unexpected

Millionaires are fleeing the Middle East. And their unexpected destination is a small Swiss canton called Zug.

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In 2011, during the Arab Spring, several European private banks detected an unusual phenomenon: Within days, high-net-worth clients began transferring large sums from the Middle East into accounts in Switzerland without prior notice. It wasn’t the first time something like this happened, but it was one of the fastest. That left a clear lesson in the financial sector: when stability falters, money does not wait to understand what happens, it simply moves. War moves money. we have been counting. The war in the Middle East is not only altering military and energy balances, it is also causing a silent movement but massive capital. What were previously fiscal decisions or lifestyle They have become urgent security decisions, where the priority is no longer optimizing profits, but protecting assets. In this context, an idea begins to prevail: billionaires do not wait for the situation to get worse, they go aheadand that movement is redrawing the global map of wealth in real time. Dubai is no longer an unquestionable refuge. For years, Dubai was the natural destination for international fortunes seeking stability, tax benefits and a secure environment in a complex region. However, the conflict with Iran has introduced a variable that previously seemed controlled: the direct risk. That perception has been enough for activate discrete outputs but constant numbers of businessmen, executives and large assets who are now looking for more predictable alternatives outside the gulf. This is not a collapse, but a change in mentality: when security is no longer absolute, attractiveness quickly erodes. Aerial view of Zug And, suddenly, Zug. In this displacement, the place that is attracting attention is not a great global capital, but a small swiss canton of just 135,000 inhabitants: Zug. Traditionally known for its role in commodities trading and, more recently, in crypto ecosystemhas become the first destination that many of these capitals look to. Reasons? counted the financial times that both wealth managers and bankers agree that demand has grown significantly since the beginning of the conflict, to the point that for many clients the request is direct and automatic: move there. The call effect. This growing flow is having immediate consequences in an already limited market, especially when it comes to housing. Demand has rapidly outstripped supply, generating intense competition for any property available and lines even for modest rentals. Added to this are administrative barriers that make entry difficult, especially for those who do not belong to the European Union, forcing residence to be linked to employment, investment or specific tax agreements. Zug attractsbut it does not absorb without friction. Switzerland reinforces its role in the geopolitics of money. What is happening in Zug is not an isolated phenomenon, but rather part of a broader dynamic in which Switzerland consolidates again as a refuge in times of uncertainty. Its political stability, its legal framework and its financial tradition make it a almost automatic destiny when overall risk increases. In fact, other cantons like Lugano have begun to capture part of this growing demand, expanding the phenomenon and confirming that the movement has only just begun. A map of wealth that changes with each conflict. In short, the result is a progressive movement of money from risk areas to safe enclaves, where each crisis acts as a catalyst. The war in the Middle East is accelerating this process and leaving one conclusion abundantly clear: global fortunes are no longer driven only by opportunity, but for threats. And in that new balance, places so small and discreet like Zug They can become, almost without noise, the great beneficiaries of an increasingly unstable world. Image | Schulerst , IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, LohriPR In Xataka | The most buoyant market right now is selling streaming and satellite images of US movements to Iran. In Xataka | Commercial aviation is based on very old aircraft. The Iran war is going to make it even worse

We have found the father of the Roman legion belts in a totally unexpected place: an Asturian cave

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The spectacular expansion of the Roman Empire (at its greatest splendor, Rome It covered three continents) was not based solely and exclusively on its numerical superiority and conquering hunger, but also on its ability to absorb and adapt technology. That is, as the legions advanced, Rome absorbed and perfected those military innovations that it found in the conquered peoples. This process of cultural transfer is what allowed the Roman army to evolve from a citizen militia to a professional, standardized war machine. An example of this assimilation phenomenon is found in the Iberian Peninsula. Within the framework of the Asturian-Cantabrian wars (29-19 BC), the last great conflict of the conquest of Hispania under the mandate of Augustus, is where the military complex found in the La Cerrosa-Lagaña cave (Asturias) acquires critical importance. The study, published in the Spal Magazineevidence that is more than an archaeological remains: it is the material proof of how a belt native to the plateau became the prototype of the iconic cingulum of the imperial legionnaire. The discovery. He found set It includes a dagger sheath with curved edges accompanied by an articulated bronze belt made up of sheets, a bronze omega fibula, a razor, a spear and human remains. There were also 807 animal remains belonging to 36 specimens of bovids, ovicaprines, equids, suids and canids, as if it were a ritual banquet or sacrifice. But let’s go to the star element: an articulated suspension belt made of bronze, composed of a buckle and four openwork plates of great technical complexity. This system of riveted plates allowed greater flexibility than leather straps and was not something random: it was a design designed to support the weight of a sheath (like the one found) and allow quick extraction of the weapon in combat. The sophistication of the plates suggests high-quality manufacturing, linked to workshops with a long tradition in iron and bronze metalwork. Hypothetical reconstruction of the belt and sheath assembly with curved edges found in the La Cerrosa-Lagaña cave. Spal Magazine Why is it important. This belt is something like the missing link in the evolution of military equipment: it demonstrates that pieces that we traditionally consider “purely Roman” actually have a foreign origin. Their discovery allows researchers to precisely trace the process of technological transfer, documenting how the functionality of Hispanic defensive equipment was absorbed, perfected and standardized by the Roman State to equip its legions throughout the Empire. Context. The discovery was not found in a military camp, but in a deep and difficult to access gallery in a cave. The context points to liturgical: the research team proposes that it was possibly a captured enemy who was the object of a sacrifice or ritual (possibly a captured Roman soldier), as an offering to the Cantabrian divinities in the face of the advancing Roman army. The dating places the human remains around the 1st century BC. This type of deposits in natural cavities reflects the religious practices of the people of the north and the Plateau, who considered the caves as thresholds to the underworld. The main hypothesis. The thesis supported by the research team is: Technological hybridization, insofar as the belt was not manufactured in Roman workshops, but in Vaccean and Celtiberian workshops (pre-Roman peoples of the Plateau). It later became the standard belt of the Roman legions, the cingulumto address the need for more flexible and durable equipment. The evolution. There is evidence that the belt plates resemble others found in Roman military camps such as Numancia and Renieblas, what it suggests that local artisans developed prototypes that Rome adopted and standardized. Yes, but. Beyond the doubt of the ethnic identity of the buried soldier, since it is unknown whether he was a Roman soldier who had adopted the local uniform for its greater efficiency or a native warrior who served as an auxiliary to the Roman topas, the key lies in the origin of the cingulum. The main thesis points out that the model was the father of the Roman belt par excellence, but more findings are missing from other parts of Europe to confirm that this evolution occurred exclusively in Hispania and was not a parallel process on other borders of the Empire. In Xataka | A cargo sunk in a Swiss lake 2,000 years ago confirms it: the Roman legions did not deprive themselves of anything In Xataka | We have been arguing for years about the origin of writing. Now an Asturian cave can settle the debate Cover | Jametlene Reskp and Spal (Study of a ritual deposit from the Asturian-Cantabrian wars: the set of the curved-edged dagger from the La Cerrosa-Lagaña cave (Suarias, Asturias, Spain) as a link between the indigenous dagger belts and the Roman cingulum)

The countries of the Persian Gulf have adopted an unexpected civil protection measure against Iran’s attacks: teleworking

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When an employee in Riyadh receives an email from his company telling him not to come to the office the next day, the most common reason was usually a sandstorm, construction work, or a holiday. In recent weeks, the reason has been something else: the possibility that its offices, probably located in a downtown financial district, could become Iranian missile target. In the Persian Gulf, teleworking has ceased to be a post-pandemic convenience and has become a civil protection tool in the midst of a geopolitical crisis that has been repeated in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain since the start of the armed conflict between the US, Israel and Iran. Riyadh: the most visible offices, the first to be emptied. According to published Reutersseveral Western and Saudi companies in Riyadh this week expanded their teleworking recommendations via email or text message sent to their employees. The notices focused on employees working in the King Abdullah financial district, Faisaliah Tower, Business Gate and Laysen Valley, areas where major US banks, technology companies such as Microsoft and Apple, and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund itself are based. The arguments for adopting this measure were not unfounded. Iran threatened to attack American interests in the region in retaliation and, in fact, attacked several Amazon data centers in United Arab Emirates. The order to telework does not mean that this simple measure will keep the civilian population safe, but it does distance them from the international offices occupied by American companies. The Arab Emirates were the first to adopt teleworking. The United Arab Emirates were, in fact, the first in ordering teleworking for its employees, immediately after Iran’s first attacks. According to published the local newspaper Khaleej Times, The Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratization asked private companies to adopt teleworking as a precautionary measure, keeping only workers whose physical presence was essential in their jobs. In those first attacks, four people were injured by debris from intercepted drones that fell on residential buildings, and damage was reported to the dubai international airportthe Burj Al Arab and the Palm Jumeirah. Teleworking recommended, not mandatory. The authorities of other countries in the region, such as Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, also followed in the footsteps of the United Arab Emirates and recommended private companies adopt teleworking and restrictions on influx to offices due to the risk of Iranian missile attacks. Qatar, also punished for reprisals against US interests during the conflict, was another of the countries that activated teleworking protocols for its officials. However, something that all of them have in common is that none of them consider themselves as an obligation to teleworkbut rather companies are recommended to adopt teleworking, leaving the risk assessment to their discretion and that of local authorities. The Government of Dubai Media Office confirmed that the emirate’s private sector continued operating normally, with most business activities uninterrupted despite the risk of attacks. A region that learns to work under pressure. Although these countries are not officially at war with Iran, they are involved and targeted in Iranian attacks in retaliation against US and Israeli companies in the area. In this context, many fear that any escalation would lead Iran to attack critical infrastructure in the region more forcefully, which explains the caution of companies even after the announcement of the ceasefire reached in extremis during the early morning. trump qualified the pact of “total and complete victory.” But as negotiators work in Islamabad to turn that provisional ceasefire into a lasting agreement, Gulf companies continue to watch the calendar with one eye on the news and another on their security protocols to protect their employees. In Xataka | Working from anywhere was the dream of teleworking: not notifying those location changes can get you fired Image | Unsplash (Kate Trysh, Microsoft Copilot)

With the RAM market in crisis, an unexpected winner appears: China

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The saying goes that, in a troubled river, fishermen gain. In the case of the RAM crisisto a troubled market, manufacturers profit. All devices need NAND chips. They are the ones that go into the RAM memory or the storage that is used from the mobile phone to the car, the router and the SD memories and Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are the ones that control the majority of the production. The data centers need a huge amount of memorywhich has caused everything other than producing for them to be missing out on a large portion of the pie, which is why the three companies have thrown themselves into it. And, since their most important factories cannot do more, they have made the decision to inject a lot of money into China, which is not their favorite scenario, but what gives immediate relief. And all the extra RAM they make… it’s not going to be for us. Exploited. A few weeks ago we said that Jensen Huang, boss of NVIDIA, had met with senior officials from the Asian technology industry, including executives from TSMC and Samsung. He told the first ones to get their act together because NVIDIA was going to need a lot of wafers this year. In the seconds, more of the same, but with HBM4 memory new generation. Shortly after, it was Lisa Su, AMD’s boss, who visited Samsung’s offices in South Korea to reach a deal for HBM4 memory of South Koreans for AMD’s new platform focused on artificial intelligence. Everything moves to the tune of AI training and inference. We are talking about Samsung, but SK Hynix is ​​also developing new generation memory and the objective is the same: to produce everything possible because, although as users we cannot buy RAM or SSD and Valve can’t make the Steam Machinethey are doing great. Wons galore. The problem is that, although the numbers come out, the production lines can’t take it anymore. There are very few companies to create RAM that supplies a brutal demand, and that means that they either expand… or they don’t arrive. And that is precisely what they are doing, but looking at the industrial fabric that can serve as support: what they have been manufacturing in China. In SCMP we can read that Samsung is going to intensify its investment in its Xi’an plant. Specifically, 67.5% compared to the previous year. This will bring the investment to 465.4 billion won -about 264 million euros- in the Chinese plant. This is Samsung’s only plant abroad, and also one of the company’s most important because it is estimated to produce 40% of South Koreans’ NAND memory. The million-dollar investment comes after a few years of hiatus, but they are not the only ones. SK Hynix is ​​also going to inject 581.1 billion won -331 million euros- into its Dalian plant. It is 52% more than in the previous period and the largest disbursement since they acquired the factory in 2022. Immediate relief. The information They point out that it is not so much to produce more, but to satisfy the demand for cutting-edge memories. Recently, Samsung began mass manufacturing the HBM4 memory and SK Hynix the fastest DDR5 memory, and this strategy is focused on the two plants manufacturing that advanced memory instead of the rest of the factories having to adapt to the cutting-edge memory creation processes in order to continue dedicating themselves to other types of NAND chips. It also responds to a more pragmatic vision. Setting up a memory factory is not cheap, but above all, it is not fast. It takes about four or five years to build, polish the clean rooms and optimize the operational lines. It is much faster to adapt existing factories to obtain a much faster response. The reason is that they need wafers, and they need them now. From SK warned that the global shortage of wafers exceeds 20% and, probably, the situation will continue until 2030. Not very favorable weather. The curious thing is that this increase in investments occurs when the situation between China and the United States continues to be very turbulent. Although they have been relaxing, the United States imposed export controls on advanced chip manufacturing equipment destined for China. As much as Samsung is moving money and advanced machines to Samsung, it is in China and that means they must obey Washington’s order. There is licenses and annual permits and, both Samsung and SK Hynix, have a deadline to be able to send tools to their facilities, which are the ones they are taking advantage of because it is estimated that China represents 40% of Samsung’s NAND production and between 40% and 45% of SK Hynix’s. In fact, the company has another plant in Wuxi from which 30% of its NAND chips come out. China, from chill. Whether there is an upsurge in export orders or not remains to be seen. What is on the table at this moment is that China, “without doing anything” (and this with many quotes) is emerging as a very important player in this playing field. It is not only that Samsung and SK Hynix, the two most powerful in the sector, have greatly increased investment in their territory, but that their own RAM companies can see in this scenario the boost they needed to place themselves in the global conversation. One of the largest manufacturers in the country is CXMT and not only have they been polishing their manufacturing process in recent months to create 8,000 MHz DDR5 memories, but they have scaled their production capacity to reach a global market share of between 11% and 13%. Together with the manufacturer YMTC, they are emerging as an opportunity for brands like Lenovo, Dell or Asus, which need RAM to continue selling computers, have available without drastically increasing the price of their equipment. But hey, as we have said more than once in recent weeks, all the extra RAM they manufacture is … Read more

There is a Basque company that is making a fortune with an unexpected business: ripening bananas from the Canary Islands

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100 million euros of turnover ripening bananas. It is the objective of Musanorte, a company with Canarian roots and headquarters in Vizcaya that has turned a niche as specific and far from the focus as the controlled ripening of fruit into an economic engine for the Orozko region. Your task is not to grow, but what happens after the harvest. In their facilities, the Canarian banana arrives green and comes out ready to eat. Controlled maturation. What Musanorte does with bananas is a process that much of the fruit goes through that we see in supermarkets. So that the bananas arrive at the stores at their peak, with that bright yellow tone without darkening, they are placed in chambers in which the temperature and ethylene is applied to them. Ethylene is what is known as maturation hormone and it is released by vegetables naturally. By adding it artificially, the process is accelerated. The company. Musanorte is a subsidiary of Mercamusa, a company dedicated to the marketing of fruit that also has a ripening plant in Alicante. In 2017, Mercamusa was purchased by Eurobananaa Canarian company that sought to eliminate intermediaries and thus better control quality while saving costs. Production takes place in the Canary Islands and the peninsular offices are dedicated to ripening and packaging. Capacity and investment. With more than 21 ripening chambers and two packaging lines, Musanorte has the capacity to manage 40,000 tons of bananas per yearwhich are added to the 30,000 tons of capacity of the Alicante plant. The Musanorte plant has been operational since 2020, but it was not until recently that it received an investment of 24 million euros that has allowed it to increase its capacity. They hope to reach 100 million euros in turnover and also have announced the creation of 100 new jobs in the region. The banana crisis. In 2025 the price of Canary Islands bananas skyrocketed, reaching 7 euros per kilo. In September we talked about the crisis that the banana production sector was going through: Producing them cost more than what the farmers, who survived thanks to aid from the European Union, ended up receiving. The situation has improved, but not enoughand currently production costs remain very highwhich strains the profitability of producers. Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | Neither patting nor waving them in the air: the science of choosing a good melon in the supermarket

The most unexpected blow of the Iran war is not the price of oil. It’s the one with the chips

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The Strait of Hormuz does not manufacture semiconductors or host data centers. However, its closure effective March 4 threatens to destabilize the heart of the global technology economy. Taiwan, which through TSMC manufactures around 90% of the world’s most advanced semiconductors, runs on imported energy, and a large part of it flowed through that strait. The connection between a conflict in the Middle East and the price of a GPU It is not metaphorical. It is totally physical. Why is it important. What Trump has described as a “minor excursion” began on February 28 as a military intervention against the Iranian leadership and has led to the almost total closure of the passage that connects the Persian Gulf with the Indian Ocean. 20% of the world’s natural gas and 25% of the global oil usually pass through there. Now, practically nothing happens. Between the lines. The problem for the chip industry is not oil, but two much less visible resources: The LNG. The Middle East supplies 37% of the fuel that powers the Taiwanese electrical grid, and that electricity is what TSMC’s factories consume with an energy hunger that demands continuous supply. And helium, which is even more delicate: it is essential in the process of photolithography and has no viable substitute. Taiwan only has LNG reserves for 11 days without external imports. South Korea has 52; Japan, three weeks. The contrast. South Korea and Japan have been building energy security buffers for years precisely because they know how much they depend on abroad. Taiwan, on the other hand, has historically prioritized cost over resilience: its LNG storage capacity is much lower than that of its neighbors, and that is now taking its toll. It’s not just a matter of reserve days. The thing is that Samsung and SK Hynix operate in a country with more robust emergency infrastructure, while TSMC, the company on which practically the entire global technological ecosystem depends, turns out to be the most exposed of all. Yes, but. Companies are not sitting idly by: TSMC has secured LNG supplies until mid-May. As for helium, Australia and the United States have the capacity to partially compensate for Qatar’s decline. Morgan Stanley estimates that several additional shipments are already heading to the islandalthough Taiwan has probably paid a notable premium for them. That premium will most likely translate into a price increase. The big question. The real risk is not the immediate cut, but how long this lasts. Consumers expecting GPUs for gaming They will be the last in line. In Xataka | Chinese airlines are the only ones still flying over Russia. And that is why they are the winners of the Iran crisis Featured image | Xataka

Telecinco audiences have been in free fall for four years and their recovery has come with an unexpected format: blind weddings

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He success of ‘Married at First Sight’ on Telecinco and the more than 410 million dollars generated by ‘Love Is Blind’ on Netflix show that realities Romantic and friendly blind weddings are no longer entertainment to watch on the sly and feel guilty. Now they generate very profitable franchises and, in the case of Mediaset, a welcome boost of oxygen to their disastrous audiences. Getting married without knowing each other: the origins. Well, the origins are the traditional weddings of convenience, but let’s talk about TV. In 2013, the Danish public channel DR3 broadcast the first episode of ‘Gift ved første blik’, where a panel of experts in psychology and compatibility paired strangers who would meet for the first time at the altar, getting legally married before starting to live together. The success in his country was immediate and generated the ‘Married at First Sight’ franchise, which has had 35 different versions before reaching Spain, where it was already seen in 2015 on Antena 3. In 2026 it reached a new version on Telecinco. The hearings. The result in terms of audience has been very stimulating for the Mediaset channel, after months of trying with launches and schedule changes that have not quite worked out. The premiere recorded a 13.9% audience share and nearly 947,000 viewers, leading its time slot, with a devastating 22.2% in the age group of 25 to 44 years. The following weeks consolidated and even improved those numbers, reaching 14.2%. 44% of viewers who saw the premiere repeated in the second broadcast, which indicates a level of loyalty that Telecinco needs like breathing. For this reason, it has already announced the renewal for a second season. We already know the context: Telecinco is going through a very serious audience crisisclosed 2025 with a 9.4% average annual share (the worst result in its history), which may end up impacting its advertising revenue. That is why in 2026 Mediaset is adopting a conservative policy, returning to its realities classics and experimenting just enough with programs like this one, new but with proven formulas. Blind dates. Meanwhile, Netflix finds success with a very similar format: ‘Love Is Blind’, which the platform premiered in 2020. In it there were no experts who matched the contestants, but rather a group of single men and another group of single women who got to know each other on dates without seeing each other physically, until couples were formed and we saw them becoming intimate in coexistence. Thirty million households watched it in the first four weeks of broadcast. The franchise has already spread to eleven countries, from Brazil to Japan. The figures for ‘Love Is Blind’. The data analysis company Parrot Analytics has estimated that he reality has generated more than $410 million in global subscriber revenue since its premiere. The secret of these stratospheric figures (and other realities platform romances like ‘Jugando con fuego’) is in its structure: fixed format, rotating casting with each season. It’s like a fictional franchise, but at a much faster pace, because each season is produced before the previous one ends. The cost of between 100,000 and 500,000 dollars per episode makes these programs much more attractive to platforms than fiction. When Netflix saw what it had on its hands (‘Love Is Blind’ remained among Netflix’s ten most viewed titles in the United States for 86 days in 2022) it did not put all its eggs in the same basket: it diversified the bet into different countries, each with its regional peculiarities, which multiplies income without doing so proportionally to the cost because, for example, the advertising is done. Furthermore, unlike the binge watching Common on Netflix, episodes are released weekly, which keeps the conversation going on networks. A historic format. They are not the first programs of this type: ‘Blind Date’, on ABC in 1949, when there were hardly any televisions in American homes, and ‘The Dating Game’ in the sixties They exploited similar starting points. What ‘Married at First Sight’ brought was the panel of experts that gave a pseudoscientific excuse to the fooling around between strangers and the inevitable marital quarrels. But what makes them a financial triumph is the economics of their production, which has turned Netflix’s proposal into one of the most profitable ideas in the history of the platform. In Xataka | Spotify and Netflix join forces, entering unexplored territory that has nothing to do with music, movies or series

In a New York coffee shop, the concept of a blind date has taken an unexpected turn: the meeting is with an AI

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Going to a coffee shop to have a blind date is already a somewhat peculiar situation. If the person waiting for you is also an AI, the matter borders on surrealism. A lukewarm experience. He tells it Ben Sherry at INCwho a few days ago went to the EVA Café in New York. There was a table with a single chair and a stand with a cell phone waiting for him, where he could choose between different AI avatars for his appointment. During his time at the EVA Café, he spoke with two avatars, a woman and then a man. The two agreed to praise her hair and the decoration of the place, but they were reluctant to answer deeper questions such as her political ideology. In Xataka "I can’t stop": the addiction to talking to AI is already here and there are even support groups to stop it EVA AI. It is the name of the app that organized the event and, indeed, it is a “friends” AIin the style of Replika either Character.ai. Its last commercial action has been a ‘pop-up coffee’ to “bring virtual romance to the real world.” The app’s sales manager told INC that her goal is to fight the stigma that exists towards relationships with AIs. The app, which has accumulated more than 5 million downloads in the Play Store, offers the possibility of starting a relationship with one of its different AI avatars, all with a clear inclination towards romance. You can start for free, but if you want to continue talking to your AI, you have to check out; This is the only way to unlock special functions such as sending images or the ability to make video calls. What he anticipated Her. EVA AI is not an isolated case. Thevirtual girlfriends They have been around for a long time, but with generative AI there has been a boom in this type of apps.More and more people are turning to this relational modelto the point that there are those cheats on his real partner with an AI. In case we had any doubt that the trend is real, Grok launched his virtual girlfriend Ani andChatGPT announced that it would launch ‘adult mode’ coming soon, functions that of course can only be used by users with a subscription. {“videoId”:”x9hhg44″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”The TRUTH of AI – This is how ChatGPT 4, DALL-E or MIDJOURNEY works 🤖 🧠 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE”, “tag”:”webedia-prod”, “duration”:”1173″} The goal is obvious. Regardless of psychosocial reasons that lead us to seek an intimate connection with a machine, the reason why companies like OpenAI or xAI are turning towards adult content is obvious: to generate money. The emotional connection is a way to increase users’ commitment to your service and by using a subscription as a gateway, they not only get them to spend more time in your app, but they also get them to pay for it. AI has a monetization problem and this is one of the ways to generate income. Emotional connection. It may seem like something recent to us, but the reality of humans has been connecting with machines since 1966, when the first chatbot was created. In this sense, AI has not changed anything, although it is normalizing it. Recently we have seen other examples of emotional connection with machines, such as when OpenAI crashed ChatGPT 4o and users were angry because they liked his warm and friendly tone. We have also seen it with the celebration of a symbolic funeral for Claude 3 Sonnetanother model that enjoyed great affection among the community. Image | Alexander Sinn in Unsplash In Xataka | Flirting on Tinder is exhausting. The solution of these apps is to skip the eternal chats and organize the appointment directly (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news In a New York coffee shop, the concept of a blind date has taken an unexpected turn: the meeting is with an AI was originally published in Xataka by Amparo Babiloni .

An 80-year-old retiree won 2.7 million euros in the lottery and invested it in something unexpected: creating a drug trafficking network

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That a chemistry professor sick with cancer becomes one of the largest manufacturers of methamphetamine is something that gave us hours of entertainment with Breaking Bad. What we didn’t see coming is that a retiree from the United Kingdom could serve as inspiration for a sequel to the popular series. As detailed police sourcesan 80-year-old man won a small fortune in the lottery and, instead of investing it in Nvidia stock either in Hermès bags, He displayed an unexpected entrepreneurial spirit by setting up a fake pill factory that generated hundreds of millions of euros. The stroke of luck that changed everything. John Eric Spiby, from Wigan in Greater Manchester, won €2.77 million in the British Lotto in 2010. With that money he bought a rural property in Astley (west of Manchester) and started his new business venture there: manufacturing pills. The detail is that the pills he was manufacturing were etizolama thienodiazepine six to ten times more powerful than diazepam, and mixed it with other ingredients to make perfect imitations of legal anxiolytics. In Xataka Millions of Spaniards consume benzodiazepines to sleep at night. They don’t know it’s poisoned candy The Retiree’s Band. John’s son, John Colin Spiby, 37, was responsible for managing daily production in a rented container next to the house. A friend, Callum Dorian, was responsible for distributing the pills through encrypted chats on platforms such as EncroChat. For his part, Lee Ryan Drury, 45, helped with logistics. Each member of the band had an assigned role so that the entire production and distribution infrastructure functioned on an industrial scale. They sold the pills to 65 pence each (the equivalent of 75 cents) but the total estimated value reached 332 million euros on the black market. The raid that uncovered him. Spiby’s “pharmaceutical” scheme was uncovered in April 2022. Police stopped a vehicle at a hotel in Manchester and found 2.5 million fake pills valued at 77 million euros. The investigation took them to the Spiby farm, where they found hydraulic presses, automatic packaging machines, firearms, ammunition and enough equipment to produce million pills a month. The etizolam they manufactured reached a magnitude that, in the previous months, 58% of the opioid-related deaths in 2021 in Scotland, they were because of pills like those manufactured by Spiby. Dorian, the distribution manager, boasted in messages comparing Spiby’s business to drug trafficking empires, while the gang armed its distributors to protect the companies. key distribution routes. {“videoId”:”x8px49v”,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”ANTIBIOTICS are CEASING TO BE EFFECTIVE and the PROBLEM is SUPERBACTERIA”, “tag”:”Webedia-prod”, “duration”:”327″} The judge has just sentenced the band. The case came to Bolton court in November 2025. According to published The Timesduring the trial Spiby denied any knowledge of the organization that manufactured etizolam pills, claiming that he only rented his property to make some extra money. However, the chats, bank transfers and machinery pointed to him as the main financier, in addition to having found a Lotus and a Porsche that he had hidden in his garage next to the pill manufacturing machines, and the testimony of some neighbors who claimed to have seen him driving around in a Lamborghini, as he collected the BBC. The judge sentenced Spiby and his henchmen in January 2026. “Despite winning the lottery, he decided to continue a life dedicated to crime, far from what would have been normal years of retirement,” the court noted in its ruling. John Eric Spiby was sentenced to 16 years and one month in prison; his son at 9 years old. Drury, the logistics manager, was sentenced to 9 years in prison and Dorian, who already had a 12-year sentence pending, received more time. In total, 47 years in prison for the retiree’s gang. In Xataka | 13% of Spaniards have tried cocaine once in their lives. If we ask the dogs of Madrid the percentage will be higher Image | AMC, Unsplash (Candace Mathers) (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news An 80-year-old retiree won 2.7 million euros in the lottery and invested it in something unexpected: creating a drug trafficking network was originally published in Xataka by Ruben Andres .

Something dark keeps growing in the Greenland ice. And it’s melting the frozen mass at an unexpected speed

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Greenland was for centuries synonymous with immobility, a territory that seemed oblivious to the passage of time, protected by an ice sheet so vast that even polar explorers could see it. like something eternal. From the first Inuit settlements to the European expeditions of the 19th century, the island was more a symbol of resistance than change, a place where the landscape imposed its own rules. Precisely for that reason, any alteration On its surface today it has a historical weight that goes far beyond what appears at first glance. A dark spot on the ice. Something seemingly insignificant is growing on the immense Greenland ice sheet, but with a disproportionate effect: microscopic algae that dye the snow green, red or grayish brown and reduce its ability to reflect solar radiation. In a warming Arctic up to four times more faster than the rest of the planet, this so-called “dark zone” accelerates the loss of hundreds of billions of tons of ice each year, directly contributing to sea level rise and adding a new layer of complexity to an already destabilized climate system. Dust, nutrients and a cycle. counted the new york times last week that much of the latest research shows that the wind blows phosphorus-rich dust from the rocky fringes discovered on the margins of Greenland into the ice, fueling algal blooms. Here’s the crux of it all, because as the ice melts, also releases trapped nutrients for decades or centuries in its deep layers, creating a kind of vicious cycle: one where more melting releases more food, algae proliferate, the ice darkens and melts even faster. This mechanism, time and time again, turns warming into a self-accelerating process that is difficult to stop once it has started. The measurable impact of a microscopic phenomenon. In southwest Greenland, one of the fastest melting regions, algae already explain about 13% of runoff water generated by summer thaw. In fact, studies published in journals such as Environmental Science and Technology and Nature Communications have shown that even minute amounts of phosphorus and nitrogen, released from the ice or transported through the air, are enough to sustain these biological communities, suggesting that the phenomenon could extend to areas much wider of the cap. A climate problem. Plus: ice darkening does not occur in a political or economic vacuum. The retreat of sea ice around Greenland is opening new sea routes and facilitating access to mineral, oil and gas resources, increasing the strategic interest for the region. Any additional industrial activity could release, for example, soot and particles that further aggravate the darkening of the ice, accelerating a process that, in the worst case scenario, could contribute to a global rise in sea level of up to seven meters if the ice sheet completely disappeared. What is known… and what is not yet. The scientists match in which algae are not the cause of global warming, but rather a consequence which amplifies its effects, while underlining that the root of the problem continues to be the burning of fossil fuels on the planet. However, it is still unknown precisely to what extent this “dark spot” can expand and how to integrate your impact in sea level rise models. Meanwhile, Greenland seems to offer us a most ominous warning (another one): that even the smallest changes, those invisible to the naked eye, can tip the balance of one of the largest and most fragile systems on the planet. Image | Jenine McCutcheon/University of Waterloo In Xataka | Why we find 50,000 meteorites in Antarctica if they fall the same all over the planet: ice has the answer In Xataka | Antarctica launches its “Doomsday Vault”: a sanctuary at -50 °C to save the memory of the glaciers

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