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NASA just classified the 2024 incident at its highest level

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When NASA launched the Commercial Crew programdid so with a clear idea: to partner with private companies that would design and operate their own ships under fixed-price contracts. Boeing and SpaceX have been part of this scheme since its origin, with the aim of guaranteeing regular manned access to low orbit. The Starliner manned test flight in June 2024 was to complete the technical validation process of the Boeing capsule before its certification, but anomalies detected during the mission completely altered the initial plan. Now, when officially classifying This test as a “Type A Incident”, NASA places what happened at the highest level of its incident scale and recognizes that the magnitude of the episode goes beyond a simple technical setback. What happened in 2024. On June 5, 2024, the CST-100 Starliner took off heading to the International Space Station on its first crewed flight with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on board. The mission was initially planned to last between eight and fourteen days as a comprehensive test of the system. However, during the approach They detected helium leaks and failures in the thrustersand NASA explained that a loss of maneuverability occurred as the crew approached the station, although control was regained before docking. The stay ended up extending up to 93 days and, after reviewing the flight data and performing tests on the ground, The space agency decided that the vehicle would return in September 2024 without the astronautswhich finally returned to Earth in March 2025 aboard SpaceX’s Crew-9 mission. A devastating report. The independent investigation team, formed in February 2025, examined the technical, organizational and cultural factors that contributed to the problems with the test flight. According to their conclusions, there was a combination of hardware failures, gaps in the qualification processes, leadership errors and cultural dysfunctions that generated risk conditions incompatible with the safety standards of the agency’s manned flight program. NASA has indicated that it accepts this document as the final report and that work to identify the technical root cause continues. What does “Type A mishap” (Type A Incident) mean? NASA uses this category as the highest level within its incident system. Let us remember that this definition includes cases such as damages exceeding 2 million dollars, the loss of control or destruction of a vehicle or the loss of human life. In the case of the Starliner flight, there were no injuries and, according to the agency, the mission regained control before docking, but there was a loss of maneuverability during the approach and associated financial damages. The designation recognizes that there was potential for a major mishap and that the conditions generated cannot be dismissed as a simple technical mismatch. SpaceX Dragon 2 NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman was explicit in addressing the cultural dimension of the problem. “It is decision-making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight,” he declared at the press conference. The head of the agency maintained that the classification as “Type A mishap” seeks to “make things clear” and ensure that what happened is recorded appropriately for future learning. He also admitted that allowing the program itself to initially investigate itself was “incompatible with NASA’s safety culture,” a practice that, he explained, it has decided to correct. Boeing’s response. In a statement released after the report’s publicationthe company stated that it remains “committed to NASA’s vision of having two commercial crew providers” and thanked the agency for the research. Boeing maintains that in the 18 months since the test flight it has made progress in corrective actions to address the technical challenges detected and has driven cultural changes within the team. Images | POT In Xataka | NASA’s megarocket no longer leaks: Artemis 2 passes its vital test and clears the path to the Moon

The countries with the highest number of billionaires among their population, brought together in a very revealing graph

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The great fortunes they are not distributed uniformly across the planet. A few countries concentrate the majority of the world’s billionaires, while others barely contribute names to that exclusive club. The geographical distribution of extreme wealth leaves us with a snapshot that gives clues about which countries or tax policies encourage capital accumulation and they are the perfect breeding ground for generating wealth. In 2025, the wealth gap between the average population and the great fortunes has skyrocketed, but it has also left evidence of this difference between countries. The comparative graph prepared by Visual Capitalist allows you to compare this distribution in a very visual and direct way. The graph is powered by data provided by the study’Billionaire Ambitions Report 2025‘ prepared by UBS and the consulting firm PwC, in which an annual record of the number of billionaires is maintained. That is, people with assets exceeding one billion dollars at the beginning of the year. A billionaire factory To no one’s surprise, the US dominates by a wide margin the world ranking of countries according to the number of billionaires. The country hosts 924 people with a net worth of over a billion dollars, a figure that practically doubles that of the second-ranked player. This concentration also translates into a increase in joint wealthsince the sum of the US fortunes reaches a total of about 6.9 trillion dollars. China is in second place with 470 billionaires among its population. However, despite accounting for almost 50% of the billionaires in the US, their combined wealth is much lower, being close to 1.8 trillion dollars. That is to say, we only have half as many millionaires as the US, their combined assets are almost four times less. Third place on the list of countries with the most billionaires is occupied by India with 188 people with assets exceeding one billion dollars. Again, the comparison between India and China reveals a asynchronous growth between the number of millionaires and their total assets, with a combined capital of 888,000 million dollars. That is, with one third of China’s millionaires, the sum of the assets of the Indian magnates It is half of its Chinese counterparts. This reveals that a good number of Chinese millionaires have managed to overcome the billion-dollar barrier, but the accumulation of wealth from these great fortunes is not as pronounced as in other countries such as the US or India. The European map of billionaires Europe presents a internal distribution marked by notable differences between countries. According to data from the UBS report, Germany tops the European list with 156 billionairesbeing the main country on the continent in this aspect. Their combined fortune amounts to 692 billion dollars, which places them in a position alienated from the proportions of the United States or India. Common names also appear in the list in the lists of countries with millionaire populations, What are the United Kingdom like?which occupies fifth place with 91 billionairesor Switzerland with 84 great fortunes. In the following ranks are countries like Italy, which with 61 billionaires occupies the eighth position in number of great fortunes. France is also among the countries with outstanding figures, although well below these three leaders as it occupies thirteenth position in the ranking. In these cases, the harsh sales crisis in the Chinese and Asian markets for luxury products have seriously affected the balance sheets of exclusive brands like LVMH or Ferrariwhose owners are located as standard bearers of those great fortunes. The distribution of fortunes makes it clear that, even within Europethe concentration of billionaires tends to cluster in industrialized economies or with fiscal policies very oriented to capital returns. Spain takes positions Spain is not among the European countries with more billionairesalthough it has experienced recent growth in that select group. According to UBS data for 2025, the total number of Spanish billionaires who exceed the billion-dollar threshold It is 32 people. This figure places Spain as the seventeenth country with the most billionaires behind countries such as Germany, the United Kingdom or Italy in the continental ranking. The total combined wealth of the Spanish billionaires reaches $213.1 billion (about 182,602 million euros) in 2025, with an increase of 21.5% compared to previous years. However, in the Spanish case, the concentration of assets is not uniform, there is one figure that monopolizes a good part of that total assets: Amancio Ortega. In Xataka | Seven of the ten largest fortunes in the world in 2026 are due to AI: this illustrative graph makes it very clear Image | Visual Capitalist

AEMET prepares for “the highest hydrometeorological impacts in the world”

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As said Kevin Killeen“February is the worst month of the year, but it is an honest month.” And February 2026 is no exception in its honesty: the models gave historic rainfall throughout the Atlantic coast and the south of the peninsula and the rainfall is already here. The jet stream is going to pass over us so “constant and uniform” throughout the week. But it is not just the “concatenation of storms generated” by this, it is that “they are going to be fed with high moisture content” that comes directly from the Gulf of Mexico. What would have been excellent news three years ago has become a huge problem: this succession of storms arrives at a time when the soil cannot absorb even one more drop. A truly exceptional accumulation. To land the data, the latest models accumulated dan for this week of more than 100-150mm and up to 300 in areas of Galicia, Extremadura and Andalusia. In the case of Andalusia, in fact, the situation will be very complicated due to the extension of the Guadalquivir valley and the composition of its soil. More than 200mm are expected at the head of the river and a homogeneous average of 100mm in the basin. That, added to the fact that “The soil is clay and its use is agricultural.“, the filtration is very scarce. This has turned the flooding of the rivers and streams in the Guadalquivir basin and adjacent areas (such as the Guadalete or the Mediterranean basins of Granada) into a ticking bomb. “The highest hydrometeorological impacts in the world”. As Martín León explainedis not a figure of speech, it is an enormous risk: the highest impacts in the world are expected. In fact, as the hours pass, the predictions they seem to get worse and floods, overflows and landslides seem inevitable. The first symptoms of flooding, in fact, have already been detected in Andalusia via satellite. How normal is this? To emphasize that we are not facing a normal situation, it is enough to take a look at the ECMWF EFIthe index that measures how extreme the atmospheric phenomena are: the entire south-southwest of the peninsula is in red, the highest level. Rain on wet. But, as I say, that is not the main problem. The main problem is that, after these days of heavy rain, the soil is extremely saturatedthe reservoirs are being forced to drain and the system’s retention capacity is at minimum levels. In mountain areas, water it’s starting to flow directly from the ground. To this we can add that the Pyrenees and the rest of the northern mountains they have a historic snow pack. We are, as all models show, in the middle of a perfect storm. This means that the Hydrographic Confederations will have a lot of work and the problems have only just begun. Special attention will have to be paid to rivers, streams and areas at risk of land displacement. Complicated hours are approaching and any precaution will be insufficient. Image | WXCharts In Xataka | Spain is preparing for a “festival” of storms in February: with more rain than normal and hardly any cold

we have the highest unemployment in the EU and also the lowest number of job vacancies

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Spain presents a phenomenon that at first glance seems contradictory: although it maintains one of the highest unemployment rates among advanced countries, it also registers one of the lowest proportions of vacancies in the EU. Understand this paradox It requires looking beyond the numbers and analyzing how employment supply and demand really work in the Spanish labor market. According to According to the INE, the unemployment rate in Spain is 10.5%, being the highest in the OECD compared to other developed countries, where the average is around 4.5%. At the same time, according to data According to Eurostat, the vacancy rate in Spain is only 0.9%, well below the European average of 2.1%. What is a vacancy? To understand why this combination occurs, it is helpful to define what a vacancy is. In the Eurostat definition This does not equate to “positions that the country would generally need to fill”, but to “newly created, vacant or about to become vacant paid position for which the employer is taking active steps and is willing to take additional steps to find a suitable candidate outside the company, and which the employer intends to fill immediately or within a specified period for which there is an active search and with an intention to fill soon.” So it is not “everything that would need to be hired in general”, but rather what is open at that moment. It’s like a photo of that exact moment, but it doesn’t show its reality. The “logic” behind the paradox. When a labor market grows, many vacancies can be expected to arise because there is more demand for workers. If, in addition, there is little unemployment, that demand tends to translate quickly into contracts. However, in Spain the reality is different. Although employment has grown in recent years, and there are busier people than ever (with membership records to Social Security), unemployment remains high compared to the EU, and vacancies do not increase at the expected rate. Mismatches between labor supply and demand. A key factor noted in the official reports is the mismatch between the skills that companies demand and those offered by unemployed people. That is, it can there are positions availablebut not that they correspond to the skills of those seeking employment. This type of mismatch is reflected in specific sectors (technology, engineering, health care) where companies claim to have difficulties find suitable profileswhile at the same time there are workers who cannot find a job. Some economists also highlight that the available offers tend to concentrate in sectors with high seasonality and little stability, such as services or tourism, where many vacancies are seasonal or short-term, which does not encourage all the unemployed to join immediately. Poorly distributed employment. Another element to consider is labor mobility. In Spain, there is a great imbalance between the territories with the greatest job offer and those with the greatest demand for employment. That is to say, employment is concentrated in large cities and industrial areas, while unemployment figures skyrocket in rural areas and in emptied Spain, contributing to maintaining this mismatch between the location of supply and demand. On the other hand, the stagnation of vacancies can also be explained by the high labor market rotation. Many times the position remains current and what happens is that it is the employees who rotate through that position. The job is still there, but it does not always appear as a “new vacancy” in the statistics, so the vacancy rate may be low, although real employment grows due to the high turnover of that position.​ For example, a waiter position is not listed as vacant, but the restaurant hires a new employee for that position every few months. The position is not vacant for statistical purposes, but the labor market does not stop registering new hires. What does this paradox tell us? That Spain has a lot of unemployment and few vacancies compared to the EU does not mean that there are no jobs available. What it indicates is that the labor market is functioning with difficulties: positions offered do not always fit the profile of unemployed people, there are great differences between sectors and an important part of the employment is temporarywhen many workers seek stability. Therefore, even when there are vacancies, they do not always end up being consolidated in the form of contracts. This situation does not depend only on a specific economic moment of prosperity or crisis, but also on underlying problems in the Spanish labor market. That this paradox continues over time points to the need to improve training, facilitate mobility between sectors and territories, raise the quality of employment and have statistics more adjusted to the reality of the labor market in Spain. In Xataka | In Belgium you could collect unemployment indefinitely. Your government has a new idea: put everyone to work Image | Unsplash (Mika Baumeister)

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

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

Iberian ham has been synonymous with the highest quality for decades. Now Guijuelo wants to blow him up

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“Race is not a parameter of quality.” With that simple idea, the Salamanca town of Guijuelo wants to open a gap in one of the flagships of our country’s gastronomy: ‘low cost’ Iberian ham. With the endorsement of the Ministry of Agriculture and the opposition of the rest of the denominations of origin (which call it “deception of the consumer”), Guijuelo’s movement has just unleash a whole Civil War in the ham sector. And it’s no wonder. What has happened? That the Protected Designation of Origin (DOP) of Guijuelo (Salamanca) approved a modification of its regulations to certify, as Iberian, “hams and pork shoulders that are 50% Iberian breed and 50% Duroc”. Until now this was something that could only be done with 75% or 100% Iberian hams. On September 1, the General Directorate of Food He has limited himself to saying that the change is legal and various communities they have supported him (although others, as we will see, have opposed it). After all, The Iberian Quality Standard (RD 4/2014) covers legally this movement; as long as it is well labeled. If this had been done by a small DOP, it would have been controversial; but it surely would not have unleashed the enormous earthquake that it has unleashed. However, Guijuelo has done it: the oldest denomination and the largest in number of marked pieces. The rest of the DOPs have come out in a rush. Let us remember that there are only four DOPs of Iberian ham in the country. Well, the other three (Jabugo, Dehesa de Extremadura and Andalucía) have denounced the change because they consider it “unfair competition” and what is worse, a “trivialization” of the DOP seal and the Iberian in general. In recent days, regulatory councils, communities (especially Extremadura and Andalusia) and professional groups have announced appeals and do not rule out going to trial if Agriculture does not take action on the matter. But if it’s legal, what’s the problem? In slightly more technical terms, the conflict is not whether a “50% Iberian” ham can exist; but whether that type of ham should carry the DOP seal. We must not forget that these seals are designed to ‘make visible’ in the market a special relationship with the territory and the product. The rest of the Regulatory Councils that want to maintain stricter racial criteria (as has been customary) believe that there is a reputational risk and that it could end up confusing the consumer. And the issue of price, of course. Guijuelo is accused of wanting to burst the market by lowering prices and moving production towards less demanding specifications. The DOPs fear that the seal and label will harm livestock farmers and dryers who have been betting on higher quality standards. In fact, as reported from the Pedroches valley, the regulatory change in Guijuelo “facilitates more intensive productions (a jump in densities per hectare in “field bait” is cited within the specifications), which threatens the pasture and the sustainability story associated with traditional Iberian. And from Jabugo they assure that “Brussels said that can’t be done.” What do they say in Guijuelo? From the PDO of Salamanca, in addition to describe many of these statements as “barbarities”focus on defending that a) the movement is legal and b) that “race is not a quality parameter, food is.” And now what? The question is whether the changes to Guijuelo’s regulatory document are indeed “normal” or require the approval of Brussels. And the most likely thing, if the regulatory councils decide to go ahead, is that it will reach Brussels. Or at least Image | Tim Sackton In Xataka | A tax on ham? There are those who already propose it as the best way to eat less meat

A sliding butterfly has become the animal with the highest number of chromosomes than we have news: 229 pairs

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It is likely that at school they will teach us that the human being has, as a general rule, 23 pairs of chromosomes. We know that there are complex organisms, such as animals, that survive with Just a couple of chromosomeslike species ants Myrmecia Pilosula. The question is then what are the species with the highest number of chromosomes. A new record. A recent study has pointed out To a kind of butterfly, the so -called Atlas girl (Atlantic polyommatus), As the animal with the greatest number of chromosomes known: 229 pairs. The number is even more striking if we consider that many of the species closest to this in the taxonomic tree have 23 or 24 pairs. The Atlas girl. The Atlas girl is an elusive butterfly that inhabits the Northwest Cordillera of Africa, extending their habitat in parts of Morocco and Algeria. We had knew That this animal had a high number of chromosomes, but the new study of the animal’s genome opens the doors to have a precise measure of the number, at the same time that also allows us to know more about why this surprising figure. “I have been investigating this butterfly for many years and I am one of the few people who have been able to observe it in nature. Unfortunately, P. Atlantic is seriously threatened by the destruction of their habitat. Explain to Sinc Roger Vila, co -author of the study. Investigating the chromosome. The strange future of this butterfly genome began about three million years ago, Explain the responsible team of sequencing this genome. And everything would have begun with 24 chromosomes, a number similar to that of other species in his family. The analysis allowed to discover that the chromosomes of the Atlas girl had been fragmenting in the areas where DNA accumulated with less density. This, the equipment adds, implies that, despite the growth of the number of chromosomes, the genetic information contained in them did not grow proportionally. Three million years of fragmentation. The team observed that all chromosomes except sexual experienced this fragmentation, carrying the total number of cormosomes from 24 to 229 throughout the last three million years. A “relatively short” interval of time in evolutionary terms, highlights the team responsible for the study. The details of the study have been published In an article In the magazine Current Biology. Evolutionary advantage? The study raises new unknowns, admits the team. An example is to know to what extent the fragmentation of chromosomes or having an abundant number of these, can help or harm the species that travel this evolutionary path. More than counting chromosomes. Beyond establishing this “new record”, the study can help us better understand the evolutionary and genetic history of this and other species. Knowing this evolutionary past can also give us clues about the future of this evolution, the team maintains. We could, for example, better understand how species can respond to changes in their environment, such as the increase in the temperature we are observing in some regions of the globe. Chromosomatic changes also occur at the non-evolutive level, for example in some cancer cells. That is why knowing the fragmentation mechanisms of chromosomes It can help us to investigate the changes when they happen in medical contexts. In Xataka | The case of the wounded fox who returns to his caregivers is not so strange: how closely we are domesticating the fox? Image | Roger Vila

The highest rocket in the world again crossed the skies after the disaster

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Starship needs to get out of the bump. After A long streak of explosionsSpacex looks for a clean flight that allane the way to the new rocket generation. Booster 16 and Ship 37 are already stacked on the launch platform for the tenth flight. This will be the Penultimate Mission of Current Design Before moving on to the third generation starship. Date and time of launch. If everything goes as planned, the takeoff will take place this Sunday, August 24, in an afternoon schedule that will allow observing the reentry of the ship over the Indian Ocean in broad daylight. The launch window for the Starship’s tenth flight It opens this Sunday at 18:30 CDT, local time of Starbase, Texas. In other cities: Madrid, Spain (CEST, UTC+2): Monday, August 25 at 01:30 Mexico City, Mexico (CST, UTC – 6): Sunday, August 24 at 5:30 p.m. Buenos Aires, Argentina (Art, UTC-3): Sunday, August 24 at 8:30 p.m. Bogotá, Colombia (COT, UTC-5): Sunday, August 24 at 6:30 p.m. Lima, Peru (Pet, UTC-5): Sunday, August 24 at 6:30 p.m. Santiago, Chile (CLT, UTC-4): Sunday, August 24 at 7:30 p.m. Caracas, Venezuela (Vet, UTC-4): Sunday, August 24 at 7:30 p.m. How to see the live flight. As usual, Spacex will broadcast the launch Through its website and of Your official account in X. The broadcast will begin approximately 30 minutes before takeoff. For the most enthusiastic, YouTube channels like Nasaspaceflight and Everyday Astronaut They will offer live coverage with their own cameras from the vicinity of Starbase. In Spanish, the coverage of Space border, Mission control, Manuel Mazzanti either Spacexstormamong others. A streak that must end. This tenth attempt comes after a few months complicated for Spacex. The company has lost Four consecutive shipsturning each launch into An invaluable data source to improve its design, but also in a reminder of the complexity involved in building the highest and most powerful rocket in the world. Flight 9, which took place on May 27, ended with the loss of both stages. Booster 14, In his second flightdisintegrated during an experimental landing maneuver, subject to an angle of attack that is too aggressive that its structure did not support. Shortly after, Ship 35 reached the scheduled speed to put out its engines, but suffered a leak in the pressurization system that prevented him from completing his goals and condemned it to turn without control. As if that were not enough, the ship that had to star in this tenth flight, the Ship 36, violently exploded at the test base on June 18 during a fuel load. The culprit, according to Spacex, was a secondary nitrogen tank with structural damage that were overlooked. With this history, the pressure on the new prototypes is maximum. A flight full of experiments. Far from being conservative, Spacex has designed an ambitious mission to continue taking the vehicle to the limit and demonstrating that previous failures are solved. The Super Heavy propeller will not be caught by the tower. Instead, it will go to the Gulf of Mexico for controlled amelution while performing complex tests. Booster 16 will repeat the controlled turn that was already tested on flight 9 to save fuel in the return maneuver, after the separation of stages. But this time, it will intentionally deactivate one of the three central landing engines to test whether a backup engine can take over. The test will end with the propeller making a stationary flight on the ocean using only two engines before falling into the water. The ship 37, meanwhile, has the mission of finally fulfilling the objectives that its predecessors did not achieve. He will try for the first time to open your load gate in space to display eight Starlink satellite models. He will tasta again the redempted of a Raptor engine to perform a controlled orbit outlet. And will fly without some thermal tiles to stress vulnerable areas. In addition, it will test new materials for thermal shield, such as metal tiles (one of them with active refrigeration), and a more aggressive reentry profile. The penultimate test before the redesign. This tenth flight is not one more. It is, together with the eleventh, the last opportunity for Spacex to collect data from the current rocket design before making the jump the Starship 3. This new version, which we have already seen components, promises a deep redesign with larger and more robust fins, and a greater structural capacity. A success on flight 10 would be a fundamental moral and technical impulse for the program, demonstrating that the rapid Iteration of Spacex works and that the path to a totally reusable launch system, although full of explosions, continues to advance. Whatever happens, the show is guaranteed. Image | Spacex In Xataka | Spacex has asked Mexico to stop invading its property and returns the starship pieces that fell into the country

The food industry is living its highest price drop since 2014. There is a clear suspect: white brands

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Manufacturers in the food sector are living an interesting phenomenon. They go up Industry prices in general, Upload the CPIgo up What they pay consumers in stores when they buy food and yet The rates That applies the food industry have been in free fall for almost a year. Moreover, the sector is facing its highest price decrease since early 2014. Behind that apparent nonsense there is a clear suspect: the effect of white brands and The fight that is getting rid of supermarkets. We explain ourselves. A percentage: 3.3%. Among the many indicators that periodically publishes the INE there is one that helps us better understand a key link of trade, which connects industry with the chain of distributors that take their merchandise to stores. The so -called Industrial Price Index (IPRI) records the oscillations in the right prices in That “first stage” of “internal market”, when the articles leave the factories and do not yet incorporate other added expenses, such as transport, marketing or VAT. Your approach is different from that of IPCwhich takes into account the prices paid by consumers. The INE calculates the IPRI for large sectors every month and sometimes the indicator leaves us some surprise, as happened in June, when it showed an annual fall of the 3.3% In the food industry. What does that mean? That month food manufacturers decided to reduce their rates. Why is it important? For what that percentage means. What reveals to us is a Price drop In the food industry, an adjustment of the rates with which the products leave the factory. The most curious thing is that this fall is not the dominant tonic in the industrial sector. On the contrary. Even beverage manufacturers saw in June how their industrial prices experienced A 2.7% rise. He IPRI General registered one 0.8% rise and if We go down to detail We observed that the indicator rose in most industrial branches. It only retreated in oil refinement, the chemical, metallurgical sector … and food. The annual IPC rate, which reflects the prices paid by consumers, also It was positive: In June it rose 2.2%. If we talk about the specific IPC of non -alcoholic foods and beverages of the purchase basket, it also grew 2.8%. It matters what … And imports when. If we look back, to the context, we observe two interesting data. The first is that the price index of the food industry has already a few months adjusting down. In June he scored a variation of -3.3%, but in May he had already done -2.7%and in April 2.2%. Actually the indicator has been going back. The second fact that we must take into account is that the food industry I had a decade without registering such a pronounced price drop. To find a major year -on -year drop, you have to go back to February 2014. What is the reason? The million dollar question. In a context of industrial inflationwith energy, a 3.5% And the increasing industrial prices, why do those in the food sector descend? In An article in which he delves into that phenomenon, Javier Romera, from The economisthe remembered yesterday that the reduction of the industry arrives in a context marked by a crucial factor: the rise of white brands and their growing competition In supermarkets. THE GREAT PULSE OF THE SECTOR. The industry price adjustment therefore coincides with a key moment for manufacturers, marked by the pulse with supermarket chains and The growing weight that white marks have (those of the distributor itself, such as Auchan, Hacondado or Seleqtia). All this also after years marked by a deep inflationary crisis that has made the big chains that manage supermarkets try to contain prices. The phenomenon is not new and Manuel Morales, manager of the IFA group, in An interview with The economist: “If they don’t react, brands are dead.” His notice, he remembered, comes in a context in which white brands have a greater weight in the linear of supermarkets. “Already almost 50% add up and will continue to grow because they have increased quality and differentiating prices is increasing,” Morales foreshadowed. With that backdrop, the food industry has begun to Cut your profitability. In the first quarter it stood at 6.81% after falling for the first time since 2022. Does the white mark grow so much? Yeah. Last year Promarca presented A report which shows that in just a five years, between 2018 and 2023, the presence of white -branded goods in supermarkets increased by 13%. The opposite path followed the articles sold with the brand of its manufacturer, which during that same period they retreated 23%. Promarca represents manufacturers and is therefore interested in, but their report provides a valuable track. Promarca estimates that in a five years they have disappeared from the super more than 3,600 Products marketed by manufacturers outside the distribution chains while theirs, those of the white brand, added 1,800 only in the feeding and hygiene sections. The calculation was made after analyzing six large chains. The Statista platform estimates that the market share of the white brands grew between 2005 and 2015, fell for a few years and would rebound again in 2019 until they were in 2024 in about 46%. Other studies consider that their mark on the linear of supermarkets is greater and already exceeds 50%. Images | Arno Senoner (UNSPLASH) and Alcampo In Xataka | The favorite ice cream in Spain are from Mercadona and have no “brand”. And there is a Valencian company making gold with them

The construction of the highest skyscraper in the world

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China is synonymous with Megaconstructions. In addition, in record time, but there are two countries that have been in a particular battle in which the concrete is the absolute protagonist. In 2010 the imposing Burj Khalifa was inaugurated, dethroning Taipei 101 as the tallest building in the world and giving the departure gun to a war between Arab Emirates and Arabia to see who made the vast skyscraper. And, although we have seen numerous skyscrapers in recent years, there are two that have between eyebrow and eyebrow over Creek Tower and the Jeddah Tower. And perhaps it is that ambition that the two projects are being carried ahead. The Saudi Jeddah Tower. It is one of the most ambitious projects in the world and it is expected that, when it is complete, it will become the highest building in the world. Saudi Arabia is clear that it must dethrone the Burj Khalifa of 828 meters with this tower that will exceed 1,000 meters high. How many exactly? We do not know, since although the works began in 2013, they go quite slowly. It will be a tower that will house a luxury hotel, residential apartments, offices and the highest observatory in the world and will feature a whopping 59 elevators, four of them with a double floor. Your designer? The American Adrian Smith, the same one who designed the Burj Khalifa with which he will have a certain resemblance. Dubai’s Creek Tower. This is much more recent, since the works began in 2016 and the data are much more diffuse. As Burj Khalifa, Creek Tower will be in Dubai and will be a very different construction from the other two towers. It will be more a recreational tower with restaurants, places to spend time and ten observation platforms (with glass floor to see the entire city. You can also house some luxury residences, but a very scarce number to be considered the “highest building in the world”, at least technically. And how much are we talking about? Between 828 meters and 1,400 meters. It is a huge fan, but what were clear is that it should exceed 828 of the city’s iconic megonstruction. The design is also peculiar, and the leading architect of the project is the “Recognized” Santiago Calatrava. Shared difficulties. The two constructions share more elements than it might seem. Both have a peculiar design, both are very high and both … have been drawing problems for years. For different reasons, yes. The construction of the Jeddah Tower It was arrested in 2018 due to the fight of the Royal House against administrative, political and real corruption. In a process known as ‘La Purga’, the heir prince created a committee that arrested 281 people. It was a tremendously controversial process because in parallel, it seems that a group of death operated to kill dissidents silently. The works officially resumed In February this year. In the case of Creek Tower, its inauguration was planned For some time of 2020, but COVID-19 forced to paralyze the work and construction has not yet raised head. In 2024 some project updates were made, confirming that the final height would be far from what was expected and, with a total of 745 meters, will not meet the objective of overcoming Burj Khalifa. The craziest plan. Now, although these two towers are colossal, there is a Saudi Arabia project that wants to leave them up to a normal and current residential block. It has no name, but an objective height: 2,000 meters. We only know which is something that is on the horizon and that will be the responsibility of the architects of Foster +. Partners And yes, it is an idea of ​​the same country that is building The Mukaabhe Riad Airport and The Lineso it is sure they will try. Samsung, the silent winner. And although it is not very clear what the two countries intend with this particular battle of megaconstrucciones, the obvious thing is that there are companies that are filling the pockets with these projects. And beyond local construction companies and foreign architects, we must mention Samsung. Specifically, to the Samsung C&T Engineering and Construction Group division that is charge of the construction of Burj Khalifa and is in command of the Creek Tower. And they are not the only constructions of the South Korean division, since, within Vision 2030, the company advertisement In December of last year that the construction of the first Saudi Arabia subway system under Riyadh, a totally automated system without drivers and was ending 11 years with a total cost of more than 2.4 billion dollars. Images | Jeddah Tower, Emaar In Xataka | The tallest building never designed is a colossal (and theoretical) skyscraper of four kilometers: the X-Seed 4000

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