problem

Using aerial balloons to smuggle tobacco is common in Eastern Europe. And then the airports have a problem

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The airport of Vilnius, Lithuania, has been forced to close its doors throughout the night from last Tuesday to Wednesday due to the massive entry of hot air balloons loaded with cigarettes smuggled from Belarus. The closure, which lasted from 11:00 p.m. until 6:30 a.m., has affected around 4,000 passengers and caused the cancellation of 30 flights. The worst thing is that It hasn’t been the first time that the airport is facing this situation. What has happened. Dozens of weather balloons used by smugglers to transport tobacco from Belarus crossed Lithuanian airspace overnight. According to Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center, called it “the most intense raid of the year.” Incoming flights had to be diverted to other airports, including Warsaw and Kaunas, while two land border crossings between the two countries were also temporarily closed for the same reason. Why do they use balloons? Smugglers take advantage of the fact that tobacco is significantly more expensive in the European Union than in Belarus. Using these hot air balloons, they send thousands of packages of illegal cigarettes across the border without having to go through customs controls. The images spread The media shows large balloons floating between the trees with cigarette packs hanging below. It’s not the first time. On October 5, just two weeks before, Vilnius airport had already had to suspend operations for hours for a similar incident. On that occasion, 25 balloons crossed Lithuanian airspace, affecting around 6,000 passengers. According to official data published this month, a total of 966 balloons entered Lithuania last year and more than 500 have already done so so far in 2025. Neighboring Poland has recorded more than 100 similar incidents this year, according to its border police. The Government’s response. Lithuanian Prime Minister Inga Ruginienė has announced the call for an urgent meeting of the National Security Committee to address the problem. “It is not normal that so many balloons cross our border and that we have to intercept them to keep them away from our strategic installations,” he declared. Ruginienė has urged authorities in Minsk to cooperate to prevent future incidents, calling on Belarus to take “a responsible approach towards these events, regardless of our political relations.” A security issue. The commander general of the Lithuanian Border Guard, Rustamas Liubajevas, confirmed that hundreds of balloons could have crossed the border last Tuesday and that four suspects have been detained. The Lithuanian authorities have been authorized to shoot down these balloons since last year. Although these incidents are directly linked to smuggling, violations of Lithuanian airspace are a particularly sensitive issue: the country is a member of NATO and the EU, and in July suspected russian drones They crossed its territory from Belarus, one of them carrying explosives. Vilnius is located just 32 kilometers from the border with Belarus, Vladimir Putin’s main ally in Europe. Cover image | State Border Guard Service and Made In Vilnius In Xataka | El Prat airport is full of ghost valets, and they are a real problem: the Mossos have already shielded the area

The buzzword in the world of sports and weight loss is “autophagy.” Sounds good, the only problem is that it’s bullshit

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On December 7, 2016, Yoshinori Ohsumi He stood on the stage of the Medical Classroom of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and began to explainin detail, “the discoveries of the mechanisms of autophagy.” Three days later, in front of a completely packed auditorium, won the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology. Now, dozens of people are dedicated to using these mechanisms to lose weight. Isn’t it a beautiful example of the value of basic science? It would be, in fact, if it weren’t for the fact that it’s all a hoax. Autophagy exists. Of course yes: as I say, the 2016 Nobel Prize went to its discoverer. It is a cellular mechanism that recycles damaged components. We know that when nutrients are lacking or there is stress, the cell wraps parts of itself (damaged proteins, old organelles like mitochondria) in double-membrane vesicles called autophagosomes, which fuse with lysosomes to degrade and reuse those components. It is something essential in cellular life. Basic, essential: essential to preserve the functionality of tissues throughout life. This maintains internal well-being, obtains extra energy or materials and contributes to cellular defense. It reaches such a point that a few days ago, the journal Nature Immunology explained in detail how all this is a fundamental piece in longevity. What’s the problem then? Measuring its effect on humans is complex. After all, direct markers They are difficult to grasp outside of biopsies or highly controlled laboratory conditions. Indirect markers abound, yes; but they are not very specific. This makes us know that prolonged fasting activates the mechanisms of autophagy, yes; but we don’t know anything about anything like intermittent fasting or any type of diet doing that. In fact, even when we can see increases in autophagy gene expression, we cannot make the leap to clinical benefits. So… Can it be used, then, to lose weight? Well no. The truth is that selling it as a “trick” to lose weight is going too far: weight is lost due to a caloric deficit, not by “eating yourself.” Ultimately, all the examples given are nothing more than the extrapolation of isolated cellular models. There is no no kind of scientific evidence that endorses any of that. The only thing we know about autophagy at a clinical level is that, well, it sounds good: it sells. And, really, that’s enough. Saving the distance, ‘autophagy’ is the new ‘quantum diet’: something that sounds scientific, that has the endorsement of the community of experts and that means absolutely nothing. A perfect breeding ground for charlatans. Is it a scam then? I wouldn’t say that much. What’s more, we may find out in the next few years that autophagy mechanisms do indeed do things in normal diets. The important thing is that, along the way, all those who want to take advantage do not destroy the credit that Oshumi achieved with his revolutionary work. Image | Marco Vitiello In Xataka | The lies of the nutritional pyramid: from pedagogical tool to corporate battleground

The problem is that they are almost non-existent.

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Spain has more than 52,000 public charging points for electric vehicles, but only 2,080 allow you to charge the car in less than 15 minutes. Although there are various obstacles why a buyer does not want to opt for an electric car, the lack of quality infrastructure is one of the main reasons why the electric vehicle has not yet been standardized in Spain. The problem in figures. According to the latest Anfac barometeronly 4% of the charging points available at the end of September reached 250 kW of power or more, the threshold necessary for ultra-fast charging. Castilla y León leads with 357 points of this type, followed by Andalusia (277) and Catalonia (268). The rest of the network is mainly made up of slow chargers: more than 36,000 points offer 22 kW or less, which implies waiting times of between 3 and 19 hours, depending on the model. Why is it critical? The lack of ultra-fast recharging especially slows down long trips, where the experience should be close to that of a traditional refueling. Current electric cars already incorporate systems prepared for powers greater than 100 kW, and this capacity will increase with the new models. However, the infrastructure is not accompanying the evolution in vehicle batteries. Spain is situated like this below the European average in high power deployment, a key factor for individuals and companies to decide on electric. Who drives the network. Two thirds of the ultra-fast stations (equal to or greater than 250 kW) come from projects of the car manufacturers themselves. Just like share From the CincoDías media, Anfac has been insisting for some time that electric mobility should not only be promoted by brands, but also by energy companies and the public sector. An underused park. There is also a notable operational problem, since 14,643 charging points are installed but out of servicewhich represents 22% of the total. These chargers remain inactive due to breakdowns, lack of maintenance or because the installation companies have not yet obtained permits to connect to the electrical grid. This situation has remained this way for two quarters, with no signs of a significant improvement. The delay in Spain. The penetration of the electrified vehicle reached 29.3% in the third quarter, an improvement of 3.9 points compared to the previous period, but still far from the 43.1% average in the European Union. The general director of Anfac, José López-Tafall, warns that “leading the bottom group in Europe cannot be enough” and that Spain must maintain the current rate of growth for years to recover the accumulated delay. The road ahead. Although the charging network grows in absolute numbers (this year more than 13,000 points have been added), the challenge is to guarantee quality as well as quantity. However, from the employers they insist that the data is “very positive”, and that “the important efforts that companies are making to install public charging are little by little giving results.” Cover image | Michael Fousert In Xataka | Spain is emerging as the destination of the next BYD factory, according to Reuters: the next chapter of its advance in Europe

The popular hair drug hides a big problem behind depression

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Finasteride has long been a popular solution for the treatment of androgenic baldnesswhich has long been a very popular solution to stop hair loss. However, behind its apparent cosmetic success hides an alarming reality that has taken more than twenty years to receive greater attention: a significant association with depressionanxiety and suicide. The analysis. Published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry by Professor Mayer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, systematically reviews the accumulated evidence and exposes what he describes as “a systemic failure of pharmacovigilance.” The study concludes that both the drug’s manufacturer, Merck, and regulatory bodies, such as the US FDA, failed to take relevant action despite growing danger signals about serious health problems. The evidence. Although concerns about depression associated with finasteride arose as early as 2002, it was not until the last decade that the evidence became overwhelming following studies done after the product was marketed. Brezis’ analysis is based on eight large independent studies published between 2017 and 2023, which used two main methods: disproportionality analysis in adverse event reporting systems and analysis of massive health registry databases. The results. The study carried out in countries such as Sweden, Canada and Israel points to very consistent results: the use of finasteride is associated with a significantly higher risk of developing depression, anxiety and suicidal behavior. All of this with a good statistical significance that shows that it is not due to chance. The human cost of this two-decade delay is devastating. The report estimates that, globally, “hundreds of thousands of people may have suffered from depression, and hundreds, or even thousands, may have died by suicide.” The data. One of the main reasons why it took so long to react was the massive under-reporting of cases. In 2010, the FDA was already discussing internally the possibility of including depression as a side effect, but noted that reported suicides were lower than expected in such a large user population. Brezis’ analysis puts figures on this discrepancy: For 2011, with a base of 4.6 million users worldwide, between 6,440 and 12,880 suicides were expected over a period of 10 to 20 years. However, only 18 cases had been reported to the FDA system (FAERS). By 2024, reported suicides amounted to 320, compared to the 19,320 that would be expected over a 30-year period. FDA inaction. The report is especially critical of the manufacturer and the regulator. Despite suspicions, none of the eight studies analyzed were conducted by Merck or requested by the FDA. This is striking, since Merck itself had validated in 2006 the usefulness of the pharmacovigilance tools used in these investigations, concluding that they had “sufficient sensitivity and specificity.” For its part, the FDA was disconcertingly slow. In 2011 it recognized depression as an adverse effect and in 2022 it added suicidal ideation, but not as a formal warning on the label. It took the agency five years to respond to a citizen petition requesting the drug be removed from the market. Internal FDA documents from 2010 show entire sections redacted as “confidential,” hiding key data about the drug’s safety. The case in Europe. In addition to the report issued by the FDA, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) has also launched an alert following its research on this same medication and suicidal tendencies. This is something that the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS) has collected on its website, pointing out that from now on the packages of finasteride 1 mg will include a patient information card with the aim of reinforcing these warnings. In France they wanted be much more critical with the recommendations made by the EMA to confront this serious problem. Specifically, they have pointed out that the introduction of this alert card or the dissemination of a letter to professionals is not enough. Especially considering that the latest recommendations made by the regulator have not reduced the incidence of suicidal ideation in treated patients. Because. The relationship between finasteride and mood disorders is not a simple correlation, but has a plausible biological basis. The drug inhibits the enzyme 5α-reductase, reducing the conversion of testosterone. This process also decreases the synthesis of brain neurosteroids, such as allopregnanolone, which are crucial for mood regulation. For some users, the effects do not go away when they stop treatment. The so-called “post-finasteride syndrome” describes severe neuropsychiatric symptoms that persist for months or years after stopping the drug. Call to action. Brezis emphasizes that, as it is a medicine for a cosmetic indication, the balance between benefit and risk is radically different. “It wasn’t about a life-or-death medical need. It was about the hair,” he emphasizes. Images | Nik Shuliahin 💛💙 In Xataka | A natural, safe and already approved sweetener for consumption: the new and unexpected solution against baldness

China’s biggest problem is not the US. It is a “virus” that advances at an unprecedented speed and threatens to empty its factories

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In September, and in front to a data offered by the United Nations that put the future of the Chinese economy in check, Beijing defended itself with an opportunity for the future: the AI. In between, it remained to be seen who was right. Because the main problem of the economy that pull the strings of the planet are pure mathematics applied to a near and most uncertain future. One that indicates that, sooner rather than later, its population will to plummet. Against oneself. The demographic crisis that shakes China today is, to a large extent, the result of a policy that worked too well: the birth control campaign begun in the seventies and crystallized in the policy of only child 1979. What began as a state intervention to contain population growth that was considered unsustainable ended up shaping behaviors, expectations, and family structures for generations. Sterilizations, fines and forced abortions not only birth numbers reducedbut they inhibited the cultural habit of mass reproduction, and when the State began to relax the rules (allowing two children in 2016 and three in 2021) the social response was no longer the same: the fertility rate fell from 1.77 children per woman in 2016 up to 1.12 in 2021and the timid incentive measures have barely reversed the curve. The real cost of breeding. Behind the numbers there are everyday decisions. The economic calculation of starting a family in China is, as in so many other places, considerable: studies estimate that raising a child from birth to the end of their college education can cost on average about $75,000and in cities like Shanghai that figure shoots up to approximately $140,000. These prices, together with long work daysmarket expensive housing and professional expectations, explain why many young people (especially women) they choose not to have children. Surveys and testimonials collected show that for many people motherhood today is equivalent to a professional and personal resignation that they are not willing to assume: “I don’t want to think about sacrificing my life,” summarizes an executive from Hangzhou in the Washington Postand that plea for time and personal autonomy is one of the reasons why symbolic subsidies from the government (for example, some 500 dollars a year for the first three years) are insufficient to reverse the trend. Without weddings and solutions. we have been counting. Demographic decline is accelerated by fall of marriage: in 2024 just 6.1 million of couples registered their union, compared to 13.5 million in 2013, a data that works as predictor of future births when the rate of births outside of marriage is marginal. The State not only offers economic incentives and university courses about “how to flirt”, but has returned to intrusive behavior: officials pressure newlyweds about your plans of pregnancy and control the conversation public about marriage in the media. It is a gesture of urgency that clashes with the autonomy of generation Z, increasingly individualisticfor which getting married and procreating are no longer social mandates but options (among many). That tension between pronatalist policy and cultural change explains why coercive measures of the past do not seem to translate into higher births today. Accelerated aging. While fewer Chinese are born, the older population continues to grow: Life expectancy rises and the population pyramid inverts, which poses a brutal rebalancing in public accounts. Projections indicate that in the coming decades the proportion of elderly will doublewith colossal pressure on pensions, healthcare and long-term care financed by an increasingly narrow contributor base. Demographers warn that this phenomenon can trigger a vicious circle: more resources allocated to the elderly imply less public support for young families, which further reduces fertility. By 2100, according to calculations by international organizations, there will be more people out of working life than within it, a scenario with economic and political implications of systemic scope. The factory of the world shrinks. The problem is not only quantitative but qualitative: the workforce that made China the factory of the planet (born between 1960 and 1980, with a disposition for industrial jobs) has no substitute culture in later generations that they avoid factory work. At the same time, the proportion of Chinese manufacturing in the world total (today located around 30%) will necessarily be reduced if demographics exhaust the labor supply. The official short-term answer is automationbetting on robots and investment in productivity, but substitution does not work the same in all sectors: services, care and certain labor-intensive branches will continue to demand humans. The consequence is that manufacturing companies already they detect competitive pressure in prices and labor costs, and some observers point out that the industrial replacement could move to India, Southeast Asia, Mexico or Eastern Europe, with a multiplier effect on global supply chains. Politics and resistance to foreigners. They remembered in the post that a lever that in other countries would alleviate the labor force deficit (immigration) crashes in China with taboos of cultural homogeneity and political considerations that make the adoption of broad immigration policies difficult. That forces the government’s options and forces it to rely on internal incentives and in robotization. The strain between the economic need for labor and the preference to maintain cultural cohesion places Beijing in a strategic dilemma: either it embraces broader migrations (with all the integration challenges that this would imply) or it accelerates productive reconversion and the displacement of sectors that depend less on the labor factor. State measures. Faced with the abyss, Beijing has been introducing measures: relaxation of family policysubsidies, public campaigns for promote marriage and birth rate, and tax programs limited. But the experts they underline that late policies rarely reorder behaviors already fixed for decades. Louise Loo and other economists they estimate that reducing the workforce could take away about 0.5 points percentages to annual GDP growth in the next decade, a bite significant for an economy that needs to grow to absorb debts and finance its modernization. The challenge is that demographics act over long periods of time: cohorts born today … Read more

The new trend in AI is “AI agents.” The only problem is that almost no one is clear about what they are.

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It is not the first time that a word becomes fashionable in the technology sector. It has happened with IoT, Big data, Blockchain and even 5G. In English they call it buzzword and refers to those terms that are repeated and repeated until they almost lose their meaning. It has happened with AI and, now that we have overcome that first stage, it was time to give it a surname. The chosen one is agentic AI and, suddenly everything is agentic AI. I experienced it a couple of weeks ago in the Qualcomm Snapdragon Summit. During the different conferences, the most repeated words were “agents” and “agentic”. The problem is that they didn’t show any real products that actually fit this definition. They are not the only ones, there is a whole wave of companies that already call agentic AI literally anything that has minimal automation. Agents all the time everywhere Agentic AI It was going to be a revolution in 2025but reality ended lower the smoke to the gurus of the sector. With this I don’t mean that everything is a hoax, AI agents are very real and they are already here. We can try them If we have the ChatGPT Plus plan. At the development level, Anthropic allows create scheduling agents with Claude and Google with Gemini. Other platforms like Salesforce offer their own custom AI agents for specific sectors such as public or industrial. They are improving a lot, but the reality is that AI agents They are still very green as has been demonstrated in enough tests. There is no real product, not even one that they are developing, everything is part of a dream, one in which AI agents are even in the soup. Being cautious and waiting for technology to develop does not suit many companies. Returning to the case of Qualcomm, in the “The Ecosystem of You” conferenceits CEO Cristiano Amon drew us a future in which “the agent” does everything for us, absolutely everything: “The agent will understand our world and will be helping us, anticipating every need.” The problem is that everything he showed It was simply a demo. There is no real product, not even one that they are developing, everything is part of a dream, one in which AI agents are even in the soup. What is agentic AI It is also known as agentive AI, agential AI or simply “AI agents”. Google defines it as “an advanced form of artificial intelligence focused on autonomous decision-making and action.” For NVIDIA is an AI that “uses sophisticated reasoning and iterative planning to autonomously solve complex, multi-step problems.” For amazon It is “an autonomous system that can act independently to achieve predetermined goals” and they add that, unlike generative AI, agential AI “is proactive and can perform complex tasks without constant human supervision.” It seems pretty clear, generative AI responds to one request at a time, while agentic AI can achieve more complex goals, making decisions autonomously. An AI agent must be able to collect information, use tools and solve problems to achieve the objective we have given it. They call it agentic AI because “AI with slight automation” doesn’t sound so good In another of the Snapdragon Summit conferences they showed us several products that were real, one of them is Page.aian AI assistant that works locally on mobile. During the intervention, the presenteror stopped repeating that the app had agentic functionswhen the most they showed was how the AI ​​was capable of organizing a barbecue: it created an event on the calendar and then invited a friend. What caught my attention is that the creator of the app did not use the word, but was the presenter. The reality is that many of the use cases presented as agents are, at best, a kind of IFTTT on steroids. In this CNBC articlethe head of AI at the consulting firm EY assured that “Many in the market want to take advantage of it. We have witnessed an incredible change of image of everything related to generative AI, which is now presented as agentic AI.” “Agent washing”: when products that are sold as agents are actually products that already existed. At the beginning of the year, Gartner surveyed more than 3,000 companies who promote AI agents and discovered a trend they call “agent washing.” That is to say, many products sold as agents are actually products that already existed. Gartner estimates that of the 3,000 companies, only 130 sell real AI agents. “Most agency AI proposals lack significant value or return on investment,” said analyst Anushree Verma. The firm predicts that more than 40% of agentic AI projects will be canceled before the end of 2027. Why so much hype? In May of this year, a survey of senior American executives revealed that 88% of companies had planned to increase their AI budget before the arrival of agents. Most respondents believed agentic AI was going to change workplaces more than the internet did, and nearly half were worried about competitors adopting AI agents before them. The fear of being left behind has encouraged many companies to jump into the pool without fully understanding what agentic AI is. It makes sense that they want to hype it up and even “cheat” by calling agents who really are not: they are investing a lot in this and they need it to turn out well. Image | Gemini In Xataka | A group of AI experts attended a party at a mansion. The topic of conversation: what will happen when AI ends humanity

Japan is so desperate for its bears that it will allow hunters to shoot them in cities. Problem: you run out of hunters

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Tuesday was not an easy day Numatain Gunma prefecture, north of Tokyo. Around seven thirty in the afternoon the police received the notice that a 1.4 meter bear He had sneaked into a supermarket with several dozen customers and destroyed the fish and sushi sections. He also injured two people, one in the parking lot and another inside the store. It is not an isolated case. Not anything exclusive to Numata. Japan has a serious problem of encounters with bears. To solve it, the authorities have decided to use their most experienced hunters, but they won’t make it easy either. There are less and less. What has happened? That Japan has a problem with encounters between bears and humans, episodes that in most cases result in scares or injuries, but that sometimes end with the worst outcomes. It’s not something newbut statistics show that the problem is far from being solved. CNS News assures that between April and September 108 people suffered injuries caused by bears, reflecting a similar rate to the year between March 2023 and 2024, when the Government recorded a record of 219 attacks. Is it that serious? Many of the encounters end in scares or injuries, but the Japanese media also talk about an all-time high number of deaths: seven, the highest number since records began in 2006. The people who have suffered attacks also include both locals and tourists from other countries. In fact, just a few days ago a Spaniard received the blow in the village of Shirakawa-goWorld Heritage Site. In Shiretokoanother place popular with tourists, the trails were closed after an attack in August. What is the reason? Better to talk about ‘reasons’, in plural. When analyzing the problem, a cocktail of causes is usually cited in which environmental issues are mixed with other social and demographic issues. At the end of the day the record of attacks arrives in full abandonment from rural areas and farmland and with a serious population decline that the country has been dragging on for several decades. There are those who include other causes in the equation, such as the effect of climate change on food availability or fluctuations in acorn and beechnut harvests, which cause food scarcity among the adult population. The truth is that Japan is losing inhabitantsis suffering a rural exodus, has seen the borders between populated centers and forests blur and the country has also seen a clear increase in the bear population. Yomiuri Shimbun ensures that the number of black bears has tripled since 2012, with tens of thousands of copies, to which are added the brown from Hokkaido. And how to solve it? The big question. A month ago the country took an important decision and not exempt from controversy: Amended its wildlife protection and management law to relax rules governing what hunters can and cannot do in densely populated neighborhoods. To be more precise, the new regulations allow municipalities to commission hunters to carry out “emergency hunts” for dangerous animals in inhabited areas. Until now, the general rule prohibited killing wild animals with weapons in public spaces. It could only be authorized (and exceptionally) by the police in cases of imminent danger. After the legislative changemunicipal governments may authorize hunts against brown or black bears in densely populated areas provided that certain requirements are met: first, it must be an emergency measure; second, there can be no room for other solutions; and third (and most importantly) it must be ensured that no stray bullet will end up harming a resident. The idea is that only authorized hunters intervene. End of the problem? Not quite. Japan has decided to rely on hunters to solve bear attacks, but the problem is that in the country (like in Spain) there are fewer and fewer hunters. The diary The Mainichi published on Thursday a extensive report in which he recalls that the number of licenses in force in Japan has been decreasing as the population has decreased, the fields have been abandoned and society has changed. If in 1976 there were 500,000 first-level permits approved, since 2012 the figure has always been below 100,000. Who will shoot the bears? In Japan, there is also debate about who will be able to kill bears in neighborhoods full of houses and people. The Government already has announced that the measure will be accompanied by training workshops to guarantee that the system works correctly, which also includes planning security measures, restricting access and evacuating residents. “Emergency shots” are not in any case the only solution that the country has on the table. On the trails of Fukushima, for example, they have installed devices with sensors that seek to scare away animals. The idea: that they emit an annoying buzzing sound that becomes more intense when the bears approach. Images | Suzi Kim (Unsplash) In Xataka | Wolf hunting throughout Spain depended on a red button that changes its status. And Europe has decided to press it

Spain has become the first European country to break the gas. The only problem is that the invoice says something else

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At first glance it seems a contradiction: we produce more solar and wind energy than ever, and yet The invoice continues. Sometimes it seems that everything returns to the same thing: gas. And, in part, it is true. The gas continues to enter every night to sustain the electrical system when the sun falls. But behind that reality there is another less visible: Spain is getting the structural link between electricity and fossil fuels. Reducing the power of gas. According to an Ember analysisthe influence of gas and coal in electric prices has been reduced by 75% since 2019. In the first half of 2025, the gas only determined the price of light 19% of the time, compared to 75% of six years ago. The result is overwhelming: the wholesale price of electricity in Spain was 32 % lower than the European average. While Germany or Italy have barely reduced the influence of gas by 12%and 13%, respectively, Spain has done it in 75%. It is a much faster jump than in any other large European electric market. Spain stopped the power of gas and coal, becoming one of the cheapest markets in Europe This fall reflects a deep transformation of the system. The country has made renewable energy – more cheap and stable – progressively replace gas and coal in pricing. So why don’t you notice the invoice? The answer, as we will see, has to do with the network, the storage and a blackout that changed the rules of the game. An exponential growth. Since 2019, Spain added more than 40 GW Of new wind and solar capacity, which has allowed the renewables to cover 46 % of the electrical demand in the first half of 2025. In that same period, the generation with gas and coal fell to 20 %, compared to more than 40 % that still register Germany and Italy. This transformation has had a direct effect on the market: gas and coal are barely marked the price of light. “Spain has broken the dire bond between electricity and fossil fuels”, summarize Chris RossloweEmber analyst. However, this technical achievement does not mean that the system is free of shadows. The imperceptible success. Here comes the less encouraging part. The problem is not only how much it costs to generate electricity, but how the system remains stable. After the blackout of April 28, 2025, Ree adopted an “reinforced” operational modeactivating more combined gas cycles to stabilize the network. That strategy avoided new cuts, but had a high cost. The use of gas for network services – as voltage control or frequency regulation – doubled in May 2025 compared to the previous year. These services went from representing 14% of the final price before the blackout at 57% that month, According to Ember. In addition, the missing renewable energy (Curtailment) It tripled after the blackout, moving from 1.8% in the two years prior to 7.2% between May and July 2025. In practice, a part of the clean energy generated is lost because the system cannot manage it. A power with bottlenecks. Despite being a renewable power, Spain only invests 30 cents in electrical networks for each euro allocated to renewables, compared to the 70 cents on average in Europe, As the report explains. And although it is the fourth largest electrical market of the continent, it occupies the 13th position in battery capacity, with just 120 MW installed. In some points of the network, Ree has recognized losses of up to 30% of the renewable generation due to lack of infrastructure. This imbalance prevents the clean energy from fully taking advantage of and forces to resort to gas as support. As we have pointed out in Xatakathe system is still vulnerable and rigid: only one in ten new facilities manages to access the network. After the blackout. The blackout marked a before and after. Although European experts have published A factual report, the official report is not expected until the end of the year. Following that episode, the government approved Royal Decree-Law 7/2025with measures to reinforce the network, encourage storage and make access to hybrid facilities. Although the text was rejected by Congress on July 22, part of its measures are being applied by other ways. Among them, As Ember points outthe incorporation of eight synchronous compensators – devices that stabilize the tension without using fossil fuels – and the impulse of 2,600 MW of new batteries, of which 340 MW already have permission. The Executive also plans to launch capacity auctions before 2026 to keep gas plants operational while structural solutions are displayed. But the message of the sector is clear: it will take time, investment and brave political decisions. The European Energy Laboratory. The Spanish case has become a mirror for the rest of the continent. It has shown that growing in solar and wind reduces the wholesale price and gas dependence, but also that without network and storage investment the benefits do not reach the consumer. In Brussels and in neighboring markets, Spain’s example is closely followed as a transition model: a country that has reduced its fossil dependence without sacrificing competitiveness, but still fights to transfer that advantage to the citizen. In Rosslowe’s words: “Spain has shown the way, but to keep it you need to invest in clean flexibility and modern networks.” Electricity is already cheaper to produce. It is also necessary to pay. Image | Freepik Xataka | In his career for the total domain of the solar panels, a rival has come out: the Spanish Perovskita

Elon Musk needs to launch Starship from Florida to accelerate his plans. The problem: up to 13,200 delayed flights

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The airplanes will have to get used to sharing airspace with the largest rocket in the world. Especially when Elon Musk’s starship disembark in Florida in a few months. Starship’s double landing. The arrival of Starship to Cabo Cañaveral promises to revolutionize a region that, although it is accustomed to rocket launches, has not lived anything the same. The key is the planned launch frequency and the double landing of the system: first that of the Super Heavy propeller, more than 70 meters high, and then that of the ship itself, more than 50 meters. Although the public debate has focused so far In the sonic boom That produces each of these rockets when returning from space, the Federal Aviation Administration of the United States has put on the table the possibility that Spacex’s plans to launch 120 starship a year delay between 8,800 and 13,200 commercial flights a year. Where those figures come from. According to him FAA reportthe launches and landings of the two stages of the rocket would force to divert the airplanes from the south of Florida to avoid the rocket trajectory. This could suppose delays for airports as important as those of Orlando, Miami, Tampa and Fort Lauderdale. Each launch would require the closure of airspace in periods ranging from 40 minutes to two hours, which in times of traffic could affect between 133 and 400 flights. The landing of the Starship ship, which would happen hours later, would cause a new closure of the airspace between 40 minutes and one hour, affecting another 400 or 600 commercial airplanes. Spacex’s posture. Spacex insists that these estimates are too conservative. The company has published A statement in which he affirms that the areas of danger for the planes defined in FAA studies “are extremely conservative by nature and are destined to capture a compound of the entire range of the worst possible scenarios, not an operation in the real world.” Spacex argues that, as happened with their Falcon 9 rockets, the areas of aerial and sea exclusion will be reduced as data of the launches accumulate and the reliability of Starship is demonstrated. In fact, the airspace that Falcon 9 forces to close for Starlink missions have been reduced by 66% since 2022. A future of shared skies. Although Starship is a special case, it is only the last new generation rocket that reaches the Florida space coast. Other companies like Blue Origin and ULA have already launched His new New Glenn rockets and Vulcan From Cabo Cañaveral. According to a Ornaldo Sentinel analysisFlorida could approach the 400 rocket releases a year by the end of the decade. But that democratized access to space may require patience at the airport terminal. Image | Spacex In Xataka | There is already a date for the last flight of the Megacohete Starship as we know it: v3, heat what you go out

Sam Altman spent 6,500 million to create a Gadget from AI next to Jony Ive. Now they face a problem

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In September 2023, Sam Altman, CEO of Openai and Jony Ive, former chief chief in Apple, gathered to devise a revolutionary device they called “the iPhone of the AI”. They were serious because this year Openai bought the Startup of IVE for a whopping 6,500 million dollars. A halo of smoke Mystery has surrounded this collaboration since it was announced and now that new news arrives is because the project has problems, some more serious than others. The “problems.” They tell it in Financial Times. Openai wants to launch its mysterious Gadget Superventas next year. However, sources close to the company ensure that the project has encountered critical problems that could delay its arrival. The team is having difficulties when deciding the personality that the wizard will have, something crucial for a device designed to always be on. There are also doubts about whether to do it as the classic assistants that are only activated when we invoke them or allow it to act by yourself when you consider it useful. The big problem. Assuming that Altman is right and his gadget becomes a global success, the most serious problem they face is that OpenAi does not have the necessary computing power to operate its models on a massive use device, and that costs money (something that OpenAi is not left over precisely). In the case of Alexa or the Google, Amazon and Google assistant they have plenty of computing to make them work without depending on anyone else. OpenAi has chatgpt, The most popular chatbot in the worldand need to work with external investments. First it was his Alliance with Microsoftafter SoftBank’s investment, according to Nvidia And the newly announced according to AMD. If the gadget they want to launch ends up being massive as Altman wants, the numbers do not come out. The device. We do not know what you will call or what design will you have. The details that Altman and Ive gave in their day were quite lazyIn fact, they focused more on saying what it will not be than what will be. It will be similar to the mobile, but it will not be a mobile. Nor will it have a screen, but we will communicate with him through cameras, microphones and speakers. And they will not be glasses either. Nothing concrete, but for the moment it reminds a lot of Ai pin of Humane, that He failed loudly. OpenAi goes for hardware. OpenAI enters $ 1,000 million per monthbut the speed to which money burns is much higher than the one that enters it and would need to enter ten times more to be profitable. Even so, the company is already valued in half a billion dollars. Entry into the hardware business makes sense as a way of justifying its value. Beyond the doubts that arise around this mysterious device (They are many), Openai is very serious about creating a hardware division. When buying the IVE startup, they added 20 employees and later They hired several Apple experts and also of the finish team in charge of the target Quest and smart glasses. We will have to keep waiting to see if it ends up materializing in In Xataka | Data centers for AI are an energy hole. Jeff Bezos’s solution: Build them in space

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