pay

Netflix has slowly raised prices and already costs more than much pay TV

by

Netflix price rises again. For now, only in the United States, although movements like this tend to be the canary in the mine of increases: very possibly, we will soon experience a similar one in Europe. It is the second increase in less than two years for a platform with more than 325 million subscribers in the world, in a sector where escalating prices has become the norm. The new prices. The standard plan with ads, the cheapest, goes from $7.99 to $8.99 per month. The ad-free standard goes up two dollars, from 17.99 to 19.99. The premium (four simultaneous screens, 4K, no ads) scales from $24.99 to $26.99 per month. The cost of adding an extra member also increases: one dollar more in all cases, that is, it remains at $6.99 for the plan with ads and 9.99 for the variants without advertising. The average increase is around 11% and the new prices will be applied in the next billing cycle, after notifying subscribers by email. To understand the proportion of the accumulation, it is worth looking back. The standard plan without ads was $15.49 before January 2025 and $11.99 until October 2023. In less than three years, that same plan has gone from just over twelve dollars to twenty. 22,000 million profit. Netflix does not raise prices because it needs to. In 2025 it generated $45.2 billion in revenue and a gross profit of almost 22,000 million, with an operating margin of 29.5%, the highest in its history. Net profit for the year was 11,000 million, and free cash flow reached 9,500 million, compared to 6,900 million in 2024. For 2026, it projects an operating margin of 31.5%. Netflix is ​​not a struggling company looking to plug holes. The increase does not respond to financial pressure but to just the opposite: the company has detected that it can charge more because it knows that the majority of its subscribers are not going to leave. The analyst firm TD Cowen calls him pricing power (pricing power), which is the technical way of saying that the customer is trapped enough to take the hit. According to their estimates, the average revenue per subscriber in the US and Canada will grow 6% in 2026 due to this adjustment alone. Shared accounts no. Added to all this is the ban on account sharing, applied globally since May 2023. Far from causing the flight of subscribers that many anticipated, the measure worked: since then Netflix has added tens of millions of new subscribers. What seemed like a risk was actually a monetization lever. Each household that previously took advantage of a third-party account had to choose: pay or do without the service. And the majority paid. Ads go up. The rise in the cheapest tier (from $7.99 to $8.99) is perhaps the most revealing move. This plan has existed since 2022, designed as a safety net for those who could not or did not want to pay more. It has worked: it accumulates more than 190 million monthly active users and represents 55% of new registrations in markets with advertising enabled, according to Netflix itself. That is, it is the plan that captures the most price-sensitive users, but the truth is that there is no longer a comfortable position within the Netflix ecosystem that is protected from increases. Especially this plan: The platform’s advertising revenue exceeded $1.5 billion in 2025, multiplying by 2.5 compared to the previous year. The goal for 2026 is to double that figure to nearly 3 billion. In this context, charging an extra dollar to 190 million people means optimizing to the maximum a source of income that already works perfectly. And in Spain? The increase currently affects only the US. In Spain, current prices They are the result of the last revision applied in October 2025: 6.99 euros for the plan with ads, 13.99 for the standard without advertising and 19.99 for the premium. In January 2025, when Netflix went up in the US, Canada and Portugal, Spain was left out. But it will end up arriving: Netflix has been in Spain for eleven years and in each cycle of between twelve and eighteen months it has revised upwards some of its plans, usually with increases of one or two euros. As I said: everything according to plan. In Xataka | You’ve rewatched an episode of your favorite series and you feel like it’s missing scenes. You’re not paranoid: they are being removed

Danone wants to pay 1 billion for a powdered shake company. It’s his answer to Ozempic

by

Danone has announced the acquisition of Smella British shake and powder company that competed with things like Soylent or Joylent in the “complete nutrition” sector, for about 1,000 million euros. It is an earthquake in the sector, but (above all) because of what it implies. The food industry is preparing for the earthquake caused by the new GLP-1 drugs and is doing so by gobbling up everything there is for functional nutrition. What is Huel? Founded in 2015 in the United Kingdom, it had a turnover of around 250 million pounds in 2025, sells in more than 100 countries and has among its investors to Idris Elba and Jonathan Ross. But none of that explains why a company like this is worth so much money. After all, Human Fuel sells nutritionally complete meals: powders, shakes, bars and instant meals. Although the idea is that these products cover 100% of daily needs, the same company recommends complementing it with conventional food. And why does Danone want that? That’s the big question. The purchase of Huel is part of the strategy Renew Danone which, since 2022, seeks to expand and diversify the company’s work. Danone already has Nutriciaits specialized medical nutrition division (Fortimeloncological supplements, pediatric formulas), which operates in the clinical and hospital setting. With Huel, you are building a functional and specialized nutrition ecosystem that covers all steps from the clinic either probiotics to mass consumption. The central issue is that the market does not stop growing. To grow and transform. It is estimated that meal replacements move between 16,000 and 21,000 million dollars each year. and heanalysts agree in which it will grow at a rate greater than 5%. But what makes this operation more than a corporate purchase is the context. GLP-1 drugs (Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro) are radically transforming food purchasing habits. Users eat less, buy less ultra-processed foods, and when they eat, they look for maximum nutritional density in every bite. According to Circana, households with LPG-1 usersThey will represent 35% of food sales in the US by 2030. Nestlé has already launched a specific line (Vital Pursuit), Conagra Label your dishes “GLP-1 Friendly” and General Mills is reformulating its products so they have more protein and fiber. And why now? Basically because Danone has money. In 2024, they had a cash flow of more than 3,000 million euros. In 2025, Danone CEO made it clear that the company wanted to “go on the offensive with acquisitions. And I have done it. In the last few years they have bought three emerging companies in key sectors (and many others that, finally, has not been able to acquire). Danone isn’t buying a smoothie maker: it’s buying a position in the new food chain the GLP-1s are creating. One where food is not sold for pleasure or convenience, but for function. Image | In Xataka | Neither Soylent nor Joylent. May the future not take away the ritual, flavor and texture of eating.

Meta has ended up firing its developers to pay for AI

by

Mark Zuckerberg’s company is not having its best week. To the sanctions imposed by a US court for not protecting users of the addictive consequences of their platformsjoins a new round of layoffs that affects hundreds of people in five business areas. It’s not the first time so far this year, and it probably won’t be the last either. We cannot say that the measure has caught Meta employees by surprise, because a few days ago Reuters I was already ahead that the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp was planning to cut staff due to the increased costs of AI development. Now have materialized eliminating the departments closest to the metaverse. 700 employees on the street and a metaverse that goes out. According to published NBC Based on sources close to the company, Meta will lay off about 700 employees in this round. The cuts will affect Reality Labs, the division that for years was the flagship of Zuckerberg’s big bet on the metaverse, which just a few days ago announced the Horizon Worlds closure on Quest headsetsas well as some in the human resources departments, sales and Facebook employees, as pointed out The New York Times. Those affected are a small fraction of the nearly 78,000 employees that Meta currently has on staff, but the reason given by the company is already a classic in big tech: “Meta’s teams restructure or implement changes periodically to guarantee that they are in the best position to achieve their objectives,” said a Meta spokesperson. in a statement to which you have had access NBC. Layoffs down, bonuses up. Hours before these layoffs were announced, Meta presented a new stock compensation program for six of its senior managers. The message between the lines has not gone unnoticed. While the company cut staff with the argument of reducing costs to face the huge investments in AIwith a forecast of expenses of between 162,000 and 169,000 million dollars for 2026, the executives closest to Zuckerberg saw their compensation increased by up to 921 million dollars each for the next five years. Meta justifies the increase to its managers as a tool to retain talent in the middle of the war for the best AI profiles, but the temporal coincidence between both announcements could not have been more unfortunate. ​Layoffs without financial hardship. Historically, a company laying off its employees was a clear sign of financial problems. Instead, in the age of AI, each round of layoffs is celebrated on the financial markets with increases in the price of shares because it is a clear sign that the company is restructuring to adapt to changes in strategy for the development of AI and continue generating million-dollar income. In fact, one of the phenomena that is occurring In the latest rounds of layoffs in large technology companies, while hundreds of employees are being laid off from certain departments, new vacancies are opening up. to hire new employees with another profile more AI oriented. ​Meta is not an isolated case. What happens in Meta is part of a dynamic that is repeated throughout the sector. Amazon, Microsoft and other big tech companies have announced massive cuts in recent months, and in all cases the AI appears as the main justification for layoffs. According to data From the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI has been the argument for 12,304 layoffs so far in 2026, the equivalent of 8% of all layoffs recorded in that same period.​ In Xataka | Mark Zuckerberg spent millions on a “superintelligence” team. He is dedicating it to creating a personal AI agent for you Image | Goal

the price to pay may be relaxing the protection of our rivers

by

Our country has large reserves of these critical minerals, essential for manufacturing everything from batteries to wind turbines. In this scenario, Andalusia has emerged as the modern “El Dorado”, concentrating 90% of the value of national production metal mining. As stated in the Map of Critical Minerals of Andalusia edited by the Boardaccess to these resources is already a “strategic security issue” to be able to move forward with the European Green Deal. The fear is clear: we risk replacing our former dependence on fossil fuels with dependence on raw materials for which there is increasing global competition. Berja hits the first blow on the table. While the offices debate, the province of Almería is already preparing to drill. According to The Diario de AlmeríaIn just three months, the Minera de Órgiva company will begin extractive activity in the Lupión well concession, in the municipality of Berja. Its owner, Celso Amor, confirms that start-up is imminent and they will begin extracting mineral to carry out industrial tests and design the final plant. The target there is fluorite, a raw material considered critical by the European Union which is vital for steel mills, hydrofluoric acid production, refrigeration systems and the chemical industry. It is not a minor project: estimates indicate that there are more than 10 million tons of fluorite in the deposit, placing it among the most important in Europe. Furthermore, to minimize its ecological footprint in the Gádor mountain range, the exploitation has opted for a design in which the entire mine will be completely underground, including the treatment plant; a model of which there is only one similar installation in the world, located in Chile. The geopolitical pulse: disengaging from China. The opening in Berja is not an isolated case, but the reflection of a policy of continental survival. Currently, much of the critical raw materials are concentrated in countries like China, which controls 90% of rare earthsor the Congo, main supplier of cobalt. The European Union wants to cut this dependency to shield sectors ranging from automotive to artificial intelligence. Brussels currently has 47 strategic projects identified linked to mining throughout the continentof which seven are located in Spain. Our country He is already a key pawn: we provide 17% of the copper extracted in the EU, 12% of the zinc and we are the leading European producer of fluorine and gypsum. There is a regulatory controversy behind this. However, removing these minerals from the earth collides head-on with the protection of ecosystems. As he warns The Newspaperdozens of extractive companies have long warned that the EU Water Framework Directive prevents them from receiving the necessary authorizations to operate. To resolve this situation, the European Commission launched a public consultation process (‘Call for Evidence’) aimed at reviewing and making this water legislation more flexible. Brussels’ official goal is to address regulatory bottlenecks and simplify legislation to promote access to critical raw materials. However, environmental platforms have raised the alarm. Environmental sectors They criticize that these changes They want to do it on the fast track and warn of its consequences: if the flexibility goes ahead and a project is considered of “higher interest”, “greater pollution” will be allowed, authorizing discharges into rivers or aquifers that until now were prohibited. All this in a country like Spain, where 43% of water bodies already fail to meet environmental requirements. To try to balance the balance, the European Commission has opened a call for experts to form the Stakeholder Platform on Water Resilience, seeking to protect the water cycle from pollution and climate change. Beyond fluorite: the Andalusian map. While Europe decides what to do with its waters, the Andalusian subsoil continues to attract attention. As the local Almeria media reportsthere are projects in initial phases to study the extraction of lithium in Pulpí, and metals such as silver, iron or copper in the Sierra Almagrera and Los Filabres. Rafael Navarro, researcher at IGME-CSIC, calls for caution, remembering that from the time an investigation is carried out until a mine is opened, three or four years can easily pass. The map of Critical Minerals of the Junta de Andalucía confirms this potentialhighlighting a high potential in the Arteal area (Sierra Almagrera, Almería) as a possible lithium resource associated with brines. The document also reveals that in the Granada basin (Montevives, Escúzar) the second largest deposit of strontium in the world is located, producing 200,000 tons annually and crowning Spain as the main producer in the EU. The high price of sovereignty. We have the resources that Europe desperately needs to not depend on Asian powers, and projects like Berja show that the industry is ready to start operating. However, the debate on the modification of the Water Framework Directive raises an uncomfortable question that society and European institutions will have to answer very soon: are we willing to relax the protection of our rivers and aquifers to secure our technological and energy future? The answer will define the environmental landscape for decades to come. Image | Pexels Xataka | In 2010, Japan learned to acquire its rare earths without depending on China. Germany wants to copy its strategy now

pay you more than what they charge

by

Here where you see me, with my 52 years behind me, I am one of those who can tell—young people, don’t be scared—that I lived in a time when we children returned “the helmets.” My parents bought glass bottles (beer, wine, soda) for which they paid a “deposit” for those containers. When they consumed them, our parents sent us children to return them. You would go down to the neighborhood “bodega” – that’s what they called it in my house – and that man, I still remember his face, would take the bottles, place them in plastic boxes (clinc, clink) and give you a few pesetas for them that you would then give to your parents. They paid you to recycle. And that idea is coming back strongly now. Recycling what is a gerund. The problem of packaging recycling is not technological. The solutions have been around for decades. The problem is human behavior. Getting millions of people to change a shopping routine as ingrained as ours requires more than just an advertisement on TV that encourages us to recycle because it’s good for the environment. BonÀrea has been testing a solution to the problem for two years in Tarragona and Guissonaand data from their pilot project suggests that they may have found the key to solving the problem. The 50 cent margin trick. He ReturnA system It works in a really simple way: the customer pays 0.45 euros as a deposit when purchasing a meat tray, and receives 0.50 euros when returning it. Five cents difference in favor of the consumer. It’s a small detail, but not accidental, because you don’t get back exactly what you put in, but rather you get a reward for returning that container. There is a big psychological difference between “getting yours back” and “making money by returning it”, and the data confirms this: the return rate is 60% and more than 72,000 single-use trays have been returned in this pilot phase. Reusable trays. The objective is to completely change the economic equation. A single-use container has a production, transportation and waste management cost that must be amortized in a single use. A tray like those from BonÀrea and its RetornA program, which aims to be reused 50 times, distributes that cost over fifty cycles, which in theory (in theory, hopefully in practice) allows the final price of the product to be adjusted. It is the difference between the traditional “make, use, throw away” model and a more “circular” one in which the packaging has a residual value. A great idea, but not for everyone.. The problem with packaging return and recycling systems like this is logistical. Someone has to collect the containers, clean them with sanitary guarantees and then reintroduce them into the company’s operating cycle. BonÀrea can do it because it controls the entire chain, from production to sale, without intermediaries. You can apply traceability to each tray, guarantee its cleanliness and manage that recycling without depending on third parties. In a conventional distribution chain in which external suppliers intervene, things become significantly complicated if one wants to achieve the same efficiency. The debate over SDDR systems. In Spain we take time living with a problem in the Deposit, Return and Return Systems (SDDRwhich would be something like “incentivized recycling”) for beverage containers, for example. In countries like Germany or Nordic countries They have been applying these systems for decades with return rates greater than 90%. The beverage industry has been resisting the implementation of something like this for years because they would be the ones who would have to finance the system and bottlers have been investing in these “one-way” distribution chains for decades. The solution adopted in Spain has been to opt for recycling in containers as an alternative, but the results in terms of a real circular economy are significantly worse. The BonÀrea experiment shows that when there is a clear economic incentive and a controlled logistics chain, things work. RetornA is going to expand. The pilot project has gone so well that starting in the second quarter of 2026, RetornA will be extended to all 460 BonÀrea stores in Catalonia. The total investment will exceed 10 million euros, and has the support of the Waste Agency of Catalonia. The company is in fact expanding the products that use the system, starting with chicken fillet and gradually adding other references. The next step will be to extend it to the rest of its stores throughout Spain, where it has more than 600 establishments. But. There is a question that remains unanswered. What BonÀrea has demonstrated with its pilot is that the system works when the consumer has a direct economic incentive, the logistics platform is integrated and controlled by the company and that operating cycle is relatively short. What’s not clear is whether that 60% rate will be maintained when the system scales to 460 stores and millions of transactions, or whether it will eventually erode with day-to-day friction. We will see if those five cents manage to win the battle that recycling has been losing for decades. Image | Joana Costa | BonÀrea In Xataka | We have been recycling the garbage we produce for decades. Experts say it has been of no use.

How to use it to know if the declaration you make in 2026 will pay or return

by

We are going to explain to you what the 2025 Income Simulator is and how it works, which will help you know if the declaration you are going to make in 2026 will pay or return. According to the Income calendar 2025the campaign to regulate the last fiscal year will begin next April 8, and you can now begin to prepare for what is to come. We will start this article by explaining what exactly this simulator is, so that you understand what you can expect from it. And then, we will explain step by step how you can use it to obtain your simulation. You should know that you fill in the simulator data on your own, so it is a good idea to look your tax details to know what to put. What is the Income simulator Every year we have to file the Income Tax return to regulate our accounts from the last fiscal year, and this may result in you having to pay money to the Treasury or having them pay you compensation. This result depends on some variants, and this simulator allows you write your data and know a final result to get an idea of ​​how the statement will come out. It is a non-binding simulatorwhich means that you can do all the tests you want with it. You can enter real or false data, and the result does not affect the draft of the Income that will be generated in a few days. The Treasury will also not know or take into account what you write. It is simply a website where you can experiment and see how the results vary. In fact, you will not even have to identify yourself as a citizen on the website, which means that none of the written data is added to any type of profile. But this also has a negative side, and that is that The data that the Treasury has about you will not be loaded because you are not going to use your citizen account. This means that you will have to add them by hand. As we have told you, you can access your tax data and use it to fill it out. Another thing to keep in mind is that the simulator is not something that you need to use if you don’t want to, it is simply a tool that you have at your disposal in case you need it or have questions. How to use the 2025 Income simulator To use the simulator, you have to enter the website with all the tools of the Income campaign. The address is headquarters.agenciatributaria.gob.es/Sede/irpf/gestiones-irpf.htmland in it you have to click on the option Rent Web Open Simulator that will appear in the box Simulator, Stock Portfolio and other Services. If you don’t see the option, you can also enter directly through this link. And once inside the website, you have to choose create a new declaration or load an already created one. If this is the first time you use the simulator, create a new one. The simulator will then allow you to save the drafts you generate on your computer to load them whenever you want and resume work. When you start a new one, you will enter the identification data page. In it, you must write your personal information, that of your spouse if you have one, and that of your children or disabled elderly people in your care. After filling it out, you must click on the button Accept that you have at the bottom. By accepting you will go to a page with the mock draft and all its fields blank. Now it will be your turn fill everything by hand clicking on each field to enter its corresponding section and write the numbers. There will be pencil icons to indicate sections that you fill out by hand, while others are filled in automatically based on the data you have entered. And you’ll be on your way. From now on, what you have to do is fill out all the information in the declarationand then you can see the results. Above, you will also have the options of Validate and Keepand if you save them you can reopen it later whenever you want with the loading option at the beginning. In Xataka Basics | Who does not have to file the 2025 Income Tax return: minimum income and other conditions for 2026

A study shows that we pay more attention to doctors if they are rude and arrogant

by

Lovers of medical series may have a reference in their mind, such as Gregory Housea brilliant but insufferable doctor noted for his sheer arrogance. Fiction here taught us that we forgave him for his bad manners simply because he was a genius who saved lives, although now we may wonder what would happen in real life:we would put up with a doctor like that? science wanted to respond to this, pointing out that as patients we would not only tolerate it, but that we would pay much more attention to it than to a kind doctor. A paradigm shift. Although it may seem absurd, the doctor-patient relationship is something that It’s about cultivating from your own career of medicine in their first courses in order to achieve greater empathy and closeness to the patient. Something that, beyond the good manners that one should have, also serves as another diagnostic tool. But the fact that as patients we are much more obedient to a somewhat borderline doctor is something that has surprised, and that is why it has been dubbed the ‘Doctor House effect’. Here the objective was unravel a mystery of human communication: How a lack of civility affects our ability to be persuaded when it comes to our health. The experiment. To test our impression with these doctors, the team conducted three experiments with almost 200 participants. The premise here was quite simple, as it focused on evaluating how people reacted to different types of health advice, playing with variables such as the experience of the person giving the advice or the politeness of the person speaking. The results. These They have attracted the attention of a large part of the communitysince it breaks what doctors have been instilled in since their careers. What was seen is that, when the advice came from an expert in the field, the use of very arrogant language turned out to be much more persuasive than an affable and polite tone. In other words, acting like Dr. House was working much better than he imagined. But curiously, this study shows that there is a double standard. In this case, if the person giving the advice was not an expert authority figure, the exact opposite happened: using arrogant language destroyed credibility, with courtesy being the only way to persuade the patient to follow the most appropriate medical advice. Because Are we attracted to being talked down to? This is the question we may be asking ourselves right now, and science suggests that the key does not lie in a strange clinical masochism, but in expectations and how we manage care. Here we must understand that in our modern society there is an unwritten social contract that dictates that we must be kind and polite, especially in environments like a doctor’s office. But when a health expert abruptly breaks that rule and constantly swaggers at us, our brain goes into a state of alert. And this “unexpected rudeness” acts as a switch to capture a massive amount of our cognitive attention. The scene is clear in this situation: when we are surprised by a doctor’s borderlineness when we did not expect it, we process his message much more deeply. And the impact is so strong that persuasion works regardless of the initial relevance we gave to the topic being discussed or the biases with which it was arrived at. Not so fast. Obviously, the conclusions of this 2026 study are not a carte blanche for health professionals to start insulting us in our next medical check-up, but it does teach us a lesson about human communication and how sometimes not everything is as we think in an idyllic mind. In Xataka | Spending all day scrolling on Instagram or TikTok has a very specific effect on your brain: it dwarfs

Your employees pay that bill every morning

by

For decades, commuting to work in large Spanish cities had a clear logic: workers lived on the outskirts of large cities and They traveled every morning towards the center to their jobs. It was a fairly stable urban model, reinforced by transportation networks designed to take workers to the large office districts of the urban area. However, in recent years this pattern has been changing as the price of land in the center has skyrocketed and companies have also had to move to the periphery. As and as it portrays The Countrythe problem is that cities are not designed to move from periphery to periphery, and that movement has become in a daily mousetrap for millions of employees. Not even the companies can bear the prices of the center. In recent years, many companies have chosen to move their offices to peripheral areas where land is cheaper and there is space to build. large office complexes. This movement has made it possible to build huge business campuses that would be unviable in the urban centers of large cities with high demand for land such as Madrid or Barcelona. In Madrid, the north of the city has become one of the main destinations for this type of projects. An example is the Telephone Districtlocated in Las Tablas, which occupies about 22 hectares and concentrates more than 12,000 workers in a single business complex. The records of the Residence-Work Mobility Atlas of the Community of Madrid show that districts such as Fuencarral-El Pardo (where the Telefónica District is located) are already among the areas with the highest concentration of employment in the region. Barcelona experienced a similar process with the development of 22@ technological district in Poblenou, where numerous technology companies and corporate headquarters have been setting up shop in the last two decades. The transformation of this old industrial neighborhood created a new employment center outside the historic center of the city. Employment is moving, but so are prices. The problem with this migration of companies to the periphery of urban centers is that when thousands of workers begin to concentrate in a specific area, the real estate market usually reacts quickly. Proximity to work centers increases the value of nearby neighborhoods, which ends up raising rental and housing prices. This increase, in turn, forces employees to move to municipalities even further away from the city center and the offices where they work. The result is a constant increase in daily trips within the metropolitan area. In Madrid this phenomenon is reflected in the labor mobility figures. According to the recorded data According to the Mobility Atlas of the Community of Madrid, every day 1.2 million people enter the capital from other municipalities to work, compared to the 790,000 who did so in 2016. Something similar is happening in the city of Barcelona, which after the growth of 22@ has attracted workers from numerous municipalities in the metropolitan area, congesting the northern and southern access roads and the city’s ring roads due to the traffic generated by these employees at peak times, such as and how collect traffic congestion report of Inrix of 2025. Transportation takes you to the center, not to the periphery. All these congestion problems have their origin in the fact that the large transport infrastructures (metros, trams, Cercanías, bus lines, etc.) of the large Spanish cities have been designed for decades with a radial structure. They were planned to connect the peripheral neighborhoods with the city center, which was where most of the employment was concentrated. When new business centers began to grow outside the center, that structure began to show its limitations. Many workers no longer need to go to the urban area, but rather travel between peripheral areas that are not directly connected by public transport. This requires long journeys or several transfers, something that often makes the car faster. Even if it means getting stuck every day on the way to work. Furthermore, public transportation in many cities has become a lottery with constant delays and breakdownswhich generates uncertainty when considering alternatives to the private car. The price: hundreds of hours lost. The increase in long trips to work and dependence on the car is clearly reflected in traffic data. According to the TomTom Traffic IndexMadrid registered an average congestion level of 38% in 2025, which is 3.6 percentage points more than the previous year. That level of traffic means that traveling 10 kilometers during rush hour can take about 34 and a half minutes, with average speeds close to 17.5 km/h. The report also estimates that Madrid drivers lose around 98 hours a year in traffic jams during rush hour. When daily journeys are long, the accumulated time can multiply and reach up to 500 hours per year per person lost in traffic jams. Barcelona faces a similar situationwith a level of congestion in its urban center and access roads of 41.1%, which is one of the highest figures in Europe. In Xataka | The worst traffic jam in history: two weeks, more than 100 kilometers and thousands of cars detained in China Image | Unsplash (Kathy)

Shahed drones are spreading terror in the Gulf. Ukraine has offered the solution, and the price to pay has a name

by

In the last four years, a flying device barely twelve feet long has gone from being a little-known Iranian military experiment to becoming a one of the protagonists of several simultaneous conflicts. Its design is so simple that it can be assembled in a few hours and its cost is thousands of times lower than the systems that try to take it down. That combination has changed the way many militaries understand air defense. The buzz that changed war. Since 2022, the sound of a small motorcycle-like engine was the alarm signal which preceded many explosions in Ukrainian cities. That metallic and persistent noise belongs al Shahed-136a cheap, relatively simple Iranian kamikaze drone designed to attack pre-programmed targets at long range. With about 3.5 meters in length and the capacity to transport an explosive charge of about 50 kilos, these devices have become one of the symbols of modern warfare because they combine two factors that are difficult to counteract: their low cost and the possibility of mass producing them. The jump between conflicts. After four years of war in Europe, these drones have reappeared in force in another scenario. Iran has launched hundreds of devices against Gulf countriesreaching military bases, airports, refineries and urban areas in Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait or Qatar. The attacks seek less physical destruction than psychological and economic pressureforcing the attacked countries to activate expensive defense systems to intercept weapons that can cost only about $50,000. Although many of the aircraft are shot down, even a small percentage that manages to penetrate the defenses is enough to cause damage to critical infrastructure or generate fear among the population. A strategy perfected by Ukraine. The pattern of these attacks is clearly reminiscent of the tactics Russia has employed since 2022 against cities and infrastructure Ukrainian energy companies. Moscow turned the Shahed into the center of a strategy of attrition and terror based on launching large drone waves together with missiles to saturate air defenses and increase the probability that some projectiles reach their target. The mass production has been key in that strategy: Russia not only imported thousands of Iranian drones, but also raised an own factory to manufacture them on a large scale, which allowed hundreds of devices to be launched in a single night against power plants, ports or residential neighborhoods. The anti-drone laboratory created in kyiv. This constant pressure forced Ukraine to become one of the countries more experienced of the world in the fight against these types of threats. After facing tens of thousands of Shahed, kyiv has developed a defense system in layers that combines radarselectronic warfare equipment, anti-aircraft missiles, mobile units and even interceptor drones capable of shooting down attackers in mid-flight. The result is an improvised network but extremely effective which has allowed most of the attacks to be neutralized despite the massive scale of the waves launched by Russia. Terror reaches the Gulf. That knowledge has now acquired a new strategic value. The Gulf countries, which were not used to facing constant drone attacks, have discovered how difficult it is to protect entire cities against weapons that fly low, are difficult to detect and can appear from multiple directions. Even advanced systems designed to intercept ballistic missiles can be overwhelmed by swarms of cheap drones. The recent attacks They have hit airports, refineries, ports and military bases, demonstrating that even critical infrastructures of highly protected economies can be exposed to this new form of air warfare. Zelensky’s offer. In this context, Ukraine has launched an unexpected proposal: share your experience to help Gulf countries neutralize the Shahed. President Volodymyr Zelensky has offered to send his best anti-drone defense specialists along with a group of experienced operators to reinforce regional defenses, but, of course, with one clear condition, a name. kyiv wants Middle Eastern governments to jointly use all his influence on Moscow to pressure Vladimir Putin and achieve at least a temporary ceasefire in Ukraine. If you like, it is an offer that mixes military cooperation and diplomatic calculation: one where Ukraine presents itself as the country that knows the enemy best, and there is not much doubt about that, asking in return help to stop the war which made him precisely that expert. Image | Kyiv City State Administration,X, National Police of Ukraine In Xataka | The US has launched its most ambitious weapon against Iran in the last decade: a missile that does not need fighters or warships In Xataka | It is not that Iran is resisting US attacks, it is that it has room to take the conflict to an explosive scenario.

After 16 years, Mexico has managed to get a millionaire to pay his taxes. And they are going to use them to help young people

by

One of the richest men in Mexico has been litigating for two decades to avoid paying what he owes to the treasury. In an unexpected turn of events, that money that was owed has ended up financing scholarships, soccer fields and cultural centers for young people at risk of falling into drug trafficking violenceat least that is what the Mexican Government has assured. President Claudia Sheinbaum has presented the social program “Young People Transforming Mexico” aimed at distancing young people from the influence of drug trafficking networks. During the explanation of the measures that includes the program, the president was very direct about the origin of the project’s financing: “Where does this resource come from? All this resource for young people, well, from the payment of a person who finally paid his taxes.” Sheinbaum was not referring to just any citizen, it was a direct reference to businessman Ricardo Salinas Pliego, owner of TV Azteca, Elektra and Banco Azteca, who at the end of January settled the largest individual tax debt in the history of Mexico. The largest payment in Mexican tax history The conflict between Salinas Pliego and the Tax Administration Service (SAT) dates back to 2009, when the Treasury concluded that the Elektra Group, owned by Mexican millionaire Ricardo Salinas Pliego, with a estimated fortune at $5.8 billion, it had declared non-existent tax losses to artificially reduce its bill between 2008 and 2013. As explained in the specialized medium LexLatinFor 16 years, the businessman used a strategy of systematic delay, filing appeals in multiple judicial instances and requesting recusals of judges in order to prolong the lawsuits that demanded payment of his tax debt. In the Supreme Court alone, the seven main trials generated 100 secondary processes, the majority at the initiative of the Salinas Group. The turning point came in October 2025, when Congress approved a reform of the Amparo Lawwhich limited the possibility of challenging already final tax rulings. In November, the Supreme Court used this new law to resolve the seven trials, confirming sanctions of more than 48,000 million pesos (about 2,367 million euros), including one of more than 33,000 million pesos (about 1,627 million euros) from the 2013 fiscal year. What began in 2009 as the claim of a tax debt of about 38,000 million pesos (around 1,874 million euros) had already exceeded 74,000 million pesos (about 3,649 million euros) due to accumulated interests, surcharges and penalties. On January 29, 2026, Salinas Pliego made a first disbursement of its tax debt with a payment of 10,400 million pesos (about 513 million euros), which were deposited that same day into the Treasury. The total debt finally recognized has amounted to 32,132 million pesos (the equivalent of 1,584 million euros), with the remaining balance to be settled in 18 monthly payments. This final amount represents a discount with respect to the 51,000 million pesos (about 2,515 million euros) that the Mexican treasury had initially set, since Salinas Pliego took advantage of the benefits of the Tax Code, which in this case represented a 37% reduction of the debt through voluntary payment. As and how I collected The CountrySheinbaum He did not hide his satisfaction after knowing the sentence. “It is the largest payment that has ever been made for a case of this type. And it is really good that he decided to pay it!” The president recalled that “for many years, based on negotiations and agreements, taxes were not paid. When President Andrés Manuel López Obrador arrived, the remission of taxes was prohibited in the Constitution.” A plan against youth violence As Sheinbaum pointed out at the presentation event, the money collected from taxes owed for years by one of the largest fortunes in Mexico was going to be used to finance the program “Young People Transforming Mexico“. This project includes the construction of new educational facilities, more places in secondary and higher education, as well as the expansion of the Gertrudis Bocanegra Scholarship for one million students. In the sports field, 4,208 football fields will be rehabilitated, 100 community centers will be created in high violence areas with capacity for 1,000 young people each, offering sports, cultural workshops, mental health and addiction prevention. The objective of all these measures is to offer educational opportunities, social support and leisure to prevent young people at risk of social exclusion and without professional opportunities from falling into the networks of the Mexican drug cartels. “That young people stop any activity that has to do with criminal groups,” the president stated Mexican. In Xataka | The chances of two superyachts colliding are few, but never zero: “You won’t believe it, but our yacht was hit” Image | Wikimedia Commons (JGTorresH), Unsplash (Jesus Herrera)

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.