increasingly

inviting to “dinner” is increasingly becoming inviting to order on Glovo

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It’s Saturday afternoon. The sun begins to set and in the living room of a shared apartment, the Catan board It is spread out on the low table. We are four friends. The conversation has drifted, as almost always lately, towards uncertainty: the price of rentals, geopolitical instabilityhow difficult “everything” is. Suddenly, there is silence. It’s 8:30 p.m. and hunger is pressing. A decade ago, someone would have gotten up to the kitchen. “I have pasta, shall we make a quick sauce?” the host would have said. Today, no one moves. Almost by a synchronized reflex, three phones are unlocked at the same time. Nobody wants to cook. Nobody wants to stain. And, above all, no one wants to wait. Within minutes, a delivery person will be at the door. We have outsourced the most basic act of survival and socialization: feeding ourselves. It’s not that we became lazy overnight. The structure of our consumption has changed radically. If we look at the x-ray of Spain, the data from the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAPA) draw an ascending curve that is dizzying, the consumption of prepared dishes has grown by 514.8% since 2004. In the last two decades, we have gone from seeing convenience food as an emergency solution to making it the base of our nutritional pyramid. In 2024, each Spaniard consumed on average almost 17 kilos of prepared food per year. The penetration of this habit is absolute. According to data from the consulting firm Kantar“ready to eat” already reaches 98.6% annual penetration. Virtually all Spanish consumers resort to it. The point is that we no longer look for flavor, or even health as an absolute priority (although it is valued). He drivers The main thing, in 85% of cases, is convenience. Six out of ten Spanish households openly declare “not having enough time to cook.” We don’t buy food, we buy time. The monopoly of “not cooking”: how Mercadona kept half of the cake On this game board, there is an undisputed winner who saw the future before anyone else. Mercadona, with its “Ready to Eat” section, has achieved a dominant positioncapturing 51.2% of the market share in the distribution of ready meals. Juan Roig not only sells ingredients; Now sell the time that you don’t have—or don’t want to dedicate—to cooking them. This brings us to the prophecy that the president of Mercadona launched a year ago and that sounded like a death sentence: “In the middle of the 21st century there will be no kitchens.” Roig maintains that, in the future, houses will not have space to cook because we will simply arrive at them with the food already made. The industry seems to be betting everything on this card: the Familia Martínez group, Mercadona supplier, is investing 150 million euros in facilities to manufacture roasts and gratins on an industrial scale. This trend has transformed even historical giants. Telepizza, the pioneer that taught us to order food by phone in the 90s, has entered the red in 2024. The paradox is cruel: they lose money in the golden age of delivery because the market has been saturated. They no longer compete against another pizzeria, they compete against all types of gastronomy delivered to your door in 30 minutes. Roig’s prophecy is not science fiction, it is current urban planning. Our own homes are expelling us from the stoves. Domestic architecture has undergone a radical bifurcation explained perfectly in a report by elDiario.es: the “decorated” kitchen and the “waste” kitchen. On the one hand, in luxury or renovated apartments for tourist rental, we see immaculate kitchens, open to the living room, designed to be photographed but not used. As the architect Luis Lope de Toledo explains: “Many contemporary kitchens seem designed to be photographed, not to be stained (…) When the kitchen becomes an aspirational symbol rather than a tool for living, it loses its authenticity.” On the other hand, the reality of housing precariousness in large cities pushes towards the model kitchenless (without kitchen). In the growing “mini apartments” and studios, cooking space is reduced to a minimum. The architect Laura Pato points out the harsh reality of the real estate market: “It is very common to see apartments that only have a stove and most do not have an oven.” If your kitchen is a narrow, unventilated hallway or a corner in your bedroom, the app of delivery It stops being a leisure option and becomes an infrastructure necessity. Saying goodbye to the aspiration of cooking If industrial investment is face A of this phenomenon, face B is found in second-hand platforms. Wallapop has been filled with kitchen robots Thermomix of previous models (TM5, TM31) at knockdown prices. At first glance, it might seem that there is a culinary resistance that seeks to equip itself cheaply. But a more cynical—and probably more realistic—reading suggests the opposite: it is a failed operation. Thousands of users are getting rid of an appliance that cost more than 1,000 euros and that promised to make cooking easier, realizing that even with a robot, you have to peel, clean and wait. The Thermomix requires planning that the average user no longer has. Selling the robot is the final act of giving in to immediacy. The decline of cuisine brings with it the death of a sacred ritual in Spain: the after-dinner meal and the traditional structure of meals. According to the Gastrometer 2025 by Just Eathe delivery It is no longer a weekend treat but has become part of the work and family routine. But the most alarming thing is how we eat. The Ministry of Agriculture confirms an extreme simplification: Half of the meals we eat during the week are already single dishes. In the case of dinners, the figure skyrockets: 7 out of 10 times we have a single dish for dinner. We have eliminated the first, the second and the dessert. The dining room table, that piece of furniture that once presided … Read more

Going to the mountains to go hiking is increasingly popular in Spain. And those who are suffering are the golden eagles

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Go on the weekend to take a route through the countryside It is a plan that can be very playful and, above all, healthy for us humans. But… What happens to the native fauna of the area? This is a question that It’s starting to resonate a lot on the internet.by focusing on the impact that our presence in the mountains can have on the most emblematic species of Spain such as the golden eagle or the partridge that have begun to have a lesser presence. A technological solution. The main idea that was in mind was that the animals were crashing into the hikers and causing great damage to their presence on the mountain. But to solve this mystery, biologists chose to put a GPS device on the eagles to monitor what they were doing. And the reality is that they are not crashing into us, but rather they are fleeing. The result. In this way, when it is confirmed that we do not have any type of collision with the eagles that could respond to their change in behavior, we have to go where they go when we humans are in the mountains. The University of Valencia in 2019 led this investigationdetecting that without a doubt there is a “weekend effect.” This effect can be seen in telemetry data which shows that during Saturdays and Sundays, the eagles are forced to modify their hunting routes. All this to avoid humans who, among other things, may be scaring away their targets on the ground. A greater expense. When these birds have to go to other areas to look for food because of hikers, they have to cover a longer distance than they are normally used to. This only means greater physiological stress and energy expenditure that can compromise their reproduction or survival, even if they never touch a human. But in addition, this translates into a situation known as ‘Landscape of Fear’, where the animal perceives the human not as a physical obstacle, but as a potential predator, which triggers its stress and cortisol levels, affecting its ability to breed. The real threats. To understand the real danger that these birds are in, we must look at the different mortality statistics in Spain. In this case, although a sedentary lifestyle causes great discomfort to the animals, the causes of death are much more industrial and violent. According to the studies collected, such as those of the GER-EA projectthe main cause of death is collision with power lines and electrocution. This is followed by poisoning and shooting, with 13 and 8% respectively. But what is clear is that humans are not a direct cause of death due to collisions with us when we are sedentary in the countryside. Distinction matters. Stating that eagles collide with hikers may sound spectacular, but it diverts attention from the real problem that we can solve as mountain users. The study in Ecology and Evolution (2025) and data from Ecologists in Action They point out that the problem is Yontrusion into breeding areas. Climbing, off-road vehicles and off-road hiking near the nests cause the adults to abandon the nest or the chicks, leaving them exposed to the cold or predators. Images | Mathew Schwartz In Xataka | Japan has been looking at its bears in fear for months due to a record wave of attacks. Now he looks at them with something else: gluttony

We will increasingly see more “verified” SMS against fraud. The important thing is to understand how they really work

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We live watching our cell phones and what appears on their screen, from a notice from the bank to a code to authorize a payment. This dependency has turned the text message into fertile ground for deception, with campaigns of smishing that imitate well-known companies and sneak into conversations that seem legitimate. The problem is not only technical, it is trust: distinguishing at a glance who is really on the other side. For years, SMS has treated legitimate and fraudulent messages equally, and that neutrality is exactly what attackers exploit. Malicious campaigns detected in Spain show how names and formats of known entities are copied to gain the trust of the recipient. These messages are designed not to raise suspicion. And often, when doubt arises, it is too late to react. Say ‘hello’ to verified messages. Faced with the erosion of trust in traditional SMS, the industry has chosen to reinforce the identity of the sender instead of placing all responsibility on the user. Verified messages introduce a relevant change: they make visible whether a company has been recognized as legitimate before the message reaches the mobile. Supported by the RCS protocolthese messages add a name, logo and verification indicators with the intention of reducing one of the main weapons of fraud, confusion about the real origin of the message. BBVA. This is how it looks on mobile. In Spain, BBVA has been one of the first large banks to show this change visibly for the user. On Android, the bank’s official messages are identified with its name and logo, accompanied by an indicator that indicates them as an official channel. By clicking on that logo, the user can verify that the associated data, such as the telephone number or website, match those of the bank. Furthermore, these communications arrive in a different thread than traditional SMS, precisely to prevent them from being mixed with fraudulent messages. Bankinter has also taken the leap. Bankinter has partnered with Telefónica to distribute verified messages. The entity explains This will improve the security of “critical communications”, such as single-use codes for transfers or online payments. Here we will also find the sender verification confirmation, the official logo and additional information such as the website and a telephone number. How verification works. Behind that visible badge there is a process much less obvious to the user. The standard defined by the GSMA establishes several preliminary stages before a company can send a single verified message. First, the entity must register its identity, with a specific name and logo, and submit it to external certification by a third party that validates that the entity can use that name and logo. This validation is not enough on its own: the authority that issues it must be included in the trusted list of the recipient’s operator. Without that complete string, the check simply doesn’t show. Who verifies who. Here the so-called Verification Authorities come into play as third parties in charge of validating that a company is who it says it is before it can send verified messages. That role may fall to private companies specialized in digital verification, mobile operators or even government entities, depending on the deployment and the country. Afterwards, it is the user’s operator who decides whether they trust that authority, something that is sometimes reflected visibly in the message itself, as occurs in an official Bankinter example, where the system indicates that the verification has been carried out by Movistar. The final verification occurs when the message reaches the phone. According to the GSMA standard, the messaging app automatically downloads the sender’s profile and runs a series of technical checks before displaying any badge. It is checked that the signature is still valid, that the authority that issued it is accepted by the user’s operator and that the data has not been altered. Only if everything fits does the verification indicator appear; If something fails, the message loses that appearance of legitimacy. Does it work on iOS and Android? This scheme is not exclusive to Android. Apple added support for RCS as a carrier service starting with iOS 18, allowing you to send and receive messages with advanced features when not using iMessage. In practice, the behavior is the same: if the operator supports RCS and the standard is implemented, the system can display the name, logo and indicators associated with the sender. Without this support from the operator, the message returns to the familiar terrain of SMS or MMS, without additional verification signals. For the user, the practical learning is simple: a verified message offers more context and more clues than a conventional SMS, but it does not eliminate the need to remain cautious. Knowing that there is a technical process behind that distinction helps us better interpret what reaches our mobile phones and be wary when something does not match. However, in an environment where malicious actors never sleep, caution remains essential. Images | Vitaly Gariev | BBVA | Bankinter | Gemini 3 Pro In Xataka | Cybersecurity experts by day, cybercriminals by night: how two professionals fell after using ransomware

We are entering an era in which robots with AI are becoming increasingly popular. LG already has its own to help us with household tasks

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LG Electronics has CLOiD officially announcedits first multitasking home robot powered by artificial intelligence, which is being presented to the public for the first time at CES 2026 in Las Vegas. The goal is for this robot to be able to automate a good part of household tasks, going beyond the basic cleaning functions to which current robots are accustomed. Below these lines we tell you all the details. LG’s first robot for domestic work According to LG, CLOiD is capable of performing complex tasks like getting milk from the refrigerator, putting a croissant in the oven for breakfast, and even taking care of the laundry: from starting wash cycles to folding and stacking clothes once they’re dry. The company is demonstrating these capabilities in various domestic scenarios during the technology fair. The robot has two articulated arms with seven degrees of freedom each. The shoulders, elbows and wrists allow forward, backward, rotational and lateral movements, while each hand includes five fingers that move independently to manipulate objects with precision. The torso can be tilted to adjust its height, allowing it to pick up objects from knee height upwards, although not off the ground. An intelligent “head” as a control center The CLOiD top unit functions as a mobile smart home control center. It is equipped with a chip that acts as the robot’s brain, screen, speaker, cameras, various sensors and generative artificial intelligence by voice. These components allow the robot to communicate with people using spoken language and “facial expressions” on its screen, learn users’ living patterns, and control connected home appliances. Integration with LG’s ThinQ and ThinQ ON ecosystem allows CLOiD to work more fully with the South Korean brand’s products, essentially acting as a hands-on smart home hub. Physical AI Technology: VLM and VLA At the core of CLOiD is what LG calls physical AI technology, which combines two models: Vision Language Model (VLM), which converts images and video into structured language-based understanding, and Vision Language Action (VLA), which translates visual and verbal inputs into physical actions. According to the company, these models have been trained with tens of thousands of hours of data on household tasks, allowing the robot to recognize appliances, interpret the user’s intent and execute appropriate actions. The wheeled base uses autonomous driving technology derived from LG’s experience with robot vacuum cleaners and his Q9 model. According to the company, this configuration was chosen for its stability, safety and cost-effectiveness, with a low center of gravity that reduces the risk of overturning if a child or pet comes into contact with it. One more step in LG’s home robotics CLOiD isn’t the only robot capable of folding clothes showing at CES this year. SwitchBot is also showing its Onero H1 with similar capabilities. However, everything indicates that at the moment LG seems to be considering CLOiD more as a concept than as a product that they are going to really sell in the short term. The company says it will continue to develop home robots with practical functions and shapes for household tasks, and expand the application of its robotic technology to conventional home appliances. The ultimate goal, according to Steve Baekpresident of LG’s home appliance solutions division, is to achieve its vision of “Zero Labor Home,” “making housework a thing of the past so customers can spend more time on the things that really matter.” Autonomous robots with generative artificial intelligence are beginning to conquer technology fairs. They are the perfect setting to attract the masses, so it remains to be seen if they end up convincing enough so that in a few years we will see them hogging store shelves. Among other factors, the price will be what decides if the move really pays off. Images | LG In Xataka | The technology industry has been searching for the “next smartphone” for a decade. Now he thinks he found it with AI

Accessing our car’s mechanics has become increasingly complicated. BMW has thought of complicating it even more

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Do-it-yourself repairability of a vehicle is something that Over the years it has gotten worse. while the systems have become increasingly complicated. Therefore, it is not surprising that multiple manufacturers have chosen to design specific tools to access sensitive parts of the vehicle. In the case of BMW, a patent recently discovered Meanwhile, CarBuzz could make things even more complicated for those who want to have access to certain parts of your car. And the patent shows some screws with heads designed in the shape of the brand logo that require specific tools for handling. What is this about? The patent from BMW describes four different types of custom screw heads that replicate the brand’s circular emblem, divided into four quadrants. Two of these sections are recessed to accommodate the screwdriver, while the other two remain flat or raised. The design of this type of specific screws means that they cannot be manipulated with conventional tools such as Torx, hexagonal or Phillips, but rather requires parts manufactured specifically for BMW. Why BMW says it does. As the patent itself explains, the objective is “to prevent the screw from being loosened or tightened using common drive structures, for example, by unauthorized persons.” The company proposes its use in structural and semi-structural applications, such as seat anchors or joints between the passenger compartment and the supporting structure of the body. The intention is that these screws can be used in visible areas, since if we judge these screws from an aesthetic point of view, the truth is that molar is cool. The problem for workshops and owners. On the other hand, and addressing the central problem behind this decision, this would turn even the most basic maintenance tasks into mandatory visits to the official dealer or, at best, would force independent workshops to purchase exclusive BMW tools. Something that, on the other hand, is not so strange if we take a look at the history of many of the largest automobile groups. Just like account In the middle, working with a two-point system and the decorative ring taking up much of the surface of the screw would increase the risk of breaking the tools, especially in applications that require very hard fastening. It’s not the first time. German manufacturers have a long tradition of using specialized fasteners. Just like points out In the middle, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz and BMW routinely use triple-square, oversized Torx or even E-Torx screws, which force mechanics to have specific tool sets. Against the current. The curious thing about it all is that this patent openly contrasts with the direction that other manufacturers are taking. Mercedes-Benz for example, its main rival, advertisement that would work on redesigning its future vehicles to facilitate repairs. An example of this is their decision to replace the glue with screws in the headlights to simplify their replacement. Just a piece of paper, for now. The patent was filed on June 7, 2024 and was made public on December 11, 2025. However, it is worth remembering that manufacturers register numerous patents that never materialize in series models. There is no confirmation that BMW will actually implement this system in its production vehicles. For now, this is only technical documentation. A general trend. Regardless of whether these specific screws are manufactured or not, the patent is yet another example of the progressive distancing of owners from the mechanics of their vehicles. With electrification and greater technological complexity, drivers they increasingly depend on specialized workshops for any intervention. It should also be noted that very few owners fix or modify their car on their own. Perhaps precisely because the systems have become increasingly more complicated to access. Cover image | Paul Martinez In Xataka | Ferdinand Porsche devised the first car with an electric motor in each wheel. Today a Chinese manufacturer is going to make it possible

The loggerhead turtle is increasingly common on the Spanish coasts. It is a bad sign about the Mediterranean

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The Mediterranean is being invaded. The ‘fried egg’ jellyfish or the imposing lionfish They are two undesirable new tenants, but there is one animal that is much less annoying, It is not invasive and yet it is a problem that it is colonizing the western Mediterranean. This is the loggerhead sea turtle. And it is another adaptive response to climate change. The loggerhead turtle. Its scientific name is Caretta caretta and is one of only two species of sea turtle (the other is the Chelonia mydasor green turtle) that reproduces in the Mediterranean beaches. If you look at the map, its distribution is worldwide. They enjoy warm waters with a wide range of surface temperatures (a range between 13 and 28 degrees Celsius), but things change during the spawning season. Nesting females prefer temperatures between 27 and 28 degrees, making Mediterranean beaches an ideal area to lay eggs. The traditional spawning grounds in the Mediterranean were the eastern area, especially the Greek beaches, but something is happening: an increase in temperatures is creating a double imbalance. A determining factor. It is curious, but temperature controls both the willingness of turtles to nest in an area and, and this is almost the most important, the sixth of their hatchlings. The sexual determination of chelonians depends on the incubation temperature in the eggs buried in the sand. With this strict fan of 27-28 degrees, a balanced population between males and females is achieved. With higher temperatures, there is a imbalance towards the predominant birth of females. This is a problem for the turtle population itself, since an imbalance of this type would put the species at risk. And even more curious is that mature females have instinctively found a biological refuge on the coasts of the western Mediterranean, where the beaches are somewhat colder (for the moment). The objective is to ensure greater sexual diversity. Increase in nesting. HE esteem that, in the Mediterranean basin, there are about 8,000 eggs per year. The traditional places are Greece, Türkiye, Libya, Tunisia and Cyprus, but little by little we are seeing that change in the balance. In 2001 found a first nest on a beach in Almería, in Vera, and since then loggerhead turtle nests have been recorded in other parts of the geography of the western Mediterranean. The turtles They are spawning in Spainbut also in Italy, Malta and Tunisia. In addition to the Almeria coast, the areas in which the turtles are creating nests are Catalonia, the Balearic Islands, Valencia, Murcia and they have been observed in Fuengirola and Marbella. Conservation and awareness. There are organizations that, increasingly, point out that nesting has been increasing in recent years, and regardless of what it means at a climatic level, it is another problem due to the human factor. In countries “accustomed” to this, where nests are protected, the population knows not to interfere with them. In others where turtles are beginning to nest, it is possible that we, maliciously or unintentionally, interfere with the reproductive cycles of a species that is considered under threat. That is why it is also they throw citizen awareness campaigns to inform about them and how to proceed if someone finds a nest that is not already being monitored. For example, performing events in schools on biology and conservation of the species. It is also perform awareness work with fishermen as a target audience, since fishing activities are one of the main causes of death. Likewise, when a clutch is detected, there is the possibility of protecting the nest in situ (where the turtles have to hatch correctly and take the infernal path to the sea) or take the eggs to controlled breeding centerswhere they mature and are subsequently released. Turtle nursery in Fuerteventura Poison beyond the heat. But there is another problem apart from climate change and human action: the pollutants that are poisoning the turtles. In recent years there has been studied the liver of at least a dozen loggerhead turtles, finding traces of PCB, PCDF and PCDD. These are chemicals, pesticides that alter the immune and hormonal systems of turtles. It is something that comes from the hand of the esurface runoff carrying chemical waste from agriculture and industry to the rivers that subsequently flow into the sea. And torture, unfortunately, is becoming a thermometer of the state of our waters, both in terms of temperature and the presence of chemicals that are already altering the fauna. Images | H. Zell, Dionysisa303 In Xataka | The owner of Loro Parque in the Canary Islands charges against animal rights activists. And with this it reopens the debate on the existence of zoos

17% more hospitalizations and increasingly overwhelmed emergencies

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He flu virus is reaching its peak with a higher infection rate after seeing practically vertical graphs in communities like Madrid or Catalonia. The positive point that we mentioned is that hospitalizations They weren’t increasing too much.but we can now put this idea aside because they have begun to grow. And that is a problem for the health system. Number of infections. The report of Acute Respiratory Infection Surveillance System of the ISCIII published this Thursday points to an incidence of 446.6 cases per 100,000 inhabitants until last Sunday the 14th. An increase of almost 50% compared to the previous week, something that undoubtedly reminds us of the worst of the covid pandemic. Hospital admissions. One of the most striking points, since it can be clearly seen in hospital emergencies with long waits and a high number of patients waiting for a bed. And it is that revenue has increased by 17% until reaching 9 incomes per 100,000 inhabitants. Something that already is evident in the emergency room with patients waiting for beds, long waiting lines due to the flood of patients and a health system that is already beginning to be strained. Flu evolution in Spain by season. Source: ISCIII If we focus on the ages of the patients, those over 80 years of age have a rate of 56.2 cases per 100,000 people. But in children under one year old this figure drops to 48.8 cases. Unequal impact by communities. Although the trend is upward at the national level, the situation is not homogeneous. In the Community of Madrid, through the Notifiable Diseases system, 22,110 new flu cases during week 50. This is a figure that is quite far from other communities such as Castilla y León, which in the report WATCH reports a global rate of 149 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the case of influenza. Although in the case of acute respiratory infections in general this figure increases to 781 cases. Virus variant. Part of the blame for this great spread of the virus (at least much more than we saw in other years) is due to the variant k of the H3N2 influenza virus for which we were not entirely prepared. This has meant that the vaccine does not work 100%, and even generate certain doubts about the effectiveness of the campaign. What is clear is that it is mitigating part of its effects, minimizing its severity. This means that right now the recommendation to follow is to get vaccinated at the health center to have part of this protection. The holidays begin. The peak of the flu seems to be approaching, but there is still a very important event: Christmas dinners. A moment where there is a large accumulation of people in the same closed area and which can lead to a considerable increase in infections after these important dates. And the most relevant transmitter is undoubtedly the smallest in the house, who a priori may not show many symptoms or may even take much longer to show them. This makes it easy for them to spread it, especially for the older people in their environment who can develop a much more serious flu that may end up in a hospital. right now it’s starting to collapse. The forecast. As we say, the great ‘boom’ of the contagion curve is expected for this Christmas due to this number of contacts. But from here everything will begin to go downwards with the aim of recovering normality already into 2026. It must also be taken into account that this year the epidemic began earlier than expected, so it can also be seen that it will end earlier than what happened in other years. Images | Victory Brittany Colette In Xataka | Centuries later, tuberculosis remains a deadly disease. Now we have a shortcut to detect it: rats

a logical evolution in a context where fintech increasingly offers more services

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PayPal has introduced a formal request before the US authorities to establish PayPal Bank, a banking entity that would allow it to expand its financial services beyond digital payments. The idea is that first, the company can offer loans to small businesses and savings accounts with interest to its customers. It would be the first step in a logical evolution in a context in which all fintech companies are committed to offering more and more services. Strategy. PayPal has filed for approval with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the Utah Department of Financial Institutions to create a Utah-based industrial lending company. This type of entity can make loans, hold FDIC-insured deposits, and be owned by a non-financial institution. The objective: financial autonomy. According to declared PayPal CEO Alex Chriss, “raising capital remains a significant obstacle for small businesses looking to grow and scale.” The creation of PayPal Bank would reduce its dependence on third parties to provide financing, improving operational efficiency. According to the firm’s account, since 2013, PayPal has facilitated more than $30 billion in loans and capital to more than 420,000 business accounts around the world. A favorable regulatory context. This step by PayPal comes at a time of regulatory opening in this area under the Trump administration. Just like they count From Bloomberg, last week, five cryptocurrency platforms, including Ripple and Circle, received preliminary approval to establish national trust banks. Until a few years ago, approval was perceived as a complicated path. The fintech trend towards banking. PayPal joins a wave of financial technology companies seeking to become regulated banking entities. According to collect the Financial Times, Brazil’s Nubank and cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase have all applied for banking licenses this year. As a curiosity, other firms that a priori might have nothing to do with this sector, such as Nissan Motor and Sony Group, have also submitted similar requests. Even “buy now, pay later” platforms like Klarna and Affirm have launched debit cards, competing directly with traditional entities. Between the lines. The fintech sector is maturing, with a special ambition to offer financial services of all kinds. PayPal already has a banking license in Luxembourg, and in fact this makes it considered a banking entity throughout the European Union. The direction it wants to take in the United States would be the first step to consolidate its status as a global financial entity. The company also seeks to connect directly with American credit and debit card networks, eliminating intermediaries in its payment operations. Leading PayPal Bank will be Mara McNeill, former CEO of Toyota Financial Savings Bank. Stock market performance. Despite the announcement, which has driven shares up 1.5% in the extended market, according to CNBCPayPal is going through a difficult year on the stock market. The firm accumulates a drop of 29% in 2025, while the S&P 500 has risen almost 16% in the same period. However, in October the company reported quarterly revenue of $8.42 billion, up 7% year-over-year and above analyst expectations. Cover image | Brett Jordan In Xataka | Elon Musk’s fortune has exceeded $600 billion: SpaceX is not only breaking records in space

that building nuclear power plants becomes increasingly cheaper

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While Western countries debated for or against nuclear energy, with the construction of new plants weighed down by decades of delays and cost overruns, China has not only continued building: He has done it against the trend of the sector. For the first time in more than 50 years, a country has made building nuclear reactors increasingly cheaper, faster and scalable. The difference is overwhelming. The only two reactors built in the United States this century (at the Vogtle plant in Georgia) took 11 years to complete and cost a whopping $35 billion, equivalent to about $15 per watt of capacity. According to a analysis published in NatureChina is building its new nuclear power plants for just $2 a watt. It is not an anomaly, but a trend. Construction costs in the United States have increased tenfold since the 1960s, and in France they have almost doubled. In China they halved during the 2000s and have remained stable since then. The big question is how they have achieved it, and whether the rest of the world can imitate them. The Chinese nuclear recipe. Building a nuclear power plant remains one of the most complex engineering projects on the planet. If China has managed to do this in an increasingly efficient way, it is thanks to a mix of standardization and unwavering state support. The three state nuclear giants receive low-interest loans, which greatly reduces the cost of financing. Unlike the West, where each project has been a new experiment with unique designs, China has often focused on building a handful of models, scaling its nuclear capability rapidly. But these are just the last steps of the recipe. To get here, Beijing had to invest in mastering each link in the supply chain. Made in China. As detailed in a extensive New York Times reportthe country has developed a robust national industry capable of forging everything from reactor vessels to the most critical components of each nuclear power plant. Components made in China, such as cargo pumps or ring cranes, cost half as much as their imported equivalents. A perfect example is the American-designed AP1000 reactor. Both the United States and China faced enormous challenges building this model. But as problems led to delays and skyrocketing costs that nearly buried the American industry, China paused, studied every flaw, and ended up developing an improved, nationalized version of the reactor: the CAP1000. It is now building nine reactors of this model within just five years, and at a drastically lower cost. The winning strategy. “China demonstrates that the construction and operation costs of nuclear power do not have to increase unabated,” explains Dan Kammenprofessor at Johns Hopkins University. Breaking the curse of cost overruns requires “more than technology: it requires an intelligent and strategic approach,” says Kammen. The result of this approach is that China is on track to overtake the United States as the largest nuclear power in the world in 2030. Today it has almost as many reactors under construction as the rest of the world combined. It is not a simple bet, but a State policy that does not end at its borders. China has already put two Hualong One reactors into operation in Pakistan, and has plans to continue expanding throughout Asia, Africa and South America. Waiting for the SMR. While China perfects the construction of large already proven reactors, Western countries follow a radically different path: betting on innovation through the private sector. Dozens of startups are working on a new generation of small modular reactors (SMR), theoretically cheaper and faster to build. Tech giants like Google, Amazon and Microsoft They have invested billions in them to power their energy-hungry data centers. The problem is not only that This technological advance will take years to maturebut China does not live apart from it. The country is already taking giant steps in future technologies, such as fourth-generation gas-cooled reactors or research into thorium reactors. And he could repeat the same strategies that have worked with traditional reactors. Image | CNNC In Xataka | China has turned the energy sector upside down: the first fusion-proof nuclear power plant is already a success

The signs that the system is broken are increasingly evident

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On October 17, 2023, Jesús Fernández-Villaverde (the professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania) gave an interview in El Mundo with a very simple headline “it shows: (in Spain) everything works badly.” Everyone thought it was exaggerated, sensationalist. But then it came the DANA (and its management), the April blackoutthe Redsys repeated crash and the payment system, fire chaos and, finally, the Andalusian mammography scandal. What began as an (apparently) isolated complaint has become a deep institutional crisis for Andalusian healthcare. But the problem goes much further, the request for data from the Ministry of Health to the rest of the communities has revealed that Spain has a huge problem with all this, that in fact in Spain more and more things are working poorly. The mammography crisis. Although the first complaints surfaced at the beginning of 2024 and the affected associations met with the Board during the summer, until the first cases reached the media, the Ministry of Health did not recognize that more than 2,000 women may not have been informed of a questionable lesion after screening. What came next was chaos: after limiting the problem to a single Hospital, they were forced to recognize a widespread problem and implement a “shock plan” that no one knows very well how it will be implemented. And, in the midst of this commotion, the Ministry of Health asked the communities for data to know how screening was working throughout the country. many of them they have refused (although not all). The prosecution has taken letters in the matter. The underlying problem. Because, honestly, we run the risk of thinking that all this is nothing more than another political battle: a partisan scuffle that, this time, has acquired the format of a health controversy. The clearest example is that the PP Health Ministers they just left en bloc the Interterritorial Health Council; while the Ministry accuses the communities of “hiding” the screening data because it is “bad” and shows their “incompetence.” But not. It is enough to analyze the data of any community to see that the underlying problem is that healthcare is increasingly having problems addressing the care burden it has on it. The case of Madrid is paradigmatic because, even though protocols are well designed On paper, “in most public centers the lists and the average waiting time grow” year after year. Similar problems we can see throughout the country. How deep is this crisis? That is surely the worst of all: that we still cannot know how deep the problem is because the opacity of the Spanish institutional framework is enormous. It is true that this is not exclusively a Spanish problem: we still remember thehe confidence with which public health systems Westerners that they would be able to detect COVID and block it before it arrived to their respective populations. Shortly after, Italy’s outbreak broke out. What we don’t know is costing us our health. Civio has been researching for years as primary care is drowninghow public psychological care is almost a chimera, how dozens of health services depend on where you live and how, little by little, health is falling into the hands of private interests. But even that doesn’t explain the problem we are in. Because the central issue is that we don’t even know how we are. We also don’t know where we are going. And that is the worst of all: it removes the very possibility of us taking the reins and coming up with solutions. Image | Junta of Andalusia | NCI In Xataka | Predicting breast cancer five years before it appears, possible thanks to artificial intelligence

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