law

In Alicante, the Animal Welfare Law is causing demonstrations for a very specific thing: feline colonies

by

Despite the rain and the cold and the fact that the call was made Sunday at noona few weeks ago around 200 people They went out on the street in Alicante, with banners and a megaphoneto demand, among other things, the resignation of the city’s mayor. They did not mobilize the housing, the increase in price from the shopping cart, unemployment, immigrationcorruption or any of the other issues that according to the CIS It keeps the Spaniards awake at night. What led them to complain are the feline colonies from Alicante. Or rather, how the City Council is managing them despite the fact that since 2023 the Animal Welfare Law (and the autonomous) clearly states what your responsibilities are. What has happened? April 12 around 200 people They met on the Explanada de España, on the seafront of Alicante, to demand that the City Council change its management policy for feline colonies. Between messages such as “cats are unprotected” or “not looking is abandoning,” the protesters denounced what they consider a passive attitude on the part of the City Council, responsible for the street colonies. “He has done absolutely nothing,” regretted in statements to the newspaper Information Antonio Ripoll, president of the Felinos Lo Morant association. The group assures that, despite their insistence on the situation of the colonies, from the Consistory they have only received “excuses” and answers that they interpret as “a way of delaying things.” One of the triggers for the April 12 demonstration came to early marchwhen the Colonias Felinas Alicante (Acofal) association denounced that the municipal cleaning services had removed the cat houses installed in the Parque de la Ereta, which left their colony without shelter or food. “Scattered and disoriented”. What happened in Ereta even led PACMA to launch a statement in which it denounces “the repeated withdrawal” of food, water and shelters in the area, which affects “more than one hundred cats registered”, and warns the City Council of “a possible violation of regional and state animal protection legislation.” “It is impossible to move the cats from the Ereta Park, which occupies the entire slope of the mountain that surrounds the Santa Bárbara Castle,” underlines the collective: “The withdrawal of food, water and shelter leaves the animals unprotected, dispersed and disoriented, especially in episodes of rain.” What does the LBA have to do with it? Both in the messages of the animal associations and in that of PACMA it is repeated a fundamental idea: If the focus is on the City Council it is because for a few years the Animal Welfare Law (LBA) clearly states that local administration plays a key role in the management and care of feline colonies. In fact, PACMA warns that what happened in Ereta could “constitute a violation” of state regulations, the Law 7/2023but also the autonomous range, the 2/2023. “They oblige public administrations to guarantee the correct management and protection of feline colonies,” argues the animalist party. The message is very similar to the one sent from the associative world. Ripoll, for example, matches in which the City Council “is systematically failing to comply with the animal welfare law.” Even they point out that colonies often depend on caregivers who manage them by investing their own resources and time, something they attribute to the lack of “budget and adequate technical personnel” in the animal protection office. Chapter VI. Article 39. The truth is that the legislation is very clear on this matter. The state law 7/2023 of protection of the rights and well-being of animals details in its chapter IV, article 38, the role of city councils: “In the absence of other provisions in regional legislation and respecting the scope of competence established by current legislation, it is up to local entities to manage community cats, for which purposes they must develop Feline Colony Management Programs.” Even precise What minimum requirements should these management plans cover: encourage citizen collaboration, launch training and information campaigns, and establish population control plans. Also the care of animals. In fact, the rule makes it clear that it must be the local entity that assumes “responsibility for health care”, using registered veterinarians to do so, and also establishes protocols for treating cat colonies. Does the law say more? Yes. It puts a few homework extra to city councils (for example, including sterilizations in population control plans), specifies the roles of regional administrations and citizens and finally highlights certain actions that are categorically “prohibited” in the colonies. These include sacrificing cats with very specific exceptions, taking specimens from colonies (and therefore not used to being among humans and confined) to “animal protection centers” and exchanging animals from one colony to another. The law too precise that cats can only be removed from their communities in certain cases. In case there were any doubts Valencian law It also emphasizes that the town councils, hand in hand with animal associations and veterinarians, “will carry out comprehensive management” of the colonies in their municipalities. And that includes CER (Capture, Sterilization and Recovery) programs, feeding, shelter, supervision and health treatment for the felines. “Community cats will be identified with a microchip under the ownership of the local administration.” Beyond Alicante. Alicante is not the only municipality in which the application of the LBA and its obligations has generated friction with the town councils. In Torres Torres (Valencian Community) the volunteers who take care of the feline colonies recently threatened also with going to the Ombudsman in the face of what they consider the “inaction of the city council” and at the end of 2025 PACMA denounced that the Donostia City Council was violating Law 7/2023 in a neighborhood of the city. Similar situations have been experienced in Sangunt (Valencian Community) or Saint Joseph (Ibiza). “Volunteer veterinarians”. Two years ago, shortly after the approval of the LBA, the Alicante College of Veterinarians even released a statement to remember two key ideas about caring for cat colonies. The first is that “population and health control” depends on … Read more

The EU said its AI Law was prodigious. It must not be so good when it is going to delay its application until 2028

by

Brussels has agreed delay the toughest restrictions of your AI Law until December 2027, which in practice moves its real impact to 2028. Initially the calendar was much more ambitious and intended to prohibit and punish AI systems classified as “unacceptable risk”but all that now remains a dead letter. This makes it clear that community institutions are not prepared to supervise what they intended to regulate. Tell AESIA. A victory with risks. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has made Germany dictate the pace of Brussels. Mez has pushed until the last minute to get industrial AI applications virtually off the radar of the law. This will allow German business giants such as Siemens or Bosch not to have to comply with the regulations. Is according to Politico a political victory for Berlin—although other companies like ASML asked for the same— which protects its heavyweights, but poses a problem: if we let AI control factories and critical infrastructure, we risk its failures having an enormous impact, which is exactly what the AI ​​Law proposed. What was considered high risk six months ago is no longer so. Brussels comes to its senses. MEPs have understood something that they had been refusing to admit for a long time: being the “sheriff” of the internet is of no use if you don’t have your own AI industry. While Europe regulated, the US and China they grew without brake. The agreement is the clear admission that regulating with a heavy hand a market that you do not dominate does not make sense. The EU now gives its companies some oxygen instead of forcing regulations that the rest of the world is simply ignoring. The “Brussels effect” has a ceiling, and this delay marks it. The AI ​​Law does not give up completely. The EU, however, has included an express prohibition against AI systems capable of generating deepfakes of recognizable people. It is a direct response to the controversy generated by tools like those present in Xand a way to keep the protective spirit of the law somewhat alive. The obligation to identify AI-generated content also remains, but the grace period is stricter now, at three months compared to the previous six months. Even so, there is a clear surrender in what mattered most. Careful. If the EU has decided to delay its flagship AI law in the face of industrial pressure, what will prevent the DMA or the DSA from ending up suffering the same fate? The two regulations have been involved in complex industrial battles for some time: Apple and Meta they continue to resist to meet the requirements of interoperability and transparency, and the Commission has had to qualify its own requirements. The precedent of the is dangerous because it shows that political pressure works. Regulate so much for what. The EU has been wanting to lead technological regulation without leading (or even competing in many areas) in technological innovation. The GDPR served as a global standard because Europe was a large enough market to impose conditions for entry. The difference is that AI depends on something else very different, and here the feeling is that the only thing Europe is doing is putting doors on the field. Let your own AI Law end modifying first and later delaying is nothing more than a tacit recognition that the EU’s regulatory strategy and ambition has been a shot in the foot. One that has worsened the conditions to be able to compete with those of other countries. Image | World Economic Forum In Xataka | “What is allowed in China can never be allowed in Europe”: Spanish MEPs from the AI ​​Special Commission speak

There are so few bees that there is a law in the United Kingdom that requires new houses to have “rooms” for them.

by

On a global scale, humanity is facing a natural disaster that we have not yet come to terms with: the “insect apocalypse.” Science takes years showing its decline and although without careful thought the first impression may be “how nice to get rid of mosquitoes”, that loss threatens ecosystems essential for human life. In this collapse there is a most critical and weakest link if possible: pollinators. Its disappearance not only affects the flora, but also the food. Faced with progressive urbanization and the loss of its natural habitats, current architecture in the United Kingdom has begun to integrate microconservation solutions into the buildings themselves: the Bee Bricka brick that, in addition to supporting walls, houses bees. What began as a sustainable design project has become an urban policy phenomenon that is spreading around the world. bee bricks. As you can see below these lines, a bee brick looks quite similar to a normal brick, but with one particularity: on its front face it has 18 cavities of different diameters. The back is solid, which prevents insects from entering the interior of the building. It is made from precast and largely recycled concrete (75% granite waste from the Cornish kaolin industry and 25% granite aggregate and cementitious material as a binder). Behind the choice of design and materials used are years of testing and research not only by engineering professionals, but also by biology, such as collect research log from Falmouth University. This Bee brick can be integrated directly into the masonry of a new building, replace an existing brick in a renovation or placed independently in a garden or orchard. As a presentation, the British company Green&Blue came up with the idea and the first brick hit the market in 2014. This is what a brick for abjeas looks like. green and blue Why it is important. Because bees are one of the main engines of pollination of terrestrial ecosystems. According to the IPBES Thematic Assessment on Pollinators, Pollination and Food Productionmore than three quarters of the world’s major crops benefit from animal pollination and approximately one third of the global volume of food produced depends on it directly. That same report indicates that 87.5% of the planet’s flowering plants are pollinated by insects or other animals. And although in the collective imagination we associate this function with honey bees (Apis mellifera), this is actually an exception: they are a social species, domesticated and exploited by humans. In short: they are an overwhelming minority. Most bees do not produce honey, do not have a queen, and do not form colonies. Of course, they are first-class pollinators and some are specialized in specific species. Their decline has no substitute: if they disappear, there will be plants that will be left without a pollinator. Context. In the UK there are approximately 270 species of bees and 90% of them are solitary, such as collects the British National Bee Unit. And it is not an isolated case: on the European red list of bees of the IUCN are also the majority and on a global scale the Journal of Applied Ecology establishes that more than 75% of the more than 20,000 described species of bees are solitary. In other words, it is not an isolated case of the islands. And the problem of British bees is not exclusive either: they are losing their nesting habitat at stratospheric speed. Historically, they made their nests in cavities provided by construction, such as dead wood, cracks in the mortar in old buildings, gaps between stones and also in slopes of unpaved earth, in gaps between stones… spaces that with modern construction, so homogeneous and sealed (compared to the previous ones), have disappeared. The large-scale use of pesticides, the disappearance of grasslands or the effects of climate change, which are pushing species adapted to lower temperatures to the margins, do not help either. And that this study from Anglia Ruskin University evidence that solitary ground bees nest in a wider range of habitats than previously believed. Rooms for bees by law. The southern English coastal city Brighton & Hove was the first to turn the Bee Bricks into a legal requirement for new buildings. From January 2022 all new buildings over five meters high must include both Bee Bricks as nest boxes for swifts. Out there, Cornwall adopted in 2018 an official planning guide that includes bee bricks as a prescriptive biodiversity measure and several construction companies in the south of England they integrate them voluntarily in their projects for more than a decade. And do they work? Trials in Cornwall between 2019 and 2021 demonstrate modest results: occupancy rates were low, although nesting activity was recorded in bricks of all colors and in both urban and rural environments. The species that used them the most were the red mason bee (Osmia bicornis) and leaf cutters of the genus Megachile. He Conservation evidence from the University of Cambridge systematizes the available studies on artificial habitats for bees and concludes that nest boxes and cavity systems are used by solitary bees, as long as they are well designed and located. To work, the bricks need to face south, more than a meter off the ground and near flowering plants. Without those conditions, the probability of a bee colonizing them drops dramatically. Yes, but. In addition to the modest results precisely due to unsuitable designs and arrangements, there are experts such as Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex and one of the most renowned bee researchers in the United Kingdom, warns for The Guardian that the holes in the Bee Bricks are too small and shallow for most solitary bee species and that the initiative risks being greenwashing for the real estate sector: “We are kidding ourselves if we think that having one of these in every house is going to make a real difference to biodiversity. Much more substantial action is needed.” On the other hand, other ecology professionals they point out … Read more

Opening a company in a single visit to the administration sounds like utopia. In China it has been law for years

by

Bureaucracy is probably one of the few things on which there is almost absolute consensus: everyone hates her. Queuing from window to window, discovering that you are missing a photocopy, returning another day because the official who signs is not there… an administrative ordeal, but it doesn’t have to be like this: years ago, in China they set out to end the labyrinth of procedures with one objective: so that more companies can be created to be more competitive. One visit at most. The ‘one visit at most’ reform It was promoted in the province of Zhejiang in 2016 and today it has spread to more territories in the country. The central objective is to unify all the procedures into one, so that those who want to form a new company only have to go to the administration once, avoiding the “walk” through different windows. It does not only affect the creation of companies, but all types of procedures such as birth certificates, registration records, registrations for health insurance and health cards. In addition, there are many procedures that can be done electronically, it is what they call ‘zero visit’ and the idea is that over time more and more processes will be added to this list. How it was before. Before this reform the process was not only much more tedious, but also much slower. a businessman counted in CGNT To get a permit you had to go through a lot of procedures, the lines were very long and it took several weeks. And if everything went well, if a document was missing or there was an error, you would have to start over. Another businesswoman says that she sent the documentation online and when she went to do the process it took her only 15 minutes to get the permit. Land of entrepreneurship. That this reform has been promoted in Zhejiang is no coincidence. It is the province in which Hangzhou is located, the city that has become the reference technological hub for AI companies. Here you can find Alibaba, DeepSeek, Unitree or Deep Robotics. It is also where the Zhejiang Universitynicknamed “the Stanford of the East”, and where many of those who are today senior executives of technology companies have studied. The streamlining of bureaucracy is one of all the measures that the government has implemented and which also include very advantageous loans for entrepreneurs. One person companies. Recently We were talking about ‘one person companies’ or OCP and how the Chinese government is supporting this new entrepreneurship model. They are startups created by a single person with strong AI support, very much in the style of what he did Peter Steinberger with OpenClawwhich in turn has allowed many entrepreneurs to create their own solo companies. OCP communities are being created in cities like Suzhou, Wuhan offers special loans for ‘solopreneurs’ and in Shanghai they cover up to 300,000 yuan in computing expenses. How is it here? In Spain we also have our own agile business creation system called CIRCE. It works through the DUE (Single Electronic Document) that groups up to 25 administrative forms into one. Through CIRCE you can create or cease a company, whether it is a SL or a self-employed person, and it can take from one to ten days. Of course, for SLs it is still necessary to complete an in-person procedure at a notary office. Image | Studio4rt, Freepik In Xataka | For 60 years, a farmer with no idea about architecture built a cathedral from scratch in Madrid. The bureaucracy has closed it

the risk prevention law

by

You return to work after six months offbut no one asks you how you are, if you can do the same as before or if something in your position should change because there is no direct connection between those who look after your health and who manages your work. A new proposal from the Ministry of Labor advocates including some improvements in the Occupational Risk Prevention Law to improve the health of workers, and update a standard that has been in force for more than thirty years. He preliminary draft reform of the Occupational Risk Prevention Law has been opened for public consultation and includes the agreements reached between the Government and unions after almost twenty months of negotiations, although it does not have the support of the employers’ association, which ended up leaving the table. The context of this reform is to reduce accidents and with more prevention. In 2024 alone, 796 people died in work accidents in Spaincompared to the 1,356 people who did so in 1995. Medical recognition from day one. The most notable change contemplated in the Ministry of Labor proposal is found in its article 22, which establishes regulations for the medical examinations that workers undergo. Currently, companies do not have a general obligation to do them, and they are only carried out on the recommendation of labor mutual societies. In practice, many employees go years without going through one. Under the new law, the company will have to offer a health exam when someone starts working at the company, periodically while they are at the company, and also when they return after a long absencegenerally from six months onwards. What changes in the proposal is not only the fact that medical examination exists, but the purpose of it. The prevention doctor will no longer limit himself to saying whether or not the worker is fit to perform a certain function, but will also be able to recommend changes and adaptations to the workplace if the person needs it. And the company will be obliged to take this into account and establish a reinstatement protocol when someone returns from a long leave, including updated training if necessary. ​Voluntary, but with important exceptions. Just because the company has to offer recognition does not mean that the worker is forced to do so. The general rule remains that each person decides, as is currently the case, and refusing should not have any employment consequences. But there are three situations in which the company can require it without the employee being able to refuse it: when it is essential to know if the working conditions are affecting their health, when there is a real and demonstrable risk for themselves or their colleagues, or when a specific rule imposes it because it is a particularly dangerous job. In any case, what the doctor discovers in these tests will remain confidential. The company will only receive the conclusions that are relevant to adapt the position, not the worker’s complete medical history. New risks enter the equation. Another of the great novelties of the proposed draft is that the law explicitly recognizes for the first time in its article 4 the emotional risksbehavioral or social, placing special emphasis in its article 16 on attention to the surveillance and prevention of psychosocial risks and derived from climate changein clear reference to the protection of workers against heat waves or the DANA. The reform now requires us to identify, evaluate and plan them concrete measures to reduce them. The law also defines workplace harassment for the first time, and goes beyond what we usually imagine: it includes behaviors that occur only once if they are serious enough, and also those that are carried out through algorithms or artificial intelligence, something especially relevant. on digital platforms where the “boss” is an automated system that assigns the workload. SMEs and the million-dollar question: when? In Spain there are around 1.1 million companies with ten workers or lesswhich employ three million people. They are the ones that have the most difficulty complying with occupational risk regulations, and the law takes this into account. To provide coverage, a new figure is created: territorial prevention agents. They will be people designated in each autonomous community by the unions and employers of the sector, and their job will be to visit these small companies, detect risks and, if they are not corrected, give part to the Labor Inspection. It also opens the door for mandatory risk prevention training to be subsidized for these companies. The text presented is only a working draft that must be debated in Congress and is susceptible to modifications to be approved with sufficient support from the Chamber. If they continue their ordinary course, most of the measures would begin to apply on January 2, 2027, with a period of up to an additional year for some parts of the regulation, so this initial text would be far from being the definitive one. In Xataka | Some researchers have analyzed the working day in Spain: people work the same as 40 years ago, but in worse jobs Image | Unsplash (Vitaly Gariev)

The new “Taxi Law” of Catalonia seeks to exclude VTCs

by

Barcelona is preparing for a new Law on the Transportation of People in Vehicles but it is very likely that if we call it that you will have no idea what it is about. If I tell you it’s the new one taxi law, Anti-uber law either Titus Law…things are changing now. And Barcelona tries to shield the taxi. And that, everything indicates, is close to expelling the VTC from the city. A first step. At the moment, what is on the table is the processing of the new Law on the Transportation of People in Vehicles. That is, the law that has to regulate what happens with the operation of VTCs and, above all, if the taxi is declared an asset of commercial interest to protect it against the operation of companies such as Cabify, Uber or Bolt. The debate began last Wednesday after the amendment to the entirety proposed by VOX was rejected, which had the intention of overturning the process to carry out the new regulation that It was presented for the first time last September. Without support and with the abstention of the Popular Party, the procedure will continue its course with the support of PSC, ERC, the CUP, Comuns and Junts. Although, as we will see, we have had a surprise. What is proposed? The intention of the political parties that have supported the processing of the new normal is to protect the taxi from companies such as Cabify or Uber that operate what are known as Transportation Vehicles with Drivers. That is, the VTC. To achieve this, different measures are to be taken: If new licenses have to be created, taxis will be prioritized If a new VTC license is created, it will expire after two years and will be non-transferable Temporary limitations may be imposed on VTCs if it is considered that there is excess supply. Limitation of the service to interurban areas which implies that, in Barcelona, ​​they could not work within the AMB (their metropolitan area) which concentrates the vast majority of trips. In addition, other measures that would affect both VTCs and taxis have also been put on the table: Catalan level B1 for drivers GPS monitoring of vehicles to prevent abuse Introduction of environmental criteria for the creation of new licenses or the withdrawal of existing ones. In favor of the taxi. With these limitations, this new regulation begins to be known as Taxi Law due to the strong defense that is made of this service or as Titus Law because Tito Álvarez, spokesperson for Élite Taxi and who has led a large part of the demands and protests in recent years, is considered to be one of the people who has most influenced the new articles. The last vote on the VOX amendment paves the way for the regulation of the new regulations but, above all, it left the opportunity for political parties to express their opinion. PSC, ERC, the CUP and Comuns have made an expected defense of the sector, after supporting a review of the regulations, although the pro-independence parties defend that drivers have to speak at least B2 of Catalan. In favor of VTC. The support for VTC has come as a surprise. In addition to VOX, which proposed the amendment to the entire new normal, the PP, which abstained, has shown its disagreement by pointing out that “at peak times there are not enough taxis. The VTCs provide a great service”, in the words of Àngels Esteller, a PP deputy, reported by The Country. And, above all, the surprise has come with Junts. And the party supported the new text in September and has opposed the amendment to the entire VOX but has taken advantage of its intervention to position itself in favor of the “6,000 families that live off the VTC” for whom, says Montse Ortiz, Junts deputy, they will fight for modifications worked on through dialogue with the sector. We will guarantee the legal freedom of the sector.” Discrepancies in the taxi sector. As expected, VTC associations and companies have been against the application of the new standard. José Manuel Berzal, executive president of Unauto VTC, assures that the text lacks “legal rigor”, in words reported by The World. And he points out that there are “multiple inconsistencies and contradictions with European law and the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union.” The latter is also pointed out from The Vanguardwho claim that a report presented by the Bosch i Gimpera foundation indicates that the text contravenes European law and that the Court of Justice of the European Union will end up overturning it “in a few years.” But what is most striking are the discrepancies within the taxi sector itself. They collect in The World either Taxi Gazette that Tito Álvarez, from Élite Taxi, proposes that VTC licenses can be exchanged for temporary taxi licenses, with a duration of seven years and the possibility of a new extension of one more year. A proposal that has been frontally rejected by other unions such as STC, who describe it as a “genuine insult” that benefits “those who have built their business by breaking the rules while the taxi did comply.” The implications. If the new measure goes ahead with the current proposals, it is expected that they will have an immediate impact on the VTC sector. According to the first calculations: Between 4,000 and 5,000 direct jobs could be eliminated It is estimated that with the new restrictions only 15% of current licenses would be maintained (it is estimated that there are about 4,000 throughout Catalonia) In Barcelona, ​​600 of the 990 current VTC licenses would be eliminated VTCs would disappear from large cities as they would only be able to make interurban journeys Photo | BYD and Logan Armstrong In Xataka | “I save about 7,000 euros a year on gasoline alone”: three taxi drivers tell us their experience with an electric taxi

In 1832 Britain realized that it didn’t have much sun. Since then, a law requires that houses have good light

by

If there is something that the United Kingdom could blame for its geography and climate, it is the gray days. Rare is the moment when the sun is not covered by clouds in Mary Poppins’ country, where natural light has become a scarce commodity to fight for. So much so, that there is a “right to light” by which homeowners can legally prevent new construction that obstructs natural light rays into their homes. This law is actually an easement established in 1832 by which the owner of a building with windows that have received natural light for more than 20 years has the right to prohibit adjacent constructions that limit it. That is, historically, a person was entitled to this if natural light and air had passed freely through their windows during that time and been enjoyed without disturbance. And these homes protected by the ordinance were marked with the “Ancient Lights” sign. Therefore, if a neighbor tried to violate this by building a structure or planting trees, the owner had the power to sue him for the “nuisance”. Of course, it is important to note that these do not only affect direct sunlight. But it gives the right to a minimum level of natural lighting, not direct rays of the sun. Although this urban planning law has undergone quite a few changes since its inception, the power of property owners to demand natural light continues to be debated in British cities. Nowadays, These “Ancient Lights” signs are still found on buildings around London and other counties such as Dorset and Kent. And the law, more than 100 years later, continues to be the protagonist of all types of litigation, becoming a headache for judges, lawyers and construction companies. The idea of ​​”having the right to light” Let’s go into more detail. A question that arises from this concept is: how much natural light does a person have the right to? And that is precisely where this law has several legal loopholes. Because a building owner’s windows don’t even have to be completely blocked by a neighboring obstruction for that right to be invoked. You simply have to maintain the same level of lighting that the owner has experienced for twenty years, something that is quite diffuse. In the 1920s, Percy Waldram, an expert in this law, proposed a system to standardize the sufficient amount of light that people could claim. He suggested that “common people” required at least one foot-candle (a measure of light intensity) for reading and other work. If the builder, including a homeowner planning an extension, identifies a risk affecting light rights, they must notify the affected homeowner and engage with them to reach an amicable agreement. This could be as compensation or a redesign to rectify or mitigate the problem. However, if there is a dispute, There are two ways to take legal action: damages and/or a court order. The first consists of granting a sum of money to compensate for the loss. The second may require demolition of part or all of the new building unless some other structural change can remedy the problem. The latter is usually too expensive. The idea for many years was that if a property owner did not take immediate steps to obtain a court order, the only remedy available to them was damages. However, a 2010 case left builders stunnedas the court held that it was possible to obtain an injunction even after the completion of the new building. In another more recent case from 2020the court granted an injunction to a property owner two years after the completion of the infringing work. The court found that the builder had proceeded with full knowledge of the risk he was taking. Is there a similar law in Spain? The easements They also exist in Spain. It is the right that the owner of a property has over the adjoining property that limits the proprietary powers of the owner thereof. In fact, it is not so uncommon to find cases in our country (especially in individual homes), in which Your neighbor has one or more windows that face directly onto your property. Is it legal? As regulated by the Civil Code in article 580no party wall can, without the consent of the other, open any window or opening in a party wall. Otherwise, the owner of a wall that is not a party wall and that is adjacent to the back of another owner may open windows or openings in the same wall. to receive lightsas long as it complies with the premises established in article 581 of the Civil Code. Furthermore, as stipulated in the article 582 of the Civil Code: “You cannot open windows with straight views, nor balconies or other similar overhangs, over the neighbor’s property, if there is not two meters of distance between the wall on which they are built and said property. Nor can you have side or oblique views over the same property, if there is not 60 cm of distance.” In Xataka | If your renovation is a pain, think about the house that cost 120 times more than its original cost: a masterpiece In Xataka | If the question is whether they forgot the elevator shaft in the tallest residential skyscraper in Spain, the answer is simple: it was much worse Image | Chris Flexen

International law was written with humans who decide in mind. AI just broke that chain and no one knows who answers now

by

Pete Hegseth’s threat to Dario Amodei has a subtext that goes far beyond the $200 million contract that the Pentagon can cancel: If the US military deploys AI-controlled autonomous weapons without the safeguards that Anthropic requiresyou will have removed the only firewall that has historically prevented an illegal order from being executed. Why is it importantand. The entire legal and ethical system of the US military rests on a principle that seems obvious but has important consequences: a soldier can and should disobey a manifestly illegal order. It is the mechanism that, in theory, prevents war crimes. A drone AI-controlled autonomous vehicle does not have that mechanism. You can’t refuse. You can’t hesitate. He cannot be tried in a court-martial. Between the lines. Amodei speaks of “autonomous weapons that fire without human intervention” to point out a legal vacuum. If an AI makes the decision to kill, who is responsible criminally? The programmer? The general who activated the system? The president who signed the order? International humanitarian law (including the Geneva Conventions) was written with human beings making decisions in mind. And now AI dissolves that chain of responsibility. The backdrop. The mass surveillance argument is also a bitter pill to swallow. The Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution protects citizens from warrantless searches and interventions. It works, among other reasons, because the State has never had the physical capacity to process everything that happens in public spaces. And in the same way, with AI that operational limit disappears: we move to millions of conversations recorded in real time, transcribed, classified and connected in just seconds. What was previously impossible due to lack of human resources becomes routine with a LLM. Constitutional protection until now has depended, in part, on the inefficiency of the State, its limitations. Yes, but. The Pentagon has an argument that cannot be ruled out: other democracies are also developing these capabilities, and China or Russia are not going to wait for the United States to resolve their ethical dilemmas. The practical question is whether having those unrestricted capabilities makes you safer or simply more dangerous to your own citizens. The big question. OpenAI and Google have accepted the Pentagon’s conditions“all legal uses” without specific exceptions, and xAI has just been cleared to operate on classified systems. Anthropic has been left alone in its position. And what is at stake now is not whether Claude survives as a military supplier or not, it is whether the AI ​​industry is going to set some limit on what it sells to the State, or whether that debate will be settled directly by Congress, the courts or, in the worst case, the first serious incident that no one could have foreseen. It seems like a matter of time. In Xataka | AI is already a battlefield: Anthropic has just accused DeepSeek and other Chinese companies of “distilling” Claude Featured image | Xataka

Mexico has built a true Latin dubbing empire. And now it’s going to protect you from AI by law

by

Mexico produces 65% of the dubbing in Latin America. And until now, no rule prevented an AI from copying the voice of its actors without paying or asking for permission. The government of Claudia Sheinbaum has presented this past February 13, 2026, an initiative to legally recognize the human voice as an artistic tool that cannot be cloned. If it prospers in CongressMexico would become something more than a government that looks after the interests of the actors: it would also be a world pioneer in regulation of voice cloning in a cultural setting. Korea is to blame. The trigger for this reaction was not a native series, but some korean dramas. In May 2024, social media users shared fragments of Korean Prime Video series (‘My Boy is Cupid’, ‘The Beat of My Heart’ and ‘Field to Love’) denouncing an unusual feature: the dubbing into Latin Spanish sounded mechanical, robotic and without nuances. And there was also something very suspicious: there were no credits for voice actors anywhere. Without giving explanations, Amazon removed those dubbed versions and did not confirm the origin of the voices. The straw that broke the camel’s back. It was a turning point: the voice actors guild had been denouncing for months how voice actors from all over the continent were losing jobs in favor of AI tools trained, in addition, with their own voices. Some actors, in fact, denounced the Kafkaesque situation that his voice was the one who had replaced him on a YouTube channel for which he worked. Point of no return. In March 2025, Prime Video announced its AI dubbing pilot program in English and Latin Spanish. According to Amazonare twelve series that would not have been dubbed if it had not been for AI, presenting it as an opportunity for series to be seen that would otherwise remain unpublished. The suspicion of Latin professionals, as we have seen, went in a diametrically opposite direction. To calm things down, Amazon assured that localization professionals would monitor and correct the dubbed episodes with AI. The protest. Mexico produces around 65% of the Latin Spanish dubbing destined for Latin America, according to data from the Mexican Association of Commercial Broadcasters (AMELOC), and has some thirty-five active studios with approximately 1,500 actors working. This human force was manifested last July in Mexico under the slogan “AI does not replace.” Among other requests, it was demanded that the voice be recognized as biometric data, at the level of a fingerprint. The purpose is to prevent its use without consent. The proposal. According to the specialized media CO/AISince the summer of 2025, the National Copyright Institute (INDAUTOR) and the Legal Department of the Presidency have worked with more than 128 organizations to build a legal framework always in touch with the union. The resulting text reforms two existing laws: the Federal Labor Law incorporates dubbing actors and announcers as formal workers in the cultural sector, equating them to singers; and the Federal Copyright Law recognizes the human voice as a “unique and unrepeatable” artistic tool That is, any use of it through AI requires express authorization from the owner, plus financial compensation. None of this prohibits dubbing with AI, it only protects the voices that train or replicate the model with mandatory contracts. Missing. The initiative must pass the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate before becoming law, and it will take a while: the Mexican Congress accumulates proposals since 2020. There are more than sixty initiatives related to AI that have not yet received the corresponding legal response. Of course, this one seems to go faster: in November 2025, the Congress of Mexico City had already approved a similar opinionwhich reformed five federal laws. Mexico, spearhead. This beginning of regulation in Mexico is an advance of what other countries are trying to regulate since 2023. For example, in 2024 in Tennessee, Governor Bill Lee signed the ELVIS Act to explicitly add voice among the attributes protected against unauthorized use with AI, something new in the US. The standard also holds responsible platforms that distribute tools whose main purpose is to generate voice replicas without authorization. California and New York have tried to regulate not the technology, but the contracts signed around these activities. However, the limitations of these laws were soon demonstrated: in July last year, a New York judge did not rule in favor of two voice actors who discovered that their voices had been marketed as AI products. As it had not been made with a fixed recording, but with attributes such as tone, timbre or cadence, the court dismissed the claims. That ruling is the type of thing that the new Mexican legislation will try to avoid, and provide more robust protection to artists. Header | Amin Asbaghipour in Unsplash

The community has made it clear that they do not want AI in Windows and Microsoft has ignored them. So they have taken the law into their own hands

by

Microsoft’s obsession with putting AI in every corner of Windows is logical at the current time (after all, it’s what everyone is doing). The problem is that the community has been very clear about this: they don’t want to. Microsoft has continued with its plan flood Windows 11 with AIbut we already have a way to avoid it. Winslop. The name comes from the play on words between Windows and Slop, which is the term used to refer to ‘AI garbage’, that is, very poor quality content. This is a free tool whose purpose is to eliminate all traces of AI from the system. Its creator makes it clear that he is not anti-Windows, in fact he states that he likes the platform, what he doesn’t like is the direction it is taking. CleanIA Windows. Winslop is totally free and you can download it from Github. The interface looks like old versions of Windows and consists of a list with all the changes that we can apply. There is an option that inspects the system and proposes the changes to be made, or we can check the boxes we want, depending on the level of cleaning we want. The list is quite long and is divided into categories, these are some of the functions we found: System: shows details if there is a blue screen instead of a sad face, optimizes system sensitivity, speeds up shutdown time… Microsoft Edge– makes it not the default browser, disables the Copilot icon, removes the shopping assistant, does not show sponsored links when opening a tab… Interface: Turn off transparency effects, hide taskbar search, turn off Bing search… gaming: Disables DVR recording, power throttling and visual effects. Privacy: disables activity history and location tracking Advertisements– Remove ads system-wide. AI– Hides Copilot from the taskbar and disables Windows Recall. Bloatware. There is more. Winslop is divided into three tabs: Windows 11, applications and extensions. From the apps section we can eliminate pre-installed applications such as Bing News, Bing Weather, WindowsCamera and many more. As in the other section, pressing the ‘Inspect System’ button gives us a list of suggestions to eliminate and we mark the ones we want. It’s not the first. Recently we told you about a tool that was born with the same objective (although with a name with less punch), RemoveWindowsAI. Like Winslop, it also disables all AI functions, but beyond its functions, the important thing is that its simple existence was already a symptom of community fatigue. The fact that another app has come out only confirms it. The PC IA. The obsession with turning Windows into an agentic system has collided head-on with what the community is asking for, to the point that Microsoft is losing favor with users. A year ago PCs with AI promised to be a revolutionbut they have come face to face with reality and even historical brands like Dell are changing their discourse. Microsoft is left alone. Image | Winslop In Xataka | There’s a reason AI PCs aren’t hurting Apple: Nobody asked for AI PCs

Log In

Forgot password?

Forgot password?

Enter your account data and we will send you a link to reset your password.

Your password reset link appears to be invalid or expired.

Log in

Privacy Policy

Add to Collection

No Collections

Here you'll find all collections you've created before.