Europe

Europe is looking for a place to light its “artificial sun” and Spain only has to defeat Italy and Germany to achieve it

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For decades, nuclear fusion has been the distant horizon of energy: an almost mythical promise, always thirty years ahead. A future without a map. In full electrification of the economy and with demand pushed by the digital industry and data centers, Europe has begun to set coordinates for that promise: where to build the first commercial centers. For the first time, the “artificial sun” is no longer just a scientific experiment and it becomes a problem of territory, infrastructure and industrial planning. And in this new European energy map, Spain appears among the best positioned countries. A new path. Gauss Fusion, the European company created to power the first generation of commercial fusion plants on the continent, has completed the first comprehensive European study of potential sites for this technology, in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich (TUM). The study culminates in a map that did not exist until now. A map that indicates 150 industrial clusters and up to 900 potential sites spread across nine European countries. Behind each point there is an analysis of geology, seismicity, meteorology, refrigeration, access to the electrical grid and existing infrastructure, aligned with standards of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Spain on the horizon. It appears as the third country with the most identified clusters: 17, only behind Germany (53) and Italy (22), and ahead of France, Austria, the Netherlands or Switzerland. This is not a political decision or a formal candidacy, but rather a strictly technical diagnosis: where it would be possible to build a first-generation fusion power plant if it had to be done tomorrow. “That Spain appears as the third country with the most potential clusters is due solely to technical criteria,” emphasizes Milena Roveda, CEO of Gauss Fusion, in an interview with Xataka. “The study follows an objective methodology consistent with international standards. There are no strategic weightings or quotas per country,” he emphasizes. And that nuance is key. The map does not look for winners or distribute investments: it identifies where the minimum physical and industrial conditions already exist to host a fusion power plant. But why Spain? On the one hand, its fusion ecosystem. Spain is one of the European countries with greater historical involvement in ITERhouses the headquarters of Fusion for Energy in Barcelona and has achieved key industrial contracts for national companies. Added to this is the role of CIEMATuniversities with leading groups in plasma physics and materials, and the beginning of the construction of IFMIF-DONES in Granadaa critical infrastructure to validate materials for future reactors. On the other hand, their regulatory experience. “Spain has a nuclear regulatory body with extensive prestige and experience,” highlights Roveda. From an industrial point of view, Roveda insists that Spain should not limit itself to being a host: “It has the potential to be a key piece in the merger value chain. Companies like IDOM already have demonstrated that can design and deliver extremely complex systems. Where could these clusters be? The map does not draw isolated points, but rather broad areas. The study identifies regional clusters capable of containing multiple viable locations. In Spain, they appear spread over a good part of the territory – from Andalusia and Extremadura to Castilla y León, Aragon, Catalonia, Galicia, the Basque Country and the Valencian Community – and are concentrated in industrial areas with high electrical demandgood network connectivity and, in some cases, close to old energy enclaves that could reuse part of their infrastructure. Frédérick Bordry, CTO of Gauss Fusion, explains to Xataka that the objective of the map is not to select a specific place, but “to have a broad database that allows collaboration with authorities, companies and other interested parties.” The final decision, remember, will not come until the end of 2027. What would a commercial fusion center be like? Talking about commercial fusion is no longer talking about experiments like ITER. Gauss Fusion works with the concept of a GIGA plantcapable of producing 1 gigawatt of electricity. This implies very specific industrial requirements. “Assuming an efficiency of 30%, a plant of this type must safely evacuate about 2 GW of heat,” explains Bordry. In practice, this requires access to rivers, reservoirs or the sea, as well as robust electrical infrastructure. Unlike fission, fusion does not produce chain reactions, is self-limiting, does not emit CO₂ and does not generate long-lived radioactive waste. “Due to its safety features, it could and should be integrated near urban and industrial centers,” says Bordry, even supplying waste heat for industrial uses or district heating. This aspect connects with a trend that is already seen in Europe: heat recovery in district heating networks, as happens in Finland with data centerseither the use of large industrial heat pumps. The process now enters a delicate phase. According to Gauss Fusion, the goal is to reduce the European map to between two and five final locations by the end of 2026, and make the final decision in 2027. But the technical criteria will not be the only ones. “Political will, the regulatory framework and social acceptance will be essential,” emphasizes Roveda. In his opinion, Europe needs policies that promote fusion as a new industrial engine, and regulations “adapted to the real risk of these facilities.” Social acceptance will also be key. “Transparency and citizen participation are essential,” he says. “We have to explain well what fusion is and what it is not.” A project that covers a lot. For Bordry, no European country can tackle a project of this magnitude alone. The merger will require a continental industrial alliance, something that Roveda defines as a “fusion Eurofighter”, in which Spain should play a central role, not only as a location, but as a technological and industrial supplier. In a context in which European electricity demand could grow up to 75% by 2050fusion is beginning to be seen not as a distant promise, but as one more piece of the energy puzzle, complementary to renewables, storage and electrification. An open closure, but with a … Read more

If there is finally peace in Ukraine, Russia has a surprise for the rest of Europe

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The talks in Berlin have revived the idea of ​​an agreement to end the war in Ukraine like never before, to the point that Donald Trump has assured that peace is “closer than ever” after prolonged contacts with both European leaders and Vladimir Putin. If this horizon occurs, Finland has just sounded the alarm. The peace that appears. The United States has put on the table a plan that, according to its own negotiators, would solve around 90% of friction points and that includes a ceasefire supervised by Washington, security guarantees powerful and a central role for Europe in the stabilization of the country. kyiv admits real progressalthough he emphasizes that the territorial issue remains the most painful core of the negotiation, with Russia demanding concessions in the Donbas that Ukraine is reluctant to accept. Still, the general tone is contained optimismwith the feeling that, for the first time since 2022, there is a minimally viable political architecture to stop the fighting. Security guarantees. The key element of the plan is a package of security guarantees described by US officials as the most robust ever offered to Ukraine, with explicit parallels to NATO’s Article 5. Europe is ready to lead a multinational force on the ground, a “coalition of the willing” that would help regenerate the Ukrainian armed forces, protect its airspace and guarantee maritime security, always with political and operational support from the United States, although no US troops deployed in Ukraine. Furthermore, Washington would assume supervision of a ceasefire and an early warning system for possible violations, while European countries would legally commit to act in the event of new aggression. For kyiv, these guarantees are the essential condition to accept any freezing of the conflict, even leaving aspirations such as membership in NATO on hold, something that Zelenskiy has come to openly raise. The hidden price of peace. However, beneath this apparent diplomatic advance lies growing unrest on Europe’s eastern flank. Finland has issued a warning as clear as it is uncomfortable: peace in Ukraine will not mean the end of the Russian threat, but very likely its geographical displacement. According to Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, Moscow would take advantage of the end of hostilities to redeploy forces towards NATO’s borders, especially in the Baltic and northern Europe, strengthening its posture vis-à-vis the Alliance in a period of just three to five years. From Helsinki, it is insisted that Russia would continue to be a revisionist power and that interpreting peace as a general de-escalation would be a strategic error of the first order. The eastern flank prepares. The most exposed countries already act accordingly. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland are on track to spend more than 5% of its GDP in defense, well above the traditional objectives of NATO, while coordinate common capabilities in air defense, drones and ground forces, and are working to accelerate the movement of troops and weapons across the continent. Finland, with its historical culture of preparation against Russia, maintains bunkers, strategic reserves and training programs civil, despite going through a serious economic crisis. These countries fear that a peace agreement will lead some European partners, further away from the front, to relax their attention and their military spending just when, in their opinion, the threat would be reconfiguring and not disappearing. Europe and a decision. The debate comes in a critical week for the European Union, forced to decide whether to support financially to Ukraine in the long term, unlocks the use of frozen Russian assets and assumes that your future security It depends less on Washington and more on its own deterrence capabilities. Orpo has been explicit by warning that Europe cannot afford to just talk about peace, but must act quickly and resourcefully, because there is no credible alternative plan if support for kyiv fails. Thus, the paradox is strongly imposed: the advance towards peace in Ukrainefar from closing the chapter on European security, could open another equally delicatein which Russia, freed from the Ukrainian front, once again strains the continental chessboard and forces Europe to finally face the strategic consequences of a conflict that never was only from Ukraine. Image | Ministry of Defense of Ukraine In Xataka | Something unprecedented has happened in North Korea: a video has revealed that they are sending their soldiers in Ukraine to the “slaughterhouse” In Xataka | The drone war in Ukraine is complete nonsense: the manuals that were useful two weeks ago are a death trap today

Six dissident countries want to keep the combustion car alive in Europe. And they have the opposition of Spain ahead of them

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The European Commission will speak and everything indicates that it will back down on its decision to ban the sale of cars with combustion engines from 2035. To what extent remains to be known and has yet to be revealed. What is certain is that Europe is divided between those who want to go back and those who prefer to move forward. These are the six dissident countries. The six of combustion. “We can and must pursue our climate goal effectively, without killing our competitiveness.” These are some of the words of the letter that six countries have sent to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, according to Bloomberg. Why does an electric car have less autonomy than advertised? The letter, which is reported by the media but has also been ratified by Automotive News either Reutersis led by Italy and signed by six countries in total that disagree with the decision that is still in force right now and that points to the impossibility of selling combustion engines that generate carbon emissions from 2035. These countries are: Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Poland. They are not doing the work. In the statements they have been making these days (reported in media such as Diariomotor) its leaders there is a common axis around which everything revolves: competitiveness. These countries believe that the ban on combustion engines makes it difficult for traditional European manufacturers to exist. These leaders consider that Europeans have a lot to lose if they jump to electric cars as the only solution and that Chinese manufacturers benefit the most. This position, held for months by countries such as Italy or Poland including your express support for tariffs to the Chinese electric car, has even made some Chinese manufacturers stop your investments in these dissident countries. It is believed that by orders of the Chinese State itself. And Germany? Its absence is almost surprising considering that it is the company that has championed the fight against the 2035 ban. Not signing this letter shows that the German country is advancing on its own and that it seems to have other objectives, although with subtle differences, in mind. Friedrich Merz, German chancellor, has long been lobbying for combustion engines to remain in force. In fact, he confronted Italy until he achieved the door was opened to synthetic fuels. The big question is how far they want to stretch their position. Small nuances. Manfred Weber, president of the European People’s Party and German politician, leaked a few days ago that the intention of the European Commission was to allow the sale of cars with combustion engines as long as the average CO2 emissions were reduced by 90%, taking the 2021 objectives as a reference. The change is important because achieving that goal is only possible if the bulk of the cars sold by a brand are electric cars. Even with current approvals for plug-in hybrids it would be impossible to achieve consumption that falls within the regulations. That is, Germany is looking for a huge fleet of electric cars on the streets with certain wide sleeve for luxury manufacturers of putting cars with combustion engines on the street at very high prices. Spain and the pro-electric front. Faced with the six dissident countries and Germany, Spain seems to have confronted France so that the current ban is maintained under the terms that had already been agreed. That is, it is prohibited to sell combustion engines that produce carbon emissions. Both countries are interested in the future of the vehicle fleet going through the electric car. French manufacturers have made enormous efforts to jump to the electric car, with renault and Peugeot as champions of these investments. Multi-energy platforms Stellantis STLA and STLA Small They are good examples. And precisely part of the future of the Spanish industry starts from the latter. Our country assembles the Stellantis small electric cars and that is why now it has on the horizon a battery factory next to CATL. Martorell, from Seat, is being renovated to give way to the small electric cars from the Volkswagen Group and the investment in Sagunto for the battery factory is part of the plan. These are just some of the projects already active as Spain continues to position itself to host more of the electric car industry in the coming years, including investments already approved for the conversion of factories. Photo | Rafael Garcin and mercedes In Xataka | In 2035 only 10% of combustion cars will comply with Euro 7. So the industry is pushing to skip it

Columbus introduced the pineapple to Europe in 1496. 200 years later the English went crazy

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When the gun is drawn it is to shoot, the one who takes it out to show it is a parguela. That always made me more amused than necessary. phrase of one of Callejeros’ ‘caughts’ on public roads, and I always associated it with what we buy for status. If we are what we have, we show what we have to demonstrate our position. And in 17th century England, what the richest people took out for a walk to show off their power was… a pineapple. The Blackberry phones back in the dayto the just like watchesjewelry, cars or yachts, are status symbols. They are elements that we use to show the social level in which we find ourselves. Up to a Labubu would go into this example, and if these symbols have something in common, it is that they are expensive. In the case of the pineapple, the fruit was introduced to Europe in 1496 with a single specimen of a pineapple. And this exotic fruit did not hit hard in Spain, but in an England that experienced a real “piñamania”. From the pineapple fever… It was on his second transatlantic voyage when the explorer in the service of the Spanish crown returned with the pineapple. In the Guadeloupe island He found the fruit and took back to Spain a large quantity of this “pina de Indes”, or fruit of the “pine of the Indians”. He offered it to the Catholic Monarchs and it seems that… they liked it. So much so that, according to the historian Peter Martyr d’Anghierathe king “preferred it over everything else.” It was what was needed for the subjects will embrace the fruit with open arms. It is a mystery how and when pineapple was introduced to England, but it is believed that, in the mid-17th century, Charles II of England held a feast at which pineapple was the exotic dish. And more important than its flavor, was that the pineapple, being unknown in the Old Continent, was not associated with any cultural reference. If the apple was the forbidden fruit, the pineapple was a blank canvas. In an article by BBC We can read how Lauren O’Hagan, from the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University, explains that this allowed the pineapple to be given a mythical quality: it was the symbolic manifestation of the divine right of the king. There it is nothing, but it is still easy to identify thanks to the “crown” of the pineapple and the golden color of the exterior and, above all, the interior. This earned him the nickname “King Pine,” and the royals wasted no time in doing what they did best: turning something unattainable to the people into something more than separated them from the plebs. King Charles II commissioned a portrait of himself being entertained with a pineapple, the ornamentation of palaces and mansions began to adopt the pineapple as a structural ornament. Drawings, tapestries, more paintings, tableware, furniture ornamentation, medals and… this: Dunmore Pineapple It was exotic, but there was also an interest in starting to cultivate it in Europe, and that was possible in the mid-17th century. Heated greenhouses They allowed us to replicate the tropical climate (more or less) to start growing pineapples. And you would think that the more pineapples on the market, the lower their value will be, right? Well, the opposite happened. Since these greenhouses were very expensive, and growing the first pineapples was not an easy task, the fruit was seen as a investment. It took years to flower in a very expensive facility and, furthermore, it was possible that a large part of the harvest was lost for different reasons. There were more, yes, but since the upper classes were the only ones who could afford a pineapple and were aware of its value… they were not going to eat it. And thus began the climax of this story: pineapple rental. The wealthiest, who could spend 80 pounds on one (tight to inflation, between 12,000 and 16,000 pounds), they were not going to eat a piece of fruit worth 20,000 euros, so they used it as ornamentation. Since they last several days without going overboard, they organized events in which they had the pine cones as if they were vases (or LEGO figures), clearly visible to the guests. When it started to get soft, they ate it. And what did those who had money, but couldn’t afford a pineapple, do? Rent it. This is how a parallel business emerged. to satisfy that demand. Shark mentality of those businessmen who thought about the business of renting pineapples to the wealthy classes, but not much. It was considered shameful to be caught leaving a pineapple rental store (it would be admitting social defeat), and the absurdity reached limits like seeing people walking around holding a pineapple. The equivalent of going out into the street with a ‘Luisvi‘ bragging about ‘Luisvi’. But soon the gentrifiers’ worst nightmare would occur: globalization. …to the democratization of the pineapple The progress In transportation, with steamships that began to make more frequent trips between Great Britain and the colonies where pineapples grew wild, pineapples began to be stored in warehouses, along with other goods. Soon, the pineapple invaded the market, and if before only the upper classes could afford a pineapple, now the working class could also delight in its flavor. O’Hagan recounts that “at the time, the pineapple-eating working class was used as a visual metaphor for the problem of progress in satirical prints.” If everyone could eat pineapple, It wasn’t special anymore.. Suddenly, the image of pineapple as a prohibitive fruit fell away, like “I liked Nirvana before it became mainstream.” They were sold in carts on the streets, even cheaper than potatoes, and when a way was devised to fit a pineapple in a can, the fruit definitively lost its appeal for the wealthiest. There was only one thing left to remember that glorious past: art, tableware … Read more

a “Made in Europe” label to park wherever you want

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Paris is the most striking case because it has taken it to the extreme. The city has a very simple system to reduce the volume of cars on its most central streets: that you pay 18 euros to leave the car on the street. It doesn’t matter if it is electric or combustion, the intention is to punish parking to reduce car trips. The fee is paid by weight of the vehicle, so SUVs are the most punished. The Parisian idea has been replicated in Spain in one way or another. In Madrid, for example, parking a car in its most central streets has a price if it is labeled B or C: 200 euros fine. And the capital does allow access to the streets that previously formed Madrid Central but it is mandatory that, with these labels, the car passes through a parking lot. If you park on the street, the fine is guaranteed because access is controlled by cameras that exchange data with the parking lots. And it is not the only city that chooses this way of acting. Most of the information that suggests that cars with a B label cannot circulate in the center of a good handful of Spanish cities hides in its headline that yes they can do it as long as they park in a parking lot. The streets of the cities have ended up becoming on the battlefield of mobility. Forced by the States or by their own decision, large cities are trying to reduce the passage of vehicles and deliberately eliminate parking spacesthey roll out the red carpet for shared vehicles or widen sidewalks to absorb the flow of their citizens but also the massive arrival of tourists. Given this situation, the European Union has found an argument for citizens to switch to electric cars. Yeah one of the great attractions of the motorcycle is to reach our destination door to door, European politicians want to propose something equally attractive for cars. Cars, microcars or the luck of kei cars to the European one that wants to move forward to fight with smaller Chinese electric cars, cheaper than European ones. Free way to park According to Financial Timesone of the incentives that the European Commission is preparing for the creation of this new category of vehicles is, precisely, that its owner does not face any restrictions of any kind when parking. The measure would be just one more incentive for the purchase of a car that would also come with regulatory facilities under its arm, both for the customer and the manufacturer. As we have explained previously, the European Commission wants to put on the table a vehicle that straddles the heavy quadricycle and tourism. An alternative with contained dimensions, electric and that would receive a sticker made in Europe as long as most of its production was local. Europe is trying to improve the competitiveness of its vehicles and position a type of car that would require manufacturing on European soil. Manufacturers would benefit because they would have to meet lower standards. For example, security facilities have been targeted. Although everything remains to be confirmed, it seems that the initial idea is that they are cars that are below 4.1 meters long and a contained price, according to Coach. With current knowledge of batteries, this leaves us with cars with very small electrical energy accumulators because the battery is still the main cost of vehicles. Especially the smaller the car. Thus, we can expect vehicles designed by and for the urban environment where excursions outside the ring roads of a city are very unattractive. That’s why has signed up so that these cars did not have to comply with obligations such as the lane departure warning system, now mandatory in all new cars. Raising your hand with those obligations (in whole or in part) would help the manufacturer position the car at a more competitive and attractive price. This last part is essential for the customer since the cost of acquisition and maintenance can be a huge barrier when buying a car of little use on the open road. To make the latter more attractive, the intention is indicated from Financial Timesis to offer tax facilities to the client, rewarding those who opt for this type of car. Those tax facilities that are already present for some electric cars (such as exemptions on registration or circulation tax) would be added to being able to park anywhere in the city for free. The new regulation, therefore, would buy a good part of what Japan already offers with its kei car. These cars cannot exceed 3.48 meters in length and 1.48 meters in height. Furthermore, the engine cannot exceed 660 cc either. This category is a success because in Japan there are cities where it is mandatory to have a parking space to buy a car, given the lack of space. However, the kei car do not adhere to this standard. But, above all, they succeed in Japan because there rational purchasing is well regarded. With those dimensions and that engine, the vehicle is perfectly functional on a daily basis and even allows short getaways as long as the customer accepts some discomfort. The success is such that it even has its own proposal for kei cars sports. Whether Europe will be able to replicate the Japanese model with this new category, so particular due to its own restrictions and philosophy of life, is something that only time will tell. Photo | Dacia and Kadir Celep In Xataka | Europe is eager for cheap electric cars. Europe’s solution: copy Japan

The countries of northern Europe are full of offshore wind. So they’ve started to steal the wind from each other

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The world has thrown itself into the arms of renewables to meet the goals of decarbonization. Each country is developing its strategy And, if in some the photovoltaic takes the lead, in others it is the wind that splits the cod. The problem is the commitments: fill the plate field implies that crops receive less sunlight. And fill the world with wind turbines – apart from visual impact, for fishing and for the birds-, is causing something as curious as it is problematic. Countries that are stealing the wind from their neighbors. Wake effect. When the wind hits the wind turbine bladesthese rotate, generating kinetic energy and electricity. The wind continues its path, but after passing through a wind turbine, it does so with less force. Multiply that by fields full of these mills and we have what is known as the ‘wake effect‘ or ‘wake effect’. This air that has already passed through a wind turbine station does so with a lower speed and greater turbulence. And if this is important, it is because the wind takes time to recover: the wakes can extend more than 100 kilometers after crossing a field of windmills. wind thieves. These facilities are usually far from each other to better take advantage of the currents, but if under certain circumstances they extend tens of kilometers, and up to the aforementioned hundred, imagine the consequences for the wind turbines that remain behind that installation that receives the first “hit” of wind. It is not an assumption: there is measurements by SAR satellite that confirm that, if a wind farm is built upwind of another, the wind speed it receives is 9% lower, causing it to have a reduction between 10% and 20% compared to that first installation. This is what is known as “wind theft,” a colloquial term for something that is easy to understand, but not so easy to fix. This GIF of The Telegraph illustrates it perfectly: Princess Elisabeth. As we read in BBCthe lawyer Eirik Finseras, specialized in offshore wind energy, “is a somewhat misleading term because you cannot steal something that you cannot own. Nobody owns the wind” – del Sol, yes, a Galician -. But of course, the fact that no one owns the wind does not exempt that park on the windward side from suffering the effects of the park built on the leeward side. In the North Sea, this is already becoming a problembecause the denser and larger the wind farm, the more intense the wake effect will be. Belgium is building Princess Elisabeth, a huge park that will add a whopping 3.5 GW of offshore wind capacity to the country’s accounts. It is a really huge offshore facilitybut although it will allow the addition of those 3.5 GW, it will also affect the existing Belgian parks due to a wake that will extend 55 kilometers beyond the installation. According to the accounts of the University of Leuven, the oldest Belgian facilities located to the east will experience: An 8.5% reduction in annual electricity production. Losses of up to 15% on very windy days. Impact. That in Belgian parks, but of course, it is also an international problem because the wind does not understand borders. By 2030, it is estimated that the current capacity of offshore wind energy in the North Sea will triple. This implies that thousands of turbines will be erected in a very short time with Belgium, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands willing to obtain, in total, 65 GW of offshore wind energy. The problem is knowing what will happen to these trails, since it is estimated that the 1,400 MW installation in the Dutch area of Borssele will cause a reduction of 2.7% on average in some Belgian wind farms. It is a very clear case of how the Netherlands is “stealing” the wind from Belgium. It is logical to understand the interest in offshore wind Bigger blades. In a report by BBCPablo Ouro, a civil engineering researcher at the University of Manchester, points out that they have been seeing wake effects for years, but that “the problem is that, to achieve emissions neutrality, we will need to triple offshore wind capacity and some of these new turbines will operate very close to those already in operation. There will be more and more crowds and the wake effects will have a greater impact.” And it is no longer a question of the number of mills, but of their dimensions. In the North Sea we are seeing efforts to achieve both greater heights for the mills themselves (to take advantage of other currents that are not being taken advantage of right now, such as larger blades that receive even more force from the wind. They are imposing mega-constructions that will also affect this wake effect, aggravating the problem. Solutions? Different countries are doing calculations. For example, in the United States, esteem that the planned offshore wind farms will produce a devastating wake effect: losses in the annual electricity production of other farms by up to 48.5 TWh per year. And there are already accusations: the Netherlands says that Belgium takes advantage of its wind, Germany says that the Netherlands is harming them… and the United Kingdom’s offshore parks stealing wind each other. The solution? Nothing simple, especially when many of these parks have either already been built or are under construction, but even so, research is being carried out to optimize the facilities. For example, adjusting turbine angles and optimizing the space between them, manufacturing higher power turbines to produce more with less or creating buffer zones between parks And, perhaps, the most difficult thing: that countries cooperate to carry out joint studies to place their facilities in the most efficient way for everyone. Images | ESMAP, G B_NZ In Xataka | In the great battle for wind turbines, Spain goes against Europe: it wants them further away than ever

the map of genetic dispersion that Europe does not know how to stop

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The sperm donors They are essential people to give a bit of hope to families who cannot conceive children due to different issues related to their health or even the biological impossibility of doing so. But sometimes this is something that can go very wrong, as has become clear with the case of sperm donor 7069a Danish man whose semen was used to conceive 197 children and to whom has transmitted a hereditary disease apart from them that can be fatal. The problem. what it seemed a standard donation process managed by the giant European Sperm Bankhas ended up uncovering some seams in assisted reproduction on the continent that were already announced. And this person has a mutation in their DNA, specifically in the TP53 gene, which is associated with a Li-Fraumeni syndrome. An extremely rare disease that is transmitted through genetics that drastically increases the risk of suffering from multiple types of cancer from childhood. Something that implies that part of his descendants will have a high mortality because of all these tumors. Something that immediately set off alarm bells. A mosaic patient. Donating sperm is a laborious process due to the number of studies that have to be passed, which include a genetic panel to rule out those donors who have serious diseases that can be transmitted to their offspring. But in this case this disease screening ended up failing. All because it is a mosaic patient. This donor managed to overcome all the medical filters because his genetic alteration did not occur in all the cells of the body, but that was only in his sperm and also only in 20%. In Spain this is something that can be overlooked since the genetic panel is done with a simple blood sample and without analyzing the genetic material of the sperm. Green card. The fact of doing a blood test caused a repeated false negative that led to this serious problem. Furthermore, two decades ago screening focused on specific diseases such as cystic fibrosis with the aim of not fertilizing an egg that also had this alteration. But in the end this donor had a green card until 2023 when the sperm bank blocked his donations. The regulatory problem. If biology explains why the flaw was not detected, bureaucracy explains why it spread so much. And this donor has highlighted the many seams that exist in Europe in terms of assisted reproduction. To give us an idea, andn Spain the legislation establishes that a donor cannot have more than six children (including their own), causing their donations to be blocked when they reach that limit. But in Spain this person has 35 children… Something that explains why there is no centralized registry that cross-references data with foreign banks. Spanish clinics import the samples relying on the data of origin, but they have no way of knowing if that donor has already reached their quota in another country or even in another Spanish clinic. Disparity of criteria. In addition to not having a common databaseThere are countries like Denmark that allow you to have up to 12 children or Germany that sets it at 15. Something that is also added to the fact that in Spain there is a large number of egg donations and attracts thousands of foreign patients, which increases the complexity of traceability. This lack of communication allows the existence of “super donors”, men who, following the law in each country individually, end up having hundreds of descendants globally, increasing not only the risk of the spread of rare genetic diseases, but also that of accidental endogamy between half-siblings who are unaware of their relationship. The solution. Seeing the serious consequences that this lack of control can have at the European level, the solution is very simple: have a European donor registry. In this way, each clinic or public service that performs a fertilization leaves it registered so that anywhere in Europe it is known that that donor has several children in another country. But this would also make it much easier to trace the problem that a child has presented and the possibility that the donor is to blame through his or her genetic material. This is something that have already requested eight EU Health Ministers and about which there is currently no news on the matter. Images | Elena In Xataka |

Europe was happy with the changes in the App Store, but not with those in Google Play. There is a historic fine at stake

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Google is in the crosshairs of the European Commission. A few days ago they announced a new investigation into monopolistic practices with AI summaries, but it is not the only front they have open. The company has already paid historical fines and you face a new one if you don’t make changes to Google Play, your app store. what has happened. They tell it in Reuters. The European Commission is not satisfied with the changes that Google has made to its app store to comply with the Digital Markets Act or DMA. Regulators consider that there are two points that do not comply with the standards: There are technical restrictions that make it difficult for developers to direct users to external channels with better prices. Google continues to charge a commission to the developer even if the user buys the app from its website, with the excuse that they have “facilitated” the purchase. Why is it important. If Google does not make the necessary changes to comply with the DMA, it faces a fine that could amount to 10% of its total revenue. In 2024 they will invoice 350,000 million dollarsso the maximum fine would amount to 35,000 million, the highest to date. Google can still offer to apply changes to avoid paying the fine. The Apple case. The one the Commission is satisfied with is Apple. In fact, they are using your case as an example of what needs to be done. It was not a bed of roses and Apple was fined 500 million euros for not complying with the DMA. Apple had to remove restrictions that prevented redirection to alternative offers. The Epic trial. The European Commission is not the only one that has Google Play in its sights. In the United States, the judge of the Epic vs Google case made a historic decision: Google would have to allow rival stores within the Play Store. Recently Google and Epic reached an agreement through which Google undertakes not to charge commissions of more than 20% on purchases’in-game’ and 9% for the rest. In addition, developers will be able to showcase other payment systems through Play Billing. The agreement must still be approved by the judge, but it seems that Google will have no options but to comply with what both the judge and the EU ask of it. What Google says. The company announced changes in Google Play last August to avoid the fine, is what the Commission now considers insufficient. Google competition lawyer Clare Kelly said the company was “concerned that these could expose Android users to harmful content.” This is the usual position of American companies that are under the scrutiny of the European Commission. Mark Zuckerberg called the DMA “censorship” and there has also been harsh criticism and tariff threats since the Trump administration. Recently, a national security strategy document He claimed that European laws could mean an “erasure of American civilization.” The fruits of the DMA. He overregulation of the European Union is subject to criticism, but It also has a good side. Thanks to the DMA has made USB-C mandatory for all manufacturers, forcing Apple to abandon its proprietary connector. It has also brought us the Universal AirDrop and the changes in the app stores so that we have more freedom when it comes to where to download our apps. Image | Xataka, Pexels In Xataka | Europe wants to protect itself against Huawei, but the energy sector knows something uncomfortable: it cannot move forward without it

In 2024 a package bomb arrived on a plane. It was the beginning of the great threat to Europe: that of a “ghost” crossing the red lines

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Europe lives a strategic transformation that few had imagined possible in such a short time. What began as a series of “flats” (intermittent blackouts, suspicious fires, minor incursions) has become a coherent pattern: a campaign of directed hybrid war that is no longer limited to destabilizing, but rather deliberately explore the thresholds of what it can inflict without provoking a direct military response. It all started a year ago. The silent climb. The plot is explained more clearly from July 2024when several DHL packages exploded in centers logistics from the United Kingdom, Poland and Germany, devices powerful enough to shoot down a plane if they had detonated in mid-flight. The episode, an infiltrated bomb at the heart of the European air system, marked a before and after, because it showed to what extent Moscow was willing to strain continental security and because it exposed the fragility of an Old Continent trapped between an increasingly aggressive Russia and a United States whose commitment has stopped being reliableand. Since then, Europe no longer sees hybrid warfare as a peripheral nuisance, but as a structural threat which targets critical infrastructures, social cohesion and the European institutional framework itself. In Xataka Mercadona has found a vein to grow beyond its white label and prepared food: tourism The Russian laboratory. I counted this week the financial times that the Russian campaign has been refined in breadth and depth. European intelligence services have disabled plots to derail trains full of passengers, set fire to shopping malls, damage dams or contaminate water in urban areas. The attacks are not isolated improvisations: they respond to a “gig economy” model of sabotage in which young recruited by Telegramlocal criminals or foreigners with residence permits act as expendable pawns for unknown objectives. Plus: they are difficult to detect, impossible to anticipate and legally ambiguous, since they rarely there is a direct connection with Russian intelligence that allows them to be accused of espionage. The case of frustrated railway sabotage in Poland (an explosive planted on the Warsaw-Lublin line that came within seconds of causing a massacre) exposed that pattern in its clearest form: unimpeded entry and exit, cryptocurrency financingfalse identities issued by Moscow and a diffuse chain of command that leads to intermediaries as Mikhail Mirgorodsky or even networks managed by former Wagner members. And there is more. Yes, because each cell discovered suggests others not yet detected, and what is worrying is not the errors of saboteurs (sometimes incapable to delete videos of its own attacks) but the scale that this model offers to a Russia resentful of decades of diplomatic expulsions and doctrinally rearmed to a pre-war period. The doctrine that returns. The ISS analysts They recently reported that the archives of the KGB and the StB (Czechoslovak intelligence) reveal parallels disturbing differences between the sabotage manuals of the Cold War and what Europe witnesses today. The objectives listed decades ago (military bases, energy infrastructures, dams, communication systems, transportation) match almost exactly with the whites of the last two years. Equally revealing is the doctrinal sequencing: during times of peace, minor attacks with the appearance of accidents, in pre-war phases, massive sabotage, increased risk tolerated and increasing willingness to cause civilian casualties, and in open war, total activation of clandestine networks for lethal operations. The prelude to something more fat. It we count very recently. If you will, Europe seems to have entered fully into a intermediate stage: a pre-war phase where each incident also functions as offensive reconnaissance, a permanent exercise by razvedka boyem to measure Western reaction capacity, locate vulnerabilities and exploit any weaknesses. The episode of the unidentified drones airports and military bases European operations illustrate this dynamic: cheap raids, of uncertain origin, that revealed systemic failures in the continental air defense and that, due to their replicator effect (copies, jokes, hysteria, false alarms) multiply the psychological and financial wear and tear. A continent without a network. I remembered the new york times This morning an added problem for Europe: that if the Russian threat escalates, the other half of the problem is the growing disconnection with the United States. For the first time since 1945, Europe perceives that Washington is not unequivocally on your side in a matter of war and peace. The Trump administration is not only pressuring kyiv to accept an agreement In Moscow’s terms, it also redefines Europe as a suspicious actor, criticizes the democratic integrity of its governments and promises to openly support the European extreme right. The result is an unprecedented scenario: a Russia that intensifies its hybrid campaign, a Ukraine that depends almost entirely on continental support and a Europe that must finance your own safety while compensating for the withdrawal of US capabilities (satellites, long-range missiles, command and control) that it cannot replace before 2029the year that NATO considers the limit to have a credible deterrent. European leaders also face depleted budgets, electorates hostile to increased military spending, and a rising far-right that Moscow sees as a strategic multiplier. {“videoId”:”x8j6422″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”Declassified video of the clash between Russian fighters and the American drone”, “tag”:”united states”, “duration”:”42″} The battle of money. The internal European debate on how to finance the resistance Ukrainian reflects the magnitude of the challenge. To support kyiv for the next two years, about $200 billion is needed, an unaffordable figure without activating the 210,000 million euros on Russian assets frozen in Europe. The problem? Right now it takes the name of Belgiumwhich guards the majority through Euroclear, and which fears retaliation from Moscow and the possible erosion of the credibility of the euro as a safe haven. Washington, despite its strategic ambiguity, is also pressing for these funds to be don’t touch each othersince its eventual return is part of the US scheme for a peace agreement favorable to Russia. One more thing. And yet, without that money, Europe would have to coordinate (outside the EU framework) a colossal loan and politically explosive. The crossroads are so profound that in Berlin and Paris they are … Read more

The elite of the open models spoke in Chinese. Mistral has just placed Europe at a level that not even the US managed to reach

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Over the last year, the elite of open models for assisted programming, at least in benchmarks as SWE-Bench Verifiedhas spoken with a Chinese accent. Names like DeepSeek, Kimi either qwen They had settled into the top positions in testing and were setting the pace in complex software engineering tasks, while Europe was still searching for its position. The arrival of Devstral 2 alters that distribution. It does not displace those who were already at the top, but it places Mistral at the same level of demand and turns a European company into a real contender in a field that until now seemed reserved for others. League change: the technical leap that had been brewing for some time. During recent months, the open models developed in Europe and the United States had shown constant evolution, although still without the performance necessary to compete in the most demanding tests. The progress was evident, but there was a lack of a project capable of consolidating it at a higher level and demonstrating that this path could give results comparable to those of the sector. Devstral 2 in data: performance, size and licenses. The new Mistral model reaches 123B parameters in a dense architecture and offers an expanded context of 256K tokens, accompanied by a modified MIT license that facilitates its adoption in open environments. Its compact version, Devstral Small 2, reduces the model to 24B licensed parameters Apache 2.0. In the SWE-Bench Verified figures published by the companyDevstral 2 obtains 72.2%, a mark that places it in the most competitive section of the open models evaluated and that confirms its presence among the most advanced alternatives in the segment. It is reflected by a panorama concentrated in the upper part of the benchmark. Among the open models, DeepSeek V3.2 leads the group with 73.1%, followed by Kimi K2 Thinking with 71.3% and for proposals such as Qwen 3 Coder Plus and Minimax M2, which are around 69 points. At lower levels GLM 4.6, GPT-OSS-120B, CWM and DeepSWE appear, with more moderate results. In the closed commercial environment (proprietary models), the graph incorporates higher scores: Gemini 3 Pro reaches 76.2%, GPT 5.1 Codex Max rises to 77.9% and Claude Sonnet 4.5 scores 77.2%, all of them above the best brands registered for open models. What SWE-Bench Verified Really Measures and Why It Matters. SWE-Bench Verified is a test designed to evaluate whether a model can solve real programming tasks, not synthetic exercises. Each case presents a bug in an open source repository and requires a patch to pass the previously failed tests. The evaluation seeks to measure whether the system understands the structure of the project, identifies the cause of the problem and proposes a coherent solution. It is a useful and demanding metric, although limited to Python repositories and a specific set of situations that do not cover the full breadth of software work. From co-pilots to agents who act on the project. The arrival of Devstral 2 coincides with a broader change in the way of working with programming tools. It is no longer just about receiving suggestions in the editor, but about having agents capable of exploring an entire repository, interpreting its structure and proposing changes consistent with its real state. In this context, Vibe CLI appears, a tool that allows Devstral to analyze files, modify parts of the code and execute actions directly from the terminal, bringing these capabilities closer to the daily workflow of developers. Cost and deployment: what each type of user can do with Devstral. The model will be available for free for an initial period and will then cost $0.40 per million tokens for input and $2.00 per million for output, while the Small 2 version will be priced lower. Its deployment also makes a difference: Devstral 2 requires at least four H100-class GPUs, aimed at data centers, while Devstral Small 2 is intended to run on a single GPU and, according to Mistral documentation, the Devstral Small family can also run in CPU-only configurations, without a dedicated GPU. This variety allows both companies and individual developers to find a suitable entry point. The appearance of Devstral 2 introduces an unexpected element in a space where Chinese companies set the pace and where not even the United States, despite its leadership in artificial intelligence, had an open model in this high performance range in SWE-Bench Verified. Mistral does not displace those who were already at the top, but it does broaden the conversation and shows that Europe can compete in a field where it did not appear until now. It is a movement that does not alter the general hierarchy, although it does open a new margin for the evolution of assisted programming tools. Images | Xataka with Gemini 3 In Xataka | OpenAI and Google deny that they are going to put ads in ChatGPT and Gemini. The reality is that accounts do not come only with subscriptions

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