unexpected

Europe has finally approved how to help Ukraine. The great paradox is that the most unexpected vote has been imposed: that of Russia

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Europe has finally closed an agreement to guarantee financing for Ukraine for the next two years through a loan of 90,000 million of euros backed by the common budget of the Union, a decision taken after more than 16 hours of negotiations in Brussels and under explicit pressure to avoid a financial collapse of kyiv at the beginning of 2026. In the background, a crystal clear idea: Russia has imposed its “vote”. The lifeguard and a pulse. The pact comes at a particularly delicate moment, with the United States and Russia advancing conversations parallels about a possible end to the war and with Trump publicly urging Ukraine to accept a quick agreement. For European leaders, the loan is not just an economic instrument, but a way to reaffirm that the EU wants and needs to have its own voice in any outcome of the most serious conflict experienced on the continent in the last eight decades. The political message is clear: Europe cannot stand by while others decide the future of Ukraine and, by extension, its own security. The failure of the ideal plan. For months, Brussels’ preferred option was to use the fences of 210,000 million euros in Russian sovereign assets frozen in Europe as collateral for a large “reparations” loan for Ukraine, a formula that made it possible to finance the war effort and the functioning of the Ukrainian state without directly resorting to European taxpayers’ money. The idea was powerful, both economically as symbolically: that Russia would pay, at least indirectly, for the destruction caused by its invasion. However, the plan fell apart at the last moment, a victim of the legal, financial and political risks involved in touching that capital, above all and as we told yesterdayfor a handful of countries. Russia, in fact, has already initiated legal action denouncing an illegal confiscation, and fear of economic or judicial reprisals grew as the decisive summit approached. Bucha and the passing of the war A pragmatic agreement. Faced with the impossibility of closing ranks around the use of frozen assets, France and Italy led a more pragmatic alternative: use the common EU budget to issue debt on the markets and channel the funds to Ukraine. The result is a two year loan which guarantees immediate liquidity to kyiv, although it is more expensive and less scalable than the original option. To achieve consensus, a complex political architecture was also accepted: Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic will not assume obligations direct financial measures, a key condition to avoid an internal blockage. Still, the agreement was presented as a minimal but necessary victory. Ukraine gets the money it needs to survive and Europe avoids a picture of total paralysis at a critical moment. The resilience narrative. From kyiv, Zelenskiy celebrated the agreement as a real reinforcement of Ukrainian resilience, underscoring both the arrival of funds and the fact that Russian assets remain tied up. For the Ukrainian president, the combination it is essential: short-term financial security and sustained strategic pressure on Moscow. Zelenskiy had defended the use of frozen assets until the last moment, appealing to moral, legal and historical justice criteria, but he accepted the compromise. like a lesser evil facing the existential risk of running out of resources. The EU, for its part, insists that Ukraine will only have to repay the loan when Russia pays reparationsa formula that keeps the narrative of Russian responsibility alive without yet crossing the line of direct confiscation. Belgium and type C accounts. It we explained yesterday. In the background of the agreement there was a key actor: Belgium. Most of the Russian money frozen in Europe is there, guarded through critical financial infrastructure like Euroclear and linked to mechanisms such as called type C accountsdesigned precisely to immobilize assets without transferring ownership. Brussels demanded “unlimited” guarantees against possible Russian demands and retaliation, a level of protection that the rest of the partners were not willing to assume. The final result, although presented as a European commitment, essentially coincides with what was best for Moscow: that its sovereign capital not be confiscated or used as direct collateral. Russia loses access to the money, but retains the fundamental principle that these funds remain formally its own, avoiding a far-reaching legal precedent. If you also want, indirectly, Europe has chosen the safest path for itself and, at the same time, the least disruptive for the Kremlin. Europe and its limitations. So things are, the agreement leaves an ambivalent feeling. On the one hand, it shows that the EU is capable of mobilizing massive resources to support Ukraine and prevent its financial collapse in the middle of the war. On the other hand, it exposes again structural limitations of the European project when it comes to quick and risky decisions in foreign policy and security. The plan based on Russian assets promised to be more forceful and transformative, and the loan backed by the common budget is more conservativeslower and more politically comfortable. In a context in which Washington presses for an agreement and Russia hopes to buy time, Europe has chosen legal stability and internal cohesion over a direct financial confrontation with Moscow. Ukraine thus receives the oxygen it needs. The strategic pulse, however, is far from resolved. Image | RawPixel In Xataka | Ukraine’s biggest problem is not Russia. There are three European countries trapped in a perverse mechanism: type C accounts In Xataka | A Soviet missile is destroying Ukraine’s helicopters. The paradox is that it is not from Russia: it comes from the West

AVLO’s departure from Madrid-Barcelona seemed like another problem for Renfe. He has left us an unexpected winner

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August 2025. The summer had started out average for Renfe and ended even worse. After an exchange of information, Renfe accepted that some Talgo AVRIL trains had suffered cracks in their structures and that they were being taken out of circulation, with the consequent suspension of service. And, of course, that has had consequences for travelers. Goodbye AVLO, goodbye. Everything ended up precipitating in the last days of August but the origin must be sought a few days before. At the end of July, Renfe paralyzed by surprise the sale of tickets for the AVLO service. The news was given from The Economist: AVLO trains had suffered cracks in their cars on the Madrid-Barcelona line. A few days later, Renfe confirmed this fact and began to apply a temporary solution. The idea is that the trains would continue running but reducing traffic speed there where it was believed that the trains had cracked. Some leaked photos Already in August they demonstrated the seriousness of the events. Renfe decided withdraw AVRIL trains of the service. And days later he ended up suspending the AVLOs. September. It was a strange month for Renfe. The company maintained the AVLO service in the early stages, but in the absence of finding a solution, it ended up canceling. relocate passengers of the service low cost of the company on the AVE. That is, a kind of upgrade to travelers who already had their ticket for beyond September 8. That put the company in trouble. Or at least that was the first reading. Since then Renfe does not compete directly against Ouigo and Iryo. Without a cheaper service, the Spanish company was left without the possibility of competing directly against foreign companies. However, it does not appear to have directly affected their results. How has it affected Renfe? If we take into account the latest data from the CNMCwhich refer to the months of July, August and September, we could say nothing or very little. Renfe Viajeros (which adds data from AVLO and AVE) has increased its occupancy by 4%, the number of travelers has increased by 0.6% and they have increased the use of rolling stock by 1.6%. Regarding prices, Renfe has also won. And the company has managed to increase the number of travelers despite an obvious increase in ticket prices. The AVE cost 70.58 euros on average, 13.3% more than in the same period last year and AVLO went to 51.35 euros, repeating the same growth. Retail. But what interests us most about this period is how prices behaved when AVLO was not available. In the month of September, AVLO prices dropped but let’s remember that they were only available for very few days. Instead, Renfe only offered AVE tickets. And they were shot. In September, service prices premium increased to 75.11 euros. It is 11.4% more than the previous month. But above all, it is a price 17.4% higher than that of the same month in 2024 when there were four companies available on the market. Beyond Renfe. Curiously, the one who performed the most in this case has not been Renfe. Iryo is the company that has increased prices the most in this period. With an average ticket price of 63.82 euros, the company seemed to have positioned itself between Ouigo and Renfe, offering an alternative halfway between both services. However, the absence of AVLO in the month of September must have triggered the demand for Ouigo and Iryo. This is the only way to explain why the Italian company raised the prices of its routes to 74.13 euros in that month, just one euro less than the AVE. Year-on-year growth that month reached 83.5%. For its part, Ouigo also raised prices but remained on a somewhat more contained line. In the quarter, the average ticket price was 51.86 euros, which already represents a growth of 20% compared to the previous year. In September, however, prices remained at 52.20 euros, slightly below the month of August but, yes, 30% more expensive than in September 2024. The complete photograph. Expanding on everything that happened, as expected, AVLO’s departure from the Madrid-Barcelona corridor has only increased prices. It is something that we were already beginning to suspect and that was logical if we take into account that it is the corridor with the highest occupation and use of the line. In fact, the latter exceeds 84% ​​and remains around 10% above any other high-speed corridor with liberalized services. It is the perfect environment for passengers dynamic prices suffer. Photo | Xataka and Logan Armstrong In Xataka | Renfe is selling its AVLO for 7 euros in Andalusia: it is the new battlefield in the price war against Ouigo and Iryo

India wanted to impose an indelible state app on all mobile phones. In a matter of days he had to take an unexpected turn

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The Government of India movement to force a security app to be installed On all mobile phones sold in the country it has lasted less than a week. On November 28, the Ministry of Telecommunications sent a private communication to the manufacturers in which it gave them 90 days to comply with the measure. However, the general rejection of public opinion, doubts about its impact on cybersecurity and the apparent opposition of some manufacturers have forced a change in plans. The order began to gain public relevance when its internal details became known. Reuters noted that The Government not only requested the mandatory presence of Sanchar Saathi in new mobile phones, but also its incorporation in those already in the supply chain through software updates. The agency also reported that the initial instruction specified that the application could not be disabled. What is Sanchar Saathi. The program’s own website define the tool as a public service aimed at empowering users against fraud and device theft. It is available as a mobile application and also as a web portal, from where it is possible to temporarily lock a lost phone, track subsequent use attempts and, if recovered, reactivate it. The Government frames these functions within a broader digital education effort, with end-user security materials and advisories. From security discourse to doubts about surveillance. The debate intensified when opposition figures and privacy specialists They questioned the initiative. In his opinion, an application managed by the State, coupled with such a broad mandate, required additional guarantees to rule out intrusive uses. Organizations such as the Internet Freedom Foundation They asked for transparency and access to the full legal text. Under pressure, Scindia publicly defended that “spying is not possible” with Sanchar Saathi and denied that the app can be used for surveillance. Opposition from manufacturers added pressure to the process. Reuters indicated that Apple had no intention to comply with the order as it was proposed and that it would convey its objections to the Government, while Samsung and other actors expressed similar reservations. According to sources cited by international media, the companies questioned whether the instruction had been issued without prior consultation and warned of its impact on the privacy policies of their ecosystems. The context was not minor: India has become one of the fastest growing markets for smartphones, especially for companies like Apple and other large manufacturers. An express reverse gear with success figures in hand. The rectification came on December 3, when the Ministry of Communications published a note announcing that mandatory pre-installation was no longer necessary. The decision was justified by the “growing acceptance” by Sanchar Saathi, which according to the Government now has 14 million users and allows around 2,000 frauds to be reported daily. Only the previous day, 600,000 new registrations had driven tenfold growth. Scindia then insisted that “spying is not possible”, despite the skepticism of specialized groups. In recent years, as reported by BloombergIndia has driven decisions that have forced big tech companies to readjust, such as demands for access to encrypted information or recent attempts to have manufacturers distribute the GOV.in public app suite. All of this occurs in a market that is strategic for Apple and Google, both in sales and production. The withdrawal of the mandate makes it clear that these dynamics continue to evolve and that balances will likely continue to be redefined. Images | Ministry of Communications of India | Piyanshu Sharma In Xataka | There are 500 million users who could perfectly upgrade to Windows 11. The problem is that they don’t want to

While the US and China dominate different sectors, Europe leads an unexpected leadership: heat pumps

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Europe is experiencing an energy and industrial crisis that has reopened old fears: factories that lose competitiveness, homes punished by gas and a political debate that looks backwards. But behind the noise, the data tells a completely different story: Europe is not going backwards. It is leading the largest energy transformation in the world. And at the center of that transformation is a technology that is already changing the rules: heat pumps. The real problem: an industry trapped by gas. A large part of public opinion believes that European industry is becoming more expensive because of climate policies. But, As Jan Rosenow points outOxford energy professor, in EUobserver, the reality is exactly the opposite: “I do not accept the analysis underlying the reversal narrative. The idea that green policies must be dismantled to lower prices is nonsense.” According to Rosenow, the real shock came after 2021, when Europe lost access to the cheap Russian gas pipeline and had to replace it with much more expensive LNG from the United States. The impact was brutal: energy-intensive industries stopped production and never returned to pre-Ukrainian War levels. Ember’s report quantifies it: Europe paid an accumulated extra cost of 930 billion euros during the energy crisis due to its dependence on imported fossil fuels. The conclusion is uncomfortable, the problem is not that Europe has gone too fast in the transition, but too slow. Europe leads the solution, although it does not know it yet. While the political debate goes in circles, the market advances. Europe is, today, world leader in heat pumpsa title that he does not hold by chance. In residential adoption, some countries are decades ahead of the rest of the world: Norway has 632 heat pumps per 1,000 homes and Finland has 524, according to European Heat Pump Association (EHPA). And the surprise is in the laggards, countries like Poland, Ireland or Portugal continue to grow even in years of weak market. The European industry dominates the market. European manufacturers such as Vaillant, Stiebel Eltron, Bosch, Viessmann, Danfoss, NIBE or Clivet dominate the global market. Unlike what happened with solar panels, Europe has retained manufacturing capacityalthough it still partially depends on imported compressors and electronics. Still, most employment, engineering and assembly remain on European soil. A revolution underway. Industrial projects are not prototypes: they are signs of the times: So why do we still depend on gas? Despite technological leadership, adoption is slower than it should be. There are four main blocks: Electricity continues to be weighed down by the price of gas. In much of central Europe, gas sets the marginal price of electricity. This means that even if renewables lower the cost, gas increases it again at the peaks. As the Financial Times points outthe result is an obvious paradox: the most efficient technology (the heat pump) seems expensive because electricity is distorted by gas. Taxation. The Oxford Professor details that the majority of European countries They charge more taxes on electricity than on gas. This penalizes the clean option and favors the fossil option. Lack of installers. The European Commission calculates that they are needed 750,000 additional installers before 2030. The German company Apricum adds that the experience installation remains “complex and fragmented”. Cultural barrier. As Rosenow explains: “Most industries are used to burning things.” Fire is perceived as safe and familiar, even though it is more expensive and inefficient. But this barrier disappears when you look at northern Europe: Sweden, Finland or Denmark already use heat pumps on a large scale even at sub-zero temperatures. Electrification is not a green whim. Heat pumps are not a technological anecdote, but the pillar of a broader movement: the electrification of the continent. According to the EMBER reportelectrification could halve the EU’s fossil dependence by 2040, and that two-thirds of energy demand could be met by mature technologies: heat pumps, electric vehicles, storage and solar. Today, however, the EU has barely electrified 22% of its final energy, which reveals ample room to triple that share in the coming years. The European Commission agree with this diagnosis. Brussels estimates that Europe will have to reach 60 million heat pumps installed in 2030 – compared to 25.5 million currently – to meet its climate and energy security objectives. Also, remember that the entry into force of the new ETS2 from 2027 fossil gas will progressively become more expensivenaturally accelerating its replacement by more efficient electrical technologies. Europe needs to trust its own leadership. European politics is trapped between nostalgia for cheap gas and the fear of losing competitiveness compared to other regions. But the data tells another story: Europe is leading the technology that can free it from those dependencies. While some in Brussels debate whether the Green Deal should be slowed down, the market and European engineers are saying the opposite. If Europe wants secure energy, strong industry and affordable bills, the answer is not in returning to gas, but in something much simpler: plugging itself in. Image | dbdh Xataka | Aerothermal energy is the heating of the future, but the electrical installation is stuck in the past

In a financial carom, Google has stood up to NVIDIA, leaving an unexpected winner in the crazy AI race: Larry Page

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NVIDIA promised them very happy being the best-positioned AI chip manufacturer. At least it was until Google has started making chips. This new scenario has excited investors, who have rushed to buy Alphabet shares, making your price goes up up to 6.3% from one day to the next, and accumulating an advance of more than 75% since its August price. This increase in the value of Google’s parent company has also coincided with a dip in Oracle’s valuation, which has caused chaos on the podium of the world’s largest fortunes. according to Forbes. What AI gives you, AI takes away. A few months ago, Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle rose as the second largest fortune in the world, overtaking Mark Zuckerberg. His fortune reached 291.6 billion thanks to the good growth prospects posed by the construction of the data centers for AI. In fact, the Oracle founder’s fortune grew so much that he was close enough to the unattainable Elon Musk as to threaten its position on that list. Just as AI raised Larry Ellison to become the world’s second-largest fortune, AI he has taken that place away to hand it over to Larry Page, who reaches that position with a fortune of 261.5 billion dollars. Google rises, Oracle falls. He Google stock rally contrasts with the downturn suffered by the main architect of the cloud infrastructure in which AI lives, leaving up to 6.79% of its price in recent days. This decline has meant that Ellison’s fortune, with a strong influence of Oracle on its income balance, has suffered, falling to $256.7 billion, being displaced to third position. That same stock market momentum of Google has taken another founding partner, Sergei Brin, to fourth position, with a fortune of 242.4 billion dollars, while Alphabet shares brought the company closer to a market capitalization of almost 4 billion dollars. Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos didn’t even see it coming. The most pronounced falls in recent months have been those of Jeff Bezos and, above all, Mark Zuckerberg, who, accustomed to remaining in the Top 3 of the greatest fortunes, fall to fifth and sixth position in the ranking of Forbes. The decline in Mark Zuckerberg’s fortune is especially striking, due to the poor performance of Meta shares in recent weeks. Interestingly, Meta shares have broken their downward trend following Google’s announcement to get into the semiconductor business for AI and the rumors that Zuckerberg could change NVIDIA processors for the Tensor Processing Unit manufactured by Alphabet. Larry Page and Sergei Brin: same company, different fortunes. Although Page and Brin co-founded Google and share control of the company through their shares, both millionaires do not own exactly the same number of shares, and that detail makes a big difference in their assets. According to public statements of Alphabet before the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), between the two magnates they concentrate 87.9% of Alphabet’s class B shares, which grant 10 votes per title. However, the figures show that Page has just over 389 million shares, while Brin account with some 362.7 million of these shares, which makes Page the main beneficiary of the rally in the shares of the company they founded. Brin has been more generous with science. The key to this gap is that Sergei Brin has been much more active than Page in donating and selling part of his stake in Alphabet, and that has reduced his share package over time. Brin has been targeting large volumes of Alphabet and Tesla shares to research donations of treatment against Parkinson’s disease, bipolar disorder or autism, after being discovered a genetic mutation which made him prone to developing that disease. In Xataka | Larry Page and Sergey Brin founded Google and became millionaires. Now they are dedicated to collecting gigantic airplanes Image | Flickr (Fortune Global Forum, TED Conference)

The housing market is so broken that it has found an unexpected channel for express purchases: Telegram

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The housing market is overheated. It comes with taking a look at your price curvehe residential deficit calculated by the sector, the accelerated tempos of the agencies or simply the conditions (increasingly draconian) that real estate agencies require from tenants looking for an apartment to confirm it. There is another place however where that fever is clearly perceivedone that has little to do with agencies, portals like Idealista or the offices of the promoters: Telegram. There it is increasingly easier to find apartment purchases that are closed in minutes with a clear investment focus. Seen and unseen. The news I advanced it a few days ago The Country. If there were doubts about the imbalance between supply and demand in the Spanish real estate market or to what extent housing is awakening the appetite of investors comes with taking a look at Telegram. In the same messaging app that many of us use to talk to our families or friends, there are groups with thousands of subscribers that have become real real estate showcases. Of course, with certain peculiarities: speed prevails in the channels, the ‘seen and unseen’, with a clearly investor focus. It is not unusual for sales to be settled in a matter of minutes, sometimes by buyers who do not even get to visit the home they are purchasing in person. At the end of the day, you are not looking for a home. Generally, those who buy do so attracted by the promise of high returns. And one of the most popular ways is the rental market. How do they work? The mechanism is quite simple. The channels are run by specialized companies that are previously in charge of tracking the market in search of assets with potential, apartments in locations with rising markets, at reasonable prices and in which it is possible to charge tenants monthly payments that, over time, will translate into profitability of the 6%, 8%, 9% or even 13%, far above than other more conventional investments offer. Once the company ‘hunts’ that real estate asset, it offers it on its Telegram channel with a series of key data: area, location, age, sale price, estimated rent and profitability forecasts. Potential buyers send emails showing their interest and then the company chooses among the candidates, either by lottery or following the order in which they have written. It is not unusual for the buyer to never see the property or even live in another city. At the end of the day, what counts is the promise of economic return. How frequent is it? Last year the General Council of Notaries registered almost 716,200 home sales in Spain. Among this enormous volume of operations, those closed expressly through Telegram could have represented a small part (there is no official data), but even so the phenomenon is interesting enough that it has followers. The Country speaks from several companies that launch offers every week through groups in which they reach 3,000, 10,500 or even 15,000 subscribers. Specifically, he cites three companies in the sector: Winteromics, Nexiaprop and Buy 1 apartmentalthough not all of them are the same nor do they use Telegram with the same frequency. More than just speed. That the formula is arousing interest is explained by the characteristics of the real estate market. In cities with very stressed markets, such as Madrid, Barcelona either Valenciarents rise, but so do (and not a little) the price of properties, so its real estate stock loses interest for local investors in search of available homes to direct them to the rental market. Solution? Look beyond the metropolises, in other locations, if possible in municipalities where prices are still reasonable, where population is gaining or an increase in demand is expected in the near future, for example due to the arrival of a multinational. Hence, buyers are interested in homes that may be hundreds or thousands of kilometers from where they live. Mediation companies not only promise huge financial returns. Sometimes, if the expected returns are not achieved, they undertake to cover the difference or even offer their services as intermediaries to take care of the renovations or rental management. That is, even if the investor has in mind becoming a landlord, he or she will not even have to act as such. The company itself takes care of it… after payment (of course) of a commission. Looking for strategic areas. The focus is usually on homes located in working-class areas, without conflicts, with sales prices that usually do not reach or range around 100,000 euros. Companies also manage to ensure that these properties are not even offered on the open market, thus becoming the first to hunt for ‘bargains’ for investors. The companies they allege who with their work increase the rental supply and unlock properties that have been empty for some time. Of course, it’s not all advantages. As in any investment, the sector also recognizes that there are “risks”, especially for buyers who purchase apartments without first seeing them in situ. Images | Ivan Radic (Flickr) and Kaspar Upmanis (Unsplash) In Xataka | For years, motorhomes were a luxury. Now they are something else: the last stronghold against the housing crisis

Cambricon was a dying company in 2019. Today it is worth 68 billion thanks to an unexpected partner: the US

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Chen Tianshi has multiplied his fortune by more than twelve in two years until reaching 22.5 billion dollars. Your company, Cambricon Technologieshas seen its shares soar 765% in 24 months and its revenues have grown more than 500% in the last year. Why is it important. Cambricon’s meteoric rise is not so much a story of disruptive innovation as of strategic protectionism. And it well exemplifies how US technology sanctions have become the best trading partner for some Chinese companies. The context. In 2019, Cambricon depended more than 95% on Huawei, which canceled all its contracts at once. The company seemed doomed. Then came the US restrictions of 2023 and 2024, which cut off the supply of NVIDIA chips to China. The Chinese government responded by requiring companies to buy “at home.” And that’s how Cambricon went from dying business to national champion. Between the lines. The case shows the difference between competing in a free market and thriving in a protected one. Cambricon has not beaten NVIDIA in technology: its chip Siyuan 590 is several years behind A100. But in a market sealed by government decree, it doesn’t need to be better, just available. The company has accumulated inventory of 2.76 billion yuan ($380 million), something that would be worrying in any sector. But with NVIDIA chips locked, that stocks It has become bargaining power. Some customers pay up to 30% extra for immediate delivery. Yes, but. The question that divides analysts is how long it will last. “Cammbricon’s explosive growth is primarily due to a very low base, and its current valuation may be inflated without sustained political support,” explains Shen Meng, director of investment bank Chanson & Co. Cambricon’s chip works well for inference (when an AI model makes predictions), but it lacks scalability for model training, the most computationally intensive phase. NVIDIA not only sells chips, it sells a complete ecosystem with CUDA which is “extraordinarily difficult to replicate quickly”, according to Sunny Cheungresearcher at the Jamestown Foundation. The contrast. Cambricon has a market capitalization of 558 billion yuan (about $68 billion), 60% less than that of Intel. But it generates just 1.6% of Intel’s revenue. Investors are not buying fundamentals, they are buying national hope. The alarm signal. Cambricon herself has tried to cool the frenzy. In August, with its stock soaring more than 130% in a month, it issued an official warning: its trading price had “deviated markedly” from its fundamentals and investors “could face substantial risks.” When a company warns that its valuation no longer makes much sense, it is worth listening. What does this say about technological warfare?. The Cambricon case shows that US technological sanctions are not holding back China, but rather reorganizing its industry. They are creating a new class of state-aligned tech elites, years after the Chinese government crushed its private giants. The US government has cut off China’s access to advanced chips, but in exchange has given away captive markets to companies like Cambricon. The result is a Chinese semiconductor industry that is weaker technically but more dependent on the government. It’s not the free market that chooses the winners, it’s political favor. The big question. What happens when protectionism is no longer enough? Cambricon achieved its first quarterly profit in the fourth quarter of 2024, four years after going public. It’s not bad either. But its growth depends on the government tap remaining open and Chinese companies having no alternative. If US restrictions are eased or if domestic competitors like Huawei gain traction, the party could end quickly. Chen Tianshi has built a fortune of 22.5 billion on political arena. The history of technology suggests that these types of foundations do not usually last decades. Featured image | Cambricon In Xataka | China was no longer supposed to be able to get its hands on NVIDIA’s most advanced chips. Until he found a shortcut in Indonesia

The US vetoed NVIDIA’s most powerful chips in China. I didn’t count on an unexpected problem: Indonesia

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NVIDIA is at the center of the technological war between China and the United States. After the blockadethe US allowed the company sell a version of its H20 chips specific for the Chinese market, but the most powerful chips, The Blackwells are still banned in China. Or so we believed. What is happening. Donald Trump made it clear that he does not want China to have access to Blackwell chips, but despite the blockade, an investigation by the Wall Street Journal shows how there are Chinese companies benefiting from the computing power of these chips using legal shortcuts. The process. The investigation details the process that NVIDIA’s Blackwell chips go through until INF Tech, a Shanghai-based startup, uses the computing power. NVIDIA sells its chips to Aivres: Aivres is a Silicon Valley company partially owned by Inspur, a Chinese company that is on the US blacklist. NVIDIA could not do business with Inspur or its partners, but the blockade does not affect partners based in the US, as is the case with Aivres. Aivres sells the chips to Indonesia: specifically to an Indonesian communications provider called Indosat Ooredo Hutchison. The agreement includes the sale of 32 NVIDIA GB200 racks with 72 Blackwell chips each; more than 2,300 chips worth $100 million. Indonesia sells computing power to China: The end customer for this cloud computing power is INF Tech, which will use it to train AI in financial and medical research applications. This point is key as we will see later. Why it is important. The investigation calls into question the true effectiveness of US blockades and regulations. Using intermediaries in other countries, Chinese companies can manage to circumvent the restrictions and access the most powerful chips, all without violating the restrictions. Cracks. According to the Trump administration’s controls, the deal is legal as long as INF Tech does not use the chips to help the government with military intelligence applications or to develop weapons. However, it is difficult to know what it is actually being used for and in fact in the US there are suspicions that The Chinese government is leaning on the private sector to improve its military technology. Disagreement. If there is a crack, the logical thing would be to cover it. The Biden administration tried to tighten these rules to prevent chips from being sold to countries that are not close allies of the United States. This would have prevented the sale to the Indonesian company, but when Trump returned to power he decided not to go ahead with these new rules. Instead of the government controlling it, it should be the companies themselves. Interests. The US blockades seek to take advantage of China in the AI ​​technological race, all for reasons of “national security.” It is contradictory that they leave these cracks open through which these chips end up sneaking in legally. The one who thinks it’s great is NVIDIA. Speaking to the Wall Street Journal, a company spokesperson came out in favor of Trump’s decision, saying that “Biden’s controls cost taxpayers tens of billions, paralyzed innovation and ceded ground to foreign rivals.” Image | NVIDIA, Pexels In Xataka | The Chinese government has taken a definitive step to break NVIDIA’s dominance in China: prioritize “national” chips

The most unexpected treatment against cancer is LED light, and it is giving good results

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Currently there are many research groups that have a very clear objective: find a cancer treatment that is effective, specific and above all safe. Something that can be really complex because of everything that cancer hides behind it, but science continues to give us good news. The last one comes from the University of Texas and the University of Porto which have developed a technique based on tin oxide nanoflakes (SnOx) and LEDs that allows cancer cells to be destroyed with precision. The current problem. The therapy par excellence today in the fight against cancer, without a doubt It’s chemotherapy and radiotherapy. The first of these has numerous problems that have been tried to be corrected, such as low specificity, that is, it attacks both cancer cells like the healthy ones. And this ultimately produces many side effects that can cause you to not continue with the treatment. This makes the goal of science to seek specificity and for the treatment to attack only cancer cells. This is something that is being tried to achieve with immunotherapy and techniques like CAR-T which ultimately is part of personalized medicine for each patient and which offers a very specific selection of the type of cell to destroy. But science has not stopped here. The discovery. One of the techniques that appears to be promising is photothermal therapy (PTT). The concept in this case is quite simple to understand: inject nanomaterials into a tumor and then heat them using light. This logically causes a localized increase in temperature, which selectively destroys the cancer cells that have been marked before. The problem until now was materials and light. Many photothermal therapies require high-powered lasers, which are expensive and can damage surrounding tissue. Now, a team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Porto have found the key to changing the rules of the game. A secret ingredient. The team has developed a new photothermal agent called nanoflakes that are made of tin oxide. After all, they are tiny sheets with a thickness of less than 20 nanometers and what is really ingenious is how they were manufactured. The really ingenious thing is how they made them. They started from a cheap and abundant material such as tin disulfide, which ironically is useless for photothermal therapy. In this way, through a ‘green’ and scalable process called electrochemical exfoliation with oxidation, which only uses aqueous media, they managed to transform the inactive tin disulfide into tin oxide that was already ready to fight cancer. And the light came. Once this material was available, all that was left was to expose it to the LED irradiation low-cost that emit infrared light at 810 nm. In this case we are talking about radiation that is very safe and does not damage healthy skin as can occur with radiotherapy, and it is also extremely cheap and accessible to everyone (even developing countries). Results. To test the effectiveness, researchers have tested cells in culture. The first thing they saw was that this treatment had no effect on healthy cells, that is, it did not destroy them. But the best comes when applying it to cancer cells results in a great reduction in the different colonies. Specifically, in skin cancer there was a 92% reduction in the viability of tumor cells, while in colorectal cancer this percentage dropped to 50%, but still maintained good results. And all thanks to an increase in temperature from 37 °C to 50 °C in 30 minutes that killed cancer cells. The future. This study not only presents a more efficient material, but validates its use with safer and more economical light sources. The researchers themselves point to the potential of LED systems for applications such as skin cancer treatment, which could theoretically be self-administered at home. This would be a great advantage for patients and would reduce the burden on health systems, although there is still a lot of research ahead to see if this therapy can be viable in a range that will surely not be less than 10 years. Images | National Cancer Institute Logan Voss In Xataka | Colon cancers are increasing alarmingly among young people. We have a suspect: sedentary lifestyle

The new mayor of New York is a rare bird in the US, but he has an even more unexpected facet: a shareholder of Real Oviedo

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Among the many congratulations that Zohran Mamdani has received over the last few days, after conquering the seat of mayor of New York, there is one that stands out as unexpected: that of Real Oviedo. Yesterday the club carbayón conveyed his congratulations via It may sound strange, but it is better understood when you know a key fact: Mamdani has been a shareholder of Real Oviedo for years. To understand it you have to go back to 2012. Who is Zohran Mamdani? That question might have made sense a few years ago, when Mamdani was one of a long list of members of the Albany Assembly. Today his name is one of the most popular in the United States, even outside the political sphere. The reason: on Tuesday he beat Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa in the race for New York City Council, becoming the elected successor of Eric L. Adams and crowning a dazzling rise. Click on the image to go to the tweet. Why is it so popular? Taking into account that New York is the main city in the United States (and one of the most media-rich on the planet), becoming its mayor should be enough to gain global projection, but Mamdani stands out for something else: an unorthodox profile. So much so, in fact, that it is a rare bird in the long history of the municipality. To start with his age: he has just turned 34, making him the youngest politician to hold office in the last century. As if that weren’t enough, Mamdani is an immigrant (born in Kampala, Uganda), Muslim, made his debut in the world of rap under the name Mr. Cardamomo and defines himself as a “democratic socialist.” He is also a skilled communicator, handles himself with ease in networks and has not hesitated to run as one of the strongest voices in the opposition to Donald Trump, whom he sent a public message after proclaiming himself the winner of the municipal elections: “I know you’re watching. I only have three words for you: turn up the volume! New York will continue to be a city of immigrants, built by immigrants and driven by immigrants. And starting tonight led by an immigrant.” Click on the image to go to the tweet. And what does it have to do with Oviedo? To answer that question we have to go back to 2012, when Real Oviedo passed through low hours. In Spain the winds of recession were blowing and the club carbayón He was seen with battered accounts and confined to the Second Division Bfrom which it would still take time to come out. The club itself refers to that period, which began in 2001, as a “fight for survival”. With that backdrop, the Asturian team decided to desperately search for a capital increase to save it from the hole, an effort in which the city devoted itself and which had the support of well-known figures, such as the popular British journalist Sid Lowewho gave visibility to the campaign on social networks. The call from Lowe, a native of Archway (London), but a fan of Real Oviedo since his student years in the Asturian capital, came among others to a young man from Kampala, a football fan and with musical whims: Zohran Mamdani. At the time he was only 21 years old, but he decided to join the wave of support. On November 9, 2012, at 5:47 p.m., he responded to Sid Lowe’s request with a message posted on Twitter: “I just bought a share, am I possibly the first shareholder of the eral Oviedo based in Maine? #SOSRealOviedo.” His tweet passed without pain or glory. The message from one more fan. One more among hundreds. Things changed on Tuesday, when Mamdani became mayor of NY. Is it your only relationship with football? Mamdani is more than just a politician, former rapper and (now) elected mayor of the largest city in the United States. He is also a self-confessed soccer fan. He himself has said that he made his first steps during his student years and his Arsenal fandom. “My uncle is a fan. I had magnets of the Invincibles (the team that won the 2003-2004 First League without losing a game) on my fridge. I loved David Seaman, Sylvain Wiltord, all of them… I have gone to many Arsenal games, many with my uncle. It has been a very important part of my life,” explained recently to The New York Times. Beyond the stands or the fields, Mamdani has known how to combine his football hobby with his political side, which has led him to launch a campaign to demand that FIFA not marginalize New Yorkers in the World that will host North America in 2026 and that includes the MetLife Stadium between its stages. Their proposal is that the organizers reserve part of the tickets for residents and also offer them a discount. The objective: that enjoying the championship is not an unattainable luxury for New York families. Images | Real Oviedo and Wikipedia In Xataka | In 2017 Liverpool signed a star footballer. Without knowing it, he had found the solution to racism in sports

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