disappeared

three million people have disappeared

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Three million people are (more or less) the population of Armenia, Puerto Rico either Mongolia. Also the hole that they just found each other Japanese authorities reviewing their national census, a task they carry out every five years to get a precise idea of ​​their demographics. The last time they had done this task, in 2020, there were 126.1 million residents, including the native and foreign population. Now the figure barely exceeds 123 million, which represents a 2.45% decrease in five years and (even worse) it takes the Japanese census back to the size it was approximately in 1989. The question that more and more people are asking is: Does this decline have a basis or will the projections that predict that the census will fall to 87 million of inhabitants in 2070? Getting deeper (and darker). That is the simplest and most graphic way to describe the demographic hole which Japan has been dealing with for decades. Although all your efforts To reverse the population drain (and there have been many), the Japanese census does not stop losing weight. The last alarm signal is left the five-year report on population and households from the Statistics Bureau of Japan (SBJ), which shows that in 2025, 123,049,524 people resided in the country, including both natives and settled foreigners. Is it bad data? Worse. It’s terrible. To begin with, there are 3,096,575 fewer people than those counted in the last census, in 2020. In case this drop of 2.45% was not enough, the review of the files of the SBJ leave an even more disastrous reading: it supposes the third consecutive fall and worsens the decline recorded between 2015 and 2020, when it had already been noted a ‘puncture’ of 0.7%. Since Japanese officials began taking the census in 1920, they have never documented a decline as pronounced as the one in 2025. 45 of 47. The problem also extends to the vast majority of the territory. The SBJ census shows that, of Japan’s 47 prefectures, 45 lost population in the last five years. In some cases with drops as pronounced as those of Hokkaido, which hosts 239,000 fewer residents than in 2020, Shizuoka (164,000) or Hyogo (141,000). Other territories that had gained population in 2020 have now joined the red list. At the opposite pole are Tokyo and Okinawawhich respectively gained 199,000 and 1,000 inhabitants. Moving away from 2008. The SBJ figures leave few positive readings. Not only do they move Japan further and further away from the data from 2008, when it reached its population peak with 128 million of inhabitants. The latest censuses (and especially their trend) show that the country is gradually meeting the worst forecasts of the National Population Research Institute (IPSS), which estimates that by 2070 the number of residents will have dropped to 87 million and the population over 65 years of age will represent almost 40% of the census. The problem is not the loss of inhabitants or aging itself, but the implications that this has for the economy, health, defense and (in general) the Japanese welfare state. There are those who warn that the loss of residents is already it’s taking its toll to the country’s economy, which among other things has encountered millions of empty housesschools no activity forced to convert into factories or the closure (and bankruptcy) of health centers. “It’s at the forefront”. The most serious thing is not that Japan is losing population, it is that it is doing so despite all the Government’s efforts to tackle the country’s real problem: alarming collapse of their birth rate. The latest official data on the subject, from just a few months agoshow that the number of births has fallen to reach minimums that the authorities did not expect to see until 2042. Against this backdrop, Japan seems to be left with only the resource of immigration, which clashes with the boom of political formations that advocate the opposite. Although its increase In recent years, it is estimated that foreigners represent less than 3% of the population. “Japan has reached a point where this type of decline is not reversible in the short or medium term,” warns in The New York Times James Raymo of Princeton University. “We just won’t see mass immigration.” The Japanese case is interesting because, remember, it does not reflect a trend exclusive to the country. “More and more nations in Asia and other parts of the world will experience similar levels of demographic decline. Japan is simply ahead of the curve and has been in this situation for much longer.” The exception: Tokyo. The most curious thing (or not) is that while most of the country is depopulated and aging, in the Tokyo area the trend is diametrically opposite. The SBJ census also shows that in the metropolitan area of Tokyo The resident population has increased to around 37 million of people, 30% of the entire country. In fact, in the capital the population density more than multiplies the Japanese average: about 6,400 people per square kilometer, while in Japan as a whole it barely exceeds 300. Images | Jezael Mendoza (Unsplash) 1 and 2 In Xataka | Japan no longer knows what to do to make Japanese people have children. So he’s putting free daycare all over the country

The production of this Disney movie was so chaotic that a documentary detailing how it was made disappeared

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In 1994, the director of ‘The Lion King’ had his next big movie ready: a musical epic about the Inca Empire, with Sting composing the songs and Owen Wilson in the cast. Six years later, what ended up hitting theaters was ‘The Emperor and His Follies’, something radically different: an emperor turned into a llama, a good-natured peasant and meta jokes that broke the fourth wall. Animated on the fly from an unfinished script, all to meet the release deadlines promised to McDonald’s. A real debacle recorded in a completely inaccessible documentary. The successor to ‘The Lion King’. Development of the film began in 1994 under the title ‘Kingdom of the Sun‘ (The Kingdom of the Sun), as an epic and dramatic adventure loosely inspired by ‘The Prince and the Pauper’ by Mark Twain. Its director was Roger Allers, who was coming off the biggest hit in the studio’s recent history, ‘The Lion King’. Allers introduced then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner, a story set at the height of the Inca civilization. What was it about? The premise was ambitious: an arrogant emperor swaps places with a peasant who physically resembles him, while the villainous Yzma wants to destroy the sun to obtain eternal youth. For the soundtrack, following the model of Elton John’s success in ‘The Lion King’Allers signed Sting, who had already written several songs linked to the original plot. The team traveled to Machu Picchu in 1996 to learn about Inca architecture and Andean landscapes. It was exactly the type of production that Disney had been making since ‘The Little Mermaid’: epic, musical and very, very expensive. So much for Disney. After the disappointing box office results of ‘Pocahontas’ and ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’, two films loaded with dramatic elements, studio executives believed that the project was too ambitious and serious, and that it needed more comedy. The solution was to hire Mark Dindal as co-director, and he was tasked with lightening the tone. Allers continued working on his dramatic epic while Dindal pushed toward the absurd. A test screening in 1998 revealed that schizophrenic tone, in two mutually incompatible directions. One of Disney’s executives threatened producer Randy Fullmer with canceling the project. The McDonald’s problem. Added to all this was an extra problem: the film had to be finished in time to be released in the summer of 2000, since the promotional agreements with McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and other companies had already been signed and depended on that date being met. Allers acknowledged that production was delayed, but asked for between six months and a year of extension to solve the problems. It was denied. The director resigned, leaving Disney with at least $20 or $30 million already spent on animation. And no movie for the summer of 2000. Eisner gave Fullmer two weeks to prove the movie was salvageable. If not, the project was closed. Dindal took control alone. He completed ‘The Emperor and His Follies’ in a year and a half, a record for a Disney production, and with an unusual need in the world of animation: it was produced without a finished script. Also in this process the cast changed: Owen Wilson was replaced by John Goodman, because the character of Pacha stopped being a double of the emperor to become a burly family man from the countryside. The hilarious character of Kronk, one of the film’s great discoveries, did not exist until the end: he was added during emergency rewrites. The documentary that Disney doesn’t want you to see. Sting had agreed to compose the songs on one condition: that his wife, documentary filmmaker Trudie Styler, could film the production process. The resulting documentary‘The Sweatbox’, covers the long and troubled production. The title comes from the screening rooms at Disney studios, known for lacking air conditioning. ‘The Sweatbox’ premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2002 and quickly disappeared from circulation: Disney has never released it on DVD or streaming. The documentary includes, among other moments, the call in which Fullmer tells Sting that his eight songs have been eliminated. Only two Sting songs survived on the final soundtrack. The documentary has been compared to ‘Hearts in Darkness’, the making-of of ‘Apocalypse Now’, for its portrait of the human cost in a decaying creative process. And of course, there is a copy of ‘The Sweatbox’ circulating unofficially on the internet. Poor results. The film ended up grossing $169 million worldwide on a budget of $100 million, a disappointing figure compared to Disney’s other hits during the 1990s. The film found some success in the domestic market and became the best-selling DVD of 2001, which would spawn a television series (‘Kuzco: An Emperor in School’) and a direct-to-video sequel (‘The Emperor’s Crazy 2: Kronk’s Big Adventure’). The footprint. Curiously, the influence of ‘The Emperor and His Follies’ is deeper than it seems. The film’s non-stop parody humor anticipated ‘Shrek’, released just a year later, and other animated films with which DreamWorks Animation would find success in subsequent years. This film is quite a visionary and remains one of the most unclassifiable films of modern Disney. In Xataka | The first cartoons were flat and unappealing, until Walt Disney invented something: the multiplane camera.

When the police investigated the crime of the founder of Mango, a motive had disappeared. Then they looked at their son’s car.

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Tuesday May 19, Jonathan Andic is ordered to go to prison. It has been ordered by the Judge of the Courts of Instance and Investigation of Martorell who are handling the case of the death of Isak Andic, founder of Mango and one of the richest people in Spain. The order arrives after evaluating the information provided by the Mossos d’Esquadra. A report that points to the poor relationship between father and son, “the obsession that Jonathan Andic has with money”, in the words of the judge, and “the emotional manipulation to achieve his economic goals” that the son would have used against the father. But there are also indications that point beyond mere personal relationships. The researchers They assure that the footprints collected on the path of the Monserrat mountain, next to Barcelona, ​​where Isak Andic fell do not agree with a fortuitous slip. Nor are the version changes understood regarding the use that the founder of Mango would have made of his own mobile phone. And, as always, there is the matter of geolocation. But this time the Mossos d’Esquadra are not targeting the cell phone. They point to a much larger and more forceful object: one called Mercedes-AMG G63. Not just the mobile phone If the ubiquitous true crime podcasts or television series have taught us anything, it is that the mobile phone is a source of problems when it comes to murdering a person or disposing of a corpse. The persistent location of the telephone, either due to the use of the Internet or the search for antennas to connect to to access the mobile telephone network, has become one of the first threads to pull when studying one of these cases. In the case involving Isak Andic it has been no less. That is why the police report refers to the replacement of an iPhone 14 owned by the son of the founder of Mango with an iPhone 16 Pro after an alleged robbery during a lightning trip to Ecuador between March 24 and 26, 2025 when the media reported on the reopening of the investigations. The inherited content of the old phone was deleted and agents have found no evidence of such theft. However, this time it was not the location of the phone that made the agents suspicious. In their report they point out that they can prove that Jonathan went to the hiking route on up to three occasions in the days prior to the alleged murder. And for this they use their Mercedes-AMG G63. They point in three directions. The first is that the alleged visits coincide in days with the car entering and leaving the city of Barcelona, ​​comparing the license plate with the surveillance system of the low emissions zone. Also because the traffic cameras of Collbató, the municipality where the natural enclave is located, also recorded the passage of the vehicle. And, also, by the IMEI of the car. What is the IMEI of our car? Connections to mobile networks on a data plan have their own serial number. Each phone has its own and information on when and where it connects to the Internet or telephone networks can be tracked by police officers. But not only phones are identified with a IMEI. Modern cars also have one if they are connected to the mobile networksince they have the modem that guarantees said connection. Nowadays it is common for a new car to come with a data plan and a SIM card with a duration stipulated by contract. The duration is usually years and, after the stipulated time, the client decides whether or not to renew the plan. This data plan is what allows, for example, to use the car navigator with real-time traffic directions. And it is also the one that in an electric car allows us to know the occupancy rate of the chargers or manage certain functions of the car, such as air conditioning or opening doors, from a mobile application. Just like a mobile phone, these recurring connections made by a car with an active SIM leave a digital trail. And that digital trace is associated with the IMEI with which each vehicle is identified. The result is clear: the police only need the operation of a car equipped with this service to detect where the vehicle moved and at what time. This system should not be confused with the eCall security service of our cars. Since 2018all new cars are required to be sold with the eCall system, a service that allows the driver contact emergency services in the event of an accident. This is activated automatically if a collision is detected but can also be started by the driver himself. At that moment, an attempt is made to establish a call but, whether there is coverage or not, the car also launches a geolocation signal using the European Galileo system so that the emergency services can have a clear idea of ​​the location in the shortest possible time. This system, obviously, has its own IMEI but it is only activated when the system is started, either with automatic activation when the accident is detected or manual activation. Meanwhile, the system is inactive and therefore the car cannot be tracked. Besides, the European Union makes clear that the data saved is done so temporarily because the memory “will only be allowed to retain the last three locations of the vehicle to the extent strictly necessary to determine the current location of the vehicle and the direction of travel at the time of the event.” The regulations also make it clear that the information can only be delivered to third parties with the prior consent of the interested party and that no company can have access to the data if no emergency call occurs. Therefore, the IMEI referred to by the Mossos d’Esquadra refers to the car’s modem but they would not be able to access it if the car did not have … Read more

NASA has captured how an entire lake in Canada disappeared in just 15 days. Science has a disturbing explanation

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Seen and unseen. In the spring of 2025 something happened in central Quebec: an entire lake disappeared in a matter of days. Lac Rouge, a 1.4 square kilometer body of water located in the Lac-Walker region of Sept-Rivières, a popular hunting and fishing area in the Waswanipi Cree First Nationdisappeared. It did not dry out little by little as a result of a prolonged lack of rain as for example happens to Moroccoit was something abrupt and silent. What you see on these lines is the before and after photographed by the Landsat 9 satellite NASA from space with a margin of one year (June 2024 on the left and June 2025 on the right). That a lake disappears is scientifically interesting, as is the list of suspects: the shores have soft geology, the terrain has been suffering from forest fires for years, there is a lot of logging and also melting ice. Where is the trick. What happened to the lake. The first sign was a destroyed road, as reported by local people who used it to move around the area: the access road was completely destroyed by water, as NASA explains. CBC echoes the subsequent investigationwhich revealed that the land surrounding the lake had collapsed and that Lac Rouge had been emptied. The lake had water on April 29, 2025 but was completely dry on May 14. I mean, It dried in just 15 days. At that time, the local administration released a statement alerting of the event. But the water didn’t disappear, it just moved around. Instead of following its usual outlet channel, it opened a new channel to the northeast, crossing a 10-kilometer chain of lakes and wetlands until it reached Lac Doda. If you look at the after photo, you will see that it left a mark in the form of light brown sediments. The explanation. Science explains this mechanism called outburst flooda flash overflow flood: a portion of the lake shore suddenly gave way and water quickly escaped through that gap instead of overflowing into existing river channels. He NASA Earth Observatory confirmed that it was the east bank that gave way, originating that new route. This phenomenon is relatively common in lakes of glacial origin with unstable ice barriers, but rare in a lake like Lac Rouge, whose barrier is made of soft sedimentary soil. The underlying physics is common in basin hydrology: a coniferous forest absorbs between 20% and 50% of the rain it receives, according to this meta-study published in Nature. If there is no vegetation cover, the water reaches the soil directly, saturates it and weakens those banks. Hydrologist Younes Alila, from the University of British Columbia, summarizes it like this: Any ground disturbance (e.g. fire, logging or forestry) raises the water table and keeps it high for longer, increasing the risk of extreme flooding. There is no Lake Ninio left, only Masibón. POT Why is it important. Because Lac Rouge is not an isolated case: it is a warning. Climate change is making fires more frequent and melting more irregular, as the IPCC climate change expert group explains in his AR6while intensive logging continues to weaken soils. The combination of both factors in basins with soft geology favors the appearance of these poorly studied and difficult to anticipate events, as warned by a study on the boreal forest and climate change published in Springer Nature. In this case, the direct blow is suffered by the indigenous communities. More than 600 communities depend on the Canadian boreal forest for their livelihood, according to the Boreal Conservation Foundationand events like this disappearance drastically alter the territory’s ecosystems and activities, such as hunting and fishing, from one day to the next. The list of suspects. Considering these risk factors, Lac Rouge had all the cards: The fire. In 2019 and 2023, areas near the lake burned. The 2023 fire was Quebec’s worst in more than a century: it burned 4.5 million hectares, according to this study published in the Canadian Journal of Forest Research. The Guardian echoes from the Quebec Cree forestry department, which concludes that those fires eliminated much of the mature vegetation cover in the Lac Rouge basin, including that bank that gave way. Furthermore, the fires can reduce infiltration and increase runoff. Intensive logging. After the fires, logging companies obtained wood by scarifying the land to facilitate replanting, which worsened even more the hydrological degradation of the basin. The thaw of 2025. The winter of 2025 snowed more than normal and the thaw was rapid, generating a volume of water that those weak banks could not contain. Natural or provoked? The Quebec government classified it as a natural event and did not investigate further. Their argument: Their own forestry studies say that if less than half of a watershed’s forest is damaged, the risk to rivers and lakes is minimal, as Sigma Earth collects. International experts and the Cree community do not accept it: these studies do not take into account that in Lac Rouge the damage accumulated in layers or that climate change makes all this happen with more frequency and intensity, according to the IPCC in its Sixth Assessment Report. It was probably a combination of everything: soft soil and weak shoreline set the stage, rapid snowmelt was the spark, and decades of logging and fires made the system much more fragile than it otherwise would have been. As points out Sigma EarthLac Rouge can be a warning of what is to come if the way this territory is managed is not changed. In Xataka | Chronicle of an announced collapse: the NASA map that shows how quickly Mexico City is sinking In Xataka | The Earth’s seabed has always been a mystery: an amazing 3D map reveals it in unprecedented detail Cover | POT

10,000 tons of almonds have disappeared in Granada in a single night. It is a warning of what is about to happen.

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On the night of March 30, 2026, about 30 million euros they vanished. The figures They are from COAGbut (taking into account the precedents from the beginning of the decade and the growth of almond cultivation) they sound plausible: the region that concentrates the largest almond production in the country, lost around 10,000 tons due to a late frost. And it’s not even the most interesting thing. What the hell is up with almonds? With 70,000 hectares dedicated to almonds, the Granada Altiplano has become the national epicenter of the production of this fruit. Paradoxically, we might add. Because it is something very rare: there are not many more cases of crops that do not stop growing on the surface while their vulnerability increases to levels never seen before. A vulnerability that, of course, is not limited to March 30. Because that would be the easy thing to do: blame everything on cold air intrusion from the north that knocked down the thermometers of the Altiplano (-5 in Galera and Baza, -4 in Puebla de Don Fabrique or -3 in Castril) just at the moment of greatest sensitivity of the almond tree. However, that is only part of the story. Of course, frost during flowering and fruit setting is a problem. But in the last five years, the region has suffered 3 frosts of this type and the area of ​​almond trees does not stop growing. That is to say, the vulnerability is deeper and exceeds the climate risks: we are talking about the advance of the almond wasp, insufficient agricultural insurance, the tariff asymmetry with our main competitor (California) and, of course, the enormous pressure that international prices exert on farmers. And what happened to the harvest? According to COAGpreliminary estimates draw a very complicated scenario: between 8,000 and 12,000 tons lost, an economic impact of between 25 and 40 million euros and the complete loss of all production in the most affected areas. The assessment of the Junta de Andalucía and the Ministry is missing, but the figures serve to measure the destruction. Hunger with the desire to eat. Spanish almond production It was already affected by the drought and none of the explanations are surprising (late rains, winds that make pollination difficult, hailstorms in April and fungi derived from humidity). However, in 2025, things seemed to turn around and the campaign was positive. But it was a statistical artifact: production grew by 5%but the productive surface had increased by 10. That is to say, the situation was still complicated. And the data does not stop changing. It is enough to keep in mind that 15% of all the almond trees planted in Spain are not yet productive to understand that the crop has been experiencing a boom for years that does not end (and that may end by give us some displeasure). What does the almond tree need to avoid becoming the new lemon? That is, so that we are not forced to have to start ripping them out in a few years. And the answer is also simple: what you need is a better safety net, a better way of looking to the future, a better way of moving in the market. I have said it many times: In agriculture, Spain is a giant with feet of clay. And the almond tree is the best example that this is still the case and we have enormous difficulties to change it. Image | Marcia Cripps In Xataka | Spain is the second largest almond producer in the world. Tariffs or not, farmers are already in trouble

A planet has just disappeared. NASA’s Hubble telescope has captured a violent cosmic event that changes everything

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Investigating the universe beyond the Solar System we know sometimes brings up more questions than answers. The search for exoplanets has left findings so different from what we know as fascinating. Thus, more than a decade ago the Kepler space telescope identified the Kepler-16ba planet with “two suns” along Star Wars Tatooine and the James Webb telescope stumbled upon a world of boiling lava that paradoxically it’s colder what the theory says. In the process of investigating the universe you can witness the disappearance of a planet, as NASA’s Hubble has monitored, to discover that there was nothing like a planet: they were in front of a violent cosmic phenomenon. First they detected a bright point of light and assumed that it was a planet covered in dust where the brightness of its star was reflected. Then the object disappeared and a different bright source appeared nearby. Finally, this international research team realized that they were not seeing planets at all: the light came from incandescent debris generated by violent collisions, as they later published in Science. A planetesimal collision that changes everything In their observations in time, they captured two different and very powerful impacts that generated large amounts of dust in the same planetary system, which constitutes a magnificent opportunity to understand how planets are formed and what type of materials they are made of. Their main hypothesis: they have glimpsed not one, but two extremely rare events: one (two) planetesimal collisionthat is, a collision between small rocky objects similar to asteroids. Northwestern University astrophysicist Jason Wang explains that it is the first time they have seen a planetesimal collision outside the solar system and that its study is “key to understanding how planets form and can also provide information about the structure of asteroids, something important for planetary defense programs such as the DART test.” Paul Kalas, an astronomer at the University of California at Berkeley and lead author, insists on the exceptionality of the event: “It is not present in any of our previous Hubble images, which means that we have just witnessed a violent collision between two massive objects and a huge cloud of debris, something that has no parallel in our current solar system.” By NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) These collisions occurred in the planetary system surrounding the star Fomalhautwhich is larger than the Sun, is surrounded by an extensive and dense set of dusty debris belts and located about 25 light years from Earth, in the constellation Pisces Austrinus. That dust belt is so large that it is a real candy for research. Planet it seems, cloud of dust it is In 2008 they detected Fomalhaut b, a bright object of unknown nature that some researchers thought was a planet and others believed it was an expanding cloud of dust from a collision. Back in 2023, a new Hubble observation gave an unexpected twist to everything: the original light source was no longer there and another bright object had appeared in a slightly different area. As explains Wang, first They assumed it was Fomalhaut b, but they got a surprise: “We assumed the bright light was Fomalhaut b because it was the known source of the system. But by carefully comparing the new images with the old ones, we realized that it couldn’t be the same source. It was exciting, but also perplexing” So they had to change perspective and nomenclature: the original object was renamed Fomalhaut cs1 and its disappearance supports the idea that it was a cloud of dust that was slowly dispersing after a collision. They called the second bright source Fomalhaut cs2 and its behavior reinforces the conclusion that neither of the two objects was a planet: everything indicates that they are clouds of debris created when large planetesimals collide with each other. Investigating Fomalhaut cs2 they concluded that it looked very similar to the beginnings of cs1 from two decades ago, both in brightness and location. So the team already estimates the frequency of collisions in this guy in the system: every 100,000 years or even less. After all, in 20 years they have already seen two. Kalas explains that “if you took a movie of the last 3,000 years and sped it up so that each year lasted a fraction of a second, imagine how many flashes you would see. The Fomalhaut planetary system would be full of these crashes.” Fomalhaut cs1 no longer exists, but the research team wants to continue monitoring the system and has its eyes on cs2, which could hide more valuable information about how collisions develop in young planetary systems. Of course, in addition to the old Hubble, they will use the near-infrared camera of the James Webb Space Telescope since the NIRCam can capture detailed information about color, so they can determine the size and composition of dust grainsfor example if they contain water or ice. The confirmation of these collisions put a warning on the table for hunters of planets outside the Solar System: the gLarge clouds of dust can very well imitate the appearance of an exoplanetto by reflecting light from its star, which can lead to error using the reflected light detection system. Kalas sums it up: “What we learned from studying cs1 is that a large dust cloud can masquerade as a planet for many years.” As new observatories point to the sky to obtain direct images of Earth-like planets, differentiating between real planets and temporary dust clouds seems providential. In Xataka | Poland and Spain are the European countries that have increased their contribution to space the most. For very different reasons In Xataka | China reveals its cards for 2030: it will go in search of an “Earth 2.0” on its own Cover | Javier Miranda By ESA, NASA, and L. … Read more

14,000 million euros had disappeared

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Raise your hand if you haven’t lost money before. It’s happened to all of us and then the first day of cold in the pocket of some coat. The problem is that this money is the fortune of one of the main heirs of the hermès empire. Nothing less than 14,000 million euros. Nicolas Puech, heir to the founding family of Hermès, has just presented a demand civil against LVMH and Bernard Arnault, claiming the fraudulent sale of 6 million bearer shares of Hermès. However, this is not a simple business demand. Behind there is decades of betrayed trust and a story that mixes friendship, wealth management and one of the most intense stock market battles in French luxury. A trustworthy advisor. For years, Nicolas Puech, fifth generation heir of Thierry Hermés, founder of the select luxury fashion brand that has manufactured cult pieces only available of a lucky fewentrusted the administration of his assets to Eric Freymond, a Swiss manager who managed his Hermès shares and investments with broad powers. According what was published by The Wall Street Journalthe relationship between the two was close and based on total trust, which is why Puech signed mandates and documents without really supervising each operation. According to the heir, this blind trust allowed Freymond to make financial movements behind his back, without his knowledge. The rich heir lived without worrying about the management of his fortune. Operations hidden from the heir. As and how did he count The Wall Street Journaleven the gardener’s wife of one of his properties in Spain, the one he wanted to adoptwarned him of the excess of trust he was placing in his wealth manager and his dubious loyalty. The critical point arose from the Hermès shares that Puech owned. It is suspected that Freymond, taking advantage of the trust placed in him, sold part of those shares during LVMH’s offensive to take over the share control of Hermès in 2010. Although LVMH finally agreed to withdraw and sold his participation in 2014, Puech maintains that some of those shares came from his assets and were transferred without his consent. The shares were bearer shares, which makes their traceability in transactions difficult. Complaint against the deceased manager. Upon discovering what he considered a scam on the part of his wealth manager, Puech filed a criminal complaint in Switzerland against Freymond for breach of trust and embezzlement, alleging that his manager had defrauded him and that his actions they had disappeared mysteriously. The situation became complicated when Freymond passed away in July 2025 in an accident in Switzerland, leaving many questions unanswered and adding complexity to the judicial process. The only person who knew the real whereabouts of Puech’s fortune has taken his secret to the grave. Direct lawsuit against LVMH. Now, with Freymond deceased, and after some failed financial operations Due to not being able to provide ownership of its shares, Puech has decided attack LVMH directly and its president Bernard Arnault, demanding 14,000 million euros. According to collected Reutersthe lawsuit alleges that the disappearance of its shares allowed LVMH to take control of 23% of Hermès and indirectly benefit from Freymond’s irregular management. Something that the company founded by Arnault has denied categorically. “LVMH and its shareholder firmly reaffirm that they have never, at any time, misappropriated Hermès International shares, in any way or without anyone’s knowledge, and that they do not own ‘hidden’ shares,” the group stated in a press release. According what was published by Swissinfoafter the share purchase operation and subsequent sale agreed between LVMH and Hermés, Arnault would have obtained a capital gain of 3.8 billion euros for those shares. The first civil hearing was held on November 20, 2025 at the Paris Judicial Court, and the case remains open while the responsibility of all those involved is investigated. In Xataka | There are more and more millionaires determined to spend their entire fortune before they die. They don’t want their children to inherit it. Image | Flickr (Trump White House Archived), Hermès (Kevin Scott)

The objective is to know how they disappeared

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For decades, paleoanthropologists have grappled with a biological paradox. Neanderthals, a species supposedly adapted to the frigid cold of Europe, had huge, wide noses. A feature that in theory is completely inefficient to be able to warm the frigid air before it reaches the lungs. But due to the lack of fossils, experts could not explain what exactly had happened to this species until now. A reconstruction. In order to understand what was happening here, the experts they have managed to rebuild digitally the inside of the ‘noseAltamura Man‘, the best preserved Neanderthal in the world, without even touching it. And what they have found dismantles much of what we thought we knew about the face of our evolutionary cousins. The objective in the end has been quite clear with this study: to know one more reason why they became extinct from our planet. And all because right now the extinction of this species remains a mystery, although the latest studies suggest that They are more integrated with us than we think. The calcite prisoner. To understand the magnitude of this finding, you must first understand the subject. The ‘Altamura Man’ was discovered in 1993 by a group of spologists in the Lamalunga karst system, southern Italy. And it is not a normal fossil. The skeleton is complete, but it fell into a natural well and became trapped in a chamber where, over the millennia, water and limestone did their work. Today, the Neanderthal is literally embedded in the cave walls, covered in “popcorn” calcite formations that have protected it, but also made it impossible to extract it without destroying it. This mineral “prison” has had an unexpected advantage: it has preserved bone structures so fine and fragile that they normally disappear in the fossil record, such as the nasal turbinates and ethmoid laminae. It is the first time in history that we have a complete Neanderthal nasal cavity. Virtual dissection. Since they couldn’t remove the skull to put it in the laboratory’s scanner, they had to take the laboratory to the cave itself. Something that at first seems like a completely impossible mission. The solution found was endoscopic technology, since using high-resolution medical probes (such as those inserted into the bronchi to explore them) they passed through the ocular and nasal cavities of the fossil. The magic came from combining these images with photogrammetry techniques, since an exact 3D model of the inside of the skull was generated. Central heating. Once we had a pretty good photograph of the inside of this Neanderthal’s nose, it was time to interpret. For years there was a hypothesis in mind that to compensate for having a wide nose in a cold environment, Neanderthals must have unique internal structures. There was talk of vertical projections and medial thickenings that would act as radiators to heat and humidify the air. Two fundamental points so that you could breathe correctly. But the result of the analysis has said different things. First of all, the inside of the nose is strikingly similar to that of a modern human, just in a larger facial “frame.” This means that the supposed exclusive adaptations they had were not present in this fossil, and the airways did not have an ‘alien’ architecture as might be expected. A new extinction. In this way, Neanderthals do not seem to be able to adapt to such cold environments to be able to breathe properly. We as humans have many mechanisms to heat the air before it reaches our lungs to guarantee gas exchange. But this is something that was not found in our ancestors. In this way, if cold air reaches the lung, respiratory difficulty can be found, which at high temperatures can effectively cause the death of a species if we contextualize ourselves in extremely cold environments. Why his face. If the giant nose wasn’t an ultra-specialized “air heating machine,” why did they have it? The study suggests that we should stop looking only at the climate. The very characteristic face that this species had seems to be the result of two specific factors: Genetics of the ancestors. Very high energy demand that required a lot of oxygen and that is why a huge air intake was needed. Altamura Man lived during MIS 6 (about 130,000-170,000 years ago), a cold time, but in southern Italy he enjoyed a more temperate climate. Its nose, “normal” on the inside but enormous on the outside, suggests that the facial evolution of this species was not a straight line directed solely by the thermometer. Images | Aldo Hernandez Paul Pastourmatzis In Xataka | We still don’t know why Sapiens triumphed over Neanderthals. But we have a new hypothesis

half of the female seals have already disappeared

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The bird flu It is a disease that is on the lips of many people in Spain right now due to the great impact is having on our birds, causing many pens to have to be confined. But a variant of this virus is also wreaking havoc in Antarctica, causing the death of thousands of sea seals. A broken sanctuary. Antarctica was a frozen and impenetrable sanctuary, until now. The highly pathogenic H5N1 virus, a variant of avian flu, is arriving on the subantarctic coasts to stay. And it has done so by causing a “massacre” according to the scientists themselves, which have determined the death of 50% of reproductive female elephant seals from the south on the island of South Georgia. The discovery, led by the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), is not just a tragic figure; It is confirmation that the virus has found a new and effective transmission vector: marine mammals and not just birds. How it was revealed. Quantifying mortality in colonies as dense as this one in South Georgia is not easy. And we are precisely talking about the home of the largest population of sea seals, making counting them a titanic and risky task. This is where technology comes in. The Bamford team used drones to fly over breeding beaches. Comparing population density before and after the arrival of the virus, they documented a loss of half of adult females. This non-invasive method has been key to obtaining accurate data without interfering in an already devastated ecosystem. It is not isolated. What is happening in South Georgia is the chronicle of a death foretold. This event is the continuation of the “first wave” that hit Argentine Patagonia. A previous study, published in Nature Communicationswas the first to set off all the alarms. This work not only confirmed the jump of the virus from birds to elephant seals, but also demonstrated what the scientific community feared most: sustained transmission between mammals. The ideal breeding ground for this virus were the elephant seals that live crowded on the beaches during the breeding season, they became a perfect breeding ground. The virus no longer needed birds to spread. Out of control. In this way, the H5N1 has become a panzootiathat is, an animal epidemic on a planetary scale. Although the media focus right now is on Antarctic mammals, and in Spain on poultry, the reality is that we are talking about a much bigger problem. According to the latest report from the World Organization for Animal Health, the virus is already has affected more than 150 million birds in 84 countries, either by direct death or by the emergency sacrifices necessary to contain it. To monitor this serious problem, the Scientific Committee for Antarctic Research (SCAR) maintains an updated database that centralizes all detections of HPAI in Antarctic fauna. And the risk in humans? It is the inevitable question. If the virus has learned to jump from birds to mammals and transmit efficiently between them (as happens in seals and elephant seals), are we humans next? The latest risk assessment from WHO, FAO and WOAH keep calmbut with nuances. Right now, the risk to the general human population is still considered ‘low’. However, the report warns that this is an infection that should be closely monitored as it provides the virus the opportunity to better adapt to hosts. In short, every seal that becomes infected in the Arctic is a new probability that the virus ends up mutating and that it finally becomes a major security problem for everyone. Images | Yuriy Rzhemovskiy Fusion Medical Animation In Xataka | An old hypothesis about the origin of life has received a new boost: solving its “chicken and egg” problem

The speakers with which “bombarded” North Korea have disappeared

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South Korea wants to relax the tensions with their neighbors of North Korea. It is demonstrated by the symbolic decision of dismantle giant speakers that he had installed a few months ago and that they served for an unusual purpose: “bombard” to North Korea with K-pop at full volume. Will that gesture of something serve? The Korean conflict. The Korean division that the US and Russia defined after World War II caused the beginning of the Korean conflict, which is still in force since 1948, when both countries created separate governments. That division ended up causing the war of Korea (1950-1953) in which both countries losing and unleashed a definitive division between North Korea and South Korea. Since then, above all, tension. A lot of tension. Constant reprisals. The relationship between the two countries began to become more problematic when last summer South Korea received A rain of balloons loaded with garbage. This country did not stay still, and replied by sending propaganda drones which in turn generated two very different reprisals. From noise to K-Pop. First, North Korea described his neighbor as a “hostile state” in its constitution. And second, “bombing” to South Korea with unbearable noises for 24 hours in border areas. Although these types of measures seem unusual, they are actually a kind of psychological attack that is being used From the aforementioned Korea War. Be that as it may, South Korea responded again with a creative variant: he installed giant speakers on his border with North Korea and began to Put K-pop songs at full volume. White flag. But in June, in a sudden turn of events, South Korea decided to turn off the speakers of propaganda that transmitted both those songs and ideological messages. The decision was made by the New President Surcoreano, Lee Jae-Myung, who since his inauguration has shown a much more appeaser profile than his predecessor, a battalist Yoon Suk Yeol who had no problem that the tension rose level in the Korean conflict. North Korea adds to the gesture. In his first public speech Lee made clear that he intended to initiate a dialogue with his archienemigo, North Korea, to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula. Turning off the speakers was also a gesture that – sortingly – had an immediate response: North Korea also stopped broadcasting strident noises in the border speakers that he had launched months ago. The activists of both countries, yes, maintained the tension. While the south They sent balloons Loaded with critical pamphlets to Pyongyang, from the north they replied with balloons Full of plillas and garbage. President Lee has already asked Stop shaking the tension With those propaganda shipments. Disassembling the speakers. After that “sound truce”, South Korea has taken a new step, and they have begun to disassemble giant speakers They were installed to broadcast K-pop music at full volume. Lee Kyung-Ho, spokesman for the South Korean Ministry of Defense, explained that this was a “practical measure that can help soften interorean tensions without affecting military preparatory.” North Korea continues in his thirteen. Despite this gesture, in Pyongyang they do not seem intention to bring positions. Kim Yo Jong, sister of the Korean leader, Indian Last week that “blind trust” of Seoul in his alliance with the US made the new administration for North Korea not different from that of his predecessor. North Korea seems to be especially concerned about strengthen your relationship With Russia, with which he is collaborating in the war in Ukraineand is in no hurry to soften relations with South Korea. And South Korea, for his perhaps, warns. Although the measure is a clear symbol of Lee’s intention to relax the tension, the South Korean president highlighted that “the army maintains a constant high level of preparation.” Or what is the same: they pray for the best, but they are prepared for the worst. Restore trust. South Korea Unification Minister Chung Dong-Young, explained that there were no similar movements on the other side of the border, but for them this was “the right step.” In addition, he added, “ultimately, the key issue between the two Koreas at this time is to restore confidence, which has been completely lost. I consider that this is a step towards reconstruction of that trust. Image | Firstpost In Xataka | Russia is beginning to run out of the weapons inherited from the USSR. So he is pulling those of North Korea

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