disaster

Long before Real Madrid, the Roman Empire had already invented VIP boxes. And they ended in disaster

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In the first century, the emperor Nero ordered that some shows will include giant awnings to protect the most privileged attendees from the sun, while the rest of the public endured the heat in the upper stands. That seemingly trivial difference reflected the extent to which the experience of attending an event was already marked for money and status long before modern stadiums existed. Show business in Ancient Rome. Long before modern stadiums like the Bernabéu turned sport into a crazy revenue machine, the Roman Empire had already understood the economic potential of gathering crowds and charging for access. At that time, amphitheaters were not only leisure spaces, but political and commercial tools where prestige and money mixed openly. In fact, businessmen like Atilio They saw the games as a direct opportunity for profit, betting on filling venues at all costs and maximizing every available seat. In that context, the logic of squeezing capacity (with privileged areas for the elites and crowded stands for the rest) not only existed, but was central part of the model. Raised to make quick money. In this context, it is born the Fidenae project with a clear idea: build a lot, quickly and cheaply to start earning money as soon as possible. Attilius, a freedman with entrepreneurial ambition, decided to build a huge wooden amphitheater on the outskirts of Rome, reducing costs in the most critical elements. The structure was supported on unstable ground and was assembled with poor joints, while more seats than planned were added to increase revenue. The result was a building that appeared grand from the outside, but was actually designed more to maximize profits. that to ensure safety of those who were going to occupy it. Spectacle turned into tragedy. What happened? That the inauguration attracted tens of thousands of people who came with the expectation of witnessing gladiatorial combats after a period in which these spectacles had been rather rare. That amphitheater was filled to the limitthere was no room for a pin, with the public distributed by social classes and areas, replicating a hierarchy that also had its economic reflection. Thus, in a matter of seconds, what seemed like a festive day he happened to enter sadly in the Guinness Book of a total sporting catastrophe when the structure began to give way and collapsed simultaneously inwards and outwards. It was not just an accident, since the magnitude of the collapse trapped both those who were inside and those who were trapped. were in the surroundingsleaving a balance of victims that, according to sources, ranged between tens of thousands of dead and injured. The worst sports disaster in history. From then until now, because of its scalethe collapse or collapse of Fidenae was not only a local tragedy, but the biggest sports disaster that has ever been documented, surpassing even many modern episodes in number of victims. The figures, although imprecise at the time, point to a catastrophe comparable to major battles in terms of human losses (they were counted about 50,000 deadsome lost their lives instantly, while others were buried under the rubble), something totally exceptional for an entertainment event. The speed of the collapse, the absence of evacuation measures and the fragility of the construction made any reaction impossible, turning the amphitheater into a mousetrap, a death trap in a matter of seconds. What should have been a profitable business ended up being the most extreme example of how the search for profit can multiply risk to catastrophic limits. From greed to the first rules. There is no doubt, the impact of that disaster shook the Roman Empire and forced an institutional reaction that marked a before and after in the construction regulation. The Senate persecuted the person responsible, Attilius, and sent him into exile, but, more importantly, established rules that They demanded economic solvency to those who wanted to organize shows and forced them to build on safe land. Those measures can be considered one of the first attempts to regulate structural safety in public spaces, born directly from a tragedy caused by negligence. Ultimately, the episode left a lesson that is still very valid: when business prevails over security, the show not only cannot be guaranteed, it can end up becoming in his own catastrophe. Image | Wikimedia C. In Xataka | In 1995, South Korea suffered one of the great architectural disasters of the century. The culprit: the air conditioning In Xataka | If you’re hot at home, remember that Disney made an auditorium with a huge mistake: turning a neighborhood into an unbearable oven

If you are going to install air conditioning, remember what happened to South Korea. It was the architectural disaster of the millennium

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In the 1990s, some of Asia’s densest cities reached concentrate millions of people in urban areas built in just a few decades. In that same period, several studies began to warn that a significant part of the buildings erected during the great economic booms had serious structural deficiencies. In fact, in some inspections after major accidents, it was estimated that only a minority of buildings fully complied security standards. When you grow faster than you can build. In a few decades, South Korea went from the devastation of war to becoming an industrial and urban powerwith a speed of growth that was hardly unprecedented. Furthermore, during the economic boom in the 1980s, the country was chosen to host the 1988 Olympic Games, and an exorbitant number of buildings were built to meet these new needs. That impulse translated into a construction fever where building architectures mattered more than doing them well, and where practices such as cutting costs, accelerating deadlines or ignoring technical warnings became common. In that scenario was born Sampoong Department Storenot as a project exceptionally flawed from the beginning, but as a typical product of an era when progress was measured in square meters and not in safety standards. Air conditioning as a wick. The key point of the tragedy that was about to take place and that ended up turning the department store into the millennium architectural disasterit was not a single error, but a chain of decisions that ended up concentrating all the fragility of the building in an apparently secondary detail: the air conditioning system. As? Apparently, the equipment installed on the roof They weighed tens of tonsfar above what the structure could support, and their accelerated installation did not even follow normal procedures, as they were dragged on the roof, damaging the structure itself. From that moment on, a terrifying image: every vibration when you turn them on widened invisible cracks that toured the building. What should have been an element of comfort became a lethal burden that ended up acting as the final trigger for the collapse, concentrating years of accumulated negligence in a single point. The department store before the disaster Condemned from the plans. The disaster began long before anyone heard creaking in the ceiling. The original project It was a residential block four floors, but was transformed by Lee Joon, future director of the Sampoong Group, to turn it into a large shopping center without properly redesigning the structure. Plus: Due to bans in Seoul that prevented foreign companies from signing contracts in the city, these monstrous buildings were awarded to a handful of South Korean companies. Overwhelmed by pressure, companies decided that it was best to accelerate the pace of work, regardless of the cost. Thus, the diameter of the pillars was reduced from 80 to 60 centimetersand the distance between them was increased to increase the useful surface, columns removed to install escalators, its thickness was reduced to gain commercial space and a fifth floor was added that was never planned. Each modification increased the weight and weakened the resistancewhile companies that warned of the danger were fired and replaced by more accommodating ones. The result was a chaotic building that, on paper, no longer had a safety margin even before opening its doors. Cracks getting bigger. In the months before the collapse, the building gave multiple warnings that something was wrong. Visible cracks appeared, floors vibrated, employees felt dizzy, and engineers warned of a imminent structural failure. The management’s reaction was to close some areas, turn off the air conditioning at the last minute and continue operating normally in the rest of the building. The reason was so simple as devastating: Losing a day of sales in a complex that received thousands of people was unacceptable. Even on the day of the collapse, with cracks of several centimeters and obvious signs of danger, it was decided do not evacuate customers. Images after the collapse The collapse. On the afternoon of June 29, 1995, the building did not explode nor was it the victim of an external attack: he just gave in to the crazy number of negligence. The air conditioning equipment ended up passing through the weakened roof, the columns could not support the accumulated load and the building collapsed. collapsed in a matter of 20 secondscrushing entire plants on top of each other. More than 500 people died and more than a thousand were trapped, many of them in a space that, just a few hours before, symbolized the country’s economic success. It was a destruction so rapid that it turned a shopping center full of life into a mountain of rubble in less than half a minute. Images after the collapse An avoidable tragedy. Rescue efforts continued for weeks, with survivors found even more than two weeks later under the remains of the building. But the magnitude of the disaster revealed an even more disturbing reality: many victims did not die only from the collapse, but due to subsequent failures in emergency management. Meanwhile, investigations confirmed the most obvious: there was not a single cause, but one after another.accumulation of avoidable errorsfrom the use of low-quality materials to business decisions that prioritized immediate profit over any safety criteria. Monument in memory of the collapse Corruption, punishment and a system in question. The collapse not only destroyed a building, but exposed an entire system. Those responsible, starting with owner Lee Joon, were convicted, including several officials involved in corrupt practices, but the impact was much broader. Subsequent inspections revealed that a significant portion of Seoul’s buildings had very serious structural problemswhich forced us to review regulations and reinforce controls. The Sampoong ceased to be an isolated case and became in a symbol of what happens when a society builds too quickly and too badly. The legacy. Today, where the building stood there is no visible trace of the tragedy, but its lesson remains crystal clear. The disaster was not the result of bad luck … Read more

The largest naval project in German history since World War II is turning out to be a crazy disaster

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In Europe, large military programs often take more than a decade to be completed and, in many cases, end up costing several times more than initially anticipated. It is not uncommon for complex projects to accumulate thousands of technical requirements and go through multiple reviews before reaching production. In this context, some plans are born as emblems of modernization… and end up becoming examples of how difficult it is to bring them to fruition. From something historic to something unsustainable. He program F126 was born as the great symbol of German rearmament and largest naval project of the country since the Second World War, but over time it has become quite the opposite: an example of how an ambitious plan can derail to the point of collapse. Conceived as a latest generation frigateflexible and prepared for decades of service, the project has not only accumulated delays and cost overrunsbut has called into question Germany’s ability to execute large military programs at a time when it aspires to lead European defense. Technical errors and chaos. He told in an extensive report the financial times that the origin of the problem seems as modern as it is devastating: a failed bet on a new software design that was not ready for a project of this scale. What should have been an advanced tool ended up generating cascading errors, from cables incorrectly located on the plans to steel parts manufactured with incorrect shapes, forcing manual corrections and slowing down the entire production. The result was a system that was moving at just a fraction of its planned pace, with delays that pushed the initial delivery several years later than planned. A culture shock. It turns out that the problem was not just technical. Apparently, the media reported that the project was trapped in a deep shock between the Dutch shipyard’s way of working and the German contracting system, known for its extreme rigidity. Thousands of specifications detailed even the smallest elements, while approval processes were they dragged on for months within a complex bureaucracy that required paper documentation and rejected even plans in English. This combination made collaboration a slow, frustrating, and, in many cases, unproductive process. Skyrocketing costs and limit decisions. As the problems piled up, so did made the invoice: The project, initially valued in the billions, began to go off track with significant cost overruns and structural delays. As it is, Germany now faces critical decisions ranging from replacing the main contractor to accepting billions already invested. as irrecoverable losses. At the same time, faster but less ambitious alternative solutions are being studied, reflecting the extent to which the original project has lost credibility. Notice to sailors of rearmament. If you like, the case of the F126 goes beyond a simple industrial failure: it reveals the limits of European military cooperation even among closely integrated countries and raises questions about the continent’s ability to implement complex joint programs. In a context of increasing of defense spending and increasing strategic pressure, the project has become a clear warning: It is not enough to invest more, you also have to know how to manage better. Because otherwise, even the most important projects can end up being, as in this case, a costly and lengthy example of what not to do. Image | Give me In Xataka | Germany is experiencing a new “industrial miracle” that it already experienced 90 years ago: that of weapons In Xataka | Germany was a sleeping military giant: now it has been awakened and it is already surpassing the US in bullets produced per year

Japan sent the wrong creature to eradicate snakes from an island. The disaster was so big that it took half a century to solve it

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Once again, desperate situations lead to extreme measures. Save a species sometimes it involves “exterminating” another. We have seen it in South Africa and his plan to annihilate miceeither injecting radioactive material into the horns of rhinosthe cases of hunt the wild cator the plan for exterminate half a million owls. However, sometimes things do not go as governments imagine. In Japan they know it perfectly. The incident of ’79. The story begins in 1979 on the Japanese island of Amami Ōshima, located in the Kagoshima prefecture. That year, Amami’s rabbit is rediscovered (Pentalagus furnessi), an endemic species and considered a “living fossil” due to its evolutionary antiquity. Before the discovery, the rabbit was thought to be on the brink of extinction due to habitat loss and hunting. The discovery marked a before and after for the conservation of the species and highlighted the importance of protecting the natural environment of the island, home to many other unique species. An event that also highlighted the need for greater conservation efforts at Amami Ōshima, for example trying to eradicate or control the snake population. A wrong “bomb”. Thus, a few months later, Japan launched a plan. Introduces around 30 mongooses to the island with the intention of ending the population of snakes, specifically the habu (Trimeresurus flavoviridis), which represented a threat to the local inhabitants. The idea, on paper, was a seamless plan: that the mongooses, which are natural predators of snakes, would reduce the number of habus and improve security on the island at all levels. However, that project was far from infallible. The mongoose was not the ideal creature to eradicate snakes. Firstly, because they are animals active during the day, therefore, they could not catch the nocturnal habu snakes, which continued to inhabit the following decades without problem. What happened as a result had an enormous ecological impact. A specimen of Trimeresurus flavoviridis Predation of endemic species. Thus, during the day, instead of focusing on the habu snakes, the mongooses began to prey on a wide range of native species, including several that had no natural enemies on the island until then. That seriously affected the local fauna, especially endemic and endangered species, like the same Amami rabbit that had just been happily announced months ago. Hundreds of thousands of mongooses. The situation reached such a point that the mongooses, brought in to eradicate one pest, had become an even larger and more dangerous one, one that It reached around 10,000 copies. at its peak around the year 2000. The truth is that Japan had already started a mongoose control project in 1993 that was expanded over time. As? Around 30,000 traps were set on the island to capture the animals and cameras with sensors were installed to monitor them. In addition, local residents formed the so-called Amami Mongoose Bustersa team specialized in capturing mongooses (they captured thousands). The end? In 2018, the last official capture of a mongoose on the island occurred. It occurred in the month of April, and since no creature has been captured for a long period of time, the expert panel, which is tasked with determining whether the animal is eradicated from the island, estimated that the eradication rate was between 98.8 and 99.8% in February last year, reaching a preliminary conclusion that it is reasonable to say/think that mongooses are eradicated from the island under the current circumstances. Finally, on September 3, 2024, Japan’s Ministry of Environment declared eradication of non-native mongooses on the island of Amami-Oshima, declared a World Natural Heritage Site by UNESCO. The statement was based on the opinion of the expert group on scientific grounds, taking into account that the capture of mongooses has not been confirmed for more than six years since the last one in April 2018. A unique case. The ministry itself did not hide the disaster that was the attempt to control the snakes in 1979. In fact, and as the administration has announced, it is one of the largest cases in the world in which non-native mongooses that had been established for so long have been eradicated. After the statement, the government explained that it will remove the traps that were placed on the island, although it will continue to monitor with cameras to prevent a new group of these small creatures from entering again. After all, if it took half a century to get them out of there, any contingency method is more than understandable. A version of this article can be foundlaunched in 2024 Image | Animalia, TANAKA Juuyoh, Patrick Randall In Xataka | “There are so many that you can hold them with your hand”: the daily nightmare of a town in Pontevedra with flies In Xataka | Salamanca faces its biggest environmental plague in decades. And the problem is that you can’t legally stop it.

The Bernabéu was facing a financial disaster after the concert fiasco. So he has converted to tennis

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The Bernabéu will convert its retractable grass into clay courts for training at the Mutua Madrid Open 2026. The move is possible thanks to the engineering of the stadium renovation, which has invested more than 1.3 billion euros, and the gap in events left by Real Madrid’s calendar. It is also the latest expression of an ambition that has been colliding with neighbors and noise limits for years. What’s going to happen? From April 23 to 30, the Santiago Bernabéu will stop being a soccer field and become several clay courts. The best tennis players on the circuit (among others, Carlos Alcaraz, Jannik Sinner, Aryna Sabalenka and Iga Swiatek) will train at the Real Madrid stadium during the first week of competition of the Mutua Madrid Open 2026, which begins on April 20 at the Caja Mágica. The Bernabéu will be a minute’s drive from the players’ hotel. The information, advanced by The New York Timesmarks the arrival at the stadium of a sport that Florentino Pérez has been fooling around with for years. How to do it. All this is possible thanks to retractable pitch system installed during the remodeling of the stadium, completed at the end of 2023. The field is divided into six trays measuring 107 by 11.67 meters, each weighing approximately 1,500 tons, which are moved by 24 transport carts and stored in the hypogeum: a 30-meter-deep underground greenhouse equipped with growth lamps and air conditioning systems that keep the grass in optimal condition. The entire process takes approximately six hours. Once the grass is stored, the concrete base is free to install any other surface, such as clay for tennis. It is the same mechanism that allowed us to host the first NFL game in Spain last November. 1.1 billion does not pay for itself. The conversion into a multifunctional stadium is not Florentino’s whim, although he tries to sell us that it has always been a personal dream, as we explain below. The renovation of the Bernabéu has cost, after chaining up to three loans, around 1,100 million euros. Football is not enough. Real Madrid plays around twenty home games per season, which leaves the stadium empty more than three hundred days a year. The strategy is to fill those days with events that generate additional income, following the model already practiced by facilities such as SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles or Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. The club surpassed €1.2 billion in annual revenue in 2023-24 in part thanks to this diversification. AND as we counted at the timethe large Spanish stadiums are looking for new sources of income: Athletic is studying options with San Mamés, Betis is working on Villamarín, Barcelona has just invested 1,450 million in the Camp Nou. They all look for the same thing: that the business does not depend on those 19 or 20 game nights a year. Dreaming since 2019. In the general assembly of Real Madrid that yearthe club president explained that injuries had frustrated several attempts to organize an exhibition match between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer at the Bernabéu. Pérez had been thinking about the idea for some time. Federer retired in 2022, Nadal in 2024, and the match never came. But the link with tennis remains intact: Nadal has declared on several occasions his desire to preside over the club one dayand Alcaraz, number one in the world, is a declared Madrid fan. The first team players frequently appear in the boxes of the Caja Mágica during the tournament. That the Bernabéu now hosts the training of the circuit’s great figures is, at least, the modest and executable version of that effort by Florentino Pérez that was never fulfilled. Previous setbacksand how to solve them. The plan to turn the Bernabéu into an events machine has had a serious setback: the concerts. Since the inauguration of the stadium as a music venue in April 2024, the residents of Chamartín complaints about noise levels accumulated which sometimes exceeded 85 decibels, when the municipal ordinance establishes a maximum of 53. The City Council processed sanctions for a total of 2.6 million euros between April and December 2024. In September 2024, Real Madrid suspended the concerts scheduled until early 2025, and the complaint by the Association of People Injured by the Bernabéu is still ongoing. The situation ended up expelling artists like AitanaLola Índigo or Dellafuente from the stadium. On the other hand, tennis training does not generate this problem: a group of tennis players training in a stadium without 80,000 attendees in the surrounding streets is, acoustically, an activity of another category. For the club, it is also a way to demonstrate that diversification is possible without raising eyebrows. In Xataka | Shakira is not convinced by any stadium in Madrid to close her world tour. So he’s going to build his own

Throwing concrete into the sea is usually a disaster or cause for conflict. The United Kingdom is using it to revive an ecosystem

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When huge blocks of concrete are thrown to the bottom of the sea, we can think that whoever is doing it is looking for a territorial conflict or even to ruin the ecosystem, as It was already seen in Gibraltar in 2013 in order to prevent fishing. However, on the coast of the United Kingdom, this same action of throw concrete blocks It has become the spearhead of one of the most ambitious bioengineering and ecological restoration projects in Europe, despite being contradictory. The objective. The objective of throwing these blocks is to bring reefs back to life of native North Sea oysters, lost more than a century ago due to overfishing, pollution and the destruction of their habitat. Heavy engineering. At first glance, it seems simple to take some concrete blocks and throw them over the side of a boat. But in reality the 20 blocks recently deployed off the coast of Tyne and Wear are actually pieces of green high-tech. And it’s no wonder, because have been developed ARC Marine under the name Reef Cubes and made with a special material called “Marine Crete”. Furthermore, they are not small at all, because each of these cubes weighs six tons and measures one and a half meters high. Why this weight? This initiative promoted by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), the Wild Oysters project and Groundwork, leaves nothing to chance, since the fact of launching these heavy masses of concrete is explained by the British climate. In the previous phases of this project, the team encountered devastating storms that destroyed all restoration attempts. That is why these six-tonne masses ensure that the violent ocean currents and waves of the North Sea do not move the structures even one centimeter so that they can develop their final objective. Its usefulness. The magic actually happens on the surface of the block, as these cubes are not entirely smooth, but are designed with complex rough textures and artificial pores that perfectly mimic natural marine surfaces. These automatically become the perfect anchorage for life to thrive and an ideal refuge for fish and crustaceans. The role of oysters In addition to the roughness, 4,000 native European oysters have been placed inside each of these 20 immense cubes thanks to the efforts of 190 local volunteers. And it makes all the sense in the world, because beyond their great gastronomic value, oysters They are the great “purifiers” of the ocean. To give us an idea, a single adult oyster is capable of filtering up to 200 liters of water per day. In this way, when they feed they eliminate pollutants, nitrogen and excess nutrients, radically improving the quality of coastal water and allowing sunlight to penetrate deeper, which in turn stimulates the growth of marine flora. In short, these blocks act as a new ‘home’ for the animals that live on the seabed, but also as a way to clean their environment. It already gave results. The robustness of using thousands of tonnes of concrete on the seabed has already been tested in Scotland with great success, and now this project is just the beginning of what is to come. That is why, while these artificial reefs begin to filter millions of liters of water daily in the north, other projects are taking note to scale the idea to titanic proportions. In Norfolk, initiatives such as Oyster Heaven and Norfolk Seaweed are already planning the deployment of 40,000 clay “Mother Reefs” by the end of 2026. Their goal is to house 4 million juvenile oysters, which would officially be crowned the largest restored reef in all of Europe. In this way, throwing blocks into the sea has gone from being a technique to create conflicts between regions to being able to recover part of an ecosystem. Images | Robert Katzki Nicolas Arnold In Xataka | The “green belt” of the Earth had been stable for centuries: now it is moving towards the northern hemisphere in a worrying way

In 1850, Almería inaugurated one of the largest hydraulic works in 19th century Spain. It was a complete disaster

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It is May 8, 1850, Níjar (Almería). Although the promoters have been trying for months, finally the inauguration of the Isabel II reservoir will not have the physical presence of the Queen which gives it its name. But they are not going to let that ruin the moment, their moment. We talk about what may be the largest hydraulic work of the Andalusian 19th century and one of the most ambitious on the peninsula: 35 meters of stonework built at will by more than a thousand private investors that culminate the old dream of the Duchess of Abrantes, to build a dam along the Rambla del Carrizal. A dam doomed to failure. Money in abundance. In 1821, in the heat of the mining boom in the Sierra Almagrera of Almería, Diego María Madollel He created ‘Irrigation of Níjar’ and obtained tax exemptions from the crown. The idea was simple: build a stone structure 44 meters long and 35 meters high with the idea of ​​irrigating more than 18,000 hectares in Campo de Níjar and Campohermoso. Over the next 40 years, Madollel would learn that there are many ways to fail. The first was almost immediate. The second took almost twenty years and the third, in 1842, with the constitution of the Níjar Reservoir Company, seemed to be the good one. The businessman gathered more than a thousand shareholders from Almería, Murcia, Málaga, Madrid and Valencia (people who had become rich from the mines, wanted to invest, but did not know much about the matter) and got the state to declare the project a ‘public utility’; but, five years later, the project could not get off the ground. It wouldn’t have started, but In 1848 the drought began. A persistent, sharp and prophetic drought… but that promoted the construction of the swamp. Madollel saw his opportunity and began selling water rights. The construction moved forward, the Murcian Jerónimo Ros took control of the construction and by 1857 not only the dam was finished, but also a very complex system of irrigation canals and pipes. Madollel had built a hydrological Ferrari: but the road was not in condition to go more than 20 kilometers per hour. How much everything goes wrong. Despite the very long development, the promoters did almost everything wrong. To begin with, they did not carry out hydrological studies of the area and that prevented them from realizing that the riverbed did not have enough flow to fill the reservoir or to irrigate 18,000 hectares. Furthermore, they did not realize that the regime of the boulevard was ‘torrential’: when it rains, it does so torrentially and that causes enormous amounts of sediment to be washed away. By 1871, the reservoir was completely blocked. The failure was enormous. Or almost. Because, although it is true that today the prey is a relic for hikersthe truth is that Madollel did have some vision. Today the Campo de Níjar is the epicenter of one of the largest seas of plastics in the country. The hydrological pressures are the same or worse, but this shows that it doesn’t matter how many times the climate twists our hand, the man is there to try again. Image | ANE In Xataka | The reservoir that would “never be filled” is opening its floodgates: 23 years later, the largest swamp in Western Europe is completely full

The almond trees throughout Spain are already in bloom and that is fantastic news for the sector. Or also a disaster

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40 years ago, on January 10, the father of Simplisíssimus told him it would be a bad year for the almond. The reason was simple: when the trees flowered early, the almond embryo was exposed (“weak and sensitive”) to late frosts that could destroy entire crops. Therefore, the good time for flowering was March, he explained. And he must have been right, but in the last 44 years it has been increasingly difficult to prove it. According to an article published by AEMETSince 1981, the flowering of the almond tree has been advancing systematically and documented throughout the country. But it seems that, at least in some areas, this has changed this year. If confirmed, it could be good news. When do almond trees bloom? According to the work of the Autonomous University of Madrid, the Senckenberg Research Institute and AEMETin these 40 years, the median flowering date in the center of the peninsula has moved from February 12 to February 7. Of course, the progress has not been linear: it has accelerated in recent years. At a historical level, the most advanced in recent decades was in 1993 (around January 8). And why should we care? In general terms, because the almond tree is the most extensive woody crop in Spain and, in fact, it is growing: in the last decade the dedicated area has grown by 34%. The almendril madness in the country is such that, well, Spain leads the sector with 765,000 hectares productive. That is, it is an issue that matters to us as a country. So, we’re talking about good news, right? It will depend on how the weather goes from now on and, furthermore, we must not forget that It has not been like this in all places. However, as has been happening lately in the field, it can be (at the same time) good news and bad news. Good because a big harvest would help remove volatility that the almond has had in recent years, because it would help generate rural employment in a year which is expected to be complicated by flooding and will give a break to agricultural insurance. And yet, a good harvest can end up delaying a fundamental debate: that of varieties. The only way the sector has adapt to climate changes is betting on late or hyperlate variants. They are not a magic solution, but it is a solution. The question is whether the global almond giant, up to its eyeballs in debt, will understand that it has to make a move. Image | Tim Mossholder In Xataka | An end of February with 20 ºC, haze and full reservoirs is not “good weather”: it is the sign of a completely misplaced meteorology

that of Ukraine with disaster tourism

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In October we met that Ryanair was going to escalate its confrontation with the Spanish government with a figure that was going to appear in all the media: a 1.2 million cut of seats in the summer season of 2026, with enclaves such as Asturias especially affected. The figure, added to the previous cutsmeant three million fewer places in just twelve months. Now, in a surprising turn of events, the airline, along with the rest of Low Cost, is preparing an unexpected landing: Ukraine. Fly after the war. Yes, Europe is preparing for a scenario in which Ukrainian airspace reopens after a peace agreementand low-cost airlines see at that time not only the recovery of lost routes, but the beginning of an unprecedented stage in European commercial aviation. Wizz Air, which before the Russian invasion was the country’s largest foreign operator, anticipates a massive return supported by the diaspora that wants to return, in the gigantic reconstruction that will transform the Ukrainian economic geography and in an uncomfortable, but historically recurring phenomenon: the disaster tourismthat collective drive to visit scenes that have marked a traumatic chapter in recent history. A known phenomenon. That’s how it is, how it happened With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the visible wounds of war will attract millions of interested people for a time in being witnesses from the place where everything happened, and the airlines seek to position themselves before that human tide. For Wizz Air, this translates into deploy fifteen aircraft in the first two years after peace and fifty in a horizon of seven, a leap that outlines the ambition to quickly rebuild a network that operated more than 5,000 flights annually before February 2022. Ryanair’s strategy. In parallel, Ryanair has moved pieces with a speed that reveals the extent to which it considers Ukraine a key territory for its future growth. The Financial Times said A few hours ago its managers visited the main airports in the country with a plan already closed to achieve the four million passengers annually, almost tripling the 1.5 million it transported before the airspace closure. The fortress of your model (dozens of bases distributed throughout Europe and the ability to open routes from practically any point in a matter of days) would allow it to fly to cities like kyiv, Lviv or Odessa as soon as two weeks later that it is declared safe to do so. That logistical muscle will make the difference in a race in which each airline seeks to be the first to occupy an infrastructure that, although damaged, retains enormous strategic potential. Ryanair, depending on the mediuminsists that filling planes will not be a problem: the return of citizens, pent-up demand and the natural flow of European travelers guarantee robust occupancy from day one. The role of EasyJet. For its part, EasyJet, which never operated in Ukraine before the war, is eyeing the country as what could be Europe’s biggest civil project in decades. The attraction is not only tourist or demographic, but economic: The volume of investment that reconstruction will mobilize promises to turn Ukraine into a hub of activity that will attract companies, workers and entire logistics chains. The airline insist in that operational viability will depend on the ability to restore control towers, runways and terminals, but emphasizes that these processes can be restarted relatively quickly once the military risk ceases. Even so, unlike Wizz Air and Ryanair, EasyJet does not plan to base aircraft in the country in the short term, reflecting a more cautious approach in a market that continues to be conditioned by geopolitical uncertainty and the need to rebuild essential infrastructure from scratch. Security and the past. All this planning hits an inevitable and obvious obstacle: air safety. The European Aviation Safety Agency maintains the veto to fly over or land in Ukraine while the risk of attacks, misidentification or collateral damage persists, a warning that echoes the memory of the demolition of flight MH17 in 2014, a trauma that continues to mark continental aeronautical policy. The warning reflects the precarious balance between the economic urgency to reconnect the country with Europe and the need to prevent a hasty reopening from turning civil aviation into an easy target or an accidental victim of a conflict that has not yet been completely extinguished. Currently, only the Russian Smartavia has recorded flights in two years, an indication of the air vacuum in which Ukraine has lived since the beginning of the invasion. A future tied to the end of the war. There is no doubt, the renaissance of air traffic Ukrainian will depend, ultimately, on the long-awaited peace signing and the pace at which its airports are rebuilt, but also the narrative that the country manages to project. Ukraine will become a space where memory, economic opportunity, return mobility and a massive reconstruction effort converge that will reconfigure its position in Europe. And in this scenario, low-cost airlines are already competing for stand on the front line of a renaissance, convinced that, when the country reopens to the world, it will not only recover the almost fifteen million passengers before the war, but that it will become a symbolic destination of a new European stage. Paradoxically, their deceased aim to be the first to generate an economy. Image | Michael OrtegaZohra Bensemra, RawPixel In Xataka | A giant spider web has taken over the front lines in Ukraine: a death trap made of almost undetectable threads In Xataka | If the question is how peace negotiations in Ukraine are going, Russia’s answer is disturbing: “we are ready”

A university used an AI to hunt down students who used AI. The result was a predictable disaster

by

What has happened? They count in Futurism that in 2024, the Australian Catholic University accused about 6,000 students of academic misconduct. At least 90% of cases were related to the use of AI for cheating. What is striking is that the university itself used an AI to issue these accusations, many of which were erroneous. Why it is important. It is one more example that AI is not yet reliable. We see it constantly with wrong results and hallucinations. The Australian university is not the only one that has relied on AI to accuse its students, it is a practice quite common and there have been others similar cases. The reality is that AI text detectors are also AI and, at least for now, They are imperfect. Turnitin. It is a plagiarism detection software whose first version was released in 1997 and is widely used in universities and educational centers. In 2023 he added a tool to detect texts created with AI and it is the one they used at the Australian Catholic University. The company itself says in its usage guide that the AI ​​detector is not always accurate and should not be used as the sole source when accusing a student. However, according to ABC Australiathe university used it as the only evidence when issuing his records for misconduct. The university version. Allegations regarding AI use included AI-generated works, fabricated references (hallucinations), and the use of AI tools to cite and translate content. The university says at least a quarter of all allegations were dropped after an investigation. They also rejected those in which the only proof was the AI ​​itself and in March of this year they stopped using that software. The dilemma. The emergence of AI tools poses challenges in the educational sector. Hay voices that advocate its banwhile others They defend integration and encourage good practices. UNESCO published a guide to the use of generative AI in education in which they establish rules and obligations, such as privacy protection, age limits and an approach that guarantees ethical and safe use of these tools. Image | Turnitin In Xataka | A teacher corrected a final exam done with ChatGPT, but another AI evaluated it differently and exposed the dilemma

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