tons

Foie gras was one of the last armored culinary symbols of France. They did not have a rival that measures it in tons: China

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In 1778, French Marshal Jean-Pierre de Clermont-Tonnerre gave foie gras to King Louis XVI and the monarch was so impressed that he rewarded the cook with lands and a pension. Since then, the product was sealed as one of the great gastronomic symbols from France. More than two centuries later, that culinary crown is beginning to find competition far from Europe. The gastronomic bastion that seemed untouchable. For decades, the Foie gras It was one of those symbols that France considered almost part of its national DNA. It was not just a luxury product or a profitable export, it was a centerpiece of your food sovereigntya cultural emblem protected by designations of origin, rural tradition and a political machinery willing to protect it. When the sector celebrated a trade surplus in 2025 of 35.6 million eurosthe message was clear: after years of bird flu and mass slaughter, French foie gras was still standing. The wound of bird flu. The blow of bird flu It was deep. In 2022, French production fell to historic lows, barely touching the 8,000 tonsan unthinkable figure for a country used to dominating this market. The mandatory vaccination of ducks starting in 2023 managed to stabilize the sector and return it to levels close to 17,000 tons in 2025. That recovery seemed to confirm that France had closed the crisis. What no one expected is that, while he was healing his wounds, another actor was growing at full speed. China enters the scene. that actor it was china. In just a decade, it went from producing about 2,000 tons to touch 14,000placing itself dangerously close to the French leadership. The quote by Fabien Chevalierpresident of CIFOG, summarizes the surprise of the sector: “We didn’t see them coming like this.” And that is perhaps the key to everything. France thought that foie gras remained one of its last armored culinary totems. What he did not have was a rival who does not measure his ambition in tradition, but in tons. Scale changes everything. The comparison is brutal. While an average French producer produces around 10 tons per year, Chinese farms like Li Fengshan’s They produce 300 and aim for 500. The contrast is almost industrial versus artisanal. Li, who grew up in poverty and today drives a Maserati Thanks to foie gras, it symbolizes the Chinese transformation: turning a Western luxury into a mass product. On their farms, each worker handles more than 400 geese and the livers can exceed a kilo, easily doubling the usual size in France. Where the French see terroir, the Chinese see scalability. From luxury to popular consumption. The great revolution is not only in producing more, but in changing the meaning of the product. In China, foie gras is no longer just an elite delicacy: mixed with fried riceserved in a hotpot or transformed into cherry or rose-shaped desserts bathed in red wine. This democratization has triggered internal demand and has allowed prices to be drastically lowered. A dish can cost between 4 and 10 dollarscompared to 15 or 40 euros in many French restaurants. That changes the global market: when luxury becomes cheaper, the symbolic monopoly begins to break down. The next step: export. Until now, most of Chinese production stayed at home. That barrier is beginning to break down. As? Reuters counted that Chinese producers are already preparing exports to South Korea, Japan, Russia and Southeast Asia, and some have already sent batches to the United Arab Emirates. For France, the threat is not so much in Europe, where denominations continue to carry a lot of weight, but in those emerging markets where the “foie gras” label is worth more than its origin. The battle between story and volume. France continues to rely on its main advantage: the prestige. Labels such as “foie gras du Sud-Ouest” continue to be a cultural and gastronomic guarantee that is difficult to replicate. The problem is that economic history is full of examples where scale ends up eroding the story. China has subsidies, intensive labor, low costs and a immense industrial capacity. In fact, even now start talking about robots to automate force feeding. French foie gras still retains its aura, no doubt, but for the first time in a long time its dominance no longer seems like a natural inheritance. It seems like a position that will have to be defended. Image | Annie Tu, Charles Haynes In Xataka | 3D printed meat was a utopia years ago. You can now buy it in the supermarket, for 3.5 euros and made in Navarra In Xataka | France has found a way to stand up to China: the first pilot line to recycle rare earth magnets

build submarines. The last one weighs five tons and works

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Zhang Shengwu is 60 years old, he is a farmer and has not studied naval engineering, although throughout his long life he has had other jobs that can be assumed to be a handyman, such as a carpenter, welder or in the shipping industry. Back in 2014, Shengwu saw a person on TV building his own submarine and, just like you and I ventured to make a cod pil-pil after seeing Argiñano do it effortlessly (spoiler: it goes wrong), the farmer made the determination to build it for himself. As China Daily tellsnot even his family’s warnings about the risks or the cost stopped him. Just over a decade later, in early July 2025, Zhang Shengwu showed the world his creation with a successful test dive of his “Big Black Fish”, a homemade submarine weighing five tons capable of submerging eight meters, the latest of his creations. It is neither the first submarine he has made nor is it almost certainly the last. Some play petanque, I make submarines. The idea of ​​building a submarine from scratch caught his attention, so he invested 5,000 yuan (approximately 642 euros at the exchange rate) to buy sheet steel, a motor and a battery. In about six months he had built his first prototype, a submarine six meters long, 1.2 meters high, weighing two tons, how Sixth Tone collects. The bad news is that there was a leak. The good news is that the design of its prototype obtained a patent, a formal recognition by the Chinese state of the technical validity of the project. Obviously it didn’t stop there. He then built a surface ship that also got a patent. As Shengwu himself acknowledges, his head is never idle, so he already had the following project in mind: invested 40,000 yuan (just over 5,000 euros) to create the second generation of his submarine, which would later become the Big Black Fish. First submarine built by Zhang Shengwu. CCTV News His masterpiece: he Big Black Fish. He improved and lengthened the hull to seven meters and 1.8 meters high, so that its cabin now seats two people. For more stability, Zhang poured approximately two tons of concrete into the hull as a counterweight and mounted two ballast tanks at the bow and stern: “The tanks collect water to submerge and empty it to float,” explains for Sixth Tone. He didn’t want any more leaks like his previous project, so he welded every joint and installed circular hatches. This boat is capable of reaching speeds of up to four knots and Zhang is especially proud of its performance. So, details that “a small battery and a motor can propel this huge structure underwater. And it can submerge for half an hour without a single drop of water entering, it can even recoil.” Context. For someone to assemble something as complex and unintuitive as a submarine at home sounds exotic, but the reality is that in China it happens relatively often: in 2009 another inventor named Li Yuming Up to five homemade submarines were manufactured. In 2014 a former prison officer named Zhang Junlin He also developed a tourist submarine that he tested in the South China Sea. In 2015, a Shaanxi villager He borrowed 200,000 yuan to make a 9.2-meter one. Why is it important. It is no coincidence: the Chinese government has been betting on rural talent for years. Thus, in 2020 was fixed The goal is to have one million “innovation leaders” and 15 million entrepreneurs in rural areas by 2025. In fact, in Anhui, the province where Zhang Shengwu and the prison officer – inventor come from, these profiles can qualify for a one-time initial subsidy of 5,000 yuan if their activity remains stable for more than six months. Shengwu fits that profile: without a college degree but with a lot of time and persistence, he has successfully executed complex technology. Obviously not at the level of the Chinese army and its submarinesbut in a functional way: it submerges, navigates and rises. AND already have His next submarine in mind, the third: it will be larger and with more autonomy. In Xataka | A Chinese farmer wanted to take his pigs down the mountain by drone. What followed was a ten-hour blackout. In Xataka | Satellite images leave no doubt: China has launched an underwater creature into the sea that defies naval engineering Cover | CCTV and Gemini

build submarines. The last one weighs five tons and works

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Zhang Shengwu is 60 years old, he is a farmer and has not studied naval engineering, although throughout his long life he has had other jobs that can be assumed to be a handyman, such as a carpenter, welder or in the shipping industry. Back in 2014, Shengwu saw a person on TV building his own submarine and, just like you and I ventured to make a cod pil-pil after seeing Argiñano do it effortlessly (spoiler: it goes wrong), the farmer made the determination to build it for himself. As China Daily tellsnot even his family’s warnings about the risks or the cost stopped him. Just over a decade later, in early July 2025, Zhang Shengwu showed the world his creation with a successful test dive of his “Big Black Fish”, a homemade submarine weighing five tons capable of submerging eight meters, the latest of his creations. It is neither the first submarine he has made nor is it almost certainly the last. Some play petanque, I make submarines. The idea of ​​building a submarine from scratch caught his attention, so he invested 5,000 yuan (approximately 642 euros at the exchange rate) to buy sheet steel, a motor and a battery. In about six months he had built his first prototype, a submarine six meters long, 1.2 meters high, weighing two tons, how Sixth Tone collects. The bad news is that there was a leak. The good news is that the design of its prototype obtained a patent, a formal recognition by the Chinese state of the technical validity of the project. Obviously it didn’t stop there. He then built a surface ship that also got a patent. As Shengwu himself acknowledges, his head is never idle, so he already had the following project in mind: invested 40,000 yuan (just over 5,000 euros) to create the second generation of his submarine, which would later become the Big Black Fish. First submarine built by Zhang Shengwu. CCTV News His masterpiece: he Big Black Fish. He improved and lengthened the hull to seven meters and 1.8 meters high, so that its cabin now seats two people. For more stability, Zhang poured approximately two tons of concrete into the hull as a counterweight and mounted two ballast tanks in the bow and stern: “The tanks collect water to submerge and empty it to float,” explains for Sixth Tone. He didn’t want any more leaks like his previous project, so he welded every joint and installed circular hatches. This boat is capable of reaching speeds of up to four knots and Zhang is especially proud of its performance. So, details that “a small battery and a motor can propel this huge structure underwater. And it can submerge for half an hour without a single drop of water entering, it can even recoil.” Context. For someone to assemble something as complex and unintuitive as a submarine at home sounds exotic, but the reality is that in China it happens relatively often: in 2009 another inventor named Li Yuming Up to five homemade submarines were manufactured. In 2014 a former prison officer named Zhang Junlin He also developed a tourist submarine that he tested in the South China Sea. In 2015, a Shaanxi villager He borrowed 200,000 yuan to make a 9.2-meter one. Why is it important. It is no coincidence: the Chinese government has been betting on rural talent for years. Thus, in 2020 was fixed The goal is to have one million “innovation leaders” and 15 million entrepreneurs in rural areas by 2025. In fact, in Anhui, the province where Zhang Shengwu and the prison officer – inventor come from, these profiles can qualify for a one-time initial subsidy of 5,000 yuan if their activity remains stable for more than six months. Shengwu fits that profile: without a college degree but with a lot of time and persistence, he has successfully executed complex technology. Obviously not at the level of the Chinese army and its submarinesbut in a functional way: it submerges, navigates and rises. AND already have His next submarine in mind, the third: it will be larger and with more autonomy. In Xataka | A Chinese farmer wanted to take his pigs down the mountain by drone. What followed was a ten-hour blackout. In Xataka | Satellite images leave no doubt: China has launched an underwater creature into the sea that defies naval engineering Cover | CCTV and Gemini

how to blow up a bridge without tons of bombs

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In May 1943, the RAF launched the famous Operation Chastise: 19 bombers with the so-called “bouncing bombs” of Barnes Wallis to destroy german dams. It was the most sophisticated solution of its time to a classic problem: how to break a gigantic structure with precision. Eight decades later, that same obsession lives on, only now it fits in an operator’s backpack A bridge as an eternal military obsession. There are few things more valuable in a war than a bridge. Concentrating troops, armor and logistics in an obligatory step turns these structures into strategic arteries, and that is why destroying them has always been a military priority. The problem is that they are hard targets by nature: decades of doctrine taught that to knock one down bombers, heavy artillery or high-cost missiles were needed. An alternative has just appeared in Ukraine that breaks that logic. It is not more powerful or faster, but it is much cheaper and more persistent: dozens of small suicide drones working like a colony of termites until the structure is emptied from within. Solve an old problem with new things. What is really important here is not only that Russia has demolished a bridge with 43 FPV dronesbut it demonstrates something that for years was almost a laboratory hypothesis: that tons of explosives are no longer needed to blow up critical infrastructure. During World War II, sinking a bridge could require hundreds of tons of air-dropped bombs. Then came weapons like the ATACMS either the JDAM to do it precisely. Now the equation changes again: less than 250 pounds of ammunition distributed in small impacts can achieve the same effect. The military obsession of “how to cut off the enemy” has just become radically cheaper. The structural logic of collapse. The key is not to destroy it in one fell swoop, but to understand how does a bridge hold up. Reinforced concrete is strong because it combines two materials with different functions: concrete supports compression and steel absorbs tension. The FPVs they don’t need split the entire column. They just have to go tearing off layers of concrete until the metal skeleton is exposed. At that moment the structure loses much of its load capacity. The steel is still there, but it is no longer enough to support the weight. The bridge begins to collapse on itself and collapse due to structural fatigue. The war of accumulation. This introduces a completely different logic to military destruction. Before, power concentrated in a single blow mattered. Now it matters sum of many blows small, extremely precise and always directed to the same point. The first impacts barely remove fragments of cement. The following deepen the crack. The latter turn the column into an empty shell. It’s something like the industrialization of wear: a slow, but surgical method. What once required an aerial window, tactical superiority, and millions of dollars can now be done with patience, coordination, and a backpack. full of quadcopters. Ridiculous cost, enormous strategic effect. The most brutal fact is economic. The 43 FPVs used in the attack They would have cost less than $25,000. That’s about half of a single American guided bomb and a ridiculous fraction of the price of an ATACMS missile. The comparison is devastating for any classical military planning, because for the cost of a single strategic missile you can launch forty similar attacks. And without exposing pilots, planes or large platforms. It is the democratization of tactical demolition: destroying critical infrastructure is no longer the privilege of those who have heavy aviation. What comes next. Possibly, the big impact of this is not on the bridge in question, but on what it redefines as a viable objective from now on. If a handful of FPVs can knock down a highway structure, railway bridges, overpasses, logistics warehouses and even tall buildings start to come into the equation. Even more so if the drones use linear hollow charges capable of directly cutting steel bars. Systems like Pasikawhich allow a single operator to control entire swarms, further accelerate that process. The question is no longer whether they can do it. The question is how many critical structures in the world are still designed under the old idea that only big bombs can bring them down. Ukraine is showing that that era is over. Image | Rasal HagueDmitro Zavtonov In Xataka | “Speed ​​is not the key”: the trick against all logic of Ukrainian drones to hunt the fearsome Russian shahed In Xataka | “They are preparing the deployment of 80,000 soldiers”: satellites indicate where Russia is heading in Europe after Ukraine

With 3,500 tons and 15 meters in diameter, China already has the largest tunnel boring machine in the world for high-speed trains

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China has just introduced Jiaoping No.1, the world’s largest earth pressure balance (EPB) TBM designed specifically for high-speed railway tunnels. According to counted recently reported by the state broadcaster CGTN, it is a 3,500-ton colossus with an excavation diameter of 14.57 meters, capable of also using artificial intelligence to monitor, adjust and correct breakdowns while drilling underground, all under extreme underground conditions. We tell you everything. What exactly is it. An earth pressure balance tunnel boring machine is a type of machine that excavates the ground while supporting it at the same time. The rotating head (cutting head) tears off material from the front, which accumulates in a closed chamber just behind. This accumulated earth acts as a “plug” and compensates for the natural pressure of the soil and water, preventing the excavation face from collapsing or the surface land from sinking. For soft soils or urban areas, it is a widely used method and we have seen it other times, like in Madrid with ‘Mayrit’ for transform L11. Why size matters. The larger the tunnel, the more complex and heavier the equipment needed to excavate it, and the more difficult it is to keep such a large excavation face stable. The latest one presented in China is almost 15 meters in diameter and specializes in high-speed lines, so it exceeds a considerable technical ceiling. It is a diameter comparable to that of the largest Chinese underwater tunnel boring machines, like the Dinghaiwhich has an identical maximum excavation diameter (14.57 meters) for the Jintang underwater tunnel. What AI does. According to the media, Jiaoping No.1 incorporates AI to monitor drilling in real time, adjust parameters and detect failures autonomously. And it is something that we see more and more in machinery of this caliber, since in recent projects such as the yangtze river tunnel between Chongming and Taicang, the Linghang TBM employs, according to Interesting Engineeringan intelligent control system capable of automatically regulating pressure, anticipating ground conditions using data and self-guiding during progress. Independence of the West. As has happened in many other sectors, China has gone from depending almost completely on foreign technology to dominating the world market in just a few years. Until a decade ago, German and Japanese manufacturers controlled the vast majority of this market. The turning point came in 2017, when China presented its first domestically manufactured 15-meter class TBM. Today the situation is very different. And according to data from People’s Daily, Chinese-made tunnel boring machines They hold close to 70% of the global market. Behind these teams are usually large state groups such as China Railway Engineering Equipment Group (CREG), the largest manufacturer in the country, or China Railway Construction Heavy Industry. What is all this for? The ultimate goal of these machines is to allow high-speed trains to cross rivers, seas and mountains at 350 km/h inside tunnels, something that a decade ago was a much greater challenge. Projects like the Yangtze Undersea Tunnel seek to drastically cut travel times between large cities and boost the economy of entire regions. And a tunnel boring machine like the Jiaoping No.1 makes its way however it wants. Cover image | Modern China In Xataka | Spain and Morocco have been dreaming of a tunnel under the Strait for 40 years. The great enemy of the project is called Umbral de Camarinal

China is very clear about how to win the technology race over the rest of the world: with tons of public money

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China has insisted on be the first world power. This declaration of intentions can be as empty as every January 1st when I say that this year I will begin to wake up at six in the morning to go out for a run, or the opposite can happen: they put all the means at their disposal to achieve it. In the case of the Asian giant, what is happening is the second. The Five-Year Plan is the roadmap that the Government sets every five years and that indicates the direction they should follow both public institutions and private companies to achieve the country’s objective. And with a defined objective, there is only one pending issue: the question of financing. And, in the case of China, that translates into a government impulse that other countries do not have. A competition at two speeds OECD stands for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It is made up of 38 States, including North Americans, some South Americans, many Europeans, Australia and Japan.

There is a medieval city in Germany built in a meteorite crater. Its walls hide 72,000 tons of diamonds

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If you’ve seen Shingeki no Kyojin (if you haven’t, I’m envious), the comparison with Shiganshina is inevitable: the image on the left of the montage on the cover corresponds to the Nördlingen market square and the one on the right is the city seen from above, completely fortified with a wall that surrounds it. However and although it is fan pilgrimage destination of the series, there is officially no relationship between the two. At first glance, the architecture of Nördlingen makes it just another fairytale Bavarian village, but this German city in the Donau-Ries district (in Swabia) is anything but just another one. In 1215, Emperor Frederick II promoted it to an imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire and a century later they began to build the wall. The municipality is integrated within the crater that left a meteorite when it fell. However, we know this now: until the 1960s, geologists themselves thought that the depression was an inactive volcano. Nördlingen is in a crater. He Nördlinger Ries It is a depression 24 kilometers wide and up to 150 meters caused by the impact of a meteorite approximately one kilometer in diameter in the Miocene, which pierced a primary crater of 11 kilometers. As deepens the International Union of Geological Sciencesthat hole grew due to the uplift of the crater floor and marginal collapse, until it reached what it is now. The Ries asteroid impacted with a speed of at least 70,000 km/h, causing an explosion of heat and energy that lasted approximately 10 minutes: the shock wave traveled through the area, setting everything on fire up to 100 kilometers away, which ended life in that radius. Afterwards, a lake was formed where diverse flora and fauna settled. The findings in the nearby Ofnet caves They confirm that the site of today’s Nördlingen was already inhabited in the late Paleolithic. The wall outlines the diameter of the meteorite. When in 1327 Louis the Bavarian ordered build the wall of Nördlingen, no one knew that he was tracing the exact outline of the meteorite that had hit there 15 million years earlier, as notes NASA. The medieval historic center fits almost perfectly within the kilometer diameter of the primary crater: a geological coincidence that would not be discovered until the 20th century. With a perimeter of 2.7 kilometers, it is one of the three medieval walls of Germany preserved almost intact and the only one that can be visited in its entirety: five gates, twelve towers and two bastions make up this circuit that, seen from the top of the Daniel tower, reveals its perfectly circular shape: the underlying trace of the Miocene catastrophe. And a small detail: it is made with stones that house small diamonds. The wall of Nördlingen. Wolkenkratzer, via Wikimedia Walls made of diamonds. Cities usually have their stone quarry, but Nördlingen had diamonds: the meteorite impact generated an estimated 72,000 tons of them when it hit a local graphite deposit, so its stone buildings contain millions of small diamonds. The stone is not just any one either: it is the sueviteextremely rare and marbled with small greenish crystals. It is found in other locations on the planet where there were similar impacts, but the concentration of gems in Nördlingen is unique. Those who built those buildings did not know that they were working with diamonds: they discovered it after the visit of Eugene Shoemaker and Edward Chaothe two American geologists who in 1960 demonstrated the origin by impact by finding shock quartz in the walls of St. George’s Church. St. George’s Church. Tkx via Wikimedia The “luxurious” church of St. George. Normally jewelry in churches is reserved for the altarpieces, but in San Jorge they are also on the walls. In fact, it was the construction that revealed the use of suevite extracted from the Ries basin. St. George’s is one of the largest late Gothic hall churches in southern Germany and was built between 1427 and 1505, when Nördlingen was Imperial. The church tower is known as “Daniel” and is 90 meters high: after climbing 350 steps you can reach the viewpoint (70 meters away), where you can observe the perfectly circular shape of the city and the crater that surrounds it. The tower also preserves one of the most unusual traditions of modern Europe: a night watchman who has been shouting before midnight since the Middle Ages to warn that everything is fine. Nördlingen, space training ground. Since impact craters also occur on the Moon and Mars, Nördlinger Ries has been used for decades as a training ground to teach astronauts to recognize the rocks and minerals created by impacts. the astronauts from Apollo 14 and NASA’s Apollo 17 studied the geology of the crater in 1970. But It is not something exclusive of the North American space agency: it is one of the three destinations of the program PANGAEA of the European Space Agency, along with the Italian Dolomites and Lanzarote. JAXA has also carried out training there. In Xataka | That Christian Friedrich von Kahlbut died in 1702 is nothing exceptional. That his corpse has not decomposed, yes In Xataka | A treasure hunter looted a shipwreck, did not reveal where he had kept the treasure and spent 10 years in prison. Now you are free to get it back Cover | Tilman2007 and Bayerische Vermessungsverwaltung

In Nepal they have begun to fill their streets with tons of plastic waste. Their goal: to be more sustainable

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In Nepal they have begun to fill their streets with garbage. Kilos and more kilos of discarded plastic, old open noodle packages, cookie containers and other synthetic waste that (due to their characteristics) it’s not always easy recycle. The prospect of walking or driving on trash-strewn asphalt may not seem too appealing, but it makes perfect sense and is something that has been done before (or at least tried out) in other parts of the world. Asia, Europe, Africa either America. Of course, usually in a timid way. The key is that plastic waste is not dispersed directly on the pavement. No. They are part of it, of its structure. Even there are those who maintain that improves it. Pavement with garbage? Exact. If every year we produce more than 400 million tons of plastic, much of it destined for single-use packaging and which is then difficult to recycle, and we also build (and repave) kilometers and kilometers of roads every year… Why not connect both things? What if we used the most difficult to recycle synthetic waste to make pavement? What if this material was also better than conventional asphalt? The idea It’s not entirely new and there are those who question whether it is really as sustainable and good as it seems, but the truth is that over the last few years it has attracted the interest of entrepreneurs and institutions from different countries. Usually (not always) in a timid, almost experimental way, with pilot projects and in more or less short periods, but it has managed to stay in the limelight. Click on the image to go to the tweet. Where has it been tested? A quick search on Google shows that over the last five years, “plastic paving” has convinced a few entrepreneurs and institutions from around the world. We see examples in Philippines, Thailand, South Africa, Netherlands, USA, Singapore either Indiaone of the countries that has opted most decisively for this solution. In 2024 Business Standard informed that in the Asian country they had built almost 40,000 kilometers of rural tracks that included plastic waste, 13,000 of them completed in recent years. In Singapore the idea too seems to have curdled and has received the endorsement of the Public Works area. And Nepal arrived. Nepal is one of the latest to join the list. In 2025 the AFP agency published an extensive report in which he explained how the idea has reached the Asian republic, where it has already been used on at least one highway in Pokharaa city of 600,000 inhabitants that serves as the capital of Gandaki province. There the plastic flooring formula has the support of Green Road Waste Managementan organization that is trying to expand it in Nepal. Step by step. In 2025, the founder of the entity, Bimal Bastola, he assured AFP who had completed around a dozen projects totaling just over a mile. It’s not much, but the organization maintains that each kilometer of pavement uses about two metric tons of shredded plastic to build. Bastola advocates going further and carrying out projects at the government level. “We try to collaborate with the highway office.” A priori it seems that the Government does not take a dim view of the measure. Arjun Nepal, an engineer at the capital’s highway department recognize that the country “is interested in testing the technology in pilot projects,” but warns that to move forward it is necessary to first guarantee a series of quality standards. Hence the authorities wanted to carry out a test in Kathmandu. “We saw possibilities”. Bastola defends the virtues of paving with synthetic waste and remembers that it even allows lower value waste to be reused. “We saw possibilities in using these plastics as raw materials, partially replacing tar in road construction,” argues to AFP. The new system does not dispense with this material, but first covers the pavement components with crushed plastic. In addition to providing an outlet for part of the tons of plastic that are generated every day in Nepalese urban areas, Bastola assures that the system saves certain materials, reduces costs and has extra advantages for the pavement itself. “It prevents water infiltration and increases the useful life of the track,” claims. There are studies that endorse These surfaces can last longer than normal ones. Perfect, right? Depends. Although the system has sparked interest in several countries, including Nepal and its neighbors Bhutan and Bangladesh, not everyone is sure it is such a good option. Or at least it has proven to be so. From the World Bank have admitted that there are “promising” pilot studies, but they lack more research: What and how many emissions are produced during the production of the pavement? How does it actually behave in practice? Does it release microplastics? What is their impact once the plastic tracks are removed? “Garbage in for garbage out”, they warned in 2020 at GAIA on solutions such as asphalt and cement with crushed plastic remains. Images | Laurentiu Morariu (Unsplash) In Xataka | We have been thinking for decades that plastic recycling was worth something. Maybe we were wrong

move two million tons of sand

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The paradisiacal coastline of the central Algarve is facing one of the great coastal problems of recent decades, the result of rising sea levels and extreme weather events happening more and more often: the ocean is swallowing its beaches. So he has left behind the classic breakwaters to carry out one of the most ambitious coastal regenerations of its history: moving more than two million tons of sand from the seabed to the shore. There is no beach in the Algarve. The problem of erosion in the area of ​​Forte Novo beach and Garrão beach (both in the municipality of Loulé, Faro district) is not new, but this winter’s storms aggravated it in a worrying way, as explains the Portuguese Environment Agency: Their records have documented a maximum retreat of up to 15 meters on Loulé Velho-Trafal beach and 14 meters in the Quarteira-Garrão area. On Forte Novo beach, a retreat of an additional six meters was detected. These data place this section as one of the most critical in all of continental Portugal. Why is it important. Coastal erosion represents a real physical risk for the population and infrastructure: when the sand of a beach recedes in a sustained manner, the coast is directly exposed to the waves, which accelerates the erosion of cliffs, threatens nearby infrastructure and destroys the associated dune ecosystems. According to a report By 2024 published on the European Union’s Copernicus science platform, between 27 and 40 percent of European sandy coasts are experiencing active retreat, with special incidence in the Mediterranean and the Iberian Atlantic. On the other hand, the Algarve is one of the great tourist engines of Portugal. The region recorded more than 20 million overnight stays in 2023, according to the National Institute of Statistics Portuguese and in 2025 concentrated 85 beaches with the Blue Flag, the highest European certification of coastal quality. Losing beaches means losing its main economic asset, which mostly lives off of sun and sea tourism. Coastal erosion patterns in Europe. European Environment Agency Context. This intervention is part of the Integrated Coastal Zone Management Strategy of Portugal, which aims to achieve a harmoniously and sustainably developed coastal area within a period of 20 years (in force since 2009). The APA has already carried out similar and even larger operations: it holds the record Figueira da Foz, where it moved more than 3.3 million cubic meters of sediments in the Cova-Gala/Costa de Lavos section, with an investment of 21.1 million euros. The Quarteira-Garrão operation is, therefore, the second major operation of this type in just over a year, which reflects the State’s policy on coastal protection. The Quarteira-Garrão project is the technical response to a regional-scale problem of the erosive dynamics that affects the entire Gulf of Cádiz. Portugal has opted for large contributions of sand instead of building rigid rock breakwaters, following European trends. These types of solutions seek to have a lower visual impact and better integration into the dynamic coastal ecosystem. In figures. The operation, without being the largest in the history of Portugal, it has some numbers that impact: Transfer of approximately 1.4 million cubic meters of sand (about two million tons). Rehabilitation of 6.7 kilometers of coastline. Planned average widening of 37 meters. Tender budget: 14.9 million euros. How are they doing it. The technique that Portugal is applying is called artificial beach feeding or beach nourishment and consists of extracting sediments from nearby underwater areas and depositing them on the shore through dredging and pipelines. The project has been executed in phases, section by section and in coordination with the Cultural Heritage Agency of Portugal and after an environmental impact assessment: on the one hand, to control the deposition of sediments at each point avoiding saturation and on the other, because this underwater extraction area contains remains of underwater archaeological heritage. The works began between April 2 and 3 and completion was scheduled for May 6, in time for the beginning of the bathing season. Yes, but. The artificial regeneration of beaches is an effective solution in the short and medium term, but it does not solve the underlying problem as science warns: the deposited sand moves again due to the action of waves, currents and storms. In most cases documented in Europeregenerated beaches require new intervention after a few years (it can be more than a decade), depending on the energy exposure of the coast. The underlying structural problem is the chronic loss of sediment throughout the coastal system, aggravated by climate change, the rise in sea level and the reduction in the river supply of sand caused by the regulation of rivers with dams. If these causes are not solved comprehensively, beach recharge is putting a patch on. In fact, the APA itself recognizes it by framing the intervention within a broader coastal protection strategy and continuously monitoring for the next action. In Xataka | Portugal’s radical proposal to stop touristification: an underwater cable that connects with the US In Xataka | “I am an engineer, politics is not my profession”: the mayor of Lisbon has turned it into a magnet for European startups Cover | Bengt Nyman and Ludovico Ceroseis

Some archaeologists have found 80 tons of stones under the sea. Everything points to one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

by

At the end of the 19th century, several fishermen in the port of Alexandria began to accidentally catch huge fragments of stone entangled in their networks. Some were so large and strange that stories circulated for years about giant ruins hidden underwater off the Egyptian coast. Long before underwater scanners or digital archeology existed, the Mediterranean was already hinting that beneath its waters remained buried a monumental part of the ancient world. 80 tons to return a wonder. Archaeologists and divers they have been finding for years huge blocks of granite and limestone under the waters of Alexandria, but the latest works have triggered a fascinating idea: everything indicates that the Mediterranean is returning key fragments of the legendary Alexandria Lighthouseone of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Some of the recovered blocks weigh up to 80 tons and were part of monumental entrances, platforms and gigantic structures that for centuries remained dispersed on the seabed. The discovery is not only allowing us to reconstruct what the lighthouse really was like, but it is also changing many of the theories that existed about its size, its engineering and its final appearance. A gigantic tower that dominated the Mediterranean. The Lighthouse of Alexandria began to be built at the beginning of the 3rd century BC under the reign of Ptolemy I Soter and it was designed by Sostratus of Cnidus on the island of Pharos, opposite the Egyptian port. Ancient sources described a structure of more than a hundred meters higha type of Hellenistic skyscraper visible dozens of kilometers out to sea thanks to its enormous night fire and complex reflective systems. For more than sixteen hundred years it served as a guide for ships arriving at one of the most important ports in the Mediterranean, also becoming a political symbol of the Ptolemaic power and the ambition of the Alexandria founded after the death of Alexander the Great. Some Roman chroniclers even stated that its light was so intense that it could be confused with a star. 3D reconstruction of the Alexandria Lighthouse The sea ended up swallowing the wonder. The structure withstood earthquakes for centuries, but several huge earthquakes between the 14th and 15th centuries they ended up destroying it almost completely. Part of its stones were later reused to build the Qaitbay fortresswhich still occupies the same coastal area, while the rest of the ancient city began to slowly sink under the sea due to geological movements and the relative rise in the level of the Mediterranean. Over the centuries, the lighthouse eventually disappeared beneath murky waters filled with sediment, architectural remains, and huge stone fragments scattered across dozens of underwater acres. For a long time, historians even thought that ancient descriptions of its size had been exaggerated. Remains of a lighthouse in the Mediterranean Sea A gigantic puzzle. Everything began to change when French and Egyptian archaeologists began to systematically map the eastern port of Alexandria in the 1990s. Sphinxes, columns, colossal statues and gigantic door frames weighing up to seventy tons appeared under the water, but recent work from the PHAROS project They have taken the process much further. Only in recent campaigns have rrecovered 22 huge blocks of granite using special cranes mounted on barges, including lintels, jambs and pieces of a hitherto unknown structure that mixed Egyptian architectural elements and Greek construction techniques. Each find reinforces the idea that the lighthouse was not just a functional tower, but a monumental demonstration of the multicultural power of Hellenistic Alexandria. Reconstructed block by block… but digitally. The New York Times said last February in an extensive report that the great advance of the PHAROS project is not only in removing stones from the water, but in virtually rebuilding the lighthouse with a never seen before precision. The researchers have scanned thousands of fragments using photogrammetry to create a “digital twin” capable of recomposing the building piece by piece without continually moving extremely fragile and heavy materials. Thanks to this, engineers and archaeologists are discovering how the blocks really fit together, how they worked the joining systems and what techniques allowed such a gigantic structure to be built more than two thousand years ago. Investigations have also revealed that the lighthouse used advanced assembly systems with clamps and huge interconnected blocks, something that helps explain how it was able to survive so many centuries against earthquakes and storms. The modern Mediterranean like ancient earthquakes. Archaeological work is also carried out in an increasingly complicated environment. The waters off Alexandria have very poor visibilityare full of pollution and suffer a progressive rise in sea level while the coast itself continues to slowly sink. The researchers they warn that the Mediterranean is warming faster than many other regions of the planet and that the accumulation of waste and sediments makes underwater documentation tasks increasingly difficult. Paradoxically, while technology allows one of the greatest wonders of Antiquity to be digitally reconstructed, the environment where its physical remains remain becomes more hostile and vulnerable year after year. One of the Seven Wonders reappearing. The most striking thing of all is that the project has already managed to dismantle many historical doubts about him Alexandria Lighthouse. Researchers now believe that the ancient chronicles probably they did not exaggerate: The tower really must have been as colossal and advanced as classical authors described. The recovered blocks, some almost impossible in size even for modern engineering, are allowing locate monumental entrancesplatforms and structural elements with unprecedented precision. Little by little, under the waters of Alexandria, one of the most famous constructions in all of human history is ceasing to be a myth and once again taking on a real form. Image | PHAROS, SciVi 3D studio, Roland Unger In Xataka | Some 5,000-year-old tombs went unnoticed for millennia. Until we look from the sky In Xataka | The “Gate of Hell” has been burning in the middle of the Turkmenistan desert for half a century. And now it’s fading

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