country

not be the country in Europe with the most unemployment

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After almost four decades being the European country with one of the worst employment data on the continent, Spain has just witnessed a historic change: Finland has surpassed us as the EU country with the highest unemployment rate in November 2025. According to Eurostat dataFinland recorded an unemployment rate of 10.6%, compared to 10.4% in Spain. The change may seem minuscule (just two tenths), but it is an indicator of something bigger: for the first time since 2013, Spain has stopped occupying first place in this unenviable category. A change of trend. This shift in unemployment figures reflects an interesting paradox. While Spain has improved its labor market figures in recent years, with a sustained drop in unemployment that was only interrupted during the COVID-19 pandemic, Finland has experienced an economic deterioration that has skyrocketed its unemployment. In any case, and despite this change in trend, the figures are not good at all. Both countries remain well above the European Union average, which in November stands at 6.0%, demonstrating that they have a serious structural problem that goes beyond the specific ups and downs. Finland: how a prosperous country has reached the worst unemployment in 15 years. The most striking thing about the Finnish data is the surprising speed of the deterioration of its labor market. The government of the Nordic country implemented reforms a few years ago to reduce public debt, an objective that prioritized job creation. As collected SwissinfoElina Pylkkänen, Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Employment of Finland, speaking to national television YLEstated that “Increased productivity has been sought by cutting costs, rather than expanding operations and investing.” In November 2025, more than 250,000 people found themselves without work in Finland, a figure that represents the highest unemployment in the country since 2009. A fact that has been aggravated by the approval of a regulation more lax for dismissal. Unemployment improves as measured. Although Finland leads the unemployment rate with the seasonally adjusted data (10.6%), there is an important nuance since Eurostat uses trend data for Finland, not seasonally adjusted, so the situation reflected in these data still needs to be consolidated. If you use the seasonally adjusted unemployment data facilitated by the EU, Spain remains at 10.4% while Finland is at 10.1%. However, the unemployment trend for the third quarter of 2025 It already showed the stagnation of the Finnish labor market and the improvement of employment in Spain. Spain: decades of an unemployment problem that does not end. Spain has not arrived at this situation suddenly either. According to the data from the National Statistics Institute (INE), the unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2025 was 10.45%, which demonstrates the persistence of the problem. During the last 39 consecutive monthsSpain has been the country with the highest unemployment rate in the EU, an undesirable leadership that has remained practically without interruption since 2013. He origin of this problem chronic work it’s complexcombining a high rate of temporary contracts with a more limited level of investment in training. This generates an extreme sensitivity of employment to economic cycles: when the economy slows down, employment is the variable that adjusts most quickly, but falls at the same speed when it slows down. The 2008 crisis exemplified this vulnerability, bringing the Unemployment at historic highs. Although Spain has consistently created jobs since then, unemployment rates remain almost double the European average. That Spain loses a title that it has held for almost four decades does not represent a solution to the problem, but rather the confirmation that another country faces a situation even more complicated. In Xataka | The “Spanishization” of Sweden and Finland: youth unemployment is the key for Spain to stop being the EU unemployment champion Image | Pexels (Bulat369)

The CEO of Ryanair is clear about how he would govern a country. We are lucky that it doesn’t.

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Michael O’Leary has spent decades building a reputation based on provocation and irreverence. The CEO of Ryanair has not only built Europe’s largest low-cost airline based on surcharges on your services and open confrontation with clients, unions and regulators. He has also turned each interview into a showcase of extreme opinions that rarely leave anyone indifferent. The last of them, granted to the Financial Timesis especially revealing. In it, O’Leary explains bluntly how he would run a country if he had the chance. To no one’s surprise, his approach is not too far from what has been applying for years at Ryanair: treat everything as a balance of results, eliminate what is considered “inefficient” and assume political wear and tear as inevitable collateral damage. Govern a country as if it were Ryanair. O’Leary doesn’t hesitate when asked about his vision of power. As he explains, if he had to govern a country he would do it exactly the same as his airline. Aggressively cutting public spending and, especially, social benefits. “I would run it like Ryanair, I would cut it big… I would cut benefits big. Get a job!” he says without nuance in the interview. Even when he recognizes that there are people who cannot work, his conclusion remains the same and he would not hesitate to reduce this aid. “Are there people who cannot work at all? Yes, but it would also cut their benefits,” said the controversial manager, who maintains an extreme vision of the minimum State, where the social protection network is perceived more as a cost than as a collective investment. Millionaire politicians to attract talent. The most striking part of the interview comes when O’Leary addresses salary of the politicians. There are no cuts on the horizon. For the Irish manager, one of the big problems in current politics is the lack of talent, and the solution is to pay politicians as if they were senior managers. His idea is that “If you are prime minister or a minister, you should earn at least one million pounds a year”, which is equivalent to 1,152,900 euros at the exchange rate. Very far from the 93,145.20 euros that are assigned as salary to the President of the Government in Spain, or 182,400 euros gross per year who receives the President of the Republic in France. “Politicians must be paid much better, although saying so is political suicide,” giving Singapore as an example, where senior public officials receive very high salaries to attract the most talented profiles in the private sector to politics and reduce incentives for corruption. Zero personal affinity with Trump. O’Leary’s interview Financial Times It also leaves room for his relationship with Donald Trump. O’Leary recounts a direct call from the then-candidate in 2016, in which Trump insisted for almost an hour on increase flights from Ryanair to airports close to its golf courses in Scotland and Ireland. The current president of the United States even offered him accommodation in one of his hotels. O’Leary’s response to Trump’s offer was to avoid at all costs approaching any politician. “No, no way. It’s not my style,” the executive concluded, making it clear that personal harmony with Trump never existed, although both share a very similar vision of the world as a place where everything is negotiated. The same approach you apply to your passengers. O’Leary’s ideas on how to govern are consistent with the decisions he has made at Ryanair during the years who runs Ryanair. From defending the charge for using the bathroom on board to imposing increasingly complex surcharges for luggage or boarding passes. Everything responds to one income maximization logic and reduce costs, even if that means a more hostile experience for the customer. Their inflexibility with refunds is another example. In the interview he remembers the case of a passenger stabbed in an attack on a train in the United Kingdom who tried to cancel a flightbut did not obtain a refund for the ticket. “If the company had offered him one, the doors would have been opened to other demands for reimbursement,” said O’Leary, for whom the company’s efficiency and profitability always come before empathy. An old idea with dubious results. The proposal to manage a country as if it were a company is neither new nor exclusive to O’Leary. Elon Musk already defended openly that approach from the DOGE who led in the first months of the Trump administration. The result was especially negative for the cooperation policy and the operation of the US administration. Trump himself has applied this logic of business negotiation to international and economic policy with the imposition of tariffs as a negotiation weapon. The results, at least so far, do not seem to be giving the best fruits for the United States economy. In Xataka | When Ryanair CEO went to a restaurant he was charged for two extras: “priority seating” and “legroom” Image | Flickr (Polish presidency of the Council of the EU 2025)

a third of the world’s data centers are in a single country

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Currently there are more than 11,000 data centers operating worldwidewhich is said soon. Seeing the huge investment by technology companies, The figure is going to grow exponentially in the coming years. Now, thanks to the interactive map of Data Center Map We know where they are. An overwhelming majority of them are in the northern hemisphere, with one country accounting for almost a third of the total. United States rules USA To no one’s surprise, the country with the largest number of data centers is the United States. Considering that the major cloud infrastructure companies are American, this is also not surprising. In total they have 4,303 data centers spread throughout the territory, but not on a regular basis: there are regions in which the concentration is brutal. In the state of Virginia alone there are a whopping 668 data centers, which is more than Germany, the second country on the list with 494 centers. The weather too We already know that data centers consume a lot of energy and much of it goes into cooling their components. The hotter it is outside, the more it will cost to cool it and therefore the more energy is consumed, as well as water. According to the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers, The ideal temperature for a data center is between 18 and 27 degrees Celsius. Location has a notable impact on electricity and water expenses, which is why technology companies usually choose places with lower temperatures to set up their infrastructure. The south also wants its piece of the pie Indonesia It is striking that, despite the temperature recommendation, there are many data centers in countries where heat is a problem. Rest of World has done an extensive analysis about this phenomenon and estimates that at least 600 facilities are operating in areas outside the optimal range. In fact, following the list of countries with the highest number of data centers, we see that Indonesia is in third place with 184 facilities, followed by Brazil with 196. Both have a average temperature of more than 26 degrees, which means that for much of the year temperatures exceed that threshold. Singapore A striking case is that of Singapore, where the average temperature is more than 28 degrees. It has 78 data centers, a low figure compared to those we have mentioned, but they are concentrated in a very small area, which makes it one of the countries with a higher data center density. Other countries where demand for data centers is increasing are IndiaVietnam and the Philippines, all of them with quite hot climates. The heat challenge Why build in such hot areas? For many countries, data being within their own borders is more important than optimal operating temperature. The risk that arises is that, with the temperatures increasing year after yearwhat is now a manageable situation can become a difficult problem to solve, especially in areas such as Southeast Asia and the Middle East. They say in Rest of World that precisely in Singapore there is an initiative in which more than 20 technology companies and universities participate with one objective: to develop a refrigeration system Specific for humid and hot climates. The most common cooling system is air, but in these areas it is most effective to use a hybrid cooling system that uses air when possible and water when it is hotter. In some areas with extreme temperatures such as the United Arab Emirates, they are even considering build them underground. In China they are testing an even more radical solution: build a data center under the sea. Image | ChatGPT, with data from Data Center Map In Xataka | Aragón is not afraid of AI: it has just approved three more new mega data centers in full commitment to renewables

South Korea just turned on AX K1. “An AI for everyone” that puts the country in the race between China and the US

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The race for artificial intelligence It is the new diamond of the economy of many countries. one to whom they are throwing money as if the world were going to end and that it is having serious implications on issues that affect citizens such as energyhe employment and with one last controversy: the exorbitant price of RAM. The great powers they want to be sovereign in this field, and South Korea has just light his first hyperscale artificial intelligence model. His name could be some son of Elon Musk: AX K1. In short. Developed by the giant SK Telecom, AX K1 is a model that has 519 billion total parameters, although during inference, which is the practical use case, it “only” activates about 33 billion. It’s still accurate (as accurate as an AI can be) but consumes far fewer resources. That 519B – A33B mode is based on the ‘architecture’mixture of experts‘ that selects in real time and dynamically the optimal parameter subsets for each task. These parameters are like the neural connections that allow the model to “learn” during training, and the fact that South Korea already has a hyperscale model is a huge leap in the country’s position within the global picture of AI. Master Model. The design of this model allows stable performance in tasks such as advanced reasoning, mathematics and multilingual comprehension, but there is also an interesting concept: it works as a “Master Model”. These models are the ones that transfer knowledge to smaller models. While the master knows everything, the lighter model is specialized in a specific task. And, although the large model consumes an enormous amount of resources, the “student” that inherits complex capabilities without having to manage so many parameters can run on devices and environments with more limited resources. For example, the AX K1 with those 512B can “transfer its knowledge” to those below the 70B scale, much more specialized and cheaper. “As Korea’s leading AI company, we will continue to push forward our efforts to deliver AI for everyone” – Tae Yoon Kim “AI for everyone”. In less words: the master model allows the expansion of AI to be accelerated because the hyperscale is used for research, but the lower scale is used for more everyday products. And, precisely, that is what SK Telecom seeks: for its IOA to be the basis on which the country operates. In collaboration with different universities, associations and thanks to the memory manufacturer SK Hynix –one of the giants of the sector and part of SK Telecom-, the company hopes it will be the foundation of an “AI for all.” This implies that they will deploy it in their services and, as it is open source, its API can be the basis of other models in university, business and even national ecosystems. In fact, there is already talk of very specific solutions, such as access to AI through text messages and even phone calls, but also multilingual search services and even a boost for AI in video games. And, of course, for humanoid robotics either for education. The great advantage that the consortium that owns AX K1 has is that it is one of the largest groups in the world, with a presence in the semiconductor, telephone, transportation, construction, energy and video game industries. Therefore, you can easily scale this technology. Third in contention. SK Telecom has confirmed that it plans to continue expanding its model with agent-based execution and those 519Bs allow Korea to become “one of the top three artificial intelligence nations in the world,” in the words of Tae Yoon Kimone of those responsible for the model. The group’s intention is to help “consolidate South Korea as one of the world’s top three artificial intelligence nations,” a race that is taking place resources difficult to contextualize in both the United States and China and which is crushing markets like RAM for consumers. Image | SK Telecom In Xataka | The exorbitant deployment of data centers for AI has a new problem: salt caverns

The Basque Country and Navarra exported 35,700 qualified professionals who would like to return. The problem is how and where

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Companies argue that one of their main problems when it comes to filling job vacancies is find qualified workers. However, the data suggests that these qualified profiles are forced to leave the country for find better opportunities jobs outside Spain. In fact, a recent study by Artizarra Foundation and Deusto Business School puts precise figures on this mismatch between the situation of qualified talent and its reality. Thousands of professionals trained in Spanish universities and with consolidated careers outside the country they would be willing to return, but the system does not offer them a complete attractive setting to return to. The talent that left. According to the reportmore than 42,000 young people between 25 and 40 years old, trained in universities and higher educational centers in the Basque Country and Navarra, currently work outside their territory of origin. These are not profiles in transition: they are highly qualified professionals, with training in engineering, STEM disciplinesbusiness management or research. However, the key data from this report is the return intention of these professionals. More than 85% of the participants in the study affirm that they would like to return if they found working and living conditions comparable to those they have achieved abroad. If this scenario materializes, the study estimates that up to 35,700 qualified professionals could be recovered. A career developed abroad. Six out of every ten professionals consulted have already accumulated more than six years working in other countries, which implies that they already have consolidated professional trajectories there, competitive salaries and international work experience that is difficult to replicate in the short term. From an economic point of view, its impact is relevant. We are not talking about talent in training, but about already qualified personnel, with high technical knowledge and productive capacity that have been trained in public schools and universities in Spain, but that Spanish companies have not known how to retain. This lack of job opportunities is the key to their departure. Ability to train talent, not to retain it. The contrast appears when crossing the data from the Deusto Business School report with the Cotec Foundation Talent Mapwhich analyzes 55 indicators on talent creation, attraction and retention. In its latest edition in 2023, and maintaining the same territorial framework as the Deusto study, the Basque Country reaches 66.4 points, well above the national average (49.1 points) and only behind Madrid (67.7 points). The conclusions drawn from these data are clear. The Basque Country stands out for the quality of your higher educationtechnical qualification and productive environment. The educational system works well in training talent. The problem comes when that training period ends and that talent compares what you find in your country with what is offered outside. They do not return for the same reason they left. The reasons for the flight of talent are recurring: better salaries, greater professional projection, access to cutting-edge projects and, in the case of scientific profiles, more opportunities to develop a stable research career. As and how they point According to the authors of the Deusto Business School report, these factors do not disappear when the return of that talent is considered. On the contrary. Accumulated experience raises expectations and makes those reasons more visible. The study by Artizarra and Deusto identifies barriers that go beyond employment and connect with structural problems common to an entire generation. Return yes, but where. The price and conditions of housing is one of the main reasons that slows the return of this talent. Returning implies assuming high prices, both for rent as for home purchaseand face it with salaries that do not always compensate for the difference compared to other European markets. For those who have already built a life outside, the opportunity cost is high. The second major barrier to return is the quality of employment. Not so much the absence of work for these qualified profiles, but the difficulty for local companies to match salaries, professional autonomy and recognition of talent. The comparison with international markets is inevitable. A paradox that remains open. The study data supports the spirit of this talent to return because it has not separated itself from its territory and maintains its roots. Most want to return. However, as the authors of the study point out, the biggest problem is an environment that allows doing so without giving up professional and life expectations. From an economic point of view, recovering part of those 35,700 profiles would be an investment that is difficult to match for a labor market that affirms that the shortage of skilled labor It is the stone that prevents them from moving forward. As Joe Biden once said: “Pay Them More“. In Xataka | Spain has such good nurses that it exports them to other countries. The problem is that public health needs 100,000 Image | Unsplash (Philipp hubert)

We already know which country had the highest internet speed in the world in 2025: Spain

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How has the internet changed in 2025? It’s too broad a question, but if there’s anyone trying to answer it, it’s Cloudflare. The company has published an extensive summary of the most important thing this year and among the numerous conclusions there is one that has surprised us: Spain is the country with the fastest internet connection in the world. Spain at full speed. in the studio stands out that Europe was the clear leader in terms of the best internet connection speeds. Here Spain was also the protagonist, because it was the country with the highest download speed in 2025, with 318 Mbps on average (25 Mbps more than in 2024). It was also the best in terms of upload speed, with 206 Mbps (13 more than in 2024). A possible person responsible. Cloudflare indicates that the reason why Spain leads this unique ranking is probably in the program UNICO-Broadband (Universalization of Digital Infrastructures for Cohesion). This initiative has been going for years and the current goal was to achieve an infrastructure capable of providing services at symmetrical speeds of at least 300 Gbps, scalable to 1 Gbps, and achieving 100% coverage in 2025. Achieving everything is almost impossible —Hello, rural Spain— but that effort certainly seems to be paying off. Spain also more than meets the metric of latency under load: even on intense connections, response times are very good. We also enjoy excellent latency. Data download and upload speeds are important, but so is the latency of the connections: the lower it is, the more fluid the communication is, especially in video conferencing, gaming and streaming applications. Here Iceland takes the cake with only 13 ms, but Spain is still among the best with 19 ms. Things are even better in the so-called latency under load, which measures how long it takes a signal to go and return (the ping) when the internet connection is under intense load (playing online, watching 4K videos). In that metric, much more realistic than “resting” latency, Spain is in third place with 89 ms, a truly remarkable figure. Years as leaders. These results may surprise, but in reality Spain already led these rankings in past editions of Cloudflare’s annual summary. It happened in 2024and also in 2023which is undoubtedly great data that shows that despite the problems that may arise, most users have access to an enviable infrastructure. More traffic than ever. Global internet traffic grew by 19% in 2025, and the person most responsible for that traffic was the Googlebot that searches the internet to index it and make it easier for us to find all types of data in the Google search engine. Although crawlers from AI companies are gaining ground, they are still a long way from Google’s activity, and with good reason: all types of websites want to be “crawlable” in order to be “findable.” The same does not happen with AI. The higher the ratio, the less traffic these chatbots send to content websites. Anthropic is the worst here, and Google, of course, the best by far. What happens to AI in 2025. There are many metrics related to AI this year. For example, Anthropic is the platform that sends the least traffic to content websites (ahead are OpenAI and especially Perplexity). This also causes platform crawling bots (GPTBot, ClaudeBot, PerplexityBot) to be “blocked” in the robots.txt files of many websites to prevent them from collecting data without permission to train their models. Google continues to reign. The list of most popular internet services Not much has changed around the world: Google leads that ranking, and is followed by Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Instagram. It’s probably more interesting to see what data Cloudflare is reporting on the most popular generative AI services. There the winner is not a surprise (ChatGPT), but the order of the rest of the contenders is striking, because they are then followed by Claude, Perplexity, Gemini and Character.ai. Grok is in ninth place and DeepSeek in tenth, for example. That list will surely be very different in 2026. Image | Sasha Pleshco | Stephen Phillips In Xataka |

from 30 to 60 euros per month to travel throughout the country

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Almost like Groundhog Day, the announcement of a public transport pass to move around the country hits the headlines. He does so because Pedro Sánchez, in his press conference this morning, announced that in a month this single ticket for all of Spain will be active, which was already advanced in January of this same year and about which there had been no further news. All over Spain. It will be approved in the last Council of Ministers of this year, as Pedro Sánchez has pointed outPresident of the Government, at a press conference this morning. The price will be 60 euros per month but will be reduced to 30 euros for those under 26 years of age. In his presentation, Sánchez confirmed that this pass will be available to travel on Cercanías and Media Distancia trains and on public buses. That is, high speed is out. Some doubts. The Government has indicated that it will be available in “the second half of January” and that it will be used, as we said, for the aforementioned trains and buses. However, in the appearance, Sánchez indicated that “he calls on the Autonomous Communities to progressively join all regional and local public service networks.” What does it mean? Although the Government has to give more details, everything indicates that the holders of these passes will only be able to travel on the Renfe trains that provide public services (including here Cercanías and Media Distancia) and the buses that also provide these public services defined by the State. Therefore, it is not explicitly mentioned but everything indicates that municipal buses or metro or tram services, dependent on the cities or, in any case, on the Autonomous Communities, are excluded from this subscription. The same happens with the bus services provided by the latter. Aids. In his statement, Pedro Sánchez assured that aid for public transport will be maintained. This aid has been active almost all year. They were announced in the last days of 2024 specifying that would cost 1.6 billion euros. A few days after their application, they fell because the Congress of Deputies did not approve an Omnibus Decree which included aid. Weeks later it was approved again after a new negotiation. The point is that the aid was only maintained where the Autonomous Communities and municipalities confirmed that they co-financed the user aid. And the State only maintained the discount on the price of season tickets at 50% if the municipal or regional entity contributed 20% of that reduction. The question is whether these aids will now be part of the negotiation so that the passenger continues to access the discounts. It remains to be seen whether the Government will use it as a pressure measure to get regional or municipal public transport to join the single ticket for all of Spain if they want to continue receiving aid to lower the ticket price for their travelers. Background. Although it has been announced and a specific date has been set for its arrival, it is not the first time that the Government mentions the entry into force of this ticket. In January of this yearÓscar Puente, Minister of Transport, already indicated that the intention in 2025 was to define this new transport pass and have it prepared for its activation in 2026. The measure is no exception in Europe, which has seen how this type of proposals gained strength with the Covid-19 crises and the economic damage caused by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In Germany this ticket has become available for 9 euros and after dying of success It has ended up settling at 58 euros. Austria has a very similar subscription although in this case there are no restrictions on the chosen means of transport. Its price is 79 euros per month and a subscription of 110 euros/month allows you to travel with up to three children. The main doubts that have been raised with this type of transport passes were collected Financial Times. And it is not entirely clear that increased travel will take drivers off the road. They point out in the economic newspaper that the increase in journeys was due to greater mobility of those who already used the train but that after the first call effect, drivers stayed in their cars. Photo | European Union and Juan Enrique Giraldi In Xataka | The most pacifist city in Germany lived off its legendary train factory. Now they will make it from a gigantic tank factory

The world’s rare earth reserves, laid out in this graph showing the brutal dominance of a single country

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The rare earths They are neither earth nor are they rare. It is a set of 17 chemical elements that have become the lever that moves both geopolitics like practically any technology and energy sector today. As important as knowing how to produce it is knowing where the reserves are, and in both things there is a name that dominates the international scene: China. And in this graph we can see which countries have the upper hand. Or “the country”, rather. China, prominent name. Prepared by Visual Capitalist from the data of the United States Geological Survey -USGS-, the graph is very clear when it comes to visualizing the estimated rare earth reserves. China has more than twice as much as the next on the list, which in turn has three times as much as the third. The Asian giant would have reserves of 44 million metric tons, Brazil with 21 million and India with 6.9 million. Far on the list are countries like Australia (5.7 million), Russia (3.8 million), Vietnam (3.5 million), the United States (1.9 million) and Greenland (1.5 million) if we take into account those that exceed one million. The crazy thing is that the world total is estimated at about 92 million metric tons, so China has approximately 50% of the reserves. Importance. Rare earth elements are present in practically anything we can imagine. From the most subtle things such as smartphone elements or the magnets in the headphones that we use every day to the most complex things such as space telescopes, aerospace technology or guidance systems for military radars and advanced weaponry. They are also crucial to manufacturing the elements of energy change: batteries both of electric cars as accumulators for renewable energy and the internal systems themselves of both solar panels like wind turbines. And there’s something important here: you can have reservations, but if you don’t process them, those reservations are worthless. Rare earths as a weapon. The problem is that these rare earth elements do not appear isolated in nature, but rather attached to other minerals. It is necessary to separate them, something that is done through an extremely expensive and, above all, polluting refining process. Due to Western environmental policies, for years we relegate that task to a China with a more lax regulation (although it has been changing recently), and with the tariffs imposed by Donald Trump To the Asian country we have seen how China has taken advantage of his position. Same as with Soy. They have the technology and knowledge for processing rare earths, and they have been responding to the new tariffs, cutting off the supply of metals and elements that the west needs to create weapons or to make that technological paradigm shift through renewables. The West, for years, financed its own strategic and technological vulnerability. Even the western mines, such as Mountain Pass in the United Statessent his material to China to refine it there. Examples of affected productions? Suzuki had to stop production of the Swift due to a shortage of components, the European automobile industry has also shouted to the sky and Elon Musk does not have the money to manufacture his robots. making friends. As China has turned rare earths into its most powerful lever of power, the West has had to move and different countries have undertaken missions to search for new rare earth deposits. It is a strategy that is bearing fruit, finding promising deposits in Spain, Norway, Greenland either Japan. It is also being studied how to restart the rare earth producing arm in the West, although the difficulties are there both due to the technique and, above all, due to the restrictions on emissions. Searching under the stones. And that is a big problem that In Spain we are experiencing first-hand. There are several deposits found in our country, but due to this problematic and polluting extraction, mining projects have encountered opposition from neighborhood platforms and city councils. An example is Torrenueva, in an important site found in Campo de Montiel. And that is why there are several projects and research underway that are not favoring the refining of rare earths, but the recycling of these elements to, as far as possible, stop depending so much on a country that has a monopoly both for reserves and production capacity and for contracts with the most powerful mines on the other side of the world. For example, that of Serra Verde that sells exclusively to China until 2027. In Xataka | Sweden believes it has the largest reserve of rare earths in Europe: one more step towards our independence from China

kill all the wild boars that were in the country

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In summer 2020, German authorities found the first wild boar infected with African swine fever. The world was distracted by anemia, but the global pork market shook. Germany was the largest pork producer in Europe and, if we had learned anything from the disease, it is that its voracity knows no limits. With the plague in the heart of the Union, it was a matter of time before it reached everywhere and, however, one small country said no: Denmark. 68 kilometers. That is the length of the border between Denmark and Germany. It seems like a purely colorful piece of information, but in this context it has a very concrete meaning: in Christiansborg they came to the conclusion that the spread of the virus could be stopped. In fact, the Danish government had already started to build a fence one and a half meters high to stop the intrusion of wild boars into the country in 2019. Detections of infected animals in Poland began to make them nervous. However, they quickly realized that it was not enough. And they decided to eradicate them one by one. It is true that in the Danish case this was also relatively acceptable. After all, although eradicating a species is difficult, the Scandinavian country was only home to just over a hundred specimens. The effort was extensive and exhaustive, but by the end of 2021 the government announced that the species was exterminated. In December 2020 they had finished with the last copy, number 157. Denmark is, in fact, one of the countries where the swine fever virus has not yet been detected. Is it viable to do it in Spain? The truth is that no. Spain, according to the Hunting Resources Research Institutehas 1,200,000 wild boars roaming its mountains. It is no longer that the effort necessary to exterminate them would be immense, but that the socioeconomic consequences would also be immense. Dozens of ecosystems would be unbalanced and we would enter a more than swampy terrain. However, things can be learned from Denmark’s decision. Above all, when we talk about this type of illness, the measures must be drastic and proactive. We have been waiting for this to happen for years and we have been extremely lucky that it has happened days after signing the agreement with China that allowed us to ‘regionalize’ the outbreak. Otherwise, the problem would have been enormous. 8,000 million. That is the number, which according to expertsis at stake due to the outbreak of African swine fever in the Sierra de Collsarola. And, for now, it is not at all clear whether we will be able to get out of this quagmire unscathed. Image | Markus Winkler | Danny Kroon In Xataka | 14 dead wild boars have become the greatest threat to Spanish livestock farming in 30 years. And all for a sandwich

Japan is the only country in the world where the green traffic lights are blue. And the reason is called “aoshingō”

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Red, amber and green. The three colors of traffic lights around the world. All over the world? No, some particular Japanese traffic lights resist today and forever… the Vienna Convention on Traffic Signs and Signals to which more than 50 States are adhered. Although there are curious absences in it, such as those of the United States or, of course, Japan. This regulatory framework was signed for the first time in 1968promoted by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations. The text reviewed previous regulations with the aim of homogenizing traffic in as many countries as possible. The last review, in fact, is from 2003 and it addressed the modernization of some signs or the priority rules on roundabouts. The intention is that what we understand in Spain as a Stop is also the same in France or Germany. And so it is, in fact, because all of Europe subscribes to said text. But the most striking absences, such as that of Japan, give rise to curious anecdotes. Like finding traffic lights where the priority of passage is not granted with green, it is applied when the light turns blue. Blue, I love you blue And if you travel to Japan and plan to drive, there is one detail that you should not overlook (beyond the fact that you drive on the left, remember): the green light on some traffic lights is blue. Or turquoise, more accurately. The origin must be found in the language itself. The Japanese did not have a specific word to refer to green. To mention it they referred to the word “Ao”. The problem is that “Ao” It refers to a wide spectrum of colors and among them, as you can imagine, blue or greenish blue or turquoise. Some sources suggest that the word “Midori”, which refers specifically to the color green, became popular during World War II for a purely practical matter when it comes to differentiating both colors. However, a good part of society continued to refer to green as “Ao” and, in fact, it continues to be part of words that are applied exclusively to define green objects, such as aoshingō…which is actually the official word for the green traffic light even though it doesn’t specifically mean green. In 1960, Japan signed its own Traffic Law where this term was collected to talk about the traffic light. This law is, therefore, prior to the aforementioned Vienna Convention and remained intact until 1973 when a ministerial order ended up specifying that the traffic light It had to be as blue as possible within the greenas a compromise measure between maintaining the traffic lights that were already installed and approaching international conventions. The result is that the oldest traffic lights have a more intense blue and the most modern ones have a green tone with slight blue nuances that can remind us of turquoise. However, they are not exactly green because the term “Ao” works, as we said, for both blue and green. Photo | Yuya Sekiguchi and Derch In Xataka | Japan needs solutions to its great demographic drama. He is looking for them on a bus

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