empty

The Tagus reservoirs have reached their maximum level. The response of the authorities has been to empty them immediately

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1,639.67 hm3 of water. That is what the Entrepeñas and Buendía reservoirs store today at the head of the Tagus. This means that they have reached 65.11% of their capacity (compared to 48.52% last year) and, more importantly, that have reached level 1the maximum possible step. Finally, some good news! After years of hardship, the river has reached its “dream level.” Then, we are going to empty it. As? This same week, the Tajo-Segura Transfer Exploitation Commission is going to propose sending 180 hm3 of water to the Segura basin. It will be done in stages over three months. And the truth is that it was something totally predictable: the growth of reserves in the headwaters of the river has reached milestones that we have not seen since the late 90s. In application of the transfer rules that were set in 2013the irrigators of Segura request that the necessary procedures be activated so that they can give them the water that is theirs. What happens is that the political mess is enormous. What is happening with the water of the Tagus? Basically, by virtue of the Tagus Hydrological Plan, approved in 2023the transfer rules had to be updated to adapt them to the current reality. It has been tried; late, but it has been tried. What happens is that the process (due to the enormous political costs it entails) has been stalled for months and months. Right now, he is stopped waiting for pending resolutions in the Supreme Court. This has generated a very complicated situation: the plan that was going to be approved included a progressive reduction of transfers up to 40% in the next five years. The stated intention was recover the Tagus River and look for management formats that do not focus on specific moments (“emptying the pantry just when we have finished filling it”), but on more global measures that do not compromise the management of the basins in the medium term. But since it is not approved, the law is clear: Segura can claim its water and the Exploitation Commission will proceed to send it. The central issue is whether all this is a mirage or not. It is not lost on anyone that this January has not been a normal month (it has been the rainiest in the last 25 years) and, for this reason, each of the parties wants to use ‘this gift from heaven‘ for their own interests: some to regenerate the Tagus (and ensure the economic activity linked to it) and the others to keep the Segura agroindustry alive. That is, we have to choose at the worst possible moment: with the elections just around the corner. Image | Maria LVRZ In Xataka | The water from the Tagus is going to stay in Castilla-La Mancha. So Alicante and Murcia already have a plan B: set up desalination plants

how the industry sold us empty calories in exchange for destroying our satiety

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There was a time when buying whole milk or “full fat” yogurt was considered nutritionally reckless. Dietary guidelines, obsessed with reducing saturated fat, for decades pushed consumers toward pale, liquid, skimmed versions of what was once a staple food. Eating “light” became synonymous with eating well. However, the narrative starts to crack. The story of María Branyas, the woman who lived to be 117 years old and who consumed several full-fat yogurts a day, is just the tip of the iceberg of a deeper change of outlook. The researchers who studied his case warn that yogurt alone does not explain his longevity – genetics, lifestyle and environment come into the equation – but it could play a relevant role in the balance of his intestinal microbiota. The focus, today, is no longer just on the calories we subtract, but on how much processing we add along the way. The processing error. For more than half a century, health authorities encouraged limiting red meat and fatty dairy products, warning that its saturated fats They raised LDL cholesterol and, therefore, the risk of heart disease. This premise fueled a massive industry of “light” and “0%” products. However, the problem was not the cow. As Dr. Montse Prados Pérez explainsmember of the Spanish Society of Endocrinology and Nutrition (SEEN), when natural fat is removed from a food, its texture, flavor and nutritional profile are altered. To compensate for this loss of flavor, many manufacturers turn to sugars, starches, sweeteners or additives. The result is a product with less fat, yes, but also more processed, less satiating and potentially harmful to the intestinal microbiota and appetite regulation mechanisms. Added to this phenomenon is a possible metabolic rebound effect. Nutritionist Laura Isabel Arranz warns that Sweeteners, common in low-fat yogurts, send a sweet signal to the brain without providing real energy. This discordance can confuse the metabolism and favor a more “saving” response, preparing the body to more efficiently store the energy that arrives later. Why doesn’t whole fat act the same? There is a technical irony in the dairy aisle: we take the skimmed jar to maintain the line, but we forget that for the body to use it, it needs precisely the fat that has just been removed. Vitamins such as A or D They are fat soluble; Without that natural fatty vehicle, absorption is a chimera. In the end, trying to enrich a 0% yogurt is like trying to make a car run by pouring gasoline into it. The industry adds the nutrient, but has removed the mechanism to make it work. All this is explained by the “dairy matrix”. Unlike other fats, milk fat occurs naturally wrapped in a complex structure. known as dairy fat globule membrane (MFGM), rich in phospholipids and bioactive proteins. This biological “envelope” is essential because it appears to positively modulate the way our body processes cholesterol. In fact, recent research published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition have observed that the consumption of yogurt and cheese maintains a neutral—and even potentially beneficial— relationship with cardiovascular health, unlike what would be expected if only their saturated fat content were analyzed in isolation. Whole yogurt and metabolic risk. The evidence is also beginning to materialize in clinical trials. a study published in 2025 compared the consumption of full-fat yogurt (3.25% fat) versus skimmed yogurt in adults with prediabetes. After three weeks, those who consumed full-fat yogurt showed a significant reduction in blood triglycerides compared to the group that consumed nonfat yogurt. Although it is a short-term study and in a specific population, its results add to an increasingly consistent scientific literature. Along these lines, cardiologist Dariush Mozaffarian, director of the Food Is Medicine Institute at Tufts University, maintains that dairy fats are not intrinsically harmful and that there is “ample evidence” of the benefits of fermented dairy products. For its part, natural yogurt and kefir provide satiety, promote intestinal health and help avoid the subsequent consumption of empty calories. Back to real food. The conclusion for the consumer begins to be clear: the fear should not be in natural fat, but in artificial processing. The new dietary guidelines in the United States already reflect this paradigm shift by insisting, for the first time explicitly, on the need to prioritize real foods and avoid ultra-processed foods loaded with sugars, sodium and additives. This does not mean that full-fat dairy products should be consumed without limit or that they are suitable for all profiles. Institutions like Harvard remember that dairy fat It is still mostly saturated and that moderation continues to be key, especially in people with cardiovascular disease or familial hypercholesterolemia. But outside of those clinical contexts, as Dr. Prados Pérez summarizesfull-fat natural yogurt makes sense again: it is more satiating, preserves its original matrix and requires less industrial intervention. In the end, perhaps the secret was not in reformulating foods in a laboratory, but in something much simpler: opening a natural yogurt and eating it as it always was. Image | freepik Xataka | The woman who lived to be 117 had a favorite yogurt: a yogurt that thousands of people are now searching for

Chinese oil tankers are arriving in Venezuela and coming up empty. Exactly what the US was looking for

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The map of world power has been redrawn in just one week. What began as a military operation to capture Nicolás Maduro has transformed into an energy earthquake that has left an image for history: the gigantic Chinese supertankers, which for years were the financial lifeline of Caracas, turning around in the middle of the Atlantic. A U-turn in international waters. The ships Xingye and Thousand Sunny —two supertankers (VLCC) with the Chinese flag—have definitively abandoned their course towards Venezuela. As confirmed by the South China Morning Post (SCMP)After weeks of inactivity and uncertainty anchored in the ocean, these colossi return to Asia empty. These ships are not just any oil tankers. According to Reutersare part of a group of three ships dedicated exclusively to the Venezuela-China route to transport the crude oil destined to pay the gigantic Venezuelan external debt. Its withdrawal is the clearest sign that the South American country, now under US control, will not export crude oil directly to its main buyer in the short term. The embargo that Trump does not lift. Although the US president stated last week that China “would not be deprived” of Venezuelan oil, the reality in the ports is different. According to SCMPChina has not received shipments from the state-owned PDVSA since last month, while Washington insists that the oil embargo remains in force. Where does the oil go then? While the Chinese ships return empty, the giants of the trading Global companies such as Vitol and Trafigura are already preparing the first shipments of a $2 billion deal to move 50 million barrels accumulated in inventory. the destiny, as reported by Reutersit will be the United States and other markets like India. China could receive part of this oil, but only if it negotiates with these intermediaries, thus losing its direct and preferential access to the benefit of the discounts it obtained. through its independent refineries or “teapots”. The bill that no one wants to pay. After the euphoria of the military takeover, a financial dilemma of billion-dollar proportions looms. Venezuelan oil has been takenbut it is mortgaged. China financed railways and power plants for decades through more than 600 bilateral agreements. Regarding the debt, the figures estimate around 10,000 million dollars, although other calculations of think tanks they increase the historical debt to more than 60,000 million, much of it structured under the “oil for loans” model. However, the great fear in Beijing is that the new government led by Trump will invoke the doctrine of “hateful debt”. As pointed out expert Cui Shoujunthis legal recourse would allow the new executive to repudiate the loans alleging that the Chinese money did not benefit the people, but rather served to keep the Maduro regime in power. Outrage in Beijing. The response from the Asian giant is firm and has not been long in coming. The official China Daily media has qualified Maduro’s capture and the January 3 military intervention as a “flagrant hegemonic invasion” and an act of “neocolonialism.” In editorials signed by researchers from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the US is accused of using “hard force” to trample international norms and send a message of fear to the rest of the Latin American countries that seek an independent path. A treasure in ruins. The capture of Maduro has put the largest crude oil deposit in the world in the hands of Washington, but the trophy comes with a fine print that could break global financial balances. The infrastructure that the US now inherits It is literally in ruins: Loading an oil tanker today takes five days compared to the only day that was enough seven years ago, and the crude oil arrives “dirty” (with excess salt and water). Reconstruction will require $10 billion annually for a decade. The battle in Venezuela is no longer fought with soldiers, but in the offices where it will be decided who pays the Chinese debt and who repairs PDVSA’s rusty pipes. Meanwhile, the ships Xingye and Thousand Sunny They move away from the Caribbean, symbolizing the end of an era. Image | Unsplash Xataka | The “B side” of the United States landing in Venezuela: a subsoil full of hypothetical rare earths

We ask for more chargers but they are (almost) always empty

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Europe is experiencing a vicious circle with its charging points. The continent is filling up with plugs. Plugs that are necessary to guarantee the jump to the electric car. Plugs that, however, slow down private companies’ own investments in plugs because they are almost always empty. The data. Charging points for electric cars in Europe are only occupied for between 30 and 120 minutes on average each day. The data is collected by colleagues Motorpassion and it is in tune with what I pointed out Five Days a few months ago for our country. According to the economic newspaper, each plug is used on average in Spain only 1.5 times a day. The paradox. The network of charging points in Spain and Europe lives in an important paradox. To make the leap to electric cars, private customers need a safety net with charging points that is up to par. That is, it allows you to recharge wherever you go and with the assurance that there will be enough so that the waits do not drag on forever. Why does an electric car have less autonomy than advertised? That means having thousands and thousands of plugs available… and unused. Right now, Spain has 52,107 charging points available according to the Electromobility Barometer published by Anfac. The problem is that, on average, They are busy for less than an hour and a half a day and that has an immediate effect: companies stop investing. And without investments in charging points, the doubtful customer is less likely to make the jump to the electric car. And without electric cars that take advantage of the network, the operator does not invest and the wheel never stops. This is, in fact, what Philipp Senoner, CEO of Alpitronic (charging operator with more than 100,000 plugs spread across Europe), complains about. in an interview in Electrive in which he points out that the volume of plugs is oversized for the number of electric cars in circulation. What you ask for. In his interview, Senoner demands clearer regulatory frameworks from the European Union. He points out that the extensions (more theoretical than practical) that are being given to combustion cars They slow down the progress of operators who consider that the electric car is advancing in the market more slowly than expected. The manager explains that charging points for electric trucks are focusing on charging power and not so much on the volume of chargers. He points out that, in his case, the sockets dedicated to commercial vehicles are 70% occupied but also makes it clear that “one of the concerns is that the take-off in the market for electric commercial vehicles may be slowed down due to insufficient connections to the network.” That is to say, from Alpitronic they fall back into the same wheel, in the vicious circle that does not stop. They claim that car plugs are underused but recognize that if truck plugs, which are their most profitable business right now, do not increase, neither will the number of electric trucks. A paradigm shift. The market situation for operators is complex since with such low occupancy rates, amortizations are expected in the very long term. To begin with, it must be taken into account that the use of an electric car is a paradigm shift in itself. The great savings with this technology occur when can we plug in the car at home. Thus, the public socket becomes a mere auxiliary object to be used very few times a year. Gas stations, on the other hand, are the only way if we want to use a car with a combustion engine. For example, another fact: 89% of recharges are carried out at home, according to Motorpassion. The changes are more profound if we take into account that new housing constructions In many cases they arrive with charging plugs, the same happens with large work centers or hotels. Private spaces that take away business from the public outlet. And other uses in which it is passed from the electric station to the shopping center. But we need them. But in the same way, we need the availability of those plugs, slower in the city and more powerful on the highway. We need them to be available for the long trips we take throughout the year. And those projections indicated that in Spain we needed to reach 91,000 charging points by the end of 2025 if we want to guarantee a good pace of sales of electric cars in the coming years. And the time will come when, if the plans that the European Union has projected for the coming years are fulfilled, not everyone who buys an electric car will be able to charge at home. At those times it will be necessary to have sufficient network to provide service to those who park their car on the street. The big question is: who is willing to make those investments? Photo | In Xataka | I have experienced first-hand all the evils of electric car charging. These are my tips

China’s biggest problem is not the US. It is a “virus” that advances at an unprecedented speed and threatens to empty its factories

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In September, and in front to a data offered by the United Nations that put the future of the Chinese economy in check, Beijing defended itself with an opportunity for the future: the AI. In between, it remained to be seen who was right. Because the main problem of the economy that pull the strings of the planet are pure mathematics applied to a near and most uncertain future. One that indicates that, sooner rather than later, its population will to plummet. Against oneself. The demographic crisis that shakes China today is, to a large extent, the result of a policy that worked too well: the birth control campaign begun in the seventies and crystallized in the policy of only child 1979. What began as a state intervention to contain population growth that was considered unsustainable ended up shaping behaviors, expectations, and family structures for generations. Sterilizations, fines and forced abortions not only birth numbers reducedbut they inhibited the cultural habit of mass reproduction, and when the State began to relax the rules (allowing two children in 2016 and three in 2021) the social response was no longer the same: the fertility rate fell from 1.77 children per woman in 2016 up to 1.12 in 2021and the timid incentive measures have barely reversed the curve. The real cost of breeding. Behind the numbers there are everyday decisions. The economic calculation of starting a family in China is, as in so many other places, considerable: studies estimate that raising a child from birth to the end of their college education can cost on average about $75,000and in cities like Shanghai that figure shoots up to approximately $140,000. These prices, together with long work daysmarket expensive housing and professional expectations, explain why many young people (especially women) they choose not to have children. Surveys and testimonials collected show that for many people motherhood today is equivalent to a professional and personal resignation that they are not willing to assume: “I don’t want to think about sacrificing my life,” summarizes an executive from Hangzhou in the Washington Postand that plea for time and personal autonomy is one of the reasons why symbolic subsidies from the government (for example, some 500 dollars a year for the first three years) are insufficient to reverse the trend. Without weddings and solutions. we have been counting. Demographic decline is accelerated by fall of marriage: in 2024 just 6.1 million of couples registered their union, compared to 13.5 million in 2013, a data that works as predictor of future births when the rate of births outside of marriage is marginal. The State not only offers economic incentives and university courses about “how to flirt”, but has returned to intrusive behavior: officials pressure newlyweds about your plans of pregnancy and control the conversation public about marriage in the media. It is a gesture of urgency that clashes with the autonomy of generation Z, increasingly individualisticfor which getting married and procreating are no longer social mandates but options (among many). That tension between pronatalist policy and cultural change explains why coercive measures of the past do not seem to translate into higher births today. Accelerated aging. While fewer Chinese are born, the older population continues to grow: Life expectancy rises and the population pyramid inverts, which poses a brutal rebalancing in public accounts. Projections indicate that in the coming decades the proportion of elderly will doublewith colossal pressure on pensions, healthcare and long-term care financed by an increasingly narrow contributor base. Demographers warn that this phenomenon can trigger a vicious circle: more resources allocated to the elderly imply less public support for young families, which further reduces fertility. By 2100, according to calculations by international organizations, there will be more people out of working life than within it, a scenario with economic and political implications of systemic scope. The factory of the world shrinks. The problem is not only quantitative but qualitative: the workforce that made China the factory of the planet (born between 1960 and 1980, with a disposition for industrial jobs) has no substitute culture in later generations that they avoid factory work. At the same time, the proportion of Chinese manufacturing in the world total (today located around 30%) will necessarily be reduced if demographics exhaust the labor supply. The official short-term answer is automationbetting on robots and investment in productivity, but substitution does not work the same in all sectors: services, care and certain labor-intensive branches will continue to demand humans. The consequence is that manufacturing companies already they detect competitive pressure in prices and labor costs, and some observers point out that the industrial replacement could move to India, Southeast Asia, Mexico or Eastern Europe, with a multiplier effect on global supply chains. Politics and resistance to foreigners. They remembered in the post that a lever that in other countries would alleviate the labor force deficit (immigration) crashes in China with taboos of cultural homogeneity and political considerations that make the adoption of broad immigration policies difficult. That forces the government’s options and forces it to rely on internal incentives and in robotization. The strain between the economic need for labor and the preference to maintain cultural cohesion places Beijing in a strategic dilemma: either it embraces broader migrations (with all the integration challenges that this would imply) or it accelerates productive reconversion and the displacement of sectors that depend less on the labor factor. State measures. Faced with the abyss, Beijing has been introducing measures: relaxation of family policysubsidies, public campaigns for promote marriage and birth rate, and tax programs limited. But the experts they underline that late policies rarely reorder behaviors already fixed for decades. Louise Loo and other economists they estimate that reducing the workforce could take away about 0.5 points percentages to annual GDP growth in the next decade, a bite significant for an economy that needs to grow to absorb debts and finance its modernization. The challenge is that demographics act over long periods of time: cohorts born today … Read more

The 14 million empty homes

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In May 2024, the New York Times launched A report that undressed the situation of the real estate crisis in China. There was no doubt. It was one of the most serious in their recent history and the numbers were devastating: there were four million finished apartments without buyer, and another ten million sold, but still without building. The oversight was a direct consequence of something that had already happened in Japan. A year later, the situation is a bit worse. The Japanese precedent. The comparison between the current Chinese economy and the Japanese of The nineties It was inevitable: both face the consequences of inflated real estate bubbles for erratic fiscal and monetary policies, excessive expectations and an adverse demographic background. Japan lived a boom in housing prices that multiplied by more than two the relationship between cost and rent, sustained by a wave of first -time buyers, tax policies favorable to land and financial deregulation. He mirage of wealth It promoted consumption and employment, but when the population began to age and the number of new buyers was reduced, the real estate values ​​collapsed, dragging the bag and plunging the country into a deflation trap marked by unemployment and falling birth. The Japanese solution. Japan Times remembered That Tokyo’s political response, based on aggressive monetary and fiscal stimuli, misunderstood the root of the problem: it was a Chronic demographicnot of a conjunctural episode. The consequence was to aggravate imbalances, further increase housing, delay marriages and reduce births. With the passage of time, Japan managed to escape from deflation, but was caught in a Long -term inflation circlewith salaries pressured up for work shortage, industrial weakening and loss of competitiveness, all aggravating population contraction and profiling what some call not only “lost decades”, but “lost centuries.” The Chinese challenge. China today faces a panorama even more severe. The accelerated urbanization, the shortage of land imposed by public policies, the fiscal dependence of local governments of land sales and unlimited growth expectations inflated prices until unprecedented levels. At its peak, the real estate sector came to contribute a Fourth part of GDP national and more than a third of public income, while representing near the 70% of family assetsin front of the 50% in Japan In 1990. With price-unworthy ratios more than double than the Japanese and a residential investment that became 1.5 times higher than the Japanese in proportion to GDP, the prick of the bubble has left millions of homes without demand, collapse of construction, chronic overcapacity and a destruction of family wealth equivalent to a whole year of national production. Residential Zone in Shanghai The demographic trap. If Japan suffered the contraction of first -time buyers to from 40 yearsin China the situation is more serious: due to the Single Son Policythe average acquisition of the first home is earlier, towards 28-32 years. That cohort reached its maximum in 2019, just before the burst of the bubble, which means that there will be no second demand such as the one that the Japanese situation in the 2000s partially relieved. In addition, the population over 65 grows at a dizzying pace: what Japan took 28 years, China will reach it in just two decadesuntil 2040. To this is added a very low internal consumption, just one 38% of GDP In 2020, compared to 50% Japanese in 1990, which limits the capacity of domestic demand to cushion the crisis. The Evergrande case. Today, the Chinese real estate market, which for more than two decades was the great engine of economic growth, crosses a descending spiral that has been five years and threatens to chronify. The magnitude of the collapse was revealed with the record losses of Vanke in 2024 and with the Evergrande decision (The most notorious symbol of the boom and subsequent collapse) to retire from the Hong Kong bag after accumulating liabilities by 360,000 million dollars. Evergrande, that at its peak became the largest promoter of the country and the emblem of an expansion based in debt and speculation, He collapsed When Beijing imposed limits on financing in 2020. Its liquidation reflects not only the failure of restructuring attempts, but also the depth of the crisis that drags the rest of the sector. Urbanization, debt and speculation. Bloomberg remembered That Beijing’s problem has its roots in 1998, when the housing market was liberalized in an even mostly rural country. In just two decades, almost 500 million people They moved to the cities, which generated an unprecedented boom in the construction and turned the house into the main asset of Chinese families, until reaching the 80% of its wealth. Between 2000 and 2015 prices are multiplied by sixfed by speculation and a model that allowed promoters to seem homes not yet built to finance their growth. At the same time, local governments became dependent on the sale of land to sustain their budgets, feedback the bubble. At the end of the 2010, the total value of the real estate sector exceeded The 50 billion dollarstwice the United States market. The “three red lines.” In 2020, fearful of a bubble that could destabilize the financial system, the government imposed Hard restrictions: Limits to indebtedness, liquidity demands and brake on the concession of mortgages. These rules, known as The “three red lines”They suffocated promoters who already operated on the limit of their financial capacity. The coup coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic, which paralyzed works and He stopped the demand. In 2021, Evergrande stopped paying his debt, which marked the official start of the crisis. Other giants such as Country Garden and Sunac followed the same path. Since then, Hong Kong courts have ordered the liquidation of several promoters Chinese, included China South City Holdings In August 2024, confirming the structural fragility of a sector built on debt and unreal expectations. Price drop and excess supply. The demand collapsed from 2022, when the economic uncertainty and the loss of jobs eroded the confidence of the buyers. Prices fell strongly, registering … Read more

It is not that Russia is lack of artillery, it is that from the space its armor park is being empty

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Last July 28 is He published a study of the Institute of the School of Economy of kyiv where the situation of the vast Soviet arsenals that Russia had been using since the beginning of his invasion in Ukraine was analyzed. The analysis left no doubt: they were exhausting shipments from the main Russian military stores. Now, this study has added graphic evidence. The decline of reserves. Yes, in Another study recent intelligence of Ukraine, based on satellite images and published by the Jompy researcherit is confirmed that Russian tank reserves are entering a critical phase of exhaustion. The detailed monitoring of military deposits shows that the constant extraction From armored, together with the industrial disability to restore them to the necessary rhythm, it is racing in a accelerated way of Moscow to sustain the war in Ukraine with modern combat cars. Exhaustion and obsolete tanks. The nerve center of this deterioration, according to satellite imagesis the 1311 deposit, where they are withdrawing around 20 T-72b tanks a month. If that rhythm is maintained, the warehouse will be empty before the end of the year, an unexpected fact even for analysts who follow the evolution of Russian material. This emptying adds to the exhaustion of stocks close to the Uralvagonzavod plantmain tank factory in the country. Even more revealing is that 1311 no longer counts With T-80BVwhich suggests that Russia would have completely consumed that line of reserves. The presence of T-80ud In base 22 it does not alter the panorama, as these vehicles are not suitable for reconditioned. Given this shortage, they have begun to be extracted T-55 and T-62tanks of the fifties and sixties whose reappearance in Omsktransash indicates a forced setback towards obsolete models. The problems of the industry. The lack of recent updates in the images of Base 6018 points to the fact that Omsktransash, one of the pillars in armored repair, faces It would be difficulty to maintain an adequate restoration rhythm. The need to resort to infantry combat vehicles (BMP), which originally were not part of the lots stored in 1311, reflects the improvisation with which Russia is trying Cover empty in its mechanized arsenal. The general picture reveals an industrial pressure that fails to sustain the war demand, partly because vehicles extracted are in deplorable conditions after storage decades. A Russian T-80BV No strategic reservations. Once 1311 is emptied, Moscow will be forced to resort to Deposits 349 and 2544where the T-72awith 586 and 215 units respectively. However, most are in poor condition, which limits the real effectiveness of this resource. The projection is bleak: when these reserves are exhausted, Russia will depend almost exclusively on T-55 and T-62, which represent barely 16% of the inventory of armored prior to the invasion of Ukraine. Quality degradation is evident: of third generation models, relatively modern, to platforms that decades ago they are considered overcome in any scenario of contemporary war. And without artillery. It We count A few weeks ago. The decline is not limited to tanks. Previous reports had already indicated that Russia has consumed almost Half of your reservations of artillery towed in the Shchuchye deposit, which housed about 50% of all this material in the country. In addition, the pace of reactivation of pieces It has collapsedbeing currently more than four times lower than that registered in 2022, confirming the progressive inability to reconstitute the power of terrestrial fire. A step back. The news has a clear background: the wear war in Ukraine has led the Russian army to a point where its formations are experiencing a “DESMECCANIZATION”that is, a setback from the classic model of armored regiments to infantry -centered units that advance in motorcycles, light vehicles without protection or even on foot. This phenomenon does not imply that Russia is losing war, since its numerical superiority in personnel allows you It limits severely Moscow’s ability to transform those tactical advances into deep and strategic ruptures of the enemy front. Strategic implications. This panorama suggests that Russian war machinery faces a Structural limit difficult to overcome. The apparent initial abundance of Soviet reserves is being replaced for the urgency of resorting to material practically museum. Each T-62 or T-55 deployed on the front not only lacks the necessary benefits against drones, anti-tank missiles and guided artillery, but also exposes crews to crews A higher risk In modern fighting. The loss of contemporary armored armies will reduce the Russian offensive capacity, will make it slower and will force their controls to rethink mechanized assault strategies, which have already shown vulnerability in Ukraine. Image | Google Maps, Jompy/X, Alan Wilson In Xataka | The war in Ukraine, far from approaching its end, has added a disturbing ingredient: an unexpected “friend” for Russia In Xataka | It is not that the war has entered its Mad Max phase, is that Ukraine is using the trucks we saw in the movie

Ducati signed Marc Márquez to win races. They did not count on that it would also empty their safe

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Marc Márquez carries An impeccable season As for podiums and that means that Ducati has to scratch his pocket more and more to comply with the salary agreements to which he promised with the Pilot de Cervera. The military ride that Márquez is starring in his first season with Ducati is getting A infarction record being the first pilot to chain three major awards of absolute domain, linking six victories with Sprint and Carrera. Ducati’s accountant is afraid the worst. A start of the season that breaks molds. Marc Márquez has revolutionized the MotoGP world in its first season with the Ducati team. His domain on the track is not only filling the trophy showcases of the Ducati headquarters in Burgus Panigale, but also leaving the accounts of the Italian team dry. In just ten major awards, Márquez has already won almost 1.5 million euros Only in salary bonus By victories, and the figure at the end of the season can be vertigo. His great bet: leave Ducati Honda. Marc Márquez made a risky decision to leave Honda, renouncing one of the highest salaries in the history of motorcycling. Although such and As I said The pilot himself “never entered into details about that aspect because nobody really knows what my salary is in Honda”, different leaks estimated that his salary moved in a fork of between 15 and 18 million euros per season in the Japanese team. Leaving the Japanese team was not going to be a rose path since, before consolidating its entrance to the Ducati team, the six -time MotoGP world champion had to go to the Gresini team, Ducati’s satellite, before making the final jump. Paolo Ciabatti, sports director of Ducati Cors, He pointed out “Surely, the Gresini team cannot afford to pay a pilot the amount of money to which Marc Márquez was accustomed.” The Catalan pilot did not seem to import the salary cut. He would already adjust accounts with the Italians when he arrived in Ducati. Although the exact amount of your file is as secret as it was in Honda, The data They point out that Ducati signed a payroll between 12 and 14 million euros per season for the Spanish pilot. THE KEY: THE BONUS. However, although the base salary agreed by Ducati was not as high as the one he received in Honda, Márquez has managed to get the most out of his contract. The Cervera pilot has been squeezing the Ducati box chaining victories and podiums to go unlocking bonus As if they were the levels of a video game. In the ten major awards played, Márquez accumulates six victories and nine wins in Sprint races, which leaves him as a leading World Cup. All this translates into an increase of 1.38 million euros only as premiums for victories, and we are only in the middle of the championship. Motivation to win. Ducati signed with Márquez some really high cousins. According The published by ACEthe Spanish pilot pocketed 150,000 euros for each Sunday race that wins, and another 40,000 euros for each sprint. To that we must add the bonus to finish second on Sunday, which is 80,000 euros, and the one to finish third, which is 40,000 euros, just like winning a sprint. If Márquez maintains the rhythm in the twelve major awards that remain championship, the progression says that it will end more than three million euros packed as bonus in this section. But there does not end everything. Márquez will enter an additional three million euros premium if world champion is proclaimed. Thus, at 12 or 14 million euros of annual salary agreed, the additional six million that the pilot has unlocked as bonus by victories and sprints would be added. In the end, Márquez has gone well. Someone brought a tila to the Ducati accountant. In Xataka | There was a day that MotoGP rivaled in audiences with football. The Aragon GP confirms that this time has died Image | Ducati Motogt Team

After the civil war, Franco wanted to colonize empty Spain. So 300 new villages were invented

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Throughout Spain there are more than 8,100 municipalitieslarge and small villages, coast, mountain, bathed by the waters of the Cantabrian, the Atlantic or of Mediterranean climate. There are also very old, such as Brañoserafounded in the ninth century, and others so recent that their first inhabitants can still tell us about their origins. This is the case of the 300 populations promoted by the Franco dictatorship as part of its colonization policy. The peoples “Invented” By Franco. A figure: 55,000. The idea is so crazy, so huge, that often It is said which motivated one of the population displacements most important of the Spain of the twentieth century. Between 1940 and 1970 The Franco regime founded around 300 locations in 27 provinces (half in Andalusia and Extremadura) that ended up causing the displacement of 55,000 familiespeople who a good day made their bags and left their native municipalities attracted by the promises of these new -wedge settlements. “Peoples of Colonization”. The colossal project was developed under the auspices of the National Institute of Colonization (the Incan entity created After the civil war To carry out the Franco agricultural policy) and their promises were of course suggestive: families willing to move to the new settlements were offered homes and wide irrigation lands in which a future is carved. All this in property. At least in theory. Input, the settlers had to meet certain requirements. The lots were supposedly distributed by raffle, although there are who holds That not all candidates started with the same possibilities: Ideally was that they were part of large families (with children willing to work) and adjusted to the archetype dreamed by Francoism: devout, laborious Catholics and to be possible Without links With reprisals. Nor did everyone start with the same conditions. As remember ABCin 1945 the government approved an order that regulated how the colonists could access the houses, something that depended on their savings. Under the tutelage of the INC. Who could advance part of the value of the land (20%) entered a phase that the INC called “access to property”. Then they had to pay the rest of the amount to become owners of their homes and farms. The thing changed for the humblest settlers. They had to spend five years in “Tutela period”, a stage during which the Institute supervised what they cultivated and remained a portion of the crops as payment. Villalba de Calatrava, a town of colonization of the Calatrava Campo (Ciudad Real) Campo. How long did they spend like this? Depends. ABC appointment A town where that tutelage lasted until almost the end of the 60s, a time to which the families had to add the “access to property” stage. The newspaper also speaks of 25 -year deadlines to finish paying the lands (30 in the case of homes) with more than considerable interests, 3% or even 7%. To complete the picture, the INC had a structure that was in charge of “guardianship” the families of settlers through intermediate charges. In the first place were the agronomists, authors of the plans. Its guidelines passed to the expert and below this was the Mayoral, who supervised the farmers. And what was the goal? With the new settlement the Franco regime pursued several objectives. The program served to boost the Agrarian transformation (With irrigation extensions), expand the cultivable area, repopulate and transform the Spanish field, but also had an ideological background. With the new settlements, many baptized with names that They mentioned to the new regime and its referents (Caudillo Alberche, Villafranco del Guadiana either Águeda del Caudillo), The dictatorship also sought to project a new image and feed its advertising. The expansion of the new villages coincided with The bet of the dictatorship by hydraulic infrastructure. “The political strategy of the new State replaces the redistribution of the land (objective of the Second Republic) with a colonization policy based on the transformation of the rural that allowed to settle in villages of colonization a self -sufficient peasant”, Remember from the Ministry of Agriculture, on which the National Institute depended after its creation, in October 1939. A program with lights … The colonization policy of Francoism had social, economic, agricultural and even “undeniable” repercussions, such as They recognize From the ministry. And not only because the creation of hundreds of villages for Repopulation of the ’emptied Spain’ and postwar. Among the displaced there were those who, upon their arrival at the settlements, found infrastructures and unimaginable services in the villas from which they came. “When we got here it was like dreaming awake,” He recounts The country A retired farmer who arrived in Villalba in Calatrava (Ciudad Real) with his parents in 1964, when he was 12 years old. “There was a bathroom, with its cup and sink. In those years that had no one! He was very small, but having something like that was out of series.” The idea was that in the new settlements the settlers could opt for a house in fertile property and lands, contributing in passing to the economy of postwar Spain and the conversion of fields into irrigation. … And also with shadows. Not everything was positive. Despite the promises of housing and lands, many settlers to reach the property cost them years of sweat delivering part of their crops. “We were slaves,” confesses a The country Another old settler of The Bazanawhere he arrived with just 17 or 18 years. In 2018, already after 85, he remembered: “They paid you what they wanted for the crops, and then there came a point where they stopped buying them because the beans from Badajoz were very expensive.” The cultivation of the new lands was not always simple, just as it was not to follow the guidelines marked by the engineers and major people of the town. Others left their lifelong locations to move to new wedge settlements in which they had no roots, they were surrounded by strangers and (sometimes) they met half -finished works. “When … Read more

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