenko and his wife They were sanctioned by the European Union in March 2022, just days after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although, according to what was published by Reutersthe millionaire managed to circumvent the blockade by protecting his assets abroad. However, the older brother of Motor Yatch Athe 142 meter sailboat Sailing Yatch Awas trapped in the port of Trieste where still in dispute with the Italian government and today is, almost unintentionally, a tourist attraction of the city. He is not the first millionaire to gamble. It is not the first time that a Russian yacht defies Tehran’s missile batteries or the US blockade by flouting prohibitions. In April, the Northowned by tycoon Alexei Mordashov, followed almost the same route to Oman. He TO has used the same formula based on the unexpected presence of a luxury yacht tiptoeing across the most stressed area of ​​the planet for a geopolitical conflict what has in a lifelessness to energy markets around the world. In Xataka | Anti-drone systems, swimming pools, jacuzzis and live lobster tanks: the price of the most expensive yachts in the world Image | Wikimedia Commons (MatthiasKabel), Superyatch Fan, Boat International.

The Japanese technique to dry clothes in closed spaces in a more efficient and faster way

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It doesn’t matter that we are in winter, with short, cold and wet days, or in the middle of summer heatthere is a household task that is always complicated: dry clothes. If you don’t have a good outdoor clothesline, a balcony or a dryer can become a real nuisance. In winter they do not dry the sweaters. In summer, beach towels and swimsuits. Or at least that’s how it is in homes in most of the planet, where to get by, solutions are usually used that either require too much space or increase the electricity bill: dryers, radiators, dehumidifiers… In Tokyo they have another way to solve it. Learning from Japan There they have found a way to dry clothes in rainy seasons efficiently, quickly and without bad odors. In the Japanese capital, a city of climate humid subtropicalgenerous in rainfall and where there are also abundant small apartments —so many and so small that sometimes it is necessary to talk about “microhousing”— have developed a technique to keep their clothes clean and well ventilated all year round. And without the help of dryers. The system is called “hanging rainbow”, and while it sounds a bit poetic it is actually a graphic description of how the clothes should be arranged. The first step is to find a well-ventilated room in the home, through which the air circulates and, if possible, is warmed by the sun during part of the day. There we will install our clothesline, bar or rope, on which – and this is a key part of the technique – we will arrange the garments. in the shape of a rainbow. As? Trying to make the clothes draw an inverted “U”, so that the longest garments would be at the ends and the shortest ones would be distributed in a staggered manner towards the interior. In it Apts real estate portalaimed at leasing in Tokyo, even include a graph on how clothes should be arranged for efficient and quick drying. “When hanging clothes, leave enough room for air to circulate. Japan’s humidity can make the air seem heavier, which means clothes will take longer to dry —platform abounds—. A good trick is to hang the clothes in the shape of a rainbowhooking the longest ones at the ends and the shortest ones as you move inward. For towels, hang one side longer than the other for better air circulation.” According to their calculations, the technique allows considerable time savings. If drying a load by arranging the clothes in a V shape can take four and a half hours, arranging it as an inverted U can reduce that time to just four hours. It is not the only thing you should take into account. If you want a good drying and prevent your clothes from taking on a musty smell, Apts also advises not leaving them in the washing machine for longer than strictly necessary. And that means removing the clothes “immediately”, without waiting, once the washing cycle has concluded. “Even leaving clothes in the machine for 10 minutes can cause odor,” he warns. Other tricks involve placing the clothes perpendicular to air circulation and in opposite direction at the entrance of the room or use hangers to avoid that, once distributed on the clothesline, the fabrics are close to each other. Ideally, they should be as far apart as possible. For smaller socks or underwear, you can use an octopus. The goal: to make drying clothes in autumn and winter less of an ordeal… …without having to dedicate space and money to a dryer. A previous version of this article was published in November 2024. Images | Leroy Tan (Unsplash) and Atul Vinayak (Unsplash) In Xataka | Japan has reopened a nuclear reactor affected by the Fukushima accident. It is only the first of 33 in the entire country In Xataka | Japan has one of the youngest automobile fleets in the world. Their secret: an absurdly expensive ITV *An earlier version of this article was published in November 2023

3,000 years ago there were no notaries, so in Sweden agreements and marriages were closed with footprints carved in rock

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In Atapuerca there are animals, in Irulegi there is a hand and in Lake Mälaren, in central-eastern Sweden, there are feet. Thousands of footprints carved into rock that are between 2,500 and 3,700 years old. To date, archeology thought that they were a sample of symbolic or religious art, but a recent study proposes something much more practical and not at all ornamental: they were contracts engraved in stone. Take off your shoes and sign here. Fredrik Fahlander, an archaeologist at Stockholm University, has examined hundreds of footprints carved into rock surfaces along the southern coasts of the Scandinavian peninsula and has found that these petroglyphs are not placed at random nor do they belong to the same person, like when you mess around with fresh cement. So that it lasts, exactly like the contracts. In fact, that is their hypothesis: when two people wanted to seal an agreement, a friendship or a marriage, they engraved their footprints together on the rock. Faced with the oral promise, the stone made it permanent. Map of southern Scandinavia where carved footprints have been found. Fredrik Fahlander Why is it important. Because they offer a different vision than what we know about how prehistoric societies worked. Historically we have assumed that formal pacts were typical of cultures with writing, but this study shows that peoples without writing could also formalize commitments using the physical landscape as support. On the other hand, as important as knowing what those footprints mean is knowing what they were not: in the Scandinavian Bronze Age, the sacred and the symbolic was engraved in bronze and deposited in tombs and the foot prints are not in either of those two places. They appear only and exclusively on rock exposed to water. It is no coincidence: it reveals that these traces did not belong to the world of the dead or to that of symbology, but to that of the living and their agreements. Context. The Nordic Bronze Age lasted from approximately 1700 to 500 BC. During that period, Scandinavian people left tens of thousands of rock carvings with various common motifs, such as ships, animals, human figures or circles. The category of footprints is rare within this set: they are very careful, carved to life size and with so much detail that they even show the straps of the sandals. The main site studied is the Mälaren region, which during the Bronze Age was a bay of the Baltic Sea. The uplift of the land after the last ice age has made it possible to chronologically date the engravings: those located at higher altitudes are older. In detail. In the Mälaren region, 627 carved footprints have been documented in 140 sites, although it is not an isolated phenomenon: they are present throughout the province of Småland and on the Bjäre peninsula. They are deliberately arranged around water sources and shallow depressions where rainwater collected and flowed, as well as near natural crevices and mineral areas. In addition, there are certain patterns: most sites have a single footprint or an odd number. When there are two, they are almost always different in size and shape, suggesting that they belong to different people. In some cases, the second print was added some time after the first. Fahlander interprets this as an accepted invitation: the first print proposes the link, the second confirms it. If both were recorded at the same time, the commitment was sealed simultaneously by both parties. Yes, but. The study hypothesis is coherent and well-supported, but it remains a hypothesis. In fact, as Fahlander himself explains, these footprints probably had more than one meaning or purpose. However, there are no written sources from the time that confirm it simply because they do not exist. In Xataka | When they opened a remote tomb in Poland, archaeologists discovered something strange: two women embracing In Xataka | Archaeologists have found a puzzle in a Neolithic tomb: where the hell are the heads of its 77 skeletons? Cover | Fahlander, F. (2026). “A Step in Stone. Ontologies of Podomorphic Petroglyphs in Southern Scandinavian Bronze Age”

The Social Security reform has opened the door to working longer. Early retirement will remain half closed

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Social Security is pushing those who can continue working to delay their retirement as much as possible, but it resists modifying one of the most discussed rules of the system: the penalty in the pension of those who they retire earlyeven when they accumulate more than 40 years listed. The flexible retirement reform contemplated in the Royal Decree 416/2026 will come into force on August 28, launching the Government’s strategy to extend working life of workers and contain pension spending. What changes with the reform. The new flexible retirement regulation seeks to encourage more people to extend your working life as much as possible voluntarily and can make part of their pension compatible with a salary, something that current regulations did not allow. The idea is not to force anyone to continue working beyond the legal retirement age, but rather offer more incentives so that those who can and want to do so, keep working. The person who is already retired, instead of stopping working completely, can do so part-time. In exchange, they will receive a salary for their work and a supplement to the proportional part of the pension. In this way, someone retired can obtain a higher income while still active, and will receive 100% of their pension again when they stop working. That is, if someone retired receive a pension of 1,000 euros, and for working 32 hours a week (80% of a full day) they will pay you a salary of 1,000 euros, your pension will be cut in that proportion, but the sum of salary (1,000 euros) and pension (200 euros) will provide you with greater monthly income. The current regulations force you to choose between working or receiving the pension. Put obstacles to early retirement. The demographic pyramid in Spain, in which there are fewer and fewer young people to maintain the pension system and a longer life expectancy, has forced successive governments to take measures to maximize working life of employees to continue contributing. This has led to the extension of the retirement age, which has been progressively delayed since 2011 to go from 65 to 67 years in 2027. The other measure approved in the pension reform of 2024 to discourage early retirement is to apply some reducing coefficients to the retirement pension, so that the more you anticipate retirement, the less pension you receive in return. Contribute 40 years without reward. One of the problems posed by the application of reducing coefficients is that those workers who already exceed the maximum limit of years of contributions necessary to access ordinary retirement at age 65 (38 years and six months or more by 2027), will not be able to retire early. without penalizing themand end up getting paid a lower pension than other workers with fewer years of contributions. This group has already organized under the association Asjubi40 and different political groups with representation in Congress have carried out proposals to eliminate this grievance to workers with long contribution periods when they want to advance their retirements. As and how he published The Independentvoluntary early retirees bear an average reduction coefficient of 11.36% and receive an average pension of 2,002.58 euros per month, after retiring at an average age of 63 years and two months. In the case of involuntary early retirement, the average reduction rises to 18.9%, the average pension stands at 2,100.42 euros per month and the average retirement age drops to 61 years and ten months. The unaffordable cost of stopping working. The reason given by the Government for not eliminating these reducing coefficients It’s simple: removing those penalties would be expensive. The Executive estimates an additional cost of 3,358 million euros per year for Social Security if the reducing coefficients are eliminated for those who retire early after having contributed 40 years or more. Of that figure, 1,345 million would correspond to voluntary early retirement, and 2,013 million would correspond to those retired involuntarily, that is, those who have been affected by ERE, business closures, force majeure or other cases considered by the General Law of Social Security. Social Security cannot assume it. Although Spain is registering record numbers in terms of number of members. It closed 2025 with a budget deficit of 5.58 billion euros. Once again, we are facing a record to be treated of the smallest deficit of the last 14 years, as as highlighted The Confidential. But it is a deficit, after all. However, the incorporation of contributions such as the Intergenerational Equity Mechanism (MEI), has contributedIn 2026 alone, 1,162.23 million euros will be added to the Social Security Reserve Fund, which reached a total amount of 15,267 million euros last March. In Xataka | From the “Great Resignation” to the “Great Early Retirement”: the labor market loses the experience of those over 55 years of age Image | Pexels (Joaquin Carfagna)

In 1967 a war closed the Suez Canal for eight years. Half a century later, the Strait of Hormuz looks into the same abyss

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When war broke out between Egypt and Israel in 1967, fifteen commercial ships were trapped in the Suez Canal. The captains dropped anchor assuming they would only have to wait a few days for the fighting to end. They were right about the duration of hostilities: it was the Six Day War. However, It took eight years for the canal to reopen. When the ships were finally able to set sail in 1975, only two were still seaworthy. The rest had rusted so much under the desert sun that They went down in history as the “Yellow Fleet”. Almost sixty years later, history rhymes in the Persian Gulf. Ninety days after the war between the United States, Israel and Iran blocked the Strait of Hormuz at the end of February, the most important maritime passage in the world remains closed. Dozens of oil tankers wait at anchor, waiting for a diplomatic agreement that always seems imminent but never arrives. The optimism trap on Wall Street The analyst Javier Blas, in your column for Bloombergexposes the dangerous complacency with which the world is facing this closure. The financial industry operates under an adapted version of Stein’s Law: “The Strait cannot be closed forever because it would cause too much economic damage; therefore, it will reopen soon.” The problem with this logic is that the economy has not yet inflicted the pain necessary to force peace. As Blas points out: For Washington: The war is proving politically cheap. The US economy is riding with quarterly growth of more than 4% and the S&P 500 index is close to historical highs, having risen almost 10% since the start of the conflict. For Tehran: Even as the currency plummets and inflation chokes the population, the Iranian regime has demonstrated for decades an almost inexhaustible capacity to absorb economic punishment when it considers it faces an existential threat. While the mediators seek an agreement in Islamabadinertia maintains the illusion of normality. The market has absorbed the disappearance of about 20 million barrels per day thanks to accumulated inventories and massive releases of strategic reserves. Qero the global tank is emptying. June: The end of logistics inertia If we do not see shortages on the streets it is due to pure physics of transportation: a supertanker moves at the speed of a bicycle. The fuel that the West consumed in the spring left the Gulf before the first missile fell. However, the data They already show the cracks in the system. Global demand fell by 5 million barrels per day in April, the largest consumption destruction since the COVID-19 pandemic. And the blow is already felt at home: Funcas warns thatIf the conflict continues, Spanish inflation will exceed 4% and growth will fall to 1.8%. In addition, the multimillion-dollar extra cost of fuel for airlines such as Iberia or Vueling directly threatens the waterline of Spanish tourism. The real precipice has a date: June. With the arrival of summer, the peak driving season and the massive use of air conditioning will collide with inventories at multi-year lows. Furthermore, a diplomatic reopening it would not solve the physical problem: Clearing the mile-wide Hormuz safe lane would require months of complex naval operations. However, the impact of this crisis goes far beyond the gas pump. As the physical shortage of crude oil becomes undeniable, the most serious repercussions are brewing in the bowels of the global financial system: The fracture of the petrodollar: The unwritten agreement of 1974, which guaranteed security in the Gulf in exchange for crude oil being sold in dollars and reinvested in US debt, is breaking down. Countries like India They are selling their US Treasury bonds to obtain liquidity and pay for much more expensive oil. The bond market: The persistence of energy inflation has skyrocketed sovereign bond yields. 30-year Treasury bonds in the US exceeded 5.15%. The cost of real life: If government bonds yield above 5%, 30-year mortgages are inexorably approaching 7%. This translates into more expensive loans, lower business investment and a paralysis of the real estate market. As several analysts warn, undoing the economic damage from Hormuz could require an induced recession to curb borrowing costs. The bypass of the desert While the world waits, some actors have already given up on Hormuz. United Arab Emirates has accelerated urgently the construction of a gigantic pipeline that bypasses the strait, with the goal of exporting 3.5 million barrels a day directly to the Gulf of Oman by 2027. It is “prudent planning for the worst scenario,” and a clear sign that Abu Dhabi believes the waterway could remain threatened for years. Half a century ago, no one imagined that 15 ships would spend a decade rotting in the sun in Suez for a war that lasted less than a week. Today, the world assumes that the Hormuz crisis will be a temporary blip. But as the days go by, the shock absorbers wear out and the financial markets creak. The oil is simply still waiting in the sea. Image | Photo by Jens Rademacher on Unsplash Xataka | The war in the East has reached an unexpected agreement: one where the US does not discuss Iran’s missiles, bombs or uranium

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

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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’

has ended with closed stores, fights and tear gas

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In 2026 it is no longer strange see long lines of people who spend the night outside the stores of a certain brand waiting for the launch of one of their products. What is not so common is to see them at the doors of a youth watch store to a watch that costs 400 euros. Triple that of the average of their watches. The launch that occurred this weekend was not just any launch, what all that people who were waiting patiently at the doors of the shops I longed for the Swatch Royal Popa watch that emerged from the alliance between Swatch and Audemars Piguet, a Swiss firm whose royal oak from which this model is inspired, starts at 20,000 euros. Such a fuss has been made to achieve this, that even the police have had to use tear gas in some stores. Luxury watchmaking for generation Z Swatch has been partnering with luxury Swiss watch brands for years to bring haute horlogerie to a generation Z more familiar with smartwatches than with traditional mechanical watches. From there collaborations such as the MoonSwatch with Omega in 2022, with Blancpain and now with the prestigious Swiss manufacturer Audemars Piguet. According to published the medium of fashion and trends #Legendthe MoonSwatch series created by Omega for Swatch sold more than one million units in its first year and generated around $275 million in revenue. Given such success, the Swiss brand wanted to replicate the recipe with the Royal Pop by Audemars Piguetand get a “luxury” watch adapted to the taste of generation Z. The Royal Pop transfers that haute horlogerie aesthetic to eight pocket models with Swatch’s characteristic colors, at a price between 385 and 400 euros. A seemingly simple and affordable proposal to wear a luxury piece on your wrist that, however, has exceeded the capacity of Swatch stores from all over the world, to the point that the brand had to make a call for calm from their social networks. MoonSwatch with developed by Swatch and Omega Going for a 400 euro watch that already costs 2,500 on Wallapop The collection was put on sale with a restriction of one watch per person per day. That limitation, far from slowing down demand, triggered it. In Barcelona, ​​hundreds of people had been camping for days in front of the store and the Mossos d’Esquadra they had to intervene and order the closure of the premises. In Paris, the police used tear gas to control about 300 people, and in Milan there were fights between clients and security. The local press from Seville said that long queues also formed in the center of the city. According what was published by The Wall Street Journal, Most stores sold out in a matter of minutes and Swatch preemptively closed stores in the United Kingdom, the United States and Europe. A few hours after the launch, Royal Pop was already appeared on Wallapop for a resale price of between 600 and 2,500 euros, and on eBay some pieces were ordered for 17,000 euros. The dynamics of this second hand massive sale has been identical to that of the launches of limited edition sneakers or other exclusive products: buyers with knowledge of the market grabbed the first places in the queue days before their launch and bought and resold immediately, taking advantage of the shortage in the first units. According to collected Reason Whysome of those who were legitimately interested in the watch complained about the way in which Swatch had organized the launch: “What happened in the stores in Madrid is a shame. Zero security control, mafias sneaking people by the dozens into the first positions and zero concern for those truly interested in the watch and not in resale. It’s time to sell the collection and never touch a Swatch again,” declared one of the people waiting in line at a store in the capital. A success as a product, a failure as a brand The Royal Pop chaos is a case of success and failure at the same time. If you look up the definition of “dying successful” in a dictionary, a Swatch logo will appear. The collection created together with Audemars Piguet has been a resounding success and shows that Swatch’s recipe to try to attract generation Z to the world of luxury watchmaking is the right one. As and as they point out in Marketing InteractiveWith this strategy, both brands win because Swatch ensures large sales in the present, while Audemars Piguet positions itself as an aspirational brand for a new generation of potential. buyers in the future. The problem is that the management at the Swatch points of sale has been a disaster lacking any foresight, to the point of requiring the intervention of the police to avoid greater evils. This lack of foresight in such a strategic launch makes the customer feel reluctant to participate in the next campaign because they do not want to have to spend days camped in front of the store to get their unit, even more so when the product is targeted to an audience who, in the near future, aspires to wear an Omega, Audemars Piguet or Blancpain watch on his wrist. In Xataka | Some OT contestants did not know how to read a clock hands. Science has clues as to why it is becoming more common Image | Swatch

We always believed that the Mediterranean was “closed” with an apocalyptic waterfall in Gibraltar. 50 years have qualified it

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If we travel to the past and stand in the Strait of Gibraltar 5.96 million years ago, we would see how it was closed and not open as is the case right now. This is something that left a Mediterranean isolated from the Atlantic, causing its water to begin to evaporate and leaving only a kilometer of salt on the bottom in an event known as the ‘Messinian salinity crisis‘. But now, the method by which it was ‘opened’ to give rise to the Mediterranean that we know today has undergone different nuances. What we knew. Until now it was thought that hundreds of thousands of years after this closure of the strait, a tectonic collapse occurred that reopened the passage, causing what is known as ‘Zanclian Megaflood‘. This was nothing more than a large waterfall in Gibraltar which supposedly filled the entire sea in a matter of months or a few years. In anyone’s mind this may be something great and like a real Hollywood movie, but the reality is that science is beginning to show many doubts that this exists. The origin of the myth. This mental image of the Strait of Gibraltar did not come out of nowhere, but in 2009 the magazine Nature public a study that modeled how the Atlantic would have breached the Gibraltar barrier, carving a deep canyon and pouring water at great speed. Without a doubt this was the perfect scenario to explain the erosive scars on the seabed. Although he was not alone, since later studies were added to this that, although they clarified how the salinity was stabilized after the event, they continued to find clear evidence in the geology that pointed to yes there were flooding episodes very abrupt and a violent flow of water that would make sense with this large waterfall. The problem is that this great phenomenon was oversimplified when complexity is its great characteristic. There are changes. Fifty years after the first hypotheses were raised, a large study published in 2025 pointed out that the connection between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean could have continued to exist for much of this period of time. But this is something that makes us raise another question: how is it possible then that kilometers of salt accumulated on the bottom if the sea did not dry completely? This is where the ‘‘paradox of the Mediterranean’ which suggests that changes in precipitation and the immense contribution of fresh water and sediment from European and African rivers allowed certain water levels to be maintained. That is why that scene of a completely dry Mediterranean is not so true, since only a little water was lost and it effectively made the water very salty. And more tests. Besides, studies on the Arch of Gibraltar demonstrate that the reduction in connectivity was due to a constant tectonic tug-of-war. That is why the pass never became a hermetic wall of solid rock that would break overnight, but rather a system of thresholds that allowed continuous leaks. The reality. After all, the question we must ask ourselves is whether there really was a flood or not, and here science suggests that the truth is somewhere in the middle. The latest evidence tells us that the total disconnection was real, but very brief in geological terms, since when the Atlantic finally regained definitive control over the Mediterranean basin, the filling was undoubtedly rapid and spectacularly rapid, although not necessarily through a single and apocalyptic cataract in Gibraltar. A scene that in the end can be much more boring for many. Images | wirestock In Xataka | 4.5 billion years at a glance: the amazing map of the moon that translates every impact and volcano into fascinating code

China has almost closed the AI ​​gap with the United States. And he has done it with all the sticks in the wheels

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It is difficult to go into detail about the number of dances in which the United States and China are immersed at the moment. The technological war is the umbrella under which the trade warthe attempt of military conflict in the South China Seathe robot racethat of the energy and that of artificial intelligence. Everything is related to each other and, although the United States has exercised an aggressive technological blockadeStanford University is clear that it has not been of much use. And they are clear that the AI ​​gap between the powers is “practically closed.” The report. When a new model or version of AI is presented, those responsible show graphs and tables in which they comment on how good their product is. It is something that always has to be taken with a grain of salt because the idea is to make your product look good – it would be necessary to do more – and, for this reason, an external analysis is needed to show us the complete photo. In this sense, the annual report from Stanford University (in its ninth edition) is one of the best thermometers for taking temperature in the state of AI. One of the conclusions of study is that the Chinese models are very close to the American ones. If at the beginning of the AI ​​boom those from the US set the tone with an abysmal difference, at the beginning of 2025 the distance was greatly reduced to the point that DeepSeek-R1 equaled the best American models on several occasions. Since then, the absolute top model is that of Anthropic, but currently only with a 2.7% advantage over the best Chinese model. Different approaches. In fact, in the graph with this specific analysis you can see how the distance between the two is closed as the performance of the Chinese models increases exponentially in a very short time. And something that the study highlights is that, although the United States continues to lead the battle because it is the one that produces the most top-level AI models and with the most important patents, China leads in volume of both models and production of those patents. Also in other sectors, such as AI in robotics, for example. sticks in the wheels. And the most notable thing is that China has achieved this evolution without having the best tools. As a result of the technological and trade war, it is known that the United States has done everything in its power to prevent cutting-edge technology will reach the hands of the Chinese industry. For years they prohibited American companies (which are the ones that control the AI leader like NVIDIA or AMD) sold their higher-end platforms to Chinese companies, but also They shorted the European ASML and the South Korean Samsung and SK Hynix. Because the US has the aforementioned NVIDIA and Intel, but ASML is the one that manufactures the most advanced machines for making chips, Samsung is one of the world’s leading foundries and leader in high bandwidth memory along with SK Hynix and then there is the Taiwanese TSMC as the largest foundry on the market. Although the US has more recently shaken hands with China in this regard, there are still restrictions on Chinese companies accessing the latest technology. Counterproductive. However, through innovation, government support and a little bit of smuggling, gray market and reverse engineering, companies like SMIC -the Chinese foundry- or Huawei They have managed to develop their advanced equipment and chips. The US has tried to put all the pieces in the wheels of the Chinese industry, but as some reputable voices in the chip sector have pointed out, this has only served for China to directly and advances its technological sovereignty program. That is to say, the vetoes that had such a hard impact at the beginning have served to light the flame of technological development. Huawei is the best example of this, since was ostracized five years ago and recently showed that not only has he recovered, but he has returned in better shape than ever, even becoming one of the main drivers of AI for Chinese industry. Approach. Something that the Stanford AI study also highlights is how the two countries are approaching this segment of AI. And we talk about money, of course. While private investment in AI in the United States reached almost $286 billion, in Europe The investment was almost 21,000 million and in China it was only 12,400 million. This is tricky, since it involves private financing (and this year among just a handful of American companies 650,000 million dollars will be melted) and the state support from the Chinese government should not be underestimated, but beyond investment, American companies have focused on creating the most powerful models regardless of the price while the Chinese approach is to make a Cheap AI to be almost transparent to the user. The goal in both cases is mass adoption, but here the cheaper the product and better integrated into everyday platformsbetter. Taiwan. There are other adjacent topics. For example, China has the energy for the AI ​​erabut The US has the data centers. According to the report, there are more than 5,400 data centers in the American country, which is more than ten times the amount that any other country has, but all this with a curious counterpoint: it is a Taiwanese company that manufactures almost all of its artificial intelligence chips: TSMC. The company is expanding with foundries in the US, but although a conflict that will break those relationships is not in sight, it is evident that depending on a foreign country is not the best strategy for technological independence. That is why they are injecting a lot of money so that Intel be the great foundry, but the reality is that it is still very far from TSMC and, although the US is making attempts with native companies such as Applied Materials, the main partners continue to … Read more

China has closed a huge chunk of sky for 40 days. And all we know is that space is bigger than Taiwan

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In aviation, advisories restricting the use of airspace usually last just a few days and are linked to very specific operations, while areas without altitude limits are reserved on rare occasions due to its impact on air traffic. In strategic regions of the planet, any prolonged alteration in these patterns is often interpreted as more than a simple technical measure. It just happened in China. An unprecedented air closure. China has closed for 40 days (from March 27 to May 6) a huge maritime airspace without offering any clear explanation, delimiting areas through aeronautical warnings which are normally used for short exercises but in this case they are unusually prolonged. To give us an idea, the extension of that space exceeds the size of Taiwan, which makes the measure difficult to fit within operational normality. The official silence and the scale of the movement suggest a deliberate decision that goes beyond simple air traffic management. What these notices really mean. The NOTAM (Notice to Air Missions) are designed to warn of risks or temporary restrictions, but their usual use is far from the current scenario, since they usually last a few days and are linked to specific, clearly identified maneuvers. Therefore, the combination of an extraordinary duration and the absence of explanations points more to a position of sustained activity more than a specific exercise. A priori, this implies that airspace control is being used as an active tool within a broader strategy. A key space on the regional board. counted the wall street journal A few hours ago, the affected areas extended from the Yellow Sea to the East China Sea, covering areas in front of South Korea and Japan and being located in strategic corridors for any military operation in the region. Although they are far from Taiwan (several hundred km), their location does not seem coincidental and fits with scenarios where the air route control would be decisive. The scale of the reserved area reinforces the idea that this is not a limited trial, but something with deeper operational implications. Signs in the midst of a tense context. The closure also coincides with a moment of high tension in the Indo-Pacific, with military movements in Japan, pressure about Taiwan and diplomatic activity relevant in parallel. Not only that. It also occurs after a striking pause on Chinese military flights near Taiwan, followed of its resumptionsuggesting a recalibration of activity. In this context, the measure can be interpreted as a way to send strategic messages without the need for explicit statements. Ambiguity as a strategy. In short, and although there are precedents for similar airspace reservations, they had never been so long nor so widewhich marks a clear difference compared to previous practices. If you like, this ambiguity also allows China to maintain operational flexibility, test scenarios and, ultimately, generate uncertainty among its rivals without publicly committing. The result is a signal that is difficult to interpret, one that, possibly or precisely because of this, multiply your impact strategic. Image | LG Images In Xataka | In silence, China is making giant strides in a race that until now it was not leading: space. In Xataka | The US opted for the quality of the F-35 rather than quantity. China opted for the opposite and it is already a problem

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