world

has just opened its warehouse and delivery network to any company in the world

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For decades, Amazon has built its business one of the most powerful distribution infrastructures on the planet, one that allows its workers to ship products anywhere in the world extremely efficiently. Now he is going to make it available to any business that wants to use it. global network. amazon has announced the launch of Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS), a service with which any company, not just its marketplace sellers, will be able to access its global logistics network. Transport by sea, air, road and rail; warehouses; distribution centers; and last mile delivery: all under one umbrella and available for companies in all types of sectors, whether healthcare, automotive, manufacturing or retail, among others. Why does it matter? Amazon has a fleet of more than one hundred cargo planes, only behind FedEx and UPS, thousands of warehouses and sorting centers around the world, and its own last-mile delivery service. In fact, according to data from ShipMatrix, this parcel service is already the largest in the United States by volume, ahead of UPS, FedEx and the US Postal Service. What changes now is that all that capacity, previously reserved for its own sellers and internal operations, is formally opened to the market. Likewise, the movement turns Amazon into a gigantic logistics operator, what is known in the sector as 3PL (third-party logistics provider) and places it in direct competition with giants such as DHL, Kuehne + Nagel or DSV. According to data From the consulting firm Armstrong & Associates, it is estimated that this global market moves more than 1.3 trillion dollars. The parallelism with AWS. In 2006, the company took the technological infrastructure it had built to run its own business and began selling it to third parties. This is how Amazon Web Services was borntoday the largest cloud service provider in the world. Now try to replicate that model with logistics. “Amazon brings the infrastructure, intelligence and scale of its decades-proven supply chain services to businesses around the world, just as Amazon Web Services did with cloud computing,” counted Peter Larsen, vice president of Amazon Supply Chain Services, in the company’s official statement. Variety of services. According to the company, ASCS offers services divided into four large blocks: Transportation of goods (sea, air, land and rail freight). Distribution and storage with automated inventory forecasting. Preparation and shipping of orders through any sales channel, including rival platforms such as Walmart, Shopify, Shein or TikTok. Parcel delivery with deadlines of between two and five days, seven days a week. A blow to the sector. Following the news, FedEx and UPS shares fell more than 9% each after the announcement, while GXO Logistics plummeted around 13% and DHL lost 7.3%. For these companies it is a direct competitive blow, and according to analysts from the Baird firm, the impact could also extend to air and maritime cargo transport operators. With this blow on the table, another of the threatened segments is business-to-business (B2B) logistics, a niche with a high profit margin where UPS and FedEx have been focusing all these years. Between the lines. Beyond the competitive threat, Amazon seeks to monetize an infrastructure that already exists and in which it has been investing for almost thirty years. The company was already according to Armstrong & Associatesthe world’s largest logistics operator by gross revenue in 2025, although its services were sold in a fragmented manner and without a unified proposition for external clients. “They have warehousing operations, transportation management, and international air and sea freight, but they did not have a coordinated sale like 3PL, although together they are already the largest,” counted Evan Armstrong, CEO of Armstrong & Associates, told the Wall Street Journal. Customer data. Opening the network to external companies raises a question: what does Amazon do with the information of its logistics clients? The company has already been accused in the past of using data from sellers in its marketplace to compete against them, something it has always denied. Larsen assures told the WSJ that Amazon explicitly prohibits using ASCS customer data to make decisions in its own marketplace, citing the fact that hundreds of thousands of sellers already use its logistics services for channels outside of Amazon. Cover image | Garakhan Safarli and Claudio Schwarz In Xataka | What is the cheapest Amazon device you can use Alexa+ on?

In 2014 it was inaugurated as the largest solar thermal power plant in the world. 12 years later they want to close it after incinerating birds

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The huge Ivanpah solar thermal power plant, opened in 2014 in the Mojave Desert, was almost closed after just 11 years of operation. An end accelerated by its history of technical, economic and environmental problems that, however, was paralyzed in January of this year after the agreement of all those involved. Context. Concentrated solar thermal energy, once considered one of the most cutting-edge technologies for clean electricity generation, is not going through its best moment. Especially in Nevada, where the Crescent Dunes fiasco was already very public. The concentrating solar thermal system uses thousands of mirrors, or “heliostats”, that follow the path of the sun to concentrate its light on central towers. In these towers, the extreme heat is used to heat water and produce steam, which drives turbines connected to electrical generators. The Ivanpah case. The Ivanpah plant was built with an investment of $1.6 billion in loans from the U.S. Department of Energy and long-term contracts from major electric companies. It was the largest solar thermal power plant in the world until the inauguration of Port Augusta in Australia. 11 years after its inauguration, the enormous solar thermal plant began to close after failing to meet its initial expectations. The lack of profitability condemned it, at least a priori. A succession of rulings and complaints from environmental groups about its impact on wildlife accelerated its end, approved by the US Department of Energy. Continuity. However, the decision was reversed in January 2026 by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC). Ivanpah will remain open. Their argument is that uncertainty in federal renewable energy policies forces us to prioritize the reliability of the current electricity supply. In addition, the commission seeks to prevent the enormous investment in infrastructure already made from being lost, despite the high operating costs and the serious environmental impact on local fauna. The measure ignores the previous agreement between the companies to close the plant and save money for users. A priori, it will remain open until its contract expires in 2039. A complex technology. One of the main problems has been the difficulty of keeping the mirrors precisely aligned. The technology, which requires exact tracking of the sun, has proven to be unstable and unreliable in practice, says a CNN report. The maintenance of the complex mechanisms and the management of the turbines in turn generate high operating costs, which has caused concentrated solar thermal to lose competitiveness compared to other renewable technologies, especially photovoltaic solar, whose prices have plummeted. A bird cremation machine. The criticism is not limited to the technical aspects. The Ivanpah plant has been questioned for years for its environmental impact, especially on desert wildlife. Environmental groups denounce the irreparable damage to the habitat of species such as the desert tortoise. But also the death of birds that are incinerated by the intense rays concentrated by the mirrors. A second Crescent Dunes. The case of Crescent Dunes, also occurring in Nevada, reinforces this image of failure of solar thermal energy. This project, which was intended to be one of the milestones in innovation and energy storage using molten salts, ended up becoming a multimillion-dollar waste. Developed by the Spanish group ACSpromised continuous production of electricity, even during hours without light, thanks to thermal storage in salts. In practice, Crescent Dunes never managed to deliver the promised amount of energy and ended up going bankrupt due to engineering and management problems. In the shadow of photovoltaics. In short, the rapid fall in prices of photovoltaic technology and its lower impact on wildlife have made concentrated solar thermal obsolete. While solar panels have been gaining efficiency and reducing their installation and maintenance costs, solar thermal plants have lagged behind in terms of competitiveness, which has led investors and electricity companies to reconsider their bets on this type of projects. In Xataka | The first central tower solar plant to be commercially exploited is in Seville: a pioneer that has survived other more ambitious ones In Xataka | Chile has one of the most valuable skies on Earth. Renewables are putting it on the ropes In Xataka | China’s largest solar park is doing much more than generating energy: it’s greening a desert Image | Pexels

Mythos has struck fear into governments around the world. That’s why Spain wants “early access” to see what happens

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Spain wants to have access to Claude Mythos Preview, the AI ​​model it is making shake the world. The vice president and Minister of Economy, Carlos Body, has made clear that the European Union needs “early access” to Mythos to be able to assess what vulnerabilities European financial systems have. For the minister, “Europe cannot be a second-class region.” Bad news: today, at least for the most powerful AI startups on the planet, it is. There is not only fear in the banking sector. Although the alarm was initially raised by the financial sector, the Spanish Government warns that Mythos’ ability to find “back doors” affects practically all economic sectors. We are talking about threats that extend to critical infrastructure and essential elements for the functioning of any modern country. Anthropic itself has already made its fears clear: they did not want to launch the model publicly to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands. The AI ​​Act is a problem. The European AI Law was widely celebrated among Eurolegislators for being the world’s first major regulation about this technology. In reality, it has become clear that it has been a shot in the foot for EU countries, which have often seen how the most advanced AI models could not be used on our borders because they could violate this regulation or others. like DMA/DSA. This regulation forces companies to comply with strict requirements if they want to deploy especially advanced models, considered “high risk.” And Mythos is just that, so the AI ​​Act is precisely what would prevent it from being used in Europe. So they want to delay its application. Euroofficials have realized their mistake, and are now trying to buy time because technology moves (much) faster than bureaucracy. Their proposal is simple: delay until December 2027 the application of these obligations for “high risk” models like Mythos. In this way, this model could operate in Europe without having to go through these strict controls for another year and a half. Milestone or marketing maneuver? While the Eurogroup and the ECB analyze the risks with those responsible for financial supervision, in El Mundo quote to a group of critical voices who suggest that Anthropic’s maneuver could be a distraction strategy. The thesis is simple: the company has a clear computing capacity problem, and is not able to satisfy demand. Their solution: argue that Mythos is too powerful to avoid having to release it publicly, which would cause an avalanche of petitions. Coordination. Body added that in this case it is important that the request for “early access” is coordinated and comes from the EU as a block: “We Member States cannot each go on our own in an uncoordinated manner to try to access this software to this model. We need the umbrella of the Commission and a coordinated approach.” AI as a geopolitical weapon. What this has shown is that little by little access to advanced AI models is becoming a geopolitical weapon that is straining relations between Washington and Brussels. Anthropic is expanding access to Mythos to some institutions for example in the United Kingdoma traditional ally of the US. However, trade relations with Europe they are still complicatedespecially after the tariffs with which the Trump administration wanted to change the rules of the game. In Xataka | The bad news is that the EU loses out in the tariff pact with the US. The good thing is that Spain comes out relatively unscathed

The world wants to verify the age of children so that they do not access social networks. Children’s solution: paint a mustache

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The United Kingdom presume to have one of the strictest legislations in the world when it comes to protecting minors from social networks. The curious thing is that young people are managing to demonstrate that age verification technology has a unique Achilles heel: an eyebrow pencil. Look, I have a mustache. The British country has been forcing platforms to implement age verification measures in accordance with its Online Safety Act for months. However, a recent study from the NGO Internet Matters reveals that the limits imposed by these platforms are surprisingly easy to overcome. In fact, one of the methods is especially striking, because some children simply use an eyebrow pencil to paint a mustache and thus look older than they really are. Children 1 – Machines 0. This agency surveyed 1,000 children and parents in the United Kingdom and although it showed positive effects after activating these measures, it also made it clear that many children saw these systems as an easy obstacle to overcome rather than as a way to keep them safe. 46% of minors believe that the measures are easy to overcome. Only 17% believe that they are very difficult to avoid, while 19% say they do not know. Source: Internet Matters. Cheating machines is trivial. 46% of the children surveyed indicated that These age verification systems are easy to overcomeand only 17% found them difficult to avoid. There are several methods to overcome these systems, but most are simple. For example, using video game characters like ‘Death Stranding’ to show them in front of cameras trying to verify their age. Also show IDs of other people when asked, or simply use false birth dates. (At least) One in three skips the controls. But not everyone uses these methods: although the aforementioned 46% say that it is easy to overcome these systems and another 17% say that they are neither easy nor difficult, “only” 32% admit to having used some technique to overcome them. Of course, it is one thing that only 32% admit it and quite another that these figures are representative taking into account that they are confessing that they are doing something that they should not do. Methods vary, but many use fake birth dates or log in with their parents’ or siblings’ accounts. Complicit parents. The effectiveness of the Online Safety Act depends largely on the family environment, with data suggesting that at least a quarter of parents are uncooperative. The study indicates that 26% of parents have allowed their children to ignore or overcome these age verification systems, and in fact 17% admit have actively helped their children to evade these controls while 9% simply turn a blind eye. It’s not that big of a deal. Many parents justify this “help” by indicating that they understand the risks of their children accessing these platforms, but prefer to supervise the use of services such as TikTok or video games themselves. The idea: allow your children to bypass restrictions to play with friends or stream, but theoretically under your supervision. The failure of putting doors to the field. It’s not just that age verification systems are easy to overcome: The thing is that they do not eliminate risks completely either. In the Internet Matters study, almost half of the minors surveyed (49%) indicated that they had recently encountered toxic material on the Internet. This makes it clear that even children who do not try to bypass these controls still encounter inappropriate content. There are those who advocate going further and push for the end of online anonymity. Image | Jeremiah Lawrence In Xataka | The EU has just ready its app to verify age on the internet. And Ursula von der Leyen warns: “There are no more excuses”

first the Pentagon, then the rest of the world

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The United States had a maxim to win the AI ​​race: that there were no rules or limits. Politicians and regulators have turned a blind eye because what mattered was that US companies could develop the best AI models without restrictions. The problem is that some models have ended up being so good that now the US Government is beginning to fear their potential. Your easy solution: review them before anyone can use them. Is the open bar over? Donald Trump’s team is designing a plan intended to have a formal supervision process for new artificial intelligence models. Under this structure, a group of experts and government officials would analyze and review each new model and approve its launch. The implications are enormous, because the US Government would have preliminary and exclusive access to the model before its mass launch. Trump did not want restrictions on AI. Last summer, Donald Trump compared to AI with a “beautiful baby that has been born. We have to grow that baby and let it thrive. We can’t stop it. We can’t stop it with politics. We can’t stop it with absurd rules, not even stupid rules.” But he’s staying alone. This total support for AI is leaving the US president in an uncomfortable position. Both Democrats and Republicans they are worried over the risks posed by AI, and a Pew Research Center survey from last year Indian that half of all of them do not welcome how AI is increasingly used on a daily basis. Mythos as a turning point. This feeling of rejection has been growing among political groups, but fears have been reactivated especially after the launch of Claude Mythos Preview by Anthropic. The company only allowed access to the model to a small group of technology partners, claiming that it was too advanced in areas such as cybersecurity. The internal tests Of course They seemed to demonstrate their potential. Priority access. The White House wants to avoid political repercussions from a potential cyber attack created by AI, but at the same time the administration is assessing how these capabilities can be useful to the Pentagon and US intelligence agencies. Some government officials want this review system to be put in place that allows priority access to these models even if that does not block their launch. Good news for China. This type of plan has a big problem: it would slow down the development of new models and the innovation capacity of US companies compared to Chinese companies, which do not undergo this type of prior government review. And if they do, it is a problem that is not reflected in the advancement of the AI ​​models of Chinese companies, which are increasingly closer in terms of capacity to the best models of US companies. There is no more “AI czar”. These plans coincide with another unique event. In March, David Sacks, the so-called “AI czar” of the White House, left his position. He has been replaced by Susie Wiles and Scott Besset. While Sacks fully supported such a “no rules” policy for AI, both Wiles and Bessent intend to have more control over the policies that apply to AI. AI as a weapon. All events make it inevitable to compare the development of AI with the development of the atomic bomb in World War II. It was the US Government that led and controlled this technology in the past to have a definitive strategic advantage against its adversaries, and the same could happen with AI now that it is becoming a potential “cyber weapon.” In Xataka | Only a handful of US companies have access to Claude Mythos: the ECB already fears for the savings of all of Europe

In the year of the World Cup, the brand is betting everything on RGB MiniLED

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Hisense reaches 2026 playing a good part of its range on a single card: the RGB MiniLED. The Chinese brand has renewed everything your television catalog and has presented it to society exactly where it should be done in 2026: at the FIFA headquarters in Zurich, the same year in which the entire world will be glued to a screen watching the World Cup. This movement is not coincidental. According to Omdia data provided by Hisensethe manufacturer ranks second in the world in total television sales and first in the 100-inch or larger segment between 2023 and 2025. From that position, the brand has designed a catalog that ranges from a 116-inch giant to the most affordable models with MiniLED, through two high-end series that are going to be a lot to talk about in 2026. 116 UX RGB MiniLED Evo UR9 UR8 panel RGB MiniLED Evo (4th subpixel cyan), VA, 4K UHD, 8-bit + FRC RGB MiniLED VA 4K UHD, 8 bits + FRC, 180 Hz and 16:9 RGB MiniLED VA 4K UHD, 8 bits + FRC, 180 Hz and 16:9 resolution 3,840 x 2,160 points 3,840 x 2,160 points 3,840 x 2,160 points size 116 inches 65″,75″,85″ 55″, 65″, 75″, backlight RGB MiniLED Evo, FALD up to 8,000 nits, 3,584 dimming zones RGB MiniLED FALD, up to 4,000 nits RGB MiniLED FALD, up to 3,000 nits hdr Dolby Vision 2, Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10+, HDR10, HLG Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10+, HDR and HLG Dolby Vision IQ, HDR10+, HDR and HLG processor Hi-View AI Engine RGB Hi-View AI Engine RGB Hi-View AI Engine RGB operating system VIDAA U9 VIDAA U9 VIDAA U9 sound 2 x 15 watts + 2 x 10 watts + 2 x 5 watts + 2 x 15 watts + 2x 10 watts Dolby Atmos, DTS 2 x 15 watts + 2 x 10 watts + 20 watts + 2 x 15 watts + 2x 10 watts Dolby Atmos, DTS 2 x 10 watts + 2 x 5 watts + 20 watts Dolby Atmos, DTS connectivity 3 x HDMI 2.1 3 x HDMI 2.1 4xHDMI 2.1 wireless connectivity Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.0 Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.0 Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5.0 price Not available Not available Not available FIFA, the World Cup and TCL in the background Hisense has renewed for the third time consecutively its official sponsorship with FIFA after the 2018 and 2022 editions, and in 2026 it goes further: it will be the official and exclusive supplier of RGB MiniLED TVs for VAR Video Operations Rooms throughout the tournament. Romy Gai, FIFA’s chief business officer, said the organization “partners with Hisense to welcome the best display technology to deliver an unprecedented World Cup experience for billions of fans around the world.” Hisense is not the only one bet on the king of sport as a sales driver by 2026, its competitor TCL has been official sponsor of the Spanish Soccer Team from 2023 and expanded that agreement in October 2025 to include new products and a renewed contract. The television market anticipates one of its best years in volume precisely due to the World Cup effect, and the big Chinese brands They are well positioned to take advantage of that momentum. The pie that manufacturers share in the Soccer World Cup is not small. It is estimated that the match played between France and Argentina in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar had a hearing of 1,420 million viewers and the tournament registered a average of 2.9 billion viewers from the different television signals. All glued to a television. That’s a lot of televisions. The 116UX and the fourth color that changes the image The most advanced model in the 2026 catalog is the 116UX, a 116-inch television that incorporates the RGB MiniLED Evo panel that Hisense already advanced at CES in Las Vegas. Its particularity compared to the conventional RGB MiniLED is the incorporation of a fourth cyan subpixel, an intermediate color between the blue and green that the three traditional colors cannot reproduce accurately enough on their own. Thanks to this fourth subpixel, the 116UX manages to expand the coverage of the BT.2020 color space, the standard used in professional film production. The change applied by Hisense has certain parallels with what LG has been doing for years in its WRGB OLED panelswhere a white subpixel is added to improve brightness. The difference is that in the case of the RGB MiniLED Evo the objective is not brightness (something that is necessary in OLED) but rather to expand the volume of color available, covering complex tones that were previously only approximated by combining the three RGB subpixels. The result is an image with greater fidelity in skies, vegetation and skin, exactly the elements that make a sports broadcast look more natural. With this new panel, the 116UX is positioned as the brand’s flagship for the domestic field of large-inch models with 116″ and 100″ diagonals. UR9 and UR8: the flagships in one size below 85 inchesHisense proposes two models within its high range: the UR9 and UR8. Both models are a technological showcase of what Hisense is capable of offering in its 2026 catalog, lowering RGB MiniLED technology to more accessible price ranges for users. Both mount RGB MiniLED panels (without the last name Evo and the fourth pixel, which is reserved for the UX), the Hi-View AI Engine RGB processor, and sizes of 65, 75 and 85 inches in the case of the UR9, and from 55 inches for the UR8. One of the arguments of the panels Hisense RGB MiniLED is the improvement in color representation and increased brightness. However, here is the main difference between the UR9 and UR8, depending on the brand, the UR9 can reach peaks that exceed 4,000 nits with 1,056 local dimming zones, while the UR8 would have its ceiling at 3,000 nits. Beyond that difference, both the UR9 and the UR8 share some elements that place them in a different category from the … Read more

The highway with the most lanes in the world is in China and has 50 lanes, except for one small detail: it is a lie

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Demographic growth, urban development and the great automobile boom crossed paths in the 20th century to give rise to some of the most spectacular roads today: from the Panamericana that has never closed to the road with the longest straight line in the world. Logic leads us to think: if there are more cars, then more lanes are needed to avoid traffic jams (spoiler: from one point on, not working). And if we talk about roads with more lanes, there is one place that takes the cake: the Interstate 10 in the United States. The point that interests us in question is in Houston, Texas: there an ordinary six-lane highway from the 60s became thanks to an astronomical widening of the widest road on the planet. It is this American highway that holds the record with 26 lanes and not a chinese highwaydespite the fame of the 50 lanes of the G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao. The highway with the most lanes is in Texas. Within that highway that crosses the United States from Santa Monica in California to Jacksonville in Florida with a route of 2,460 kilometers in total length there is a specific section known colloquially as the Katy Freeway: a segment about 37 kilometers west of Houston. At its widest point, at Gessner Road, the road has 26 lanes in total: 12 main lanes (six in each direction), 8 service lanes (four in each direction) and 6 central dynamic toll lanes. This corridor is the backbone of mobility for the entire west of Houston, one of the largest cities in the United States and extremely dependent on the automobile (even for the United States): it has hardly any public transportation, little urban planning and decades of peripheral expansion. In this scenario, the I-10 is more than a highway: it is the artery of mobility and business parks, logistics centers, hospitals and universities that depend on private vehicles are concentrated around it. An unofficial record, not official. The Katy Freeway holds this record in practice, but it is not official (there is no Guinness for this) because no one has agreed on how to count the lanes. Do you only count those on the main road? There are 14. Do you add the side service lanes and the center toll lanes? You reach 26. Without a single, agreed upon criterion, Guinness cannot set a number and certify it. Brief history of its construction and expansion. The Katy Freeway was built in the 1960s and had six to eight lanes, sufficient for the mobility needs of the time. But between the 80s and 90s, Houston suffered spectacular urban growth: in 2000, traffic surpassed the 200,000 vehicles when had been designed for 120,000. In 2004, the American Highway Users Alliance (AHUA) classified it as the second most serious bottleneck in the country: they estimated that drivers lost 25 million hours a year. So the Administration planned a huge road expansion: an investment of 2.8 billion dollars and a four-year project between 2004 and 2008 to incorporate dynamic toll lanes inside an interstate highway for the first time. To make room they demolished an old railway corridor. As a curiosity, in 2014 there was another small expansion to add an auxiliary lane in each direction. Travel time from Pin Oak to downtown. Source: City Observatory / data: Houston Transtar More lanes and more traffic jams. Since a picture says a thousand words, above these lines is a graph from the non-profit organization City Observatory with data from Houston’s official traffic agency. City Observatory collects Although the AHUA described in a report that this expansion was one of the great success stories of traffic engineering to alleviate traffic jams and traffic jams, this was not the case: the congestion got worse. Just two years later, they recorded that travel times on that 47-kilometer route from the outskirts to downtown Houston increased by 13 minutes in the morning rush hour and 19 minutes in the afternoon. This phenomenon has a name: induced demand. Thoroughly developed by Gilles Duranton and Matthew Turner in “The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities“, offers a clear conclusion: vehicle kilometers traveled increase proportionally to the available lanes and the new roads attract more drivers and more trips until the added capacity is saturated. The G4 toll, seen in Street View What happens with the G4 Beijing-Hong Kong-Macao. It is common to find references to the G4 as “the 50-lane highway” thus overtaking the Katy Freeway on the right. The reality is another story: as verified by Africa Check with Google Mapsthe G4 is in practice a four-lane highway along almost its entire length of more than 2,000 kilometers. The expansion to dozens of lanes that usually appears corresponds exclusively to the Zhuozhou toll area (can be verified with Street View), near Beijing, where the number of lanes is expanded punctually to distribute the flow to the toll booths. Just half a kilometer later, it is reduced to four again. In 2015 there was a terrible traffic jam during the week of China’s National Day at that point that caused kilometer-long queues and the spread of that supposed “50-lane highway” when in reality it is the toll infrastructure of an ordinary four-lane road. In Xataka | The longest straight road in the world is a mental challenge: 240 km without curves, in the middle of the desert and with truck traffic In Xataka | The longest road in the world has been incomplete for 50 years: the 106 kilometers of jungle that no country has been able to pave

The megacity you haven’t heard of is in China and aspires to be the largest in the world

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In the world there are big, huge, huge cities and then others that are almost a country in themselves, like Jing-Jin-Jithe huge conurbation that has been taking shape in northern China for years. And “country” can be taken in its most expansive sense. If they are fulfilled the forecasts launched by its promoters more than a decade ago, the megalopolis will host between 110 and 130 million of inhabitants, in addition to a robust business muscle. Its size will also take away the hiccups: is spoken of more than 200,000 km2double that of all of Portugal. It may sound like science fiction, but there is a very simple explanation: Jing-Jin-Ji is not a city founded from scratch, but a new way of understanding and organizing Beijing, Tianjin and the province of Hebei to shape an urban titan. Rethinking Beijing. Although it does not reach the levels From Tokyo, Delhi or even Shanghai, Beijing is one of the most populous cities on the planet. Its stable population easily exceeds 20 million of people, more than all Romania or Netherlands. That huge number of people move every day to go to school, the doctor and of course to companies that may be close by. several hours of their houses. If we add to that the role of Beijing as the capital of one of the greatest potentials in the world, the result is an (almost) impractical megalopolis, polluted and in which complications the services. To face such a challenge and prevent the exodus from the countryside from ending up collapsing the city, in recent years the Government has resorted to several solutions. One has been limit the population. Another is to rethink Beijing itself so that it is no longer just the capital of China or a mere metropolis, but part of a much larger conurbation. The objective is twofold: to relieve pressure on the capital and to promote a new industrial hub, one capable of replicating the success achieved in the Yangtze River Delta or Guangzhou and Shenzhen area. A new giant: “Jing-Jin-Ji”. With this premise, a decade ago the Chinese authorities decided to go for what is probably one of their most ambitious projects: Jing-Jin-jia word that hides a nod to the cities of Beijing, Tianjin and Ji, which is how the province of Hebei is traditionally known. That business card speaks for itself idea. The idea is strengthen the bond between those three territories in northern China, distributing part of the crushing burden that now falls on the capital, improving communications and betting on a distribution of specialized roles. The story of Jing-Jin-Ji can soar at least to the National New Urbanization Plan presented by the Government for the period 2014-2020. In it, China, a nation already accustomed to megacities, advocated the promotion of a dozen “urban clusters.” The greatest of all would be Jing-Jin-Ji, in which Beijing would embrace (in an almost literal sense) with Tianjin, which is another of the biggest cities of the country and nearby cities in Hebei province. More than theory (and politics). The project received Xi JinPing’s blessing just 12 years ago, in April 2014and was sold with a display of astonishing data. Its objective was neither more nor less than to bring together a region of more than 215,000 km2 in which some 130 million people would live in 2050, generating a powerful industrial and commercial hub. It could have remained just that, an ambitious idea, but a quick review of the newspaper library confirms the extent to which China was determined to push it forward. The following year, in 2015, The New York Times confirmed that Jing-Jin-Ji was beginning to become a reality. Shortly after Guardian informed of the plans to create Xiongan, a large city located just under 100 km from Beijing that would allow the urban framework of Jing-Jin-Ji to be articulated. It was just one of the measures to consolidate the new megalopolis. The most effective of all was the reinforcement of rail and road communications. In 2016, China actually approved an ambitious investment plan to build kilometers and kilometers of roads and reach the middle of the century with about twenty of railway lines. Is it just infrastructure? No. Improving communications is a fundamental part of Jing-Jin-Ji, but not the only one. Another, equally important, is the distribution of roles between the regions. He starting point It was simple: Beijing would consolidate itself as a political, cultural and technological center while Tianjin would establish itself as an export port and manufacturing hub. As for Hebei, there was a commitment to also orient it towards industry and wholesale trade. In the background, slide China Briefingthere was the desire to bet on industrial clusters focused on emerging sectors, such as electric vehicles, the biopharmaceutical industry or robotics. To achieve this distribution, of course, it was not enough to set guidelines on paper. In 2015, the Beijing authorities announced his plans to refocus the capital, moving certain services, such as wholesale markets and administrative offices, out of the urban center and moving some services to suburban areas or even to Hebei province. The importance of gestures. Perhaps the best proof of the extent to which the Government wants to keep the project alive is that, from time to time, the Chinese press publishes articles reviewing the progress in the creation of Jing-Jin-Ji. It happened in April 2024coinciding with the tenth anniversary of the presentation of the plan, and it happened again in 2025, when CGTN He published an article to make it clear that Beijing’s suburban dream is advancing little by little. His chronicle highlights the increase in economic production in the region, the opening of new stretches of road that allow travel times to be cut, the reinforcement of public transport or collaboration at an economic level and when providing services. The local press also highlights that the region “has become an innovation center” capable of attracting companies. Of course, there are also important challengeshow to achieve greater … Read more

the incredible history of the largest castle in the world

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Europe is full of castles, but there are castles and castles and the one of the Teutonic Order in Malbork plays in another league: more than just a building, it is actually a superb Gothic brick complex built in the 13th century. In fact, It is the largest castle in the world on surface. To get the idea, it is four times that of Windsor. Furthermore, it is UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork stands imposingly on the southeastern bank of the Nogat River in northern Poland, and as interesting as its impressive construction and size is its history. Beyond being a witness to Central European history, this building was built by the Teutonic Knights, a militarized German Catholic religious order of crusaders that served to Christianize the entire Baltic coast for centuries. Among other things. A masterpiece of architecture. The intro has served to whet our appetite, but the Ordensburg Marienburg complex is architecturally a marvel: it comes with a huge palace, a monastery, three different castles and hundreds of auxiliary buildings. In essence, they are three castles separated by moats and towers, three castles in one. The castle began to be built around 1274 and reached its maximum splendor in 1406, that is, it took just over 130 years. The complex that had to expand to provide shelter to 3,000 brothers of the Order, thus becoming the largest fortified Gothic building in Europe. For its construction they were needed 30 million bricks. It was impressive inside and out: inside there were amazing innovations for the time, such as hot air central heating and an advanced sewage system. Its large halls have ribbed vaults that are authentic masterpieces of engineering secular gothic Entrance. Diego Delso Why was it built?. The construction of the Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork goes hand in hand with the history and future of said militarized religious organization. And at that time, the Teutonic Order was looking for a new Headquarters after its withdrawal from the Holy Land. After a time in Venice, in 1309 Grand Master Siegfried von Feuchtwangen transfer the seat of the Italian city at Malbork, in newly conquered Prussia. The main objective was to reinforce control over the area after the repression of the Great Prussian Revolt of 1274. Thus, that border area became the nerve center of a Monastic State that would govern much of the Baltic. In addition to its religious and military function, the castle was instrumental in establishing a monopoly on amber. thanks to your strategic location along the Nogat, allowing the Teutonic Knights to collect tolls from ships transiting the river to finance their military campaigns against the pagan peoples of Lithuania and convert the fortress into a commercial center integrated into the Hanseatic League. All this allowed them to ensure their economic power of the Teutonic State in the region. Historical context: the Baltic Crusades. Malbork reached its peak during the Baltic Crusades, a period when Germanic military orders sought the forced Christianization of the northeastern peoples of Europe. In this context, the castle not only acted as a military base: it was also its best visual propaganda. A complex of such dimensions is a financial and military ostentation to potential enemies. Come on, such an impressive architectural work shows that you have God on your side. Malbork became the most powerful manifestation of the Crusades in Eastern Europe. From 1309 it was the headquarters of the Order, a role it played until its decline at the beginning of the 15th century. This period coincides with the height of Teutonic power in the Baltic, with the fortress as the political, military and religious epicenter of a sovereign monastic state. Decline, destruction and rebirth. The Teutonic Knights were finally defeated decisively in the Battle of Grunwald on July 15, 1410 at the hands of the armies of Poland and Lithuania with the support of the Tatars. In 1457, during the Thirteen Years’ War, a Bohemian mercenary they sold the castle to King Casimir IV of Poland, becoming a Polish royal residence until 1772. However, the darkest chapter in its history dates back to 1945, on the verge of the end of World War II: the forces of the German army and the Red Army reduced more than half of the structure to rubble, as can be seen. see yourself in these photos. The landscape was so desolate that restoring it seemed like an impossible mission, but the process began in 1947 and is still continuing. Thus, with the passing of the year and the good work of specialists who have used historical documentation for a detailed restoration, they have managed, among other things, to recover the interior of Saint Mary’s church. In 1997 it was declared a World Heritage Site and since 1961 it has housed the Malbork Castle Museum. In Xataka | That Christian Friedrich von Kahlbut died in 1702 is nothing exceptional. That his corpse has not decomposed, yes In Xataka | We just discovered that a semi-legendary Nile king really existed thanks to a 17th century document found in trash Cover | Gregory

the savior of world energy

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When the price of fossil fuel tightensthe answer is not long in coming. The Iran war caused breaking the barrier of 100 dollars per barrel WTI. It was not surprising considering that the closure of the Strait of Hormuz led to the loss of 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and refined products, leaving the market with a net deficit of about eight million barrels per day. The world did not sit idly by watching the price of fuel rise and the reaction was immediate: buy solar panels at industrial levels. And, in that scenario, there is a very clear winner: China. Bottleneck. When the war startedsome of the first objectives had to do with energy. Through the Strait of Hormuz It moves more than 20% of the oil consumed by the world, being a strategic element and, therefore, vulnerable. With the closure of the Ras Tanura refinery and with the collapse of the strait itself, a brutal traffic jam was caused in which hundreds of vessels They moved at the speed of a bicycle. According to Bloombergthere were more than 800 stuck boats, and an Al Jazeera investigation pointed out that, in the first 40 days of conflict, 206 million barrels disappeared from the market. With that amount, 103 supertankers would be filled. The reaction of the governments was to begin releasing millions of barrels from their emergency reserves, as well as to call on citizens to spend as little as possible. Chinese panels. This is when countries have accelerated the transformation of their electrical network. As we read in Electrekwith data from Ember, China exported 68 GW of solar energy in March alone. The graph prepared by Ember speaks for itself, but that amount is double February’s total and 49% more than the previous record, set in August 2025. It is estimated that the solar energy installed in Spain is about 42 GW by the end of 2025and being Spain one of the powers in this sensespeaks volumes about the extent to which the world has turned to Chinese solar when the fossil fuel belt was tight. It goes through neighborhoods. The largest clients have been the logical ones: those most exposed to fluctuations in fossil fuel prices. Imports from Africa increased by 176%, reaching 10 GW with Nigeria, Kenya and Ethiopia being the largest importers. India imported 6.6 GW, Malaysia 1.8 GW and, in total, other Asian countries added 39 GW. Panels were also purchased in Europe, Japan and Australia, but the study points out that capacity was lower due to work carried out previously, and in the Middle East things were more complicated due to trade restrictions due to the war. Trend change. Something that the study points out is that, although entire panels continue to be purchased from China, there seems to be a turning of the tables because imports of solar cells are increasing, which are subsequently assembled in the destination country. For example, of those 68 GW exported, 32 GW belong to pre-assembled panels and 36 GW to cells and wafers. One is going down, the other is going up. And something important: it also means a relief for a China whose panel companies they were dying of success. Not just the panels. And this commitment to new energy not only translates into a greater amount of solar energy exported. Batteries and electric vehicles They are also booming and it is estimated that, as a whole, they increased by 70% year-on-year and by 38% compared to February. The Spanish lifeguard. Going down the data, the global implementation of solar energy is growing and it is being seen that it is not only a way to pollute less, but also to cushion the blow of the fossil fuel price increase that can suffer turbulence due to war, geopolitical issues or by accidents. It also shows that the fact that much of the world’s oil passes through a single point is something that can strangle the market in the event of a catastrophe, explaining why countries seek this transition to renewable energies that make them more self-sufficient. Images | Jenikir In Xataka | For the first time, 100% of Spain’s energy has been covered by renewables. The question is whether we can repeat it

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