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An AI publishes 11,000 podcasts a day by copying local journalists. And at the moment there is no way to stop the avalanche

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An automated podcast network publishes more episodes in 24 hours than many broadcasters do in a year, using AI to convert news articles to audio in minutes. A specific case, that of the channel ‘The Daily News Now!’, helps us to consider how far the scraping of content in the era of generative AI. To loot. The case was put on the table indicator: On January 31, at 2:57 in the afternoon, the newspaper ‘The Chronicle’ (a completely marginal publication: despite being 120 years old, it is published by Duke University, in Durham, and is run and produced entirely by students) published an article about Gemma Tutton, a student and pole vaulter who had won a university competition. Seventeen minutes later, a podcast called ‘Durham News Today’ uploaded an episode titled ‘Gemma Tutton’s Triumphant Return to Pole Vault’ to Spotify. The podcast, of course, had no connection with the newspaper. But it reproduced almost all the data from the original article in the same order, including practically identical phrases. And it is not an isolated case: ‘Durham News Today’ is one of at least 433 programs that make up ‘The Daily News Now!’ podcast network created by Corey Cambridge. As of January 23, ‘DNN’ has published more than 350,000 episodes (approximately 11,000 per day). How they do it. Obviously, with AI: a system of scraping (software automation that extracts large volumes of content) monitors media websites, excises text from published articles, processes it using natural language synthesis tools, converts it into audio and distributes it on platforms such as Spotify. All in a matter of minutes. And they don’t bother to dissemble: according to Indicator, they reproduce the structure, data and writing of pieces published by outlets such as local Fox and NBC affiliates, ‘TechCrunch’, ‘Toronto Star’, ‘The Verge’ or the radio station ‘WRAL’. The tools. To understand why an operation of this type is technically possible today, we must take a look at the ecosystem of tools that has been democratizing synthetic audio production for two years. In September 2024, Google activated the feature globally Audio Overview of NotebookLM. The tool converts any document uploaded by the user into an audio summary. The impact was immediate: NotebookLM went from 652,000 monthly visits in August of that year to 10.5 million in September, an increase of 371% in thirty days. In the three months following the global launch, users accumulated audio with a total duration greater than 350 years of continuous reproduction. NotebookLM normalized the idea of ​​the synthetic podcast, and it was all downhill from there. ElevenLabsspecialized in speech synthesis and valued at more than a billion dollars, launched its GenFM function in December 2024, which allows you to generate complete episodes from text. Wondercraftfunded in part by ElevenLabs, introduced support for editing podcasts generated with NotebookLM. Podcastle, aimed at podcast creators, incorporated speech generation with text to complete or replace fragments of speech. The secret: the price. In an analysis from a similar network (Inception Point AIwhich generates around 3,000 episodes per week with more than fifty AI announcers) producing an episode costs approximately one dollar, and with just 20 listeners the episode is profitable thanks to programmatic advertising. The model does not seek loyal audiences, but search engine positioning: by publishing hyper-specific episodes on cities or niche topics minutes after local media launch their articles, these networks anticipate humans’ capacity for informative immediacy. In other words: ‘The Daily News Now!’ appears in the top Spotify results for local news searches in dozens of American cities. It directly competes (and in many cases surpasses) the media from which it steals content. Legal issues. Cambridge defends itself by saying that its network only accesses “publicly available information” and merely summarizes it. But Indicator found almost thirty episodes of ‘Durham News Today’ that reproduced the structure, order and specific sentences of articles from ‘The Duke Chronicle’: it is not a specific pattern. And Cambridge may still be legally protected, but the problem is more about information ethics than legal details. In any case, in May 2025, the United States Copyright Office came to the conclusion that “publicly accessible” material is not necessarily free to use. There are legal precedents in that direction: in November 2025, a federal judge from New York did not reject the lawsuit by fourteen major publishers (including Forbes, The Atlantic and the Los Angeles Times) against the AI ​​company Cohere, considering that their summaries could constitute direct infringement if they reproduced “structure, sequencing, tone and expressive choices” of the original articles. On the contrary, in April of the same year, the case NYT vs. Microsoft dismissed claims related to the Copilot-generated summaries on the grounds that they were not “substantially similar” to the source articles. Meanwhile, and still without trialthere is the case of the New York Times against OpenAI and Microsoft, accused of using journalistic content to train their models Very clever. There is another detail: we are not talking about the ‘New York Times’, but rather ‘DNN’ concentrates its production on local niche news (university athletics, student councils, cats trapped in trees), first because these contents generate specific searches with little competition on Spotify. And second, because legally it is safer. They point to more fragile journalism models. Meanwhile, distributors like Spotify are developing tools to detect artificial music (removed more than 75 million tracks), but the next step is to make big brands aware that they do not benefit from the exploitation of newsrooms that cannot defend themselves. In Xataka | AI is already a battlefield: Anthropic has just accused DeepSeek and other Chinese companies of “distilling” Claude

AI is very comfortable inventing everything it doesn’t know. Some researchers think they know how to stop him

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The hallucinations have been the Achilles heel of AI since chatbots began to be part of our lives. Companies like OpenAI promised that hallucinations could be mitigated with adequate training processes, but years later both ChatGPT and its direct rivals They keep making up answers when they are not sure what to say. Shuhui Qu, a researcher at Stanford University, believes she has found a way to address the problem. A structural problem. Current language models have a factory defect: they respond with complete security even when they have no idea nor the necessary information. This has to do with how they progress when processing any answer, since LLMs have no problem completing the missing information, even if they are not being faithful to reality and are working with assumptions. First thing, recognize it. Shuhui Qu, a researcher at Stanford University, publishes an article in which she introduces what she calls Bidirectional Categorical Planning with Self-Consultation. An approach that starts from a simple idea, but uncomfortable for large technology companies: forcing the model to explicitly recognize what it does not know and not move forward until solving it. A more scientific method. The idea is not that the model think betterBut stop pretending you know everything. The approach of What starts from a basic premise: every time the model takes a step in its reasoning, it should ask itself if it really has the necessary information to do so. When an unknown condition appears, the model cannot continue. You are not allowed to fill the gap with an assumption, and you have to stop to resolve the uncertainty before moving forward. You can do this in two ways: Well asking a specific question to obtain the missing information Either by introducing some intermediate step (verification, additional consultation) that becomes part of the chain of reasoning. The method. The researchers, using external code, made models like GPT-4 They responded only when they had complete information. They did it with simple tasks, asking about cooking recipes and Wikihow guides. The key? They purposely withheld information to force him to stop. The conclusion of the research was that making preconditions explicit and verifying them before moving forward significantly reduces LLM errors when information is missing. Of course, along the way it is admitted that even this is not enough to make the hallucinations disappear completely. not so fast. Although the researcher’s idea sounds brilliant, it is quite unlikely to see it in the short and medium term. This way of processing breaks the natural flow of current LLMs, designed to return complete answers. To make such a system work, it is necessary to add an additional layer to the structure, some preconditions that force it to control the calls, interpret the responses themselves, classify them and self-block from asking questions if they do not have all the information. In other words, for the moment, AI will continue to score the triples to which we are already accustomed. Image | Xataka In Xataka | ChatGPT invents data and that is illegal in Europe. So an organization has set out to fix it with a lawsuit

China has done everything to stop its population bleeding. The result is the lowest birth rate since 1949

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China has encountered an even more complex challenge than the real estate crisis, the trade war with the US or the future of Taiwan: the babies. As your birth rate deflates (leaving the number of newborns below the number of deaths) the Asian giant is becoming less and less “giant”, a trend that threatens to punish the nation’s economy. Beijing knows it and that is why it takes time deploying measures that seek to boost their demographics. The problem is that, despite his many efforts, he can’t hit the nail on the head. Your latest official data birth rates show a new setback. What has happened? That despite all its efforts, China has not been able to stop its demographic hemorrhage. This is how it reveals the last balance from the National Bureau of Statistics of China (NBS), which shows a scenario similar to that suffered by other nations (inside and outside Asia) shaken by demographic winter: fewer babies, more deaths and general population decline. In short: a country that continues to lose weight little by little and risks complying UN predictionswhich estimates that by 2100 China will have lost more than half of its population, remaining at the size it had in the late 1950s. What does the data say? That in 2025 the authorities counted 7.92 million of births, 17% less than the previous year. The data leaves two other negative readings: the first is that it suggests that the birth rate increase registered in 2024 was punctual and has not been consolidated over time. After that brief rebound (which some associate to the cultural influence of ‘Year of the Dragon’) the Chinese birth rate has resumed the negative curve that it has been drawing for years. The second negative reading is that the decrease in the number of births has in turn reduced the country’s birth rate, leaving it in 5.63 births per 1,000 people. This is a historic low. A fact that has not been seen since (at least) 1949, year of foundation of the People’s Republic of China. It is about the steepest drop birth rate for the last five years. As AP News recallsChinese authorities do not regularly publish their fertility rate, but their last estimate, from 2020, was 1.3 children per woman. Now that indicator would have dropped to 1. The data is far from the “replacement rate” (2.1), essential to keep a country’s population stable. Click on the image to go to the tweet. Are there more figures? Yes. And they are just as bad. Deaths increased, going from 10.93 million registered in 2024 to 11.31 in 2025. The result of this drop in birth rates and increase in deaths was a natural loss of population (the data does not allude to the migratory effect) that brings China even closer to the projections of the United Nations by the end of the century. The NBS balance sheet reflects the loss of some 3.39 million of Chinese, leaving the country’s total population at around 1,405 million. It is the fourth consecutive year in which the country sees its population reduced, which has caused China to no longer be the most populous nation on the planet: from 2023 that honor India boasts itwhich comfortably exceeds the 1.4 billion of people. Why is it important? Birth rate and census are more than just demographic variables. They also influence the future of the country. The size of the population is directly related, for example, to domestic consumption (key piece in the country’s economy) or the health of its workforce. The demographic winter threatens to subject China to the same social pressures as other countries in Asia and the West, only on a much larger scale. Right now the population over 60 years old represents 23%. If nothing changes, in 2035 that strip will add 400 million of people, just like the entire population of the US and Italy combined. The big question is how that will affect their pension system. At the moment the country already has increased the retirement age. How to change it? That is the other reason why the NBS data is so important and has probably fallen like a bucket of cold water on Beijing. It’s not just about fewer babies being born and population being lost, it’s that the Government has been looking for a way to avoid it for some time… without success, at least until now. As far as birth rates are concerned, it seems to have hit the same rock as other neighboring nations that face a similar challenge, like japan either South Korea. What have you tried? Of everything. And without much success. Despite the billions of dollars invested in child care programs, the facilities offered to those considering becoming parents (from subsidies to medical attention) and efforts to form new couplesthe birth rate continues without increasing. And the Chinese authorities have gone to the extreme of go door to door encouraging women to be mothers. The reason? Beyond the influence of ‘one child’ policy (abandoned a decade ago) there are those who point to cultural changes and the high cost that (despite everything) parenthood entails in China. A 2024 report from the YuWan Population Research Institute in fact concluded that China is one of the most expensive places to raise children (especially if we talk about cities), even more than in Japan or the United States in relative terms. The study addressed both direct and opportunity costs. Image | Peijia Li (Unsplash) In Xataka | China knows that its population is going to collapse but it already has a long-term plan to solve it. Of course, thanks to AI

There is an age at which we should stop drinking alcohol forever. Neuroscience is clear why

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For years, popular culture and certain observational studies have sold us a comfortable idea: moderate alcohol consumption could be harmless and even beneficial for the heart. However, when we focus on the brainthe story changes radically. It is neurotoxic. A growing stream of neurologists and new epidemiological evidence point to an uncomfortable reality: alcohol is a neurotoxinand there is a biological age from which our brain loses the ability to tolerate it. Although official guidelines do not prohibit retirees from drinking, scientific literature suggests that The ages of 65-70 mark a critical boundary. Crossing it with a drink in hand could be accelerating cognitive decline and dementiawhich are very prevalent diseases at that time of life. Although there are exceptions, with people who are very long-lived and point out that their ‘secret’ is having a glass of alcohol daily. Although genetics may play an important role here. The neuronal reserve. Neurologist Richard Restak popularized a strong clinical recommendation: you should stop drinking completely at 70 years old. Is it an arbitrary number? Not at all. It is based on the concept of “neural reserve”. According to science, a young brain has room for maneuver before the arrival of these toxins. It has enough neurons and plasticity to compensate for the slight damage caused by ethanol, but, however, natural aging leads to a loss of neurons. That is why drinking in old age is, basically, burning fuel from a tank that is already in reserve and that is not going to be refilled. It is accelerating. Science in this case is quite clear that alcohol-related brain damage along with intense and prolonged consumption accelerates brain aging. And the fact is that with the same alcohol consumption, an aged brain has greater damage than a young one. Something that is explained because the neuronal repair mechanisms are also aged and do not have the same capacity as when a person is 20 years old to compensate. The data. The biggest blow to the idea that a little drinking “doesn’t hurt” comes from large cohort studies, such as the famous Whitehall II studiowhich followed thousands of people for 23 years. In this case, it was seen that people who drank between 14 and 21 glasses of alcohol per week were three times more likely to suffer from hippocampal atrophy compared to those who did not drink. And this is the fundamental region to have memory. For those who exceeded 30 units per week, the probability of atrophy shot up to almost six times more. But the most worrying thing is that no protective benefit was observed in the light consumption group (less than seven drinks a week) compared to general abstinence. Zero alcohol. These data along with brain imaging studies They point out that even ‘moderate’ consumption is associated with a significant brain alteration. This means that it can be stated that the safety margin for the brain is practically non-existent. The limit age. Why can 65 be a turning point? Although there is no international “dry law” for people over 70, organizations such as the Alzheimer’s Society from the UK warn that those over 65 are a special risk group. This is because there is already an aging liver that processes alcohol slowly, which means that the alcohol circulates through the body for longer. This is also added to the interactions that alcohol has with medications that can increase its toxicity and most importantly: increases the risk of dementia. You have to be careful. With all this data, science is quite clear that any consumption increases the risk of health problems, especially in regards to the brain. Although clinical guidelines still recommend simply “not exceeding 14 units per week,” the recommendation of experts like Restak and reading the most current evidence suggest a more aggressive prevention strategy. Given that we have no cure for dementia and that neuronal reserve is our only shield, giving up alcohol when entering old age is not an option, it is a logical cognitive survival strategy. Images | CHUTTERSNAP Simon Godfrey In Xataka | The alcohol industry’s biggest fear can be summed up in just five words: being teetotal is fashionable.

Ukraine has asked Russia if they stop for Christmas like in the First World War. The answer could not have been more Russian

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The inevitable reference when talking about a Christmas break in the middle of a conflict is the spontaneous truce December 1914in the first months of the First World War. On several sectors of the Western Front, British and German soldiers left the trenches, exchanged cigarettes, sang Christmas carols and even played football in no man’s land. Ukraine has remembered it, but it is going to be complicated. The first time. On that occasion of the First World War, the truce was not ordered by the commanders nor was it part of a political negotiation: came from belowof human exhaustion in the face of a war that had not yet shown all its industrial brutality. Precisely for this reason it was never repeated. The high command considered it dangerous, subversive and incompatible with a modern total war. Since then, Christmas has been used many times as a rhetorical symbol of peace, but almost never as an actual interruption of fighting. The Ukrainian proposal. In this historical context full of symbolism, Ukraine has raised the possibility of a ceasefire during Christmas, an idea carefully formulated so as not to appear as a disguised surrender. Zelensky has spoken of a specific pauseespecially linked to attacks against energy infrastructure, at a critical time of winter and with the civilian population as the main collateral victim. At the same time, kyiv is preparing a new package of peace proposals backed by European partners and channeled through the United States, with the expectation that Washington will offer top-level security guarantees if Moscow rejects the plan. Zelensky, however, has shown caution and has lowered any expectations of a quick deal, publicly assuming that Russia may choose to continue the war and that, in that case, Ukraine will ask for more sanctions and more weapons. Officers and men of the 26th Division Ammunition Train playing football at Salonica, Greece, on Christmas Day 1915 The Russian response. The Kremlin’s reaction to the “Christmas break” has been immediate and bluntalmost ritual in its formulation. Dmitri Peskov has discarded any temporary ceasefire, including a Christmas truce, with an argument that Moscow has been repeating for months: a pause would only serve for Ukraine to regroup, rearm and prolong the conflict. In official Russian language, the word “truce” is presented like a trapwhile the word “peace” is reserved for a scenario in which Russia has achieved all your strategic objectives. According to Peskov, Moscow is not ready to replace a comprehensive negotiation (in their own terms) for “momentary and non-viable” solutions. The logic is clear and brutal: either the Russian framework of political and territorial victory is accepted, or the war continues without sentimental interruptions. Territory, guarantees and red lines. Behind the exchange of statements lies the real core of the conflict. Russia demands that Ukraine rspread to wide areas of its territory, accept permanent limits on its armed forces and rule out any future accession to NATO. Ukraine, for its part, rejects hand over the Donbaseven under ambiguous formulas such as a supposed demilitarized “free economic zone,” and remembers that it was already betrayed once when it renounced its nuclear arsenal in 1994 in exchange for security guarantees that did not prevent the invasion. Polls show that a clear majority of Ukrainian society opposes withdrawing from the east and is willing to continue fighting, a domestic factor that greatly limits Zelensky’s political margin even as international pressure increases. Christmas without miracles. The proposal for a Christmas break actually exposes the abysmal distance between the war that we evoke in historical memory and the war that is being fought today. In 1914an improvised truce was possible because the soldiers still saw each other as human beings confronted by accident. In 2025, the war in Ukraine is a conflict of objectives strategic, existential red lines and cold calculation of power, where each day of pause is measured in kilometers of front, ammunition reserves and operational advantages. The Russian response dry and distrustfulis not only “very Russian”: it is confirmation that, in this war, Christmas has no capacity to suspend the logic of the conflict. Unlike more than a century agothere is no room for carols between the trenches, only for official statements that remind that, for Moscow, peace does not begin with a truce, but with the political defeat of the adversary. Image | RawPixel, WikiCommons, Ariel Varges In Xataka | 24 hours later, satellite images leave no doubt: a Ukrainian underwater drone has changed the future of wars In Xataka | Drums of peace sound in Ukraine. And that should be a good thing for Europe… unless Finland is right

which 13 phones from Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO stop receiving updates

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We are going to tell you the Xiaomi mobiles that They will stop receiving updates in 2026. This marks the end of support for the devices, which will neither have new versions of Android nor security updates. You will still be able to use them, but they will no longer be as safe. Therefore, we are going to give you the mobile list for support purposes, so that if your mobile appears in it know that its useful life in terms of software is over. Xiaomi will consider them as dead. And then, it will depend on you whether you continue using them or not. These are devices that reached the market between 2022 and 2023. Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO phones without support in 2026 Below, we leave you the list of Xiaomi, Redmi and POCO devices that will stop receiving updates. Remember that this It does not mean that the mobile stops workingbut you will no longer receive new features and security improvements against upcoming viruses and malware. These are the devices and the date your support ends in 2026: Xiaomi 12 – Support ends in the first quarter of 2026 (it will stay on HyperOS 3 and Android 15) Xiaomi 12 Pro – Support ends in the first quarter of 2026 (it will stay on HyperOS 3 and Android 15) Xiaomi 12X – Support ends in March 2026 Xiaomi 12 Lite – Support ends in March 2026 Xiaomi 12T – Support ends in October 2026 (it will stay on HyperOS 2 and Android 15) Xiaomi 12T Pro – Support ends in October 2026 (it will stay on HyperOS 3 and Android 15) Redmi Note 12 Pro 5G – Support ends in October 2026 (it will stay on HyperOS 2 and Android 15) Redmi Note 12 Pro+ 5G – Support ends in October 2026 (it will stay on HyperOS 2 and Android 15) Redmi Note 12 5G – Support ends in March 2026 (it will stay on HyperOS 2 and Android 15) Redmi Note 12 4G – Support ends in April 2026 (it will stay on HyperOS 2 and Android 15) LITTLE F5 5G – Support ends in May 2026 (it will stay on HyperOS 2 and Android 15) POCO X5 5G – Support ends in the first quarter of 2026 (it will stay on HyperOS 2 and Android 15) POCO X5 Pro 5G – Support ends in the first quarter of 2026 (it will stay on HyperOS 2 and Android 15) Cover image | Ivan Linares In Xataka Basics | HyperOS 3 on Xiaomi phones: these are the 13 models that are already updated, and the other nine from Redmi and POCO that will update later

Volkswagen is going to stop manufacturing the combustion Polo due to new emission regulations

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The future of the Volkswagen Polo will be electric or it will not be. This is what Thomas Schäfer, CEO of Volkswagen, has come to say. The company’s head believes that there is no way to launch a future combustion Polo if emissions requirements do not change. And the European Commission’s proposal changes the situation very little for this type of car. Electric or electric. “Offering new models with a gasoline engine in the size of the Polo and below does not make sense considering future emissions regulations. They would be too expensive for our customers. The future in this segment is electric.” The words are from Thomas Schäfer, CEO of Volkswagen, in an interview with the German media Auto Motor und Sport. In it, the top executive of the brand points out that it makes no sense to launch a new Volkswagen Polo with a combustion engine because the development costs could not be amortized if the car is to be kept at a competitive price. Why does an electric car have less autonomy than advertised? It must be taken into account that the disappearance of the Polo It has already been advanced in 2022 when it was thought that the car would die. Then it was already said that the company was not going to invest money in developing small cars with combustion engines and it seems that the idea remains. The Polo ID. In 2022, Volkswagen was considering eliminating the Polo name. As the years went by and seeing the public’s reception, the company has finally decided to call the electric that comes to occupy this space as Volkswagen ID.Polodiscarding the ID.2 designation finally. At the moment, little is known about the car, other than that it should start at less than 25,000 euros and that will be manufactured in Spain. That and throughout the Volkswagen Group they have the same approach to the combustion car: there will be no new cheap options. Seat, for example, will not launch combustion cars of this size to renew the current Ibiza but it will not do the same with electric until they are cheap enough. The regulations. In his statements Schäfer points to the emissions regulations that Europe has ahead. To start, Volkswagen has until 2027 to record its average emissions of cars sold since this year below 93.6 gr/km of CO2 if you don’t want to incur heavy fines. According to data collected by Motor.esthe Germans had the possibility of receiving more than 1.5 billion euros in fines on the table. These emissions must be halved by 2030 and non-existent by 2035. But hadn’t they changed? At the moment, no. Although everything indicates that there will be subtle changes. However, with the European Commission proposalthose who benefit within the Volkswagen Group are Audi, Porsche or Lamborghini since the cars with combustion engines that can be sold will be very expensive. And the proposal has to be approved by the European Parliament and the Member States (the Council of the EU). However, if it goes ahead, which is most likely, the important changes will be the following: The emissions. To get an idea of ​​the impossibility of complying with these limits by selling small combustion cars, a Volkswagen Polo with a 1.0 three-cylinder engine and 80 HP emits 119 gr/km of CO2. The company would have to sell more than a dozen electric cars to offset each sale of a combustion Polo of this type. Something unthinkable. And small cars are the ones that less profit margin left to a company. That is why the amortization of developments must be achieved by selling a very high volume of cars. If not, the price must be raised and the car is anticompetitive in a part of the market that is more susceptible to price changes. That leaves Volkswagen’s hands tied. The development of a platform for small electric vehicles to comply with emissions regulations has already eaten up money that cannot be invested in launching a new combustion-powered Volkswagen Polo with another stream of money in development included with such a short commercial life ahead. In fact, if Volkswagen does not sell enough electric vehicles He is not even interested in selling the current Volkswagen Polo. On the horns of a dilemma. The biggest problem this leaves us with is that the client finds himself between a rock and a hard place. For a purely technical issue, buying a four-meter electric car can be a very good solution for everyday life. Having a plug at home is perfect and the more kilometers we travel daily, the cheaper it will be for the customer. But the owner of an electric car of this type has a problem when he goes on a trip. And the price savings you are going to pay with discomfort. An electric car of this size is leaving us with versions with batteries of between 40 and 50 kWh to meet the 25,000 euros mark and that leaves us with real autonomy on the road of between 200 and 250 kilometers in the best of cases. This situation is causing the small electric car to not gain enough traction in the market. And if this type of car doesn’t start, the industry has a problem because emissions limits are already on the table and They need to multiply electric sales to comply with the figures that Europe has put on the table. Photo | Volkswagen In Xataka | I went out for a weekend with the Renault 5. This is all that awaits anyone who buys a cheap electric car

the map of genetic dispersion that Europe does not know how to stop

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The sperm donors They are essential people to give a bit of hope to families who cannot conceive children due to different issues related to their health or even the biological impossibility of doing so. But sometimes this is something that can go very wrong, as has become clear with the case of sperm donor 7069a Danish man whose semen was used to conceive 197 children and to whom has transmitted a hereditary disease apart from them that can be fatal. The problem. what it seemed a standard donation process managed by the giant European Sperm Bankhas ended up uncovering some seams in assisted reproduction on the continent that were already announced. And this person has a mutation in their DNA, specifically in the TP53 gene, which is associated with a Li-Fraumeni syndrome. An extremely rare disease that is transmitted through genetics that drastically increases the risk of suffering from multiple types of cancer from childhood. Something that implies that part of his descendants will have a high mortality because of all these tumors. Something that immediately set off alarm bells. A mosaic patient. Donating sperm is a laborious process due to the number of studies that have to be passed, which include a genetic panel to rule out those donors who have serious diseases that can be transmitted to their offspring. But in this case this disease screening ended up failing. All because it is a mosaic patient. This donor managed to overcome all the medical filters because his genetic alteration did not occur in all the cells of the body, but that was only in his sperm and also only in 20%. In Spain this is something that can be overlooked since the genetic panel is done with a simple blood sample and without analyzing the genetic material of the sperm. Green card. The fact of doing a blood test caused a repeated false negative that led to this serious problem. Furthermore, two decades ago screening focused on specific diseases such as cystic fibrosis with the aim of not fertilizing an egg that also had this alteration. But in the end this donor had a green card until 2023 when the sperm bank blocked his donations. The regulatory problem. If biology explains why the flaw was not detected, bureaucracy explains why it spread so much. And this donor has highlighted the many seams that exist in Europe in terms of assisted reproduction. To give us an idea, andn Spain the legislation establishes that a donor cannot have more than six children (including their own), causing their donations to be blocked when they reach that limit. But in Spain this person has 35 children… Something that explains why there is no centralized registry that cross-references data with foreign banks. Spanish clinics import the samples relying on the data of origin, but they have no way of knowing if that donor has already reached their quota in another country or even in another Spanish clinic. Disparity of criteria. In addition to not having a common databaseThere are countries like Denmark that allow you to have up to 12 children or Germany that sets it at 15. Something that is also added to the fact that in Spain there is a large number of egg donations and attracts thousands of foreign patients, which increases the complexity of traceability. This lack of communication allows the existence of “super donors”, men who, following the law in each country individually, end up having hundreds of descendants globally, increasing not only the risk of the spread of rare genetic diseases, but also that of accidental endogamy between half-siblings who are unaware of their relationship. The solution. Seeing the serious consequences that this lack of control can have at the European level, the solution is very simple: have a European donor registry. In this way, each clinic or public service that performs a fertilization leaves it registered so that anywhere in Europe it is known that that donor has several children in another country. But this would also make it much easier to trace the problem that a child has presented and the possibility that the donor is to blame through his or her genetic material. This is something that have already requested eight EU Health Ministers and about which there is currently no news on the matter. Images | Elena In Xataka |

stop importing Russian gas

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Brussels has announced a ban on importing Russian gas at the end of 2027. This is what They confirmed at a press conference the president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, and the Commissioner for Energy, Dan Jørgensen. But, beyond the statements, there is an elephant in the room: the European Union has just promised something that it does not know if it will be able to fulfill. A “permanent” veto. According to the official statement of the European Commissionthe Parliament and Council have reached a political agreement to permanently stop imports of Russian gas – not only by gas pipeline, but also liquefied natural gas – and with a very specific timetable: LNG in short-term contracts: prohibited from April 25, 2026. Gas through pipeline in the short term: prohibited from June 17, 2026. LNG in long-term contracts: January 1, 2027. Long-term gas via pipeline: September 30, 2027 (or November 1 with extension if the storage level is not reached). Furthermore, the EU plans to stop importing Russian oil in 2027, something that confirms the Financial Times and that would complete the partial embargo in force since 2022. Even so, Hungary and Slovakia will continue to receive crude oil from the Druzhba pipelinerecently bombed— while their legal exceptions remain in effect. The political message is clear. The reality, less so. On paper, it is the final slam on Russian gas. Von der Leyen celebrated that the veto will allow “deplete Putin’s war chest”, while Jørgensen proclaimed that “blackmail and manipulation are over.” The political message is clear: Europe wants to show that it no longer depends on Moscow to get through the winter. However, consensus is fragile within the EU. The gas veto is official, but not unanimous. The Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of Hungary published on his social networks which is already preparing an appeal to the Court of Justice of the EU to overturn the ban, while Slovakia asks to extend deadlines and protect its exceptions. The political agreement exists, but the operational unity is fragile: without real coordination between partners, an energy veto can become a simple declarative gesture. The actual reading is less triumphant. According to DWthe Moscow government accused the EU of precipitating “its own economic decline” by forcing the bloc to turn to more expensive alternatives and a global LNG market where already competes with Asia for each shipment. Brussels, aware of oil precedenthas shielded the veto with a much more severe legal framework. As explained by the Financial Timescompanies that try to circumvent the ban will face fines of up to 3.5% of their global turnover, fixed penalties that can reach 40 million euros and a mandatory system of certificates of origin to prevent Russian gas sneaks in disguise in the form of opaque mixtures, triangulations or indirect re-exports. The truth is even more uncomfortable. Europe still need gas to stabilize its electrical grid and cover demand peaks when the wind does not blow or the sun disappears. According to a report by McKinsey & CompanyEurope would need 75% more flexibility before 2030 to function without that fossil support, while global gas consumption will grow by 26% until 2050, just when it should fall by 75% to comply with the Paris Agreement. Added to this is the structural stress of the European gas system. The main Dutch regasification plants—Gate and Eemshaven— operate at 90–100% capacityjust when Europe faces winter with reserves at 83%, the lowest level since 2022. Spain, despite its large regasification capacity, can barely send 7,000–8,500 million m³ per year to France: the bottleneck is in the interconnections. And a cold wave is enough to destabilize prices, as Bloomberg warns. An accelerated roadmap. Brussels insists that this time there is a plan. Each Member State must be submitted before March 2026 a national diversification plan that details how it will replace the 35 billion m³ of Russian gas that was still entering the EU last year: new suppliers, new infrastructure and new LNG routes. On paper it makes sense. In practice, it means rebuilding in two years an energy system that took four decades to build. Meanwhile, Europe is held together by an unexpected lifeline: the United States. According to Bloombergthe continent has endured in recent months thanks to a boom in American LNG, with exports at record levels. This winter Europe “will probably be fine,” but real abundance will not arrive until the second half of 2026. Any unforeseen event—extreme cold, a rebound in Chinese demand, a technical failure—could strain the system again. And meanwhile, China plays another game. Europe looks at its deposits. China dig deeper. The Asian giant increased its domestic gas production by 5.8% in the first half of 2025, has had 20 years of almost uninterrupted growth, reduced its LNG imports by 22% and is moving forward with the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, capable of absorbing 50 billion Russian m³ per year. The consequence is inevitable: if Europe stops buying, Russia you have someone to sell to. The precedent that worries Brussels. Here is the main fear: oil sanctions showed that when Europe closes a door, the market opens a window. As we have told in XatakaAfter the partial embargo, a phantom fleet of oil tankers emerged, European traders moved operations to Dubai, crude oil was mixed to hide its origin, and shell companies appeared in the Emirates that operated outside of European jurisdiction. The result was evident: Russian oil never stopped flowing, it simply changed flag, route and documentation. And that precedent is precisely what they now fear in Brussels: that gas will follow the same logic of opacity, triangulations and parallel markets. Europe promises to turn off Russian gas. On paper, it is a historic decision. By 2027, Europe says there will be no trace of Russian gas left in its energy system. In practice, the road is full of cracks: saturated infrastructure, porous sanctions, hesitant allies, a potentially cold winter and an energy transition that advances … Read more

The question is not whether Tim Cook will soon stop being CEO of Apple, but who will succeed him: Crossover 1×30

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The end of an era is approaching, they say. Or maybe not. The rumors about Tim Cook’s potential “retirement” are contradictory, and if a few days ago the Financial Times spoke about He would retire early next year.yesterday new data they threw down that possibility. But here it happens that when the river sounds, it carries water, and this conversation does not come from now, but from months ago…or years. The current CEO of Apple came to this position in 2011, after the death of Steve Jobs, and since then he has turned the company into an absolute money-making machine. One that, yes, has disappointed with (theoretical) projects like Project Titan, with a Vision Pro that for the moment is still not taking off or with the surprising irrelevance in the AI ​​segment. That’s not the problem, of course. Although Apple has consolidated itself among the three companies with the largest market capitalization in the world in recent years, what it lacks is spark and the ability to innovate. Today Apple continues to depend heavily on the iPhone, although it is true that in recent years the services have given it a lot of joy. That makes it especially interesting to set up a pool with the main candidates to succeed Tim Cook, and that is what we have done in this new installment of Crossover, in which we debate Cook’s career, but also about who can take that baton. And many variables come into play here. From that operational strategy—will the new Apple be more innovative, or will it continue to focus on making money?—to the geopolitical implications of choosing a new CEO. Because let’s face it: This position is not just technologicalbut also political and diplomatic. There is a lot to cut through here, and it will certainly be interesting to see how the next few months go. On YouTube | Crossover In Xataka | Tim Cook has admitted that Apple is “very open” to acquisitions in AI. These are our candidates

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