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While Europe fears for its pocket after gas cuts in the Middle East, France has a plan: its nuclear power

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Europe holds its breath in the face of the threat of a new energy crisis. The escalation of war in the Middle East has caused a real earthquake in the markets. The de facto blockade in the vital Strait of Hormuz puts in check the arrival of liquefied natural gas (LNG) ships from Qatar, forcing cargo ships to deviate towards Asia. With European gas reserves below 30% after an unusually cold winter, panic relives the nightmare of 2022 it is palpable. However, in the midst of this continental chaos, France observes the situation with an apparent and calculated calm. The French country believes it has an ace up its sleeve to avoid blackouts and industrial ruin: its imposing, and recently resurrected, nuclear fleet. A historical export record. While northern Europe trembles over gas, the French electricity grid operator, RTE, has just put figures on the table that support the Elysée’s optimism. According to the Bilan electric 2025Last year, France broke its historical record by exporting 92.3 terawatt-hours (TWh) of electricity. To put it in perspective, RTE’s Director General of Economics, Thomas Veyrenc, explained to the Revue Générale Nucléaire that this volume exceeds the annual electricity consumption of an entire country like Belgium. This milestone has returned France to its traditional role as Europe’s “electric battery”, a status that it had resoundingly lost in 2022. The secret of this success lies in the recovery of its nuclear park, which produced 373 TWh in 2025 (3.1% more than the previous year) thanks to better availability of its reactors. As pointed out by Financial Timesthis French nuclear fleet is precisely the energy lever that Europe was missing after the invasion of Ukraine, and could be the key to not having to turn on polluting coal plants again in the face of the current gas cut in the Middle East. The paradox: they export because they do not consume. Economically, the move is round. According to Le Mondethese exports have earned France 5.4 billion euros. By having so much low-cost electricity production (nuclear and hydroelectric), the country manages to maintain very competitive wholesale prices, situated at an average of €61/MWh in 2025, well below the suffocating prices suffered by neighbors such as Germany or Italy. But this “miracle” has some worrying fine print. As the specialized media warns Le Monde de l’EnergieFrance exports so much electricity mainly because its domestic consumption is stagnant. The country’s electricity demand remained at 451 TWh in 2025, 6% below pre-crisis levels. The reality is that France is far behind in the electrification of its own economy. Paradoxically, 56% of the final energy consumed by the country continues to depend on fossil fuels, especially in sectors such as transportation and heating. The energy clamp to Spain. The French master plan to establish itself as the energy savior of Europe has a clear loser: the Iberian Peninsula. As we explained in Xatakawhile Germany pays more than 100 euros for electricity and France pays 13 euros, in Spain and Portugal renewable overproduction sinks prices until they reach zero or negative values. Why doesn’t that cheap and clean Iberian energy flow to a thirsty Europe? Because France acts as a protective wall. The country maintains Spain as an “energy island” with only 2.8% interconnection, deliberately blocking vital projects in Aragon and Navarra in its network plan for 2025-2035. ANDThe eternal France-Spain conflict. The motivation is not technical, but pure geostrategy and economic survival. Paris needs urgently make profitable a pharaonic investment of 300,000 million euros in its atomic sector. Allowing the massive entry of competitive Spanish solar and wind energy would sink the prices and profitability of its nuclear plants. In fact, President Emmanuel Macron has come to attack the Spanish energy model in the international press, calling it unstable, arguing that a network does not support a 100% renewable model, and describing the urgency of interconnections as a “false debate.” However, the data dismantles the Elysée story. On the one hand, there is the “Danish mirror”: Denmark operates with more than 80% wind generation and does not suffer blackouts because it is ultra-interconnected with its neighbors to balance the load. On the other hand, the flagrant French amnesia regarding 2022 stands out, the year in which the French reactors failed massively due to corrosion problems and it was Spain that had to export electricity to rescue France from the blackouts. Because of this current plug, Spain is forced to throw it away (what is known as technical discharges or curtailment) around 7% of its clean energy because it literally “does not fit” into the grid. All this is part of a strategy of total domination by the Elysée: Macron not only seeks civil energy hegemony, but, how to collect CNBChas put a doctrine of “advance deterrence” on the table, offering the protection of its nuclear weapons to Europe in the face of the withdrawal of the United States. The Achilles heel: the uranium crisis. However, Macron’s nuclear fortress could have feet of clay. The chain RFI (Radio France International) warns that this “nuclear renaissance” faces great uncertainty over uranium supply. Historically, France obtained 20% of its uranium from Niger. But following the recent military coup, the ruling junta revoked the permits of the French company Orano, nationalized the mines and blocked exports, leaving Paris with a gaping supply hole. Now, France is desperately trying to look for new sources in countries like Kazakhstan (the world’s largest producer) or Mongolia, but there it comes face to face with the overwhelming geopolitical, business and infrastructure influence of Russia and China. A castle with a drawbridge. France has managed to build an energy strength that, in the short term, allows it to weather the Middle East storm better than its European neighbors, selling its surpluses at a gold price. But it does so at the cost of isolating the Iberian Peninsula and betting everything on a mineral, uranium, whose control is increasingly slipping out of its hands on the global chessboard. Time will … Read more

In the middle of Valentine’s week, strawberries have reached figures never seen before in half of Europe. The problem is not love, it is Spain

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Hearts, chocolate, bouquets of flowers and pink decorations everywhere: Valentine’s week is synonymous with many things, but above all with crazy prices. What was not expected in half of Europe is that strawberries were going to rise so much. And when I say ‘so much’, it’s ‘so much’. What happened to the strawberries? The peak in demand is predictable: every year, coinciding with Valentine’s week, the demand for strawberries skyrockets. And, furthermore, it is a very inelastic demand: since it is a “special” day, people continue buying them “almost” independently of the price. That has not changed in 2026: what has changed is that the supply has suffered a huge shock. A shock called Spain and Portugal: And more specifically its meteorology. If the frosts of a few years ago caused the shortage of red peppers throughout the European continentthe historic rainfall in recent months has reduced strawberry production, its quality and shelf life to almost historic lows. To give us an idea of ​​the collapse: in Huelva, production has fallen by half compared to 2025. And despite efforts to catch up, production is 38% below from that of the 24/25 campaign. This has meant that strawberries are arriving in the Netherlands at 5.83 per kilo and in France at 6.44. The problem naked. In this case, the problem is that Europe depends completely on Huelva and, in recent decades, it has not been able to do anything to avoid it. Huelva producers have demonstrated an impressive capacity to produce with very high quality at very low prices. That (and the constant rise in production) has meant that no one can build a parallel agribusiness. The problem is that the climate becomes increasingly volatile, the ‘security’ of the Andalusian countryside decreases. and this episode has only confirmed it. What’s behind the story. So what is hidden behind the strawberries at seven euros per kilo in a market in Alicante is the story of the loss of hegemony of one of the most solid and refined economic pillars in southern Europe. That is to say, while strawberries are on their way to becoming an ‘ultra-luxury’ product, Andalusia’s competitive advantage is fading. Are a giant with feet of clay. Image | Alba Otero In Xataka | Spain’s problem with its supermarkets: Huelva strawberries are now cheaper in Germany

The Middle Ages seem like a dark age. Until you discover that they were able to count up to 9,999 on their fingers.

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Historians have been trying for decades free her from her bad reputationbut it’s still hard not to feel a pang of compassion when one thinks of the Middle Ages. Logical. We have been burned with the idea that it was a time of wars, epidemicsfamines, wars and superstition in which humanity moved away from the advances of previous centuries to throw itself into the arms of barbarism. Things change when you find out that an 8th century monk was capable of doing something that will probably seem impossible to you (and most people): count up to 9,999 with your handsrepresenting any number with just your fingers. Count with your hands? Exact. If we keep doing it in a rudimentary way (and limited) today, in a time when almost everyone walks around with a phone in their pocket, imagine how important the art of counting on your fingers was centuries ago. How do you do addition and subtraction when you have nothing to rely on? And by nothing we do not mean a calculator or a primitive abacus, but tools as basic as paper and a pencil or pen to take notes. For centuries those who wanted to do calculations were content with what was closest to hand. And usually that was (pardon the redundancy) his own hands, his 10 fingers and the universe of combinations that opened up his joints and, above all, his imagination. The result is an ancient art that has fallen into disuse over the centuries, but came to acquire an astonishing level of perfection. In fact it can date back to ancient times, long before the Middle Ages. One name: Bede Venerabilis. If we know the peculiar way our ancestors had to count astronomical figures with their fingers, it is thanks largely to a Benedictine monk who lived between the 7th and 8th centuries in what is now the United Kingdom. His name: Bede, although he is usually known as Saint Bede the Venerable. In 725 the religious wrote ‘De temporum ratione’ (‘The Calculation of Time’), a treatise that talks about the cosmos, calendars and the best way to calculate the date of Easter, a relevant topic in its day. Before addressing most of these questions, the author however touches on a simpler and more important question: “De computo vel loquela digitorum”how to make beads with your fingers. Bede does not expose us to a system devised by him, but rather he describes to us a practical art that has its roots long ago. The power of one hand. “Before we begin, with the help of God, to talk about chronology and its calculation, we consider it necessary to first briefly show the very necessary and practical technique of counting on the fingers,” starts Bede in the first chapter. From there it goes on to explain how we should place our fingers to show the numbers from 1 to 9,999. By complicating the system a little more you can reach 999,999. There is even a symbol for the million “Somma di arithmetica”, by Luca Pacioli. And how the hell do they do it? With imagination, ingenuity and also a certain agility with the hands. Especially if what we want is to represent high figures. In Scientific Culture UPV/EHU mathematics professor Raúl Ibáñez signs an interesting article which details how the system works, including graphics and translated quotes from Bede himself, who first explains how to place the fingers of the left hand to represent low numbers. “When you say one, bending the left little finger, place it in the middle joint of the palm. When you say two, bend the second finger placing it in the same place,” clarifies the Benedictine monkwho continues patiently explaining to us how to show figures with the left hand, move to tens or make the jump to hundreds and thousands with the help of the right. The key is in the meaning of each hand and groups of fingers, which are assigned the value of the units of thousands, hundreds, tens and ones. If we want to go further and express tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands we will only have to vary the position of each of the hands with respect to the body. Beyond the Middle Ages. In a video published in 2020 by the BBC, Seb Falk, author of ‘The Light Ages’, also explains how centuries ago they managed to represent astronomical quantities with their fingers. The most surprising thing is that the system long predates Vera. “It was used from Roman times to the Middle Ages (11th to 13th centuries) throughout Europe,” says the historian. “Just as when we write we have a column for units, another for tens, for hundreds and thousands, they dedicate the little finger, ring and middle fingers of the left hand to the units and the index and thumb to the tens. On the right, the thumb and index indicate the hundreds and the other fingers, the thousands.” In short: ten fingers, 9,999 numbers. It’s all a matter of internalizing the system, understanding its dynamics and playing with positions. The truth is that the method is so curious that it has aroused the interest of authors after Bede, such as the mathematician Jacob Leupoldwho addresses it in an 18th century treatise; or the famous Luca Pacioliwhich refers to (with some changes) in ‘Summa’. Why get so complicated? At a time when we are accustomed to walking with smartphones (with their respective calculators) in their pockets and it is not difficult to find paper and ink, perhaps we will be surprised by the system that the Venerable Bede tells us about. Things change when we think about the resources they had available centuries ago. And the range of possibilities that such a system opened up, which only needs something as simple and universal as the fingers of the hands. “It was a code, a sign language, that was used in markets, as it was an effective way to communicate … Read more

We don’t know if the US is going to attack Iran. We do know that it is carrying out the largest military deployment in the Middle East since Iraq

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In major international crises there is a almost imperceptible moment in which the tension stops being rhetorical and begins to be measured in real movements. History shows that when the pieces begin to be placed with that precision, the outcome It rarely depends on words alone. Therefore, when they pass 20 tanker aircraft across Europe in a single day and the maps tell us that the largest aircraft carrier in the United States is four days to reach its destination, the outcome can only be an ockham razor. A display that is already historic. Of course, we don’t know for sure whether the United States is going to attack Iran. What we do know is that it is running the largest air deployment in the Middle East since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, a concentration of power which cannot be explained as simple diplomatic pressure. There are currently dozens of stealth fighters, command and control aircraft, anti-missile systems and two aircraft carrier groups taking up positions while the White House insists that diplomacy still on the table. The question is not whether Washington has the capacity to strike, but when and to what extent it would decide to do so. And if the satellite maps they don’t lieon Sunday morning everything would be ready. Stealth fighters in motion. The radars have indicated For several days now, the F-22, F-35 and F-16 have been crossing the Atlantic in waves, reinforcing bases in Jordan and Saudi Arabia that are becoming launching pads for a sustained campaign. Them F-15E are addedelectronic warfare aircraft and air communications nodes that allow complex operations to be coordinated. It is not the pattern a specific attack like the one perpetrated in Iran with the Operation Midnight Hammerbut rather the architecture of a “heavy” and prolonged air war, one capable to last weeksbut more, with targets ranging from nuclear facilities to missile depots and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps centers. AWACS to the limit. There are six Boeing E-3 Sentry, That is, almost 40% of an aging fleet with low availability, warning and control systems that have been sent to Europe and the Middle East. We talk about the floating brain that manage air combatcoordinates interceptions and detects drones and cruise missiles at low altitude. Its massive deployment indicates that planners are setting up an environment “high intensity battle”but at the same time it reveals a structural vulnerability of Washington: the United States depends on a small and old fleet to direct one of the most complex campaigns on the planet. U.S. Ford Patriots, THAAD and defending against retaliation. There is no doubt, in such a movementreinforcement is not just offensive. Patriot Systems and THAAD They have come forward to protect the surrounding 30,000-40,000 soldiers Americans scattered in the region and allies like Israel. This gives us an idea of ​​what to expect. Washington assumes that any attack would trigger a response with ballistic missiles, kamikaze drones and possibly attempts to close the Strait of Hormuz. The deployment seeks to ensure that, if retaliation comes, it can absorb the blow without paralyzing the operation. Two aircraft carriers and a “navy” visible in space. He USS Abraham Lincoln already operates in the area with Aegis destroyers and nuclear submarines, while the USS Gerald R. Ford keep it up from the Atlantic after crossing near Gibraltar. As we said, if it maintains its current speed, it will be off the coast of Israel on sunday morning and will be able to reinforce air defense in the event of an immediate Iranian retaliation. Two combat groups with F/A-18, F-35C and electronic warfare aircraft provide mobile power, missile defense and sustained strike capability. That is to say, it is not a symbolic presence, it is an unequivocal sign of preparation for real combat. Trajectory of the American aircraft carrier US Ford Tehran, Moscow and Beijing for internships. While Washington concentrates forces, Iran is currently carrying out naval exercises with Russia and China in the Strait of Hormuz. The presence of Russian and Chinese ships does not alter the military balance against the United States Navy, but it adds a layer if you want. politics and risk which requires planning with greater caution. In this regard, Iran has also closed parts of the strait for maneuvers with anti-ship missiles and drones, stressing that any war would not be a limited exchange, but an escalation with global impact on the oil and sea routes. An outrage for ambiguous objectives. The accumulation of forces It allows, a priori, multiple scenarios: from a limited attack against nuclear facilities to a campaign aimed at degrading missile capacity or even weakening the regime. Be that as it may, technological and aerial superiority does not resolve the political mystery of what would happen next. Without ground forces or a broad coalition, a protracted war would depend almost exclusively on air and naval power. In that regard, The New York Times said that the White House has received plans designed to maximize the damage, but has not yet made a final decision. Pressure as a strategic weapon. With such a scenario there are not many options. Either the deployment is a prelude to an attack, or we are dealing with a tool unprecedented pressure aimed at forcing concessions at the negotiating table. Some analysts believe that the show of force they have in front of them right now could convince to Tehran that Washington is going all out. Others warn that the same preparation that increases military credibility also reduce the margin to retreat without any political cost. One thing is clear: at this point, the movement of parts It is already historical and hyperbolic, and the only thing left is to know if it will remain a threat or will become an open war of unpredictable dimensions. Image | TREVOR MCBRIDE, US Army Aerial, RawPixel, BORN In Xataka | Tension in Iran is so high that the Strait of Hormuz is closed. And that will have consequences when … Read more

How is it possible that Spain is freezing in the middle of a ‘warmer than normal’ winter?

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When you look out the window these days, it’s easy to ask yourself a very clear question: didn’t they say that This was going to be a warmer than normal winter.? With the storm Francis opening the door, followed by Ingrid and Joseph, and the snow level plummeting up to 500 meters in the northwest, the thermal sensation in January 2026 is far from “mild”. And although we can think of an error by the AEMET in its predictions at the beginning of the season, the problem is in the probabilities What was said. The AEMET in his initial prediction For this winter they did not use a crystal ball to ensure days of sun and beach, but rather they resorted to prediction models that showed a probabilistic situation: they placed almost all of Spain in the warm tertile. This means that there was a very high probability that the average temperature for the entire quarter was among the 33% warmest winters in the historical record. The chance of it being a colder winter was just 10%. When it comes to rainfall, the truth is that They didn’t get too wet at the AEMET by giving the same probability for it to be wetter, drier or normal than those of other years. He gave all of these 33%. January 2026. When we stop looking at the probabilistic models and move on to meteorological reality, we already see that there are substantial differences. And it is that Throughout this month we have had a severe entry of arctic air, notices in all communities and relevant snowfalls in the Cantabrian Mountains and the Pyrenees. It’s a bookish winter episode. Data is still missing. A freezing week does not make a cold winter, and everything indicates that after these storms that we are enduring right now, temperatures will rebalance between 1 and 3 degrees above the table. And for the AEMET this winter we have not yet had any cold wave which would mark the third consecutive year without them in Spain. According to the historical series, since 1975 the duration of cold waves on the peninsula has been reduced by 1.2 days per decade and that is why this winter is presented as one more to reduce this average in our climatological history. The NAO factor. The models certainly cannot see the climatological “day by day” coming very far in advance, since seasonal predictions, which are based on systems like ECMWFhave limited resolution. In this case we are talking about contextual tools for energy management or agriculture, not a “horoscope” to know if we will be able to ski without snow in the mountains. What the European winter climate largely depends on is the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) and the Arctic Oscillation (AO). In this case a positive NAO indicates a westward, warm and humid circulation. But if we talk about a negative NAO, it translates into a blockage that allows polar air to escape to the south, which is what is happening to us right now. The problem. It is precisely because these coupled atmosphere-ocean models have a low ability to anticipate what phases the NAO will be in months in advance. They get the global thermal signal very well, such as background warming, but it is difficult for them to see the specific sequence of cold entries. A change of pattern. The debate about whether the “AEMET fails” with its predictions usually hides a deeper climate reality. And a “warm winter” in the current context of climate change does not mean the disappearance of winter, but rather it means that mild days and mild minimum temperatures are becoming more frequent, and cold waves are less common and less lasting. Next weeks. If we look beyond this week full of water we find ourselves again faced with uncertainty. According to the prediction made by the AEMETit is expected that for the week of February 2 to 8 a similar meteorological pattern will continue with Atlantic storms at our altitude, so there would be water throughout all of Spain. What the models predict, although everything can change, is that it will be presented in the west of the peninsula an extremely wet period over the next two weekswith rainfall that would be counted per liters of water in very specific areas of Spain and Portugal. In Xataka | We have always believed that London is very rainy and that Barcelona is not. The only problem is that it’s a lie

Wind turbines planted in the middle of the ocean were a maintenance challenge. Until the scanner drone appeared

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Until very recently, performing a “health check” on an offshore wind turbine was a complex, slow and, above all, expensive logistical process. The industry standard dictated that to inspect the blades, the turbines had to come to a complete stop while specialized technicians traveled by boat to perform manual inspections. This practice represents a direct interruption in the generation of clean energy and loss of income for operators. However, this scenario has changed thanks to Danish startup Quali Drone, which has successfully completed the first contactless drone inspection of a fully operational offshore wind turbine. The landmark in the Baltic Sea. The setting for this advance has been the Rødsand 2 offshore wind farm, operated by RWE since 2010 off the coast of Denmark. There, the AQUADA-GO project team showed that it is possible for a large drone to fly autonomously at a short distance from the blades while they rotate at high speed. As detailed by RWEthe solution has gone from a laboratory experiment to an operational concept successfully demonstrated in real offshore conditions. “We have shown that it is possible to inspect offshore wind turbines with a drone equipped with a visual camera while the turbine is operational,” says Jesper Smit, CEO of Quali Drone. More in depth. To operate in the hostile conditions of the sea, no conventional equipment has been used. The drone is an advanced hardware platform designed for high-precision missions. State-of-the-art sensors: The drone is equipped with high-resolution cameras, infrared thermography and artificial vision systems. Autonomy and precision: It uses mission planning software and an online data infrastructure that allows the drone to track the movement of the blades autonomously. Digital Twins: The technology employs “Digital Twins” to document errors and ensure reports meet industry standards. Subsurface Inspection: Unlike traditional optical methods, this system can scan the internal layers to find damage that is not visible from the outside. Beyond the drone: what the human eye cannot see. The drone is not limited to taking photographs; It is an advanced diagnostic platform. As Xiao Chen explainsassociate professor at DTU (Technical University of Denmark), have developed artificial intelligence models that use algorithms deep learning to identify anomalies. This “digital brain” is capable of detecting everything from surface erosion to internal structural fractures through the use of thermography. Additionally, the AI ​​model learns with every flight: each inspection feeds the system with new data, making it smarter and more accurate each time it is deployed at a wind farm. A paradigm shift. This breakthrough is not just a technical feat; It has profound economic and environmental implications. According to Energy Cluster Denmarkthe impact of the AQUADA-GO project is summarized in compelling figures: Cost reduction: Savings in inspections of at least 50% are estimated in the future. Energy efficiency: By not stopping the turbines, green electricity production is maximized and the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) is reduced by 2% to 3%. Safety and Climate: The risk for workers is reduced by avoiding the deployment of ships and technicians at height, also cutting CO₂ emissions associated with maintenance by between 30% and 50%. Economic driver: This technology is expected to generate between 33 and 55 new full-time jobs and increase the revenue of the companies involved by up to 230 million Danish crowns after commercialization. Towards a smart wind industry. What started as scientific research in Denmark is today a “market-ready commercial solution”, in the words of Jesper Smit. The ability to monitor blade health continuously and without interruption could be the missing piece to make offshore wind energy even more competitive and safer. Image | RWE Xataka | Northern Europe has launched itself into offshore wind. The problem is that there are countries that ‘thieve’ wind

In the middle of World War II, a woman illuminated modern cryptography. The FBI then hid it from us.

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He did not study mathematics, nor did he enlist in the army: Elizabeth FriedmanShe simply fell in love with Shakespeare and that love embarked her on an adventure that led her to uncover Nazi spy networks in World War II, lock up Al Capone’s lackeys, and lay the foundations of the modern NSA. This is the story of how, with the only help of a pencil and paper, a poet from the American Midwest became one of the most important cryptographers in the United States. It is also the story of how they hid their work and we forgot about it for decades. Although she was the youngest of new siblings and grew up in a Quaker family in rural Illinois, Elizebeth graduated in English literature for him Hillsdale College of Michigan. Almost immediately she began working as a teacher. That seemed like it would be his vocation until Shakespeare crossed his path again. The Newberrya Chicago research library, was looking for an assistant. It was nothing too striking except for the fact that, it was said, an original by the Stratford-upon-Avon playwright was kept in the library’s holdings. That was enough for Elizebeth. It was there, working at Newberry, where he met George Fabyana millionaire convinced that Shakespeare’s plays had been written by Francis Bacon. It is not a very strange belief, for centuries the confusing past of the English poet has generated rivers of ink about who William Shakespeare really was. What had not happened until then was that an eccentric billionaire decided to put his fortune at the service of the idea. In 1916, at the age of 23, Elizebeth began working at the Fabyan think tank, a private laboratory, Riverbankwhere things as varied as genetic engineering or they worked on the development of weapons. Now, he would also have a team dedicated to finding the clues that Bacon ‘had left’ in works like ‘Hamlet’ or ‘Romeo and Juliet’. That Riverbank was surely one of the first modern cryptography laboratories. There Elizebeth met her husband, William Friedman. Together, and unintentionally, they would shape modern American cryptography and play a very important role in the next 50 years of American defense. ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’ It all started because, in the middle of the First World War, the army decided to turn to Riverbank to help them with code breaking. It was such a great success that the Secretary of War signed them and took the couple to Washington, DC. Shortly after arriving, Elizebeth began working for the Treasury: the eighteenth amendment (the famous Prohibition) and alcohol trafficking networks were rampant throughout the United States. Elizebeth was terribly productive. It is estimated that, between 1926 and 1930, he deciphered an average of 20,000 smugglers’ messages a year, dismantling hundreds of ciphers in the process. And the Second World War. The role of American cryptographers “was not very important”, but among them the Friedmans shined especially. Elizebeth’s skills were already known and served to dismantle a complex network of Nazi spies in Latin America that tried to promote fascist revolutions and weaken the “backyard” of the United States. Despite this, resources were very scarce and recognition even less. Surely his most impressive work was the one that led to the arrest and imprisonment of Velvalee Dickinsonthe “doll woman”, a spy arrested in 1942 for passing all kinds of information to Japan (hidden in letters about patent leather dolls) during World War II. “His abilities were so unusual that he became indispensable,” he explained. Jason Fagone who has written a spectacular book on Friedman’The Woman who smashed codes‘. “She was called on repeatedly to solve problems that no one else could solve. A secret weapon.” However, and despite the publicity of these cases, the Friedman surname did not transcend. It was not an forgetfulness. Hoover, the famous and controversial director of the FBI, wiped the Friedmans off the map and awarded the merits of each of the cases to his Agency. Nothing surprising in a figure, that of Hoover, key in much of the American 20th century, capable of creating the largest research office in the world and, at the same time, using it as if it were his ‘private army’. Although Elizebeth’s work and that of her husband were the seed of what would later become the NSA, their figure was forgotten, relegated and, until very few years ago, remained unrescued in the drawer of history. In 1999 he entered the NSA ‘Hall of Fame’ and in 2002 a building was dedicated to him. It’s another one of those ‘hidden figures‘without which we could not understand today’s world. In Xataka | In 1925, procrastination was already a problem and someone found the definitive solution: the isolation helmet. In Xatka | Scotland remains almost a fiefdom in the 21st century: half of its land is owned by 421 owners

While France freezes, Greece is at 27ºC in the middle of January

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While Spain was preparing to live the coldest Twelfth Night in 40 years and Western Europe collapsed in the face of a cold and snow stormthere are parts of Europe and the Mediterranean basin that They are practically in summer. And no, it is not a figure of speech: during last nightthere were people on the Greek island of Crete sleeping with air conditioning. What has happened? “35 degrees in Algeria, 20 in Russia, tropical nights in Greece, records throughout the central and eastern Mediterranean from Algeria to Turkey (with the only exception of Italy)”, said M. Herrerameteorologist specialized in extreme events. But what is striking is not the description, what is striking is what it means. Because the map that heads this article is not one of absolute temperatures, but of anomalies. And that can obviously distort the matter a bit. However, the absolutes (with data from the Greek National Observatory in Athens in hand) are amazing: we are talking about 27.5 degrees last night in Falasarma and 25.3 in Neapolis. At night. That is, we are talking about temperatures similar to those of August. Or worse because, indeed, we are in January (as the rest of Europe is suffering) The warmest night in Europe while part of the continent remains isolated under snow? It seems so. And not only because of the specific data (it is possible that the record for the warmest night in Greece will not be surpassed: Falasarna suffered one night at 28.3 in 2021), but because but because the heat is as widespread as snow in the West. We have seen night temperatures of 16 °C in Sevastopol (Crimea) and 13 in Tuapse (Russia). Furthermore, if everything continues as expected, there will be nights at 20°C in the Russian Caucasus and above 25°C in Turkmenistan and the Caspian coast. A real madness that, If Herrera is rightwill go down in the climatic annals of the continent. The image of a Europe divided in two is tremendous. But the question is why. And the answer is simple: an extremely wavy ‘jet stream’. We already know that the jet ripples, but rarely can you see an ‘S’ of this size. While in the west the atmospheric circulation introduces arctic air; In the east, a gigantic ridge favors south-southwest winds. The wavy structure of the jet is pumping polar air into France and Saharan air into Greece. Then local effects exaggerate the anomaly. In Spain, for example, thermal inversions place us at -14 degrees, while in Crete the subsidence causes extremely hot and dry air. Image | Tropical TidBits In Xataka | Neither another Filomena nor a miscalculation: the “apocalypse” of snow and cold that awaited us for Reyes is going to be much less so

In the middle of the ocean, 250 passengers on a plane learned that one of them was a stowaway. One shaped like a rat

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There are few things that can surprise you when you fly at 10,000 meters high in the middle of the ocean. The problem (the big problem) is that when something surprises you in that context, it is not usually a pleasant surprise. And much less if what surprises you is a rat. Can you imagine the feeling? We assume that something similar is what the 250 passengers They were flying from Amsterdam to Aruba, a small island in the Caribbean. The return trip, which passed through the nearby island of Bonaire, had to be suspended by the company itself, forcing passengers to wait one more night until the return plane was ready. A rat at 10,000 meters high By the time the plane wanted to arrive in Aruba, each and every one of the passengers on the KLM plane that was making the journey had already found out what was happening. Among his dreams of paradisiacal beaches and days of relaxation, the image of a rat had slipped in. Specifically, the rat shown by the videos recorded by the passengers themselvesmoving between the curtains that separate the seating categories or the overhead compartments, as can be seen in the images of the Dutch media Of Telegraaf. Click on the image to go to the Instagram post Evidently, the Dutch media has echoed the matter. According to RTL“the passengers remained calm and the crew did not lose sight of the animal at any time.” In Dutch News They point out that it took KLM 36 hours to hunt the animal after it was first seen. And that was the main problem why the return flight was cancelled. Once the rat was caught, the company had to leave more than 250 passengers on the ground in order to carry out a thorough cleaning and disinfect the entire interior of the plane. Asked if passengers traveling on board can request some type of compensation, experts pointed out Telegraaf which was complicated since it was an exceptional situation and they would have to prove that the airline was the real culprit for the entry of the rat. They explain that they could request a compensation economic if the study of the facts shows that the rat sneaked onto the plane into the compartments in which the catering is transported, but they affirm that it is complicated that this could have happened like this. Photo | Florian van Duyn and Nikolett Emmert In Xataka | In 2019, Iberia lost a dog before flying. Now the European Justice says that it is worth the same as a suitcase

China has been dumping tons of sand into the ocean for 12 years. And now we are seeing islands emerging in the middle of nowhere

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It has been more than a decade since China began a striking strategy of territorial expansion: throwing tons of sand into the South China Sea. This is not unique to China and, in fact, Japan thus built an airport that soon it will be an underwater airportbut China is doing it massively and with one objective: to claim what is its own. And seeing how they raise these artificial islands is… hypnotic. Context. The end of 2013 marked a turning point in China: the country started to massively fill in seven of the reefs of the Nansha and Xisha archipelagos (Spratly and Paracels, respectively). In record time between December of that year and June 2015, China carried out the first phase of the operation: the filling phase. From 2015 onwards, they have dedicated themselves to consolidate that territory through the construction of infrastructure such as landing strips, hangars, ports, radars and support structures. According to the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission, between December 2015 and October 2015, China had built artificially about 12 km² of land on the Nansha reefs. While the United States said it with concern, the Chinese media confirmed the information with pride. Before and then How they do it. They did not use overly complex methods to do so. On the one hand, they cut the coral bottom and pumped sediments to shallow areas. The earth was deposited as fill to later build dikes and retaining walls around the reef. The next step was to deposit more fill and, finally, large steamrollers and shovels were compacting that earth to give consistency to the whole. The last thing was to create paving, landing strips, roads and other infrastructure. The result is more than 12 km², and put in context they represent “17 times more land claimed in 20 months than all the other international claimants have achieved during the last 40 years.” In action. Seeing the satellite photos that show the before and after, something easy to do using the history function of Google Earth, is interesting, but seeing a timelapse of how one of these new territories has been built is, as I said, something hypnotic. An example, the following video ‘tweet‘ (if you can’t see it, click on it): Narrative. What motivation does China have for such a deployment of resources and money? It depends who you ask. On the one hand, the Chinese government has defended that the creation of these islands serves the support in rescue missions on the high seasalso to fishing, scientific research, navigation support points thanks to these radars and the collection of data for its meteorological service. Finally, it also serves for defense if necessary. The neighbors are not convinced by the explanation and, in fact, think that it is a strategy that responds to a single interest: claiming territories that China considers its property. The Ministry of Defense of Japan assures that these infrastructures allow a permanent Chinese presence in waters that do not belong to it, with offensive capacity in practically the entire South China Sea. Military. Recent reports, such as the one from CSIS in 2025, underlines that China’s recent near-perennial activity in the South China Sea has only been possible thanks to that decade-old construction work. Western analyzes they point that the runways for aircraft are prepared for combat aircraft and land transport, as well as the presence of ports for warships, underground facilities and even missile platforms. The tension is evident because Beijing claims sovereignty over territories that its neighbors deny. Those neighbors are Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan or the Philippines. And Vietnam, in fact, is doing the same thing as China in 2013: throwing land into the sea. Their progress has also been considerable in a short time in an area that has become a real hotbed. The ecological impact. But beyond the intentions of each other, something undeniable that cannot be hidden under any narrative is the environmental damage that these artificial islands cause to their surroundings. In some articles it has been indicated that this ‘island’ desire has caused the loss of some 12 to 18 km² of reef, damaging some of the best preserved reefs in the region directly, but also affecting distant systems due to the ‘clouds’ of sediment formed during the dumping of sediments. Chinese scientific articles have also shown that these practices eliminate completely the ecosystem of the occupied area and negatively affects currents and sediment patterns, causing the aforementioned degradation of neighboring areas. However, the State Oceanic Administration of China defend that all projects were thoroughly evaluated and do not harm corals. The fault of it? Global trends such as sea acidification or climate change. Images | Ma Wukong In Xataka | China is building something that looks like an oil well. It is actually a nuclear bunker with a command center

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