
#importing libraries

import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import requests
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

import warnings
warnings.filterwarnings("ignore")

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.by import By
from selenium.webdriver.support.ui import WebDriverWait
from selenium.webdriver.support import expected_conditions as EC
from selenium.common.exceptions import TimeoutException
from time import sleep


import scrapy
from scrapy.crawler import CrawlerProcess
import os


#define the url to scrap
url = "https://www.bolsamadrid.es/ing/aspx/Mercados/Precios.aspx?indice=ESI100000000"


#request the url 
web = requests.get(url)
#init soup 
soup = BeautifulSoup(web.content,"html.parser")
#find the table we want to scrap
tables = soup.findChildren("table", { "id" :"ctl00_Contenido_tblAcciones" })
#limit table
my_table = tables[0]
#find rows in the table
rows = my_table.findChildren(['tbody', 'tr'])
#find names of the columns:
names = my_table.findChildren(['tbody', 'th'])
#keep columns names
columns_name = []

for name in names:
    columns_name.append(name.text)

#define empy dataframe with columns_names
df1 = pd.DataFrame(columns=columns_name)

#add values to our dataset
for row in rows:
    cols = []
    for x in row.findAll("td"):  
      cols.append(x.text)
    if len(cols)!=0:
      df1.loc[len(df1.index)] = cols
#show the table
display(df1)

#save to cvs
df1.to_csv('data1.csv')


#rows X_path
row_Xpath = '//*[@id="ctl00_Contenido_tblAcciones"]/tbody/tr'

#header X_path
header_X_path = '//*[@id="ctl00_Contenido_tblAcciones"]/tbody/tr[1]/th'


# configure webdriver
options = webdriver.FirefoxOptions()
options.headless = True  # hide GUI
# set window size to native GUI size
options.add_argument("--window-size=1920,1080")
options.add_argument("start-maximized")

# get method to launch the URL
driver = webdriver.Firefox(options=options)
driver.get(url)


# to keep columns names
columns_name = []

#keep columns names
for name in driver.find_elements(by=By.XPATH, value=header_X_path):
    columns_name.append(name.text)

#define empy dataframe with columns_names
df = pd.DataFrame(columns=columns_name)

# #keep rows
for x in driver.find_elements(by=By.XPATH, value=row_Xpath):
    rows = x.find_elements_by_tag_name('td')
    data = []
    for row in rows:
        data.append(row.text)
    if len(data) != 0:
      df.loc[len(df.index)] = data

#to close the browser
driver.close()

#show the table
display(df)

#save to cvs
df.to_csv('data2.csv')


class ArticleSpider(scrapy.Spider):
    name = "articles"
    
 
    start_urls = ['https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/' ]

    def parse(self, response):
        author_page_links = response.xpath("//header/h2/a/@href")
        yield from response.follow_all(author_page_links, self.parse_author)

        pagination_links = "https://english.elpais.com/" + response.xpath("/html/body/div/main/div/div/a/@href").get()
        yield from response.follow_all(pagination_links, self.parse)

    def parse_author(self, response):
        def extract_with_css(query):
            return response.xpath(query).get(default='').strip()
        def extract_all(query):
            return response.xpath(query).getall()

        yield {
            'url': response.url,
            'date': extract_with_css('//*[@id="article_date_p"]/text()'),
            'title': extract_with_css('//header/div/h1/text()'),
            'author': extract_with_css('/html/body/div/article/div/div/div/a/text()'),
            'text_art': extract_all('/html/body/div/article/div/p/text()'),
        }
FILE_NAME = 'data.csv'
SETTINGS = {
            'FEED_FORMAT': 'csv',
            'FEED_URI': FILE_NAME,
            'DOWNLOAD_DELAY': 1,
            }


process = CrawlerProcess(SETTINGS)
process.crawl(ArticleSpider) 
process.start()

2022-06-01 23:01:10 [scrapy.utils.log] INFO: Scrapy 2.6.1 started (bot: scrapybot)
2022-06-01 23:01:10 [scrapy.utils.log] INFO: Versions: lxml 4.8.0.0, libxml2 2.9.12, cssselect 1.1.0, parsel 1.6.0, w3lib 1.22.0, Twisted 22.4.0, Python 3.9.5 (default, Jun 16 2021, 21:17:19) - [Clang 12.0.5 (clang-1205.0.22.9)], pyOpenSSL 22.0.0 (OpenSSL 1.1.1n  15 Mar 2022), cryptography 36.0.2, Platform macOS-12.4-x86_64-i386-64bit
2022-06-01 23:01:10 [scrapy.crawler] INFO: Overridden settings:
{'DOWNLOAD_DELAY': 1}
2022-06-01 23:01:10 [scrapy.utils.log] DEBUG: Using reactor: twisted.internet.selectreactor.SelectReactor
2022-06-01 23:01:10 [scrapy.extensions.telnet] INFO: Telnet Password: 5cb1143534bfdafe
2022-06-01 23:01:10 [scrapy.middleware] INFO: Enabled extensions:
['scrapy.extensions.corestats.CoreStats',
 'scrapy.extensions.telnet.TelnetConsole',
 'scrapy.extensions.memusage.MemoryUsage',
 'scrapy.extensions.feedexport.FeedExporter',
 'scrapy.extensions.logstats.LogStats']
2022-06-01 23:01:10 [scrapy.middleware] INFO: Enabled downloader middlewares:
['scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.httpauth.HttpAuthMiddleware',
 'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.downloadtimeout.DownloadTimeoutMiddleware',
 'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.defaultheaders.DefaultHeadersMiddleware',
 'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.useragent.UserAgentMiddleware',
 'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.retry.RetryMiddleware',
 'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect.MetaRefreshMiddleware',
 'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.httpcompression.HttpCompressionMiddleware',
 'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect.RedirectMiddleware',
 'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.cookies.CookiesMiddleware',
 'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.httpproxy.HttpProxyMiddleware',
 'scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.stats.DownloaderStats']
2022-06-01 23:01:10 [scrapy.middleware] INFO: Enabled spider middlewares:
['scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror.HttpErrorMiddleware',
 'scrapy.spidermiddlewares.offsite.OffsiteMiddleware',
 'scrapy.spidermiddlewares.referer.RefererMiddleware',
 'scrapy.spidermiddlewares.urllength.UrlLengthMiddleware',
 'scrapy.spidermiddlewares.depth.DepthMiddleware']
2022-06-01 23:01:10 [scrapy.middleware] INFO: Enabled item pipelines:
[]
2022-06-01 23:01:10 [scrapy.core.engine] INFO: Spider opened
2022-06-01 23:01:11 [scrapy.extensions.logstats] INFO: Crawled 0 pages (at 0 pages/min), scraped 0 items (at 0 items/min)
2022-06-01 23:01:11 [scrapy.extensions.telnet] INFO: Telnet console listening on 127.0.0.1:6024
2022-06-01 23:01:11 [filelock] DEBUG: Attempting to acquire lock 4792846176 on /Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.cache/python-tldextract/3.9.5.final__3.9.5__9c9cb8__tldextract-3.3.0/publicsuffix.org-tlds/de84b5ca2167d4c83e38fb162f2e8738.tldextract.json.lock
2022-06-01 23:01:11 [filelock] DEBUG: Lock 4792846176 acquired on /Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.cache/python-tldextract/3.9.5.final__3.9.5__9c9cb8__tldextract-3.3.0/publicsuffix.org-tlds/de84b5ca2167d4c83e38fb162f2e8738.tldextract.json.lock
2022-06-01 23:01:11 [filelock] DEBUG: Attempting to release lock 4792846176 on /Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.cache/python-tldextract/3.9.5.final__3.9.5__9c9cb8__tldextract-3.3.0/publicsuffix.org-tlds/de84b5ca2167d4c83e38fb162f2e8738.tldextract.json.lock
2022-06-01 23:01:11 [filelock] DEBUG: Lock 4792846176 released on /Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.cache/python-tldextract/3.9.5.final__3.9.5__9c9cb8__tldextract-3.3.0/publicsuffix.org-tlds/de84b5ca2167d4c83e38fb162f2e8738.tldextract.json.lock
2022-06-01 23:01:11 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/> (referer: None)
2022-06-01 23:01:11 [scrapy.dupefilters] DEBUG: Filtered duplicate request: <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/t> - no more duplicates will be shown (see DUPEFILTER_DEBUG to show all duplicates)
2022-06-01 23:01:12 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-17/the-dreams-broken-by-luna-the-cryptocurrency-that-crashed-in-three-days-it-seemed-like-a-safe-bet.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:12 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-17/the-dreams-broken-by-luna-the-cryptocurrency-that-crashed-in-three-days-it-seemed-like-a-safe-bet.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-17/the-dreams-broken-by-luna-the-cryptocurrency-that-crashed-in-three-days-it-seemed-like-a-safe-bet.html', 'date': '17 May 2022', 'title': 'The dreams broken by Luna, the cryptocurrency that crashed in three days: ‘It seemed like a safe bet’', 'author': 'Álvaro Sánchez', 'text_art': ['Until just a few days ago, D.S. thought that investing in cryptocurrencies was one of the best decisions of his life. He had €80,000 ($84,300) worth in Luna – double the €40,000 ($42,200) he had invested almost a year ago. Today, when he opens the application to see how much of that he has left, the vision is bleak: €4 ($4.22). “It seemed like one of the safest bets. Even when ', ', luna was hitting all-time highs. They were going to launch lots of projects and they were backed by investment funds, ”says the 32-year-old Spaniard, who has seen most of his savings ', ' after the collapse of the digital currency.', 'His story is repeated across the world. Luna was created by Terraform Labs, which is owned by 30-year-old Do Kwon from South Korea. Up until just a few days ago, it was considered one of the sector’s biggest success stories. Last week, before the collapse, one young Luna investor described Kwon as a “visionary, the Elon Musk of the future.” Tens of thousands of small-time investors around the world threw their money into Luna, which was once valued at $18 billion. But opinions about Kwon have changed now as investors come to terms with their losses. On forums such as Reddit, once-enthusiastic backers commiserate over their losses, with ', '. And now Kwon fears for his safety. After the Luna crash, a stranger broke into the premises of Kwon’s apartment rang the doorbell, and asked his spouse if her husband was at home before running away from the premises. Kwon’s wife has reportedly sought police protection.', 'It is a disturbing end to a period of untrammeled euphoria. When the value of Luna went from $4 in February 2021 to $60 in the same month of 2022 – multiplying fifteen-fold in just one year – questions were not raised about the sudden spike, instead, it was expected to rise even more. Few suspected that everything was about to fall apart. “I invested because it was one of the', 'top cryptocurrencies', 'It was among the top 10 by market capitalization. I was sold on the project and the profitability of its stablecoin was incredible,” explains another young man from Madrid, under the age of 30, who lost €5,000 ($5,300).', 'The stablecoin he is referring to is ', '. Investors who deposited UST in “Anchor Protocol,” a lending and borrowing protocol built by Terraform Labs, were offered a stable yield rate of up to 19.%. In a context, in which few banks give more than 0% due to low-interest rates, this anomaly was not questioned by the winning investors, who were blinded by the power of a new technology that was promising to make them rich. But UST lost its peg to the US dollar, and this is what sent Luna, its sister currency, into a health spiral. Luna lost more than 90% of its value in three days, triggering one of the biggest shocks in the crypto sector’s short history. But big losses do not always act as a deterrent. “I still think that it can turn around and I have not sold anything. On the contrary, I have bought more. When a guy goes out partying and spends €50 [$53] on drinks on something that affects his health, no one asks him if he thinks it’s wrong to throw that money away. At least this doesn’t harm my body,” says the 30-year-old from Madrid.', 'Other Luna investors', 'have completely', ', which experts have also ruled out. One investor, a 41-year-old doctor, who like the rest of those affected by the crash only speaks on the condition of anonymity, says that from now on he will limit his investment in cryptocurrencies to the two largest ones: bitcoin and Ethereum. “I’ve lost two months of salary, about €8,000 [$8,500], so it hasn’t changed anything for me. My investments are diversified and the percentage I have in cryptocurrencies is very low, but I think it is a blow to the future crypto adoption that is so much talked about. At the moment I am going to stay on the sidelines, and I am only going to reinvest the profits,” he says in a message on Telegram, which has several groups of Luna investors.', 'Yuvraj Sharma from India is one of the few people who agreed to give their full name. There is little risk that his friends and family will read the news, and the $200 he lost in Luna has also not upended his life. But for the 19-year-old business student from Calcutta, it is more money than it might seem. “It is a lot for me because it has cost me a lot of effort to get it. It’s two months’ worth of wages. I still hope that something will be done to address this devastating crash and that I will be able to come out with at least what I invested,” he says. The chances of that happening are close to nil. The price of Luna today is $0.0002.', 'Sharma’s case highlights a growing trend: more and more young people are investing in cryptocurrencies, without any safety net. The fact that they do not large sums to invest is the only thing that is preventing them from losing bigger amounts of money in a sector that they do not completely understand. The question now is whether these young investors will persevere, and invest more when they start earning more, or if this is just a passing trend that will fade over time.']}
2022-06-01 23:01:15 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-18/the-metaverse-the-business-of-the-century-or-a-massive-bubble.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:15 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-18/the-metaverse-the-business-of-the-century-or-a-massive-bubble.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-18/the-metaverse-the-business-of-the-century-or-a-massive-bubble.html', 'date': '18 May 2022', 'title': 'The metaverse: The business of the century or a massive bubble?', 'author': 'Manuel G. Pascual', 'text_art': ['On October 28, 2021, a gear was set in motion, and it is still turning. That day Mark Zuckerberg gave an hour-and-a-half presentation about his great project for the future: a virtual environment that he referred to as the ', ' which he sees as “the natural evolution of the Internet.” To emphasize the gravity of his initiative, he closed his speech by announcing that his company would be known from that moment on as Meta. “Over time, I hope we are seen as a metaverse company,” he said.', 'The message had a deep impact, and for a nonexistent product, the expectations are high: the metaverse is ', '. It took Microsoft less than a week to enter the race to create the metaverse workplace, starting with offering customizable avatars for its Teams video-calling software. The company reinforced its efforts at the end of January with the €69,000 million purchase of Activision Blizzard, the video game company behind bestsellers including Call of Duty and World of Warcraft. The CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, described the move as “a big step” towards the metaverse: the acquired company is dedicated to creating realistic interactive worlds.', 'Many other companies have followed. Niantic, Intel and Epic are all working o', '. Decentraland already has its own, and the Roblox and Fortnite video games could already be described as metaverses. Apple is also preparing its landing in this business. Brands including Nike or Gucci have started to organize events in virtual environments and develop limited series of products exclusively available in digital formats. The real estate fever has also reached hyperspace, with firms such as Earth2, Next Earth and Superworld dedicated to the purchase of land in the metaverse. Master’s degrees and university courses focused on the burgeoning new world have emerged. Some countries, such as the Caribbean island of Barbados, have decided to open virtual embassies. In March, Decentraland held the first entirely virtual fashion show, Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW), featuring brands including Dolce & Gabbana, Tommy Hilfiger and Elie Saab.', 'Are we really facing the business opportunity of the century? Or is this another repeat of the dotcom bubble? Even if one or more metaverses are developed, will consumers want to enter them? “From an economic point of view, I see a huge risk,” says Manuel Hidalgo, professor of Economics at the Pablo de Olavide University in Seville and at the Esade Center for Economic Policy. “Before, someone would design a combustion engine and then business applications would come up, like cars. With the metaverse it happens the other way around: first I tell you what it is going to be like, and then, when you invest, I develop it.”', 'That has been Meta’s message. “The transformation we are launching may have a greater impact on our lives and on the economy than the smartphone has had in the last 10 years,” Laurent Solly, the company’s vice president for southern Europe, told EL PAÍS the day after Zuckerberg’s announcement.', 'When the young tycoon presented his idea to the world, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that Zuckerburg could build a $800 billion industry by 2024. Citigroup analysts disagree: in a recent report, the report estimated the market making between $8 and $13 billion by 2030. Gartner predicts that, by 2026, 25% of the population will spend at least one hour a day in this virtual universe to work, shop, learn, interact or entertain. Citi believes the potential range of users is five billion people, more than half of humanity.', 'Many entrepreneurs already agree with those analyses. An Accenture study revealed that, out of 4,600 interviews with executives from 35 countries, 71% of business leaders believe that the metaverse will have a positive impact on their organization. And, though six months after Zuckerberg’s announcement we are still not sure exactly what the metaverse is, 42% think it will be a groundbreaking technology.', 'There is no single definition of the metaverse, a name taken from Neal Stephenson’s 1990s cyberpunk novel ', '. There is not even a single metaverse, although Zuckerberg hopes his will prevail. There was already an attempt to bring this virtual world to homes just two decades ago: Second Life attracted large investments and plenty of headlines and now rests in peace.', 'The concept involves combining the physical and virtual worlds in immersive ways, through virtual reality or augmented reality. Technical advances and high-speed internet have greatly improved the experience of putting on 3D glasses. Today’s virtual worlds look nothing like Second Life. Entering Meta’s Horizon with the company’s Oculus Quest 2 glasses can give users a feeling of vertigo when walking through a gorge, or blind their eyes if they look at the sun above the landscape.', 'Some companies are working on haptic garments that transmit pressure from other avatars or from bumping into objects in the Metaverse. The virtual reality glasses that Meta is preparing, which will improve on the Quest 2, currently on sale for about $300, will incorporate gaze sensors. The sensors will improve the user experience by bringing into focus only what the user looks at and reducing dizziness. They will also allow Meta to collect data on what catches users’ attention and for how long. Facial, lip and body recognition will observe users’ every movement. (It remains to be seen if that information will be used for other purposes.)', 'Other technical advancements have prepared the way for the metaverse. Cloud computing is expanding rapidly, allowing devices to be smaller and smaller without losing computing power. The financial system is undergoing a revolution thanks to cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, digital payment methods ideal for these virtual environments. The metaverse promises to channel these innovations.', 'So what exactly is it? The Higher Institute for Internet Development (ISDI) proposes, after reviewing the existing literature to date, that a metaverse includes four characteristics: it must have a spatial or sensorial interface; the interface should give us access to an immersive world; in that world, the user’s avatar must be able to interact with other avatars and their environment; and there must be native virtual economies. Some of these elements are already present in video games or online stores. But until they occur at the same time, it cannot be defined as such.', 'Zuckerberg himself said at the project’s debut that it would take “years, perhaps decades” to be fully ready. To generate immersive, hyper-realistic graphics requires a lot of computing power and more latency (the time it takes for data to travel from one internet point to another and back) than we have today. We need better infrastructures and product.', 'Until those arrive, we will see intermediate phases of implementation: we will enter non-immersive spaces through our cellphones, and we will experiment with products that do not meet the four conditions indicated by ISDI but that are equally novel. Some of the trends have already arrived, such as online games in which players buy costumes, or skins, for their characters. This is one of the businesses anticipated to emerge: users will be willing to invest in customizing their avatars.', 'For Víctor Javier Pérez, coordinator of ISDI’s metaverse executive program, investments in this market fall in two categories: big technology companies are developing the hardware to make the metaverse work, and other companies are generating services for the environment. “There are many brands that do not understand very well what it is. They want to position themselves there and communicate it quickly. You have to offer value. The actions for right now are now brand positioning. The time will come to monetize,” he argues.', 'The Spanish company Virtual Voyagers has managed to sneak into the first group of innovators. In 2020, they were recruited by Meta to design an environment in which to host concerts. “It worked well. It showed that people could sustain connections of more than an hour and a half, as long as it was a social experience. Meta saw that these activities generate more engagement than video games,” says Edgar Martín-Blas, the start-up’s CEO. Virtual Voyagers is now working on designing the Vodafone metaverse.', 'The fashion giant Zara launched a so-called “phygital,” or physical and digital, collection, which featured real and virtual versions of garments. Nike has gone further and has marketed fully digital shoes as NFTs.', '“We are seeing that companies in the retail sector use different approaches to enter the metaverse,” explains Antonio Calvo, head of distribution and mass consumption goods at SAS. “Some make investments in their own sales portals, such as the supermarket chain Mercadona, which is investing in start-ups that are developing in this area. Others are positioned in third-party spaces, such as the one in Fortnite. And others, like Walmart, invest in different technologies related to NFTs, cryptocurrencies or blockchain technology,” he says.', 'Then there is the generational aspect. Young people are the primary users of video games that incorporate elements present in the metaverse. Digital natives better understand the mechanisms of these virtual environments. In Fortnite, for example, concerts have been held with audience sizes that rival those of major sporting events. Rapper Travis Scott brought together 12 million viewers during a performance on a platform, and was seen in the following days by 27 million people.', 'It also happens that, in Spain, age goes hand in hand with significant differences in income. “I am a millennial. Many people of my generation cannot afford to buy a property and choose to acquire assets in the metaverse,” says Ekaitz Cancela, a researcher at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Open University of Catalonia. “Real estate trading volume in the metaverse in the last quarter has increased by 150%,” he notes. It is estimated that the total figure last year exceeded $500 million, according to data from the specialized portal MetaMetric Solutions. “My generation, which has no experience buying houses or art, sees the metaverse as the way to establish itself as an aspirational middle class,” says Cancela.', 'The real estate aspect is one of the phenomenon’s most striking elements. The case of Gamium is illustrative: a group of blockchain entrepreneurs from Barcelona began a start-up to create their own virtual space. They want to develop a unique digital identity that allows them to enter not only their metaverse but also those of other companies. To test their plan, they put up for sale virtual land in their world. In less than a month, they made over a million dollars.', '“We anticipate that there will be constant economic activity within the metaverse. In reality, it is a world that coexists parallel to the physical world and that can be monetized in infinite ways,” says Alberto Rosas, co-CEO of Gamium, speaking from Bali, Indonesia, a destination internationally known for digital nomads. “You can charge a commission for each transaction that is made. You can sell clothes and items for your avatar, create exclusive games that you can only access if you pay, or monetize through ads in the metaverse itself.”', 'All that is yet to come–or not. But, for now, money in the metaverse is being made in a familiar way: speculating on the land.']}
2022-06-01 23:01:16 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-18/cashing-in-on-the-pandemic-the-five-highest-paid-us-executives-in-2021.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:16 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-18/cashing-in-on-the-pandemic-the-five-highest-paid-us-executives-in-2021.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-18/cashing-in-on-the-pandemic-the-five-highest-paid-us-executives-in-2021.html', 'date': '18 May 2022', 'title': 'Cashing in on the pandemic: the five highest-paid US executives in 2021', 'author': 'Miguel Jiménez', 'text_art': ['A ', ' shows that in 2021, top S&P 500 executives achieved record pay for the sixth consecutive year in a row. The median amount taken home by the highest earners was $14.7 million.', 'Consisting largely of shares and stock options, these executive pay packets demonstrate who benefited from the recovery in sales and profits and the rise in the stock market following the first year of the ', '.', 'With the highest earnings of them all, Expedia CEO Peter Kern is an exemplary case of how the pandemic stock market has rewarded top company executives. As vice president of the company, former media boss and venture capitalist Kern earned $42 million in 2021, mainly in shares. Expedia shares on February 21, 2020 were trading at $120 each; they plummeted in the following two months as Covid-19 took hold of the globe. Kern was appointed sole CEO of the company while in full lockdown. Shares fell to $61 each and then, like the rest of the market, began to recover as the months went on.', 'Expedia’s board approved Kern’s CEO compensation package in February 2021, with the share price at $157. Stocks continued to rise that year, closing at $180. They currently stand at around $120-125. In other words, shareholders are in the same place as two months before the appointment, but the CEO has become the best-paid executive in the US.', 'Specifically, 54-year-old Kern’s compensation consisted of $850,000 in cash salary, $830,000 in other compensation (including $90,000 for personal use of the company plane) and two large stock and option packages: $157 million in shares and another $137 million in options. Most of the compensation is deferred and payment will not begin until 2024, according to the report.', 'The company says Kern’s salary is justified by the commitment he showed in “a period of great uncertainty for the company and the travel industry” in the first years of the pandemic; also citing his leadership in establishing a platform operating model, a cost savings program to mitigate the stoppage in travel and his generally prudent management of the balance sheet.', 'The second highest-paid executive of 2021 was David Zaslav, 62, president and CEO of Discovery, the communication and entertainment group that has integrated ', '.', 'Following the merger, the company signed Zaslav to a generous six-and-a-half-year contract with a fixed salary of $3 million a year, a $22 million benchmark bonus and an additional $12 million in stock incentives.', 'In addition, he received a welcome/retention bonus of stock valued at $203 million; a multi-year package whose final quantification will depend on the evolution of shares on the stock exchange.', 'Zaslav’s final bill for 2021 (which also includes $774,000 for personal use of the company plane, escorts and security expenses and car at his disposal) amounted to $246 million.', 'ServiceNow, the cloud computing giant valued at $85 billion, also offered an irresistible package to William McDermott, whom it signed from SAP. In just over two years, McDermott, 60, has earned $231 million. If this welcome salary of $41 million in 2019 was not bad at all, indeed complemented by another $25 million in 2020; McDermott’s package broke records last year with his total compensation valued at $165.8 million. Again, most of those amounts are made up of company shares and stock options.', ', 61, received a huge stock incentive in 2011 when he took the reins of the company. Having missed out on top pay positions for a few years, even within his company, in 2021 he was compensated. Cook earned $98.7 million, of which $3 million was his salary, $12 million cash incentives and $82 million in shares. There’s just over a million that includes, among other things, $712,000 for personal use of the company plane. Since 2017, Apple has had Cook use a private plane for all personal and business trips for reasons of efficiency and safety.', 'To be sure, Apple has a long list of executives on multi-million dollar salaries. Financial director Luca Maestri; legal counsel Kate Adams; chief of staff and retail business Deirdre O’Brien and chief operating officer Jeff Williams each earned $27 million in 2021, according to public information filed by the company.', 'The fifth position according to public company information is held by 66-year-old Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan. His compensation in 2021 was $84.4 million. A package of $52.6 million in stock options made the difference from the previous year.', 'Dimon’s number two, Daniel Pinto, 57, also became one of the highest paid managers with a $53 million package, thanks to the special stock option plan for Dimon and him. Indeed, Pinto’s salary exceeds that of the vast majority of CEOs of other companies.', 'The list of the highest-earning S&P 500 CEOs is completed by Jay A. Snowden, of Penn National Gaming, with $65.9 million; Hock Tan, of Broadcom, with $60.7 million; Fleetcor’s Ronald Clarke, at $57.92 million, and Glenn Fogel, of Booking Holdings, with $54 million. Thomas Rutledge, CEO of Charter Communications, comes in at number 10 with $41.9 million.']}
2022-06-01 23:01:17 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-05-18/the-us-is-the-worlds-leading-enabler-of-financial-secrecy.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-05-18/the-us-is-the-worlds-leading-enabler-of-financial-secrecy.html', 'date': '18 May 2022', 'title': 'The US is the world’s leading enabler of financial secrecy', 'author': 'Laura Delle Femmine', 'text_art': ['Despite advances in information exchange and financial transparency, the amount of money that the world’s wealthiest individuals manage to conceal remains overwhelming: around $10 trillion (€9.5 trillion) is hidden offshore beyond the rule of law thanks to opaque legislation, according to estimates by the British organization Tax Justice Network (TJN). On Tuesday this organization published its latest ', ', in which the United States comes out as the worst offender, followed by Switzerland and Singapore.', 'The US has very attractive tax regimes in states like Delaware, and it has been particularly disadvantaged in the TJN classification for not being part of key information exchange agreements, such as the Common Reporting Standard of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This mechanism, in which more than 100 countries participate, provided information in 2020 about $11 trillion in wealth and assets that were hidden.', '“Globally, we’re starting to curb the financial secrecy used ', ', and also by tax evaders, corrupt politicians and organized crime around the world to hide and launder ill-gotten wealth. But the US, UK, Germany, Italy and Japan cut back that global progress by more than half, fuelling financial secrecy instead of fighting it,” said', 'Alex Cobham, chief executive at the TJN.', 'The disclosure comes ahead of a meeting of G7 finance ministers in Germany between May 18 and 20.', 'The US topped the index after it increased its supply of financial secrecy to the world by almost a third (31%) since 2020, resulting in the largest supply of financial secrecy ever measured by the index, the TJN said in a statement.', 'The Joe Biden Administration is no stranger to the problem. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen noted in December last year that the United States might be “the best place ', '.”', 'The Financial Secrecy Index reveals the extent to which countries allow money to be hidden and laundered. The final score attributed to each territory – 141 jurisdictions have been analyzed in this report – depends both on the opacity of its legislation, that is, absent or low transparency and exchange of information with other countries, as well as on the volume of financial services offered to non-residents over the global total.', 'The US has declined in both variables compared to the previous report, which analyzed 2020 data: secrecy increased due to its breach of international standards and information exchange practices, said the analysis, while the volume of offshore financial services grew by 21%, reaching 25.8% of financial services provided to non-residents globally by all jurisdictions.', '“Hypocritically, the US does require, under the Foreign Account Tax  Compliance Act (FATCA) and its related inter-governmental agreements  (IGAs), all countries to share information with it about US taxpayers’ financial accounts abroad, but the US shares little to no information in return with countries about their residents,” stated the report.', 'After topping the previous ranking, the Cayman Islands – one of the many British Overseas Territories to offer advantageous tax regimes – dropped to 14th in this latest report, after authorities published data for the first time indicating the real extent of the financial services they provide to non-residents.', 'Switzerland remains near the top of the list, despite improving its score somewhat. The country, famous for many years for its unbreakable banking secrecy, takes second place in the 2022 report. In third place is Singapore, which went up two positions to join the podium of the most opaque territories for the first time. Hong Kong is in fourth place, ', ', one of the founding members of the European Union, which, however, Brussels does not include in its list of tax havens. Germany is the other EU country in the top 10, coming in at seventh position.', 'The UK is ranked 13th, but if its overseas territories included separately on the list (Jersey, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands) were taken into account, it would outrank the US to take first spot for enabling financial secrecy.']}
2022-06-01 23:01:18 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-23/why-the-honeymoon-is-over-for-start-ups-in-latin-america.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-23/why-the-honeymoon-is-over-for-start-ups-in-latin-america.html', 'date': '23 May 2022', 'title': 'Why the honeymoon is over for start-ups in Latin America', 'author': 'Isabella Cota', 'text_art': ['For a young entrepreneur with an idea for a digital business, the last two years have been golden. The monetary authority in the US injected $7 trillion into the financial system to soften the blow of the pandemic and interest rates were at zero, which generated a sense of invincibility in the markets. In this climate, 12 ', ' became unicorns last year, a term reserved for firms that are valued at over $1 billion, setting a new record for this low to middle-income region. Moreover, there were hundreds of other businesses that raised large amounts of capital from Wall Street, just falling short of this benchmark.', 'But what goes up must come down and now the party is over. Such an injection of capital by the US Federal Reserve generated high inflation; the Fed is now reversing course to control the rise in prices and the market has reacted aggressively. On the morning of May 20, the financial media officially declared a bear market, which involves a decline of major stock indexes by at least 20% from their highs. Inflationary concerns, rising interest rates, persistent supply chain disruptions from Covid-19 and the', ' are wreaking havoc on the global economy and consequently on its backbone, the global financial system.', 'Investors who once felt invincible are now seeing losses and red numbers. In the first three months of the year, funding for new businesses dropped 60% from its peak in 2021, when it reached $7.3 billion in the second quarter, according to Latin American data from analyst firm CBInsights. Meanwhile, in the first quarter of this year, the number of new unicorns reached its lowest level globally in five quarters. On top of this, not a single Latin American company had an initial public offering on the international market.', '“The best way to read the market, I find, is to view it as a pendulum that swings between stories and fundamentals,” says Scott Galloway, a professor at New York University’s business school and one of the world’s most influential technology and financial analysts. “Stories, as in, the narrative, vision, and sentiment that drives the company forward. Fundamentals, as in, how the business is making money. For the past few years we’ve been deep in the story phase, and this is especially true in Latin America”.', 'The region had become an “assembly-line for unicorn production,” in Galloway’s opinion, boosting the ', ' to stratospheric levels. However, many of these companies will have no choice but to greatly reduce their operations as the pendulum swings back, and this already appears to be happening. Examples include digital companies like Netflix, which has just had massive layoffs, to smaller companies like Brazil’s QuintoAndar and Loft Brasil Tecnologia, both of which made more than 100 people redundant last month.', '“The pain you’re seeing in the public markets — especially among the more narrative-driven stocks —eventually bleeds into the private markets,” says Galloway. “Many of these young entrepreneurs have spent their careers in a bull market, and have never heard of a down round. But that’s about to change. Valuations will fall, capital won’t be so cheap, and investors in early-stage companies will not feel as smart as they did a year ago”.', 'The timing for a bear market is coinciding with the difficulties that come with unbridled and sudden growth. Mexico’s Kavak, a digital platform for buying and selling used cars operating not only in its home country but also in Argentina and Brazil, went from 300 employees in 2020 to 8,500 after becoming a unicorn. But the start-up, which operates through a mobile app, is facing an image crisis after complaints from a slew of users went viral on social networks about poor service.', '“Torture from start to finish,” reported one client on Twitter on April 1 in a thread cataloging her experience that subsequently went viral. Thousands added to the complaint. The noise was such that Kavak CEO, Alejandro Guerra, was forced to respond. “We are not perfect. We make mistakes; technology fails,” Guerra said at a recent conference. “We are fully aware of what happens on social networks.”', 'For many in countries in this region, digital startups that have grown into huge structures have failed to live up to expectations. Despite raising billions in capital, their ', ' continues to rely on the low wages and precarious job security which is standard for millions of Latin Americans. A report published in March by the non-governmental organizations Oxfam Mexico and the Institute for Inequality Studies (Indesig) found that the average income of a delivery driver for platforms such as Uber, DiDi and the Colombian unicorn Rappi is 2,085 pesos ($104) per week. In contrast, the companies are enjoying profits running into the millions.', 'These are “the shades of light and dark of an industry and a business model that is here to stay,” says Alexandra Haas, director of Oxfam Mexico. “This is why it is extremely important to flag up the situation and improve the work model used by the platforms, as well as the labor system and access to rights in our country. Companies, authorities and society in general must promote a universal social protection agenda that, on the one hand, maintains the labor flexibility desired by the delivery workers and, on the other hand, means rights are guaranteed across the board.”', 'This is where the big challenge lies for Latin America, according to Galloway. “Big Tech has generated enormous wealth in the US, which is something we should be grateful for,” he says. “But over the past decade, we allowed Big Tech to overrun our nation and this is something Latin America should learn from as these tech companies expand. Our biggest mistake was chronically underinvesting in our regulatory bodies, leaving private capital to emerge as a shadow government. This stemmed from a major cultural problem — specifically, our idolatry of innovators. We equate wealth with virtue and do not hold the innovator class, or their firms, to the same standards as old economy firms (or the general population)”.', 'According to Galloway, “the path forward in high-growth nations is to balance technological progress with respect for the rules and referees of business, i.e. regulation. Without regulation, monopolies emerge, stamping out competition and progress below. The state of American democracy in a digital era should be a warning sign for emerging nations around the globe.”']}
2022-06-01 23:01:19 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-19/ex-directors-of-mexicos-cfe-energy-company-prepare-legal-defense-in-whitewater-midstream-corruption-probe.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-19/ex-directors-of-mexicos-cfe-energy-company-prepare-legal-defense-in-whitewater-midstream-corruption-probe.html', 'date': '19 May 2022', 'title': 'Ex-directors of Mexico’s CFE energy company prepare legal defense in WhiteWater Midstream corruption probe', 'author': 'Isabella Cota', 'text_art': [', former executives at Mexico’s state-owned electric company, the Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), are appearing this month in hearings before the Mexican Attorney General’s Office where a judge will decide if they should face criminal charges in possible corruption cases regarding natural gas contracts, including ones awarded to the US company WhiteWater Midstream. For their legal defense, Turrent and Gutiérrez hired criminal lawyer José Luis Nassar, known in Mexico for his representation of controversial public figures.', 'As', ', the CFE opened a case in a US federal court to obtain more information about the relationships between Turrent, Gutiérrez and Matthew Calhoun, a founder of WhiteWater Midstream, which became Mexico’s largest natural gas imports supplier during the administration of former President Enrique Peña Nieto. The US case, independent of the Mexico legal process, includes a document of nearly 1,100 pages that details the efforts of the former government officials to award multiple contracts to the Austin-based company, founded by Calhoun, which had no previous experience in the energy industry. One of the contracts in question, for example, was awarded to a WhiteWater subsidiary created just three days prior.', 'Nassar, the legal representative of Turrent and Gutiérrez, is a well-known criminal attorney who defended Raúl Salinas de Gortari, brother of former president Carlos Salinas de Gortari, who was accused of murder in 1995. He has also represented Mexican soccer player Rafael Márquez, accused of supposed ties to organized crime, and the former governor of the Nayarit state, Roberto Sandoval, who was arrested last year for conducting operations with illicit financial resources. Nassar’s law firm has also represented Luis Cárdenas Palomino, a former director of the Federal Police, arrested for his alleged role in torture.', 'This month, hearings are taking place before the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor of the Attorney General’s Office to determine if Turrent and Gutiérrez will face criminal charges for their role in awarding several natural gas contracts during their time as officials at CFE. Turrent was the CEO of the private arm of CFE in the US, known as CFE International, where Gutiérrez served as the chief operating officer. The contracts in question were awarded following the Mexican energy reform of the Peña Nieto administration, which opened the sector to foreign and private investment.', 'CFE alleges that Turrent and Gutiérrez violated the Mexican Constitution, as well as criminal and procurement laws, in awarding contracts valued at hundreds of millions of dollars to WhiteWater Midstream and its subsidiaries and affiliates without conducting a proper bidding process and with conflicts of interests given their preexisting relationship with Calhoun. The federal case in Texas includes testimony from Fernando Aponte, a lawyer, and current Chief Litigation Affairs Officer at CFE International, as well as a US private investigator, in representation of CFE. Gutiérrez signed certain CFE contracts “while asserting the wrong power of attorney and without proper public notarization, which constitute significant legal deficiencies under Mexican law,” Aponte said in his testimony submitted to the US court.', '“I further discovered that, in connection with the procurement of the Waha Connector agreements, there was no evidence of any procurement process that would have guaranteed the best terms for the Mexican state had taken place,” Aponte said, according to the testimony. Waha Connector is the name of a pipeline operated by WhiteWater.', '“Additional review of communications and the background of the contracts revealed that WhiteWater Midstream, the company which was awarded the Waha Connector agreements, lacked the requisite experience and credit history for such contracts to be awarded properly and that the provisions of the contracts were not competitive and materially hurt CFE,” Aponte said in his testimony. “At the time these contracts were awarded, WhiteWater had been in operation for only a few months and WhiteWater Midstream affiliates, also awarded the contracts, had been in operation for three days.”', 'Aponte added that “Gutierrez and Turrent committed to award WhiteWater Midstream these contracts prior to soliciting or receiving bids from other entities. As such, the Waha Connector agreements were awarded to WhiteWater Midstream in the absence of the analysis required by law to ensure the state receives the best market conditions available.”', 'The US court case documents also mention former CFE executive Emilio Cosio, who according to testimony submitted and CFE findings, was involved in the negotiations between CFE and WhiteWater. Cosio, Turrent and Gutiérrez appear as managing members of an Austin-based company called 3V Energy, founded in November 2019, according to the website ', '. According to a source familiar with the company, 3V, prior to closing last August, sought to sign contracts with the CFE. WhiteWater is also based in Austin.', 'In the US, the CFE began investigating dealings with WhiteWater following publication of an EL PAÍS story in July 2021 that revealed Turrent, Calhoun and another executive of WhiteWater had known each other for more than 20 years, dating back to their time working together at Royal Dutch Shell. The three appear in documents that are part of a case of possible manipulation of electricity prices in California, which remains open at the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). ', ' as “consultants” months prior to awarding the Texas company with a massive natural gas supply contract, according to three internal sources at the state electricity company.', 'CFE and WhiteWater are currently involved in an international arbitration process after the state electricity company refused to pay the Texas company for gas purchased in February 2021, when temperatures fell to record lows in the southern US. The low temperatures froze natural gas production and distribution installations and prices for the fuel skyrocketed.', 'In July 2021, the Mexican government said that US authorities were also investigating WhiteWater for “awarding contracts under suspicion of corruption, abuse of trust and traffic of influences.” The open federal case in Texas pressures authorities in the US to investigate the possible corruption in the bilateral contracts signed between the CFE and WhiteWater. In response to a request for comment from EL PAÍS, the US Embassy in Mexico said that the government doesn’t comment on open cases.', 'The US is Mexico’s most', ' and is currently in a state of turbulence and tension, largely due to the position of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador regarding energy policy and diplomacy, said Adrián Duhalt, a non-resident scholar at the Baker Institute for the United States and Mexico Center at Rice University. López Obrador has canceled permits and reversed the energy reform initiatives of his predecessor, generating uncertainty for millions of dollars in investment for North American companies.', '“Mexico, despite the rhetoric about energy self-sufficiency, will continue to depend on natural gas imports from the US that will only increase in the final years of the López Obrador administration,” Duhalt said. “A card that President López Obrador could play is to point to corruption. If it’s determined that WhiteWater Midstream or the former CFE officials took part in influence trafficking or acts of corruption, he will no doubt use the case to feed his narrative against previous governments and the ', '.”', 'He added: “With state elections in 2022 and 2023, as well as the presidential elections in 2024, the WhiteWater Midstream affair and the proceedings against former CFE officials are ammunition for the narrative of the governing coalitions.”']}
2022-06-01 23:01:21 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-26/why-rampant-capitalism-is-taking-hold-in-venezuela.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-26/why-rampant-capitalism-is-taking-hold-in-venezuela.html', 'date': '26 May 2022', 'title': 'Why rampant capitalism is taking hold in Venezuela', 'author': 'Juan Diego Quesada', 'text_art': ['Adriana drives through the streets of downtown Caracas while the city sleeps. She picks up customers through the Yummy app, the Venezuelan Uber. For a few months, this was the best-kept secret among the local micro-economy: demand was through the roof and a good night an alert worker could make around $60. But soon word spread and many people put their cars to work. Adriana’s customer pulls out a $20 bill to pay for the trip, which costs $17. She pretends to search the glove compartment for change, but they both know how this ends. “Sorry, I don’t seem to have any change. Thanks, see you!” And she drives off $3 better off. Low denomination bills are scarce in the headlong capitalism that is gripping Venezuela. Everybody is thinking about money. Daily life is governed by greenbacks. The country, through Chavism, has moved on from the unsuccessful application of the Socialist Bolivarian revolution to a process of opening up branded in the forges of liberalism. The phenomenon has caused a mirage of economic recovery to appear.', 'Gone are the days of rigid controls. Up until very recently, Venezuelans hid their dollars because it was a crime to possess them beyond the watchful eye of the state. People had to queue for hours to buy rationed food at regulated prices and bolívars, the ', ', were few and far between. The panorama now is completely different. The use of the dollar as everyday currency, the lifting of price controls and tariff-free imports have changed the reality under which Venezuelans previously attempted to subsist.', 'The economy, says Luis Vicente León, an economist and president of the polling company Datanálisis, rebels against the established order faster than societies themselves. “What is happening in Venezuela, as it did before in China or Russia, is that people are looking for imaginative solutions to the control and interventionism of the state. When the government experienced problems due to sanctions and international isolation, they started to realize that riding this surfboard that society had created was more of a solution than a problem. And the government jumped on.” And exactly the same thing happened with the dollar, which went almost overnight from being demonized to providing some guarantee of a certain stability.', 'The dollar is now used in almost 70% of commercial transactions, according to some economic observers, and in a distorted economy it has also been infected by inflation: more and more dollars are required to buy the same thing. Ecoanalítica noted that the dollar lost 50% of its purchasing power in Venezuela in 2021 and it forecasts another chunk being taken out of it this year. Life in dollars, in which those who can afford to seek refuge, is also becoming more expensive and retailers have taken to camouflaging prices in non-denominated amounts with the abbreviation Ref, for reference. The price of a pair of imitation shoes brought in via containers on which tax has not been paid in a shop in a commercial center is marked as Ref 30, which is to say, $30.', 'Nobody knows how many hours Venezuelans waste every time they open their wallet. Even the smallest transactions require a mental calculation of a few minutes to work out if the exchange rate applied by the shop is beneficial, which varies depending on the currency being used and convenience: if the extra tax has to be paid because a buyer only has dollars and their use has spiraled in recent months; if the price has to be rounded up because there are not enough low domination bills or coins for change; or if there is no other choice but to pay more for a product because they are only carrying devalued bolívars. In Venezuela’s convoluted economy, everything ends up being more expensive.', 'Paying for anything in Caracas creates scenes worthy of a Marx Brothers movie. One morning, for example, a woman turns to a stranger in the queue to pay for a parking lot with a dollar in her hand: the parking place costs five bolívars, a few cents more than the dollar at the official exchange rate. The stranger with bolívars on his card pays for her and keeps the dollar, which means she avoids paying 3% more because of the Large Transaction Tax (the difference between large and minimal is obviously irrelevant). Just paying for parking can be an odyssey.', 'The sui generis capitalism being practiced in Venezuela has created a bubble of expenditure and redistribution in which four million people are living, particularly in Caracas. It is an island of consumerism in the middle of a precarious economy. Traffic in the capital has been restored to the diabolical levels of any major Latin American city whereas previously, due to a lack of gas, the roads were practically empty. Entrepreneurs are opening nightclubs, restaurants, supermarkets, stores and pharmacies. Internationally famous singers are returning to perform. One of the trendiest spots, Bar Caracas, has a price list identical to clubs in New York. That doesn’t stop it from being jam-packed from Wednesday to Sunday. Bar Caracas is a terrace in a five-star hotel, the Tamanaco, where businesspeople from around the world stay, with local news on Google alert to try and understand what is happening in Venezuela. They have the feeling that if they get in quickly, before house and business prices start to recover, there is money to be made.', 'A large part of the population, however, has been excluded from this parallel economy. A recent study by consultant Think Anova has looked at the distribution of income in this new Venezuela bubble. “The income of 30% of the poorest section of the population fell or stagnated between 2020 and 2021, despite the fact that average income increased by 65% over the same period. In relative terms, only the richest 10% of the population improved their position in distribution. This ratifies that the results obtained unequivocally worsen income distribution in Venezuela.”', 'In between the two extremes, the middle class has tightened its belt, sometimes to the point of disappearing or being reduced to poverty. Ida Febres is a 31-year-old social communicator who says she is better off today than she was a few years ago because she no longer wonders where the next meal is coming from, but what she earns leaves noting for savings. “I earn more now because I work too much,” she says. She works in audiovisuals for an international company and is recording everything she can in Caracas to earn a contract: events, podcasts, plays. She works 16-hour days. She recently started taking a neighbor’s daughter to school. The dark rings under her eyes are evidence of how early she gets up to earn a little extra.', 'For Febres, peace of mind consists of securing private medical insurance for herself and her parents: the crisis in the public health system is something that hasn’t changed in Venezuela and it shows no sign of improving. That is why she works so hard, takes on debt and cuts back on her food expenditure and puts subsidized gas in her car even though that means long waits in line or getting up at dawn to fill the tank. “When my parents were young, they worked for goals, like buying a house, a car, and having a family. I can’t have those goals today, mine are smaller,” she says.', 'The industrial sector is working at 28% of its capacity after the economic mini-rebound and in the first quarter of the year is has registered growth in production and sales, according to the Conindustria union, which two decades ago brought 12,700 businesses together but now has only 2,200 members. “We want growth to be sustainable and to do that we have to restore the purchasing power of Venezuelans, and employment. That is synonymous with recovery,” says Luigi Pisella, president of Conindustria and a shoemaker, one of the most-affected sectors by an influx of low-quality, imitation footwear that has poured into the country after the government granted tariff benefits to imports. “To put that 28% into context, we can compare ourselves to Colombia, which is at 80%, Brazil, which is at 82%, or Argentina, which even with huge inflation and a financial crisis, is operating at 75% of its capacity,” adds Pisella. Also putting it into context are the factories that are only operational for a few months a year, then close and lay off all their staff. Only 53.8% of working-age people in Venezuela are employed, the lowest activity rate in the entire region.', 'Even with this production capacity, the industrial sector can supply half of the market due the drastic contraction of the economy. And it manages to do so with self-supply of energy in over half of the operating industries, given that public utility failures are also a hindrance to production. “It will be necessary to achieve an economic miracle of 10% annual growth over the course of 20 years for the economy to get back to the same size it was in 2012,” says Pisella. The shoemaker highlights a recent change in economic policy that “is a step in the right direction.” A total of 1,260 products from an initial list of 4,465 were finally removed from tariff exemptions that make it more expensive to buy Venezuela-made products, something that has been repeatedly requested by the country’s diminished business community. This subsidy has flooded the market with imported goods of every kind, making it impossible for Venezuelan industry, which is subject to various taxes, to be competitive. Working against Venezuelan producers is the voracity of the taxman and a lack of access to bank loans, which the government has almost completely cut off to artificially contain inflation and anchor the price of the dollar.', 'This economic transformation toward greater openness has happened, paradoxically, at the same time as ', ' has been encircled by sanctions of varying degrees applied by the US, the EU, Panama, Switzerland and Canada, in response to the authoritarian drift of the country, which has also resulted in economic ruin with Venezuela shedding 80% of its GDP in eight years, resulting in 6.1 million people seeking their fortunes overseas.', 'As has been the case in other sanctioned countries, Chavism has adapted. ', ', the country’s main oil buyer and previously a natural ally in the region, were severed. Venezuela made new friends: Iran, Turkey, Russia and China. With them, an attempt was made to circumvent the most well-aimed blow Washington had struck in 2019: the impossibility of selling oil freely on the global market, which forced geopolitical triangulations and huge discounts on crude. US President Joe Biden, to counter the energy crisis brought about by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, has once again ', ' and made various concessions that have helped to ease tensions between the two countries. There is a strong possibility that all sanctions may be lifted, although US diplomacy is hamstrung by its support for the government of interim President ', ' If sanctions were lifted, the Venezuelan administration would have more income, which would allow it to raise salaries, in turn sparking a rise in consumption that would set in motion the chain of economic growth, which is forecast at 5% to 10%, not inconsiderable numbers in any economy but insufficient in Venezuela. At that rate, the country would need decades to reach pre-Chavist economic levels.', 'Maduro has opened up his economy as best he can. He has net with business representatives, announced the sale of shares in bankrupt, state-owned companies for investment, but he has also tailored an opposition to his own requirements and maintains control over civic life. In Caracas, one can do business, become a millionaire, but politics remains off-limits. Persecution of dissidence continues and a law to limit international cooperation with NGOs protecting the victims of human rights violations is being discussed in the Chavist-controlled National Assembly.', 'After years of political friction, the opposition has ended up cornered by its own errors and the repressive machinery of Chavism. But there is still pressure, being applied at the negotiating table with Mexico and through sanctions, which have led to a leap in expectation in recent days. Febres, who is out all day trying to make ends meet, says the government has won just by surviving these years of turmoil. “Nobody is bothered about politics, all those that did are dead. People have got used to the fact we will always have the same government, and some people will call it a dictatorship. But we can’t waste our lives on that, we all have a lot of things we want to do.”']}
2022-06-01 23:01:21 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-27/shakira-loses-final-battle-to-avoid-trial-for-tax-fraud.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:22 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-27/shakira-loses-final-battle-to-avoid-trial-for-tax-fraud.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-27/shakira-loses-final-battle-to-avoid-trial-for-tax-fraud.html', 'date': '27 May 2022', 'title': 'Shakira loses final battle to avoid trial for tax fraud', 'author': 'Jesús García Bueno', 'text_art': ['Shakira has lost her last chance to avoid trial for tax fraud in Spain. On Thursday, the Barcelona Provincial High Court threw out the Colombian singer’s appeal and confirmed that there is sufficient evidence that she ', ' ($15.5 million). Although it’s still possible for Shakira to reach a last-minute agreement with Spain’s public prosecutor, she has not succeeded in stopping the case from going to trial.', 'The three-year investigation into Shakira, whose full name is Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, ', '. The judge found that there was “sufficient evidence” to try her for evading €14.5 million in taxes by concealing her wealth via a ', 'The judge held that, between 2012 and 2014, the singer was a tax resident in Spain and, therefore, had to pay her taxes in the country, which she did not do. Shakira has consistently maintained that during those years she lived in the Bahamas and only visited Spain “sporadically.” But this claim was ', ', who have closely investigated Shakira’s life in Barcelona, where she lives with FC Barcelona soccer player ', '.', 'Shakira’s defense filed an appeal to insist that there is no direct evidence that Shakira spent “more than 183 days in Spain” during the years in question. Under Spanish law, a person is considered a tax resident if they have spent this number of days in the country.', 'The singer also argued that she does not have any debt with the Spanish Tax Office, pointing out that she has already paid €17 million ($18.2 million). But the Barcelona court dismissed her appeal on Thursday. Although the court did not go into detail, it found that there was enough evidence to indicate that the case should go to trial.', 'The Barcelona Prosecutor’s Office was waiting for the court’s ruling to present its indictment against Shakira. The singer is accused of three tax offenses and may face prison time. There is still time for her to reach a last-minute deal with the prosecutors, i.e. admit to the accusations and pay a fine in exchange for avoiding prison, but Shakira’s defense continues to maintain that she has not committed any crime and that she will defend her innocence in court.']}
2022-06-01 23:01:22 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-30/are-smartphones-the-new-wallet-the-apps-that-are-replacing-credit-cards-tickets-and-drivers-licenses.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:22 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-30/are-smartphones-the-new-wallet-the-apps-that-are-replacing-credit-cards-tickets-and-drivers-licenses.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-30/are-smartphones-the-new-wallet-the-apps-that-are-replacing-credit-cards-tickets-and-drivers-licenses.html', 'date': '30 May 2022', 'title': 'Are smartphones the new wallet? The apps that are replacing credit cards, tickets and driver’s licenses', 'author': 'Isabel Rubio', 'text_art': ['What if instead of carrying cards in your wallet, you used your smartphone to pay for meals, use public transportation and earn loyalty points at your favorite store? It’s an option that has become a very real possibility thanks to the ', '. But there are still some stumbling blocks to address: not all smartphones are compatible with these apps and depending on a cellphone’s battery life, it may not be the best option.', 'The number of people who are using their smartphones as a mobile wallet is rising sharply. According to the database company Statista, the use of apps such as Apply Pay and Google Pay in North America is expected to double between 2020 and 2025, and Asia’s market is expected to become even bigger. The use of mobile wallets soared during the coronavirus pandemic, as people avoided cash payments due to concerns over transmission, and travel restrictions made it difficult to access ATMs.', 'A smartphone needs to be NFC-enabled in order to act as a digital wallet (NFC stands for near-field communication, and it allows mobile devices to share data with other equally equipped devices.) Several apps, such as Google Pay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, are compatible with a wide range of banks. To make a payment, you just place the back of your cellphone on top of the payment terminal and authorize the transaction. If your phone is not compatible with these apps, or if you have privacy concerns, you may also be able to use your bank’s app to make a payment. Some businesses also accept payment via platforms such as Venmo or Cashapp, meaning you do not need an NFC-enabled cellphone.', 'To protect yourself from ', ', digital security company ESET recommends that you select biometric methods for unlocking and locking your phone, and enable notifications every time a transaction or payment is made. “This way, if there’s suspicious activity, you will get a notification almost at once,” says the company, which adds that some apps also allow extra security steps, such as two-factor authentication.', 'To prevent these apps from gathering more information than needed, users are advised to check the permits they require.', 'Some countries allow you to carry your driver’s license on your phone. In the United States, over 20 states have either considered, tested or have already released digital versions of driver’s licenses, with other states indicating they might be joining them soon, according to ', '. Drivers, however, are still advised to carry their car’s physical documents, in case something happens to their phone or they cross into a state that does not recognize the digital license.', 'These systems may vary, but the first steps are usually similar, i.e. download the relevant app and scan your license, then verify your identity with a photograph. The states that offer mobile drivers’ licenses – also known as mDLs – maintain that digital IDs are helpful, but are not a replacement for physical documents.', 'The US health system offers ', ', which are “paper or digital versions of your clinical information, such as vaccination history or test results.” They are presented as QR codes that, once scanned, bring up the holder’s medical information. This card can also include information about a person’s Covid-19 vaccination status.', 'Apps such as Passwallet, for Android users, and Apple Wallet, for iPhone users, allow you to store and organize a large number of documents, including credit cards, concert tickets, train passes, and even hotel keys. Some BMW owners, for example, are able to open and start their cars with Apple Wallet.', 'These apps work in a very simple way. There are lots of different ways to add a card to the digital wallet. In most cases, you will receive a notification via email or SMS. You will then need to click on the link or the file and open it up in the app. With Passwallet, you can add a card just by scanning its barcode or QR code, while Apple Wallet allows users to manually upload a card’s details.', 'When it comes to organizing loyalty cards, one of the most popular apps is Stocard. Users can add cards from multiple shops, supermarkets, gas stations, clothing stores and more. To add a card, you just need to scan it or manually introduce the details. Then, to collect loyalty points, you simply show the barcode on your cellphone. Users can also access special coupons and offers that are only available on the app.', 'It’s still too soon to completely do away with wallets. Many countries have not reached this', ', while others do not allow important documents, such as IDs, to be uploaded to an app. This is expected to change sooner rather than later. But whether people decide to forgo their wallets will still largely depend on the infrastructure available to them.']}
2022-06-01 23:01:25 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-31/remote-jobs-why-tech-professionals-are-the-only-ones-who-can-choose-where-to-work.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:25 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-31/remote-jobs-why-tech-professionals-are-the-only-ones-who-can-choose-where-to-work.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-31/remote-jobs-why-tech-professionals-are-the-only-ones-who-can-choose-where-to-work.html', 'date': '31 May 2022', 'title': 'Remote jobs: Why tech professionals are the only ones who can choose where to work', 'author': 'Carmen Sánchez-Silva', 'text_art': ['Digital nomads existed long before the pandemic. But new work modes became more common as the pandemic lingered, ', ' to embrace a new lifestyle. The advent of flexible work, which Ángel Sáenz de Cenzano, LinkedIn’s country manager for Spain and Portugal, believes will one day become widespread in every company that can operate remotely, opens up a world of possibilities for workforces. This is especially true for those with technology jobs, perhaps the only professionals these days who can choose where they want to work. In fact, there is a migration of workers to smaller cities and towns, according to Gary Mullan, CEO of Prosperity. “They want lower rental prices and a better quality of life. The trend is very clear. The number of worker relocations has doubled,” he says.', 'Although there is no data to back up Mullan’s statement, Google is a good example of employees taking advantage of flexible work opportunities. Its global work program attracted 15,000 employees, while another 10,000 signed up for 100% remote work, according to Javier Martín, Google’s human resources director for southern Europe. Because returning to office work ', ' in Spain, not much data is available. But Martin has seen some Google workers relocating to Málaga, Barcelona and the outskirts of Madrid. Others have gone even further, like Victoria Campetella, who moved with her husband and two young daughters to Hamburg, Germany. “', ' made us think hard about the lifestyle we wanted. We had visited Hamburg before, and found it to be smaller and greener than Madrid, and more child-friendly. Also, my husband has family here. We’ve been living here for two months now and are happy with our decision,” she told us in a phone interview.', 'According to Prosperity, a recruiter of digital workers, approximately 40% of all ', ' are remote full-time, 25% work exclusively in an office, and 35% combine remote and office work. “We see the highest demand for remote work jobs, and offering some type of remote work is very important for retaining talent. Companies that don’t offer this work mode have higher turnover.” Prosperity is currently recruiting dozens of digital workers for positions in Spain with Microsoft, Google, Wallapop, and many start-up companies. Mullan believes that this is what the future looks like, and cites the example of Meta, which recently chosen to build a new technology center in Spain that will employ 2,000 people.', 'José López Morales has worked for several years in the technology department of The Knot Worldwide, the world’s largest wedding planning website. The Knot has 900 employees in 16 countries, and before the pandemic, Morales worked in the Barcelona office along with 500 other employees. Once the pandemic started, all of the Barcelona employees were forced to work from home. The Knot now offers a hybrid work model. “We provide our staff with flexible work arrangements. A typical employee currently works from home 70% of the time, and spends one day in the office,” said Anna Bisart, the company’s Vice President of People. But technology workers can work remotely 100% of the time, so José decided to move out of Barcelona and bought a home in Begur, Girona. He lives in a new residential development that’s close to nature and the beach. He escapes to his backyard when he needs a break from the intense pace of programming work. “Now that I’m out of the hustle and bustle of Barcelona, life is quieter, and I can also save time and money.”', 'López leads two teams located throughout Spain. “We used to only hire locally, but things changed when many US companies decided to establish technology centers in Spain. This is an incentive for hiring,” he said. Joaquín Quero wholeheartedly agrees. He is a software engineer who joined the company this year and works from his home in Córdoba. “It’s hard to find jobs in my city. If you don’t want to relocate, remote work is key,” says the 37-year-old professional who has two children. He was happy to leave his former employer, a company that didn’t offer this option.', 'Bisart is clear about her mandate at The Knot Worldwide. The company intends to recruit 250 employees in Spain this year, mainly in the technology area. She knows that to achieve this goal, offering a 100% remote work option is a must. “The individuals we seek to hire are highly sought-after and difficult to find. We have to offer added value so that they want to come work for us,” she said.', 'Globant is also trying to hire “as many people as it can,” according to Mercedes MacPherson, the company’s head of people for the EMEA region. She says they recently hired 300 people every month, and 1,000 across the company as a whole, to reach their current staffing level of 25,000 employees. “We almost doubled our growth rate in 2020 and 2021,” she said. The company is looking for experts in data, ', ', cloud computing, software developers, and more. “These positions are very hard to find everywhere in the world. It’s a global problem. The universities don’t produce many graduates in these areas, so Globant has undertaken a major initiative to train and retrain people through specific programs and boot camps.”', 'Flexibility is essential for the software engineering company, says MacPherson. “It arrived with the pandemic and it’s here to stay.” The company allows its employees to choose where they want to work. Many of them, especially those with children, have moved away from the big cities in search of a better quality of life, she says. That’s why their value proposition for employees is no longer solely focused on the individual worker, but on the family as a whole. “When everyone worked face-to-face, we didn’t intrude into people’s homes. When that ended, we developed family health and wellness programs,” said MacPherson. The company has gone even further. In response to the many employee requests to relocate to other countries, Globant launched a specific relocation program. Spain is the country of preference for Globant employees looking to relocate.']}
2022-06-01 23:01:26 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/spain/2022-06-01/the-opium-vampires-touring-spains-poppy-fields-in-search-of-a-high.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:26 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/spain/2022-06-01/the-opium-vampires-touring-spains-poppy-fields-in-search-of-a-high.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/spain/2022-06-01/the-opium-vampires-touring-spains-poppy-fields-in-search-of-a-high.html', 'date': '01 Jun 2022', 'title': 'The opium vampires: Touring Spain’s poppy fields in search of a high', 'author': 'Manuel Ansede', 'text_art': ['Five heads, with their bare torsos, emerge above a sea of white poppies in the middle of a yellowish and lonely plain. From afar, the scene is reminiscent of an oil painting by the Impressionist painter Claude Monet. Up close, the picture is somewhat less bucolic. They are two women and three men who have slipped through a hole in the fence into an abandoned plot full of wild poppies on the outskirts of the town of Ajofrín, in Spain’s Toledo province. “We are three friends who came from France to pick the poppy, like many people who come from other countries in Europe,” explains Justin, 34. The two other trespassers are from Barcelona. They didn’t come for the showy white flowers, but for the ', ' of the plant, the latex contained in its capsule. That’s why people call them “the opium vampires.”', 'Justin is carrying two popsicle sticks in one hand, but he is not using them to defeat the heat on this Tuesday at noon. A razor blade is stuck between the sticks, and he uses this tool to meticulously slit the capsules of the plants and make their latex drip out: this is opium, a highly addictive and numbing substance that calms pain thanks to compounds such as morphine. It’s a kind of cheap heroin. Justin’s rudimentary tool is identical to the one that appeared next to ', ', a 32-year-old Italian who died of suffocation and convulsions in 2009 in a legal opium poppy plantation in Albacete, in central Spain, after sneaking in to ingest opium. Three years ago, Ryan, a 20-year-old Irish youth, died in a similar way in Polán (Toledo), just a few kilometers from where Justin and his colleagues are cutting plants this May morning.', 'Spain is the world’s largest producer of opium and poppy straw from ', ', with 113 tons of morphine equivalent per year, well ahead of France and Australia (75 tons each), Turkey (69) and India (27), according to United Nations data. Since 1986, a private company named Alcaliber has been the only one authorized by Spain’s Ministry of Health to control crops in Spain and manufacture these ', ', essential in hospitals to treat severe pain.', 'Alcaliber, founded half a century ago, has historically been linked to the family of Juan Abelló, an 80-year-old businessman from Madrid with an estimated fortune of €2.5 billion, the sixth largest in Spain, according to ', '. Abelló, heir to the pharmaceutical empire created by his father after the Spanish Civil War, was a hunting companion ', ', with whom he competed year after year to kill the deer with the largest antlers in the country. A manager of a large estate in Spain’s Castilla-La Mancha region says that those hunting events also served to share out Alcaliber’s profitable business: the company delivered the seeds and harvested the poppies, while the landowners put up their vast fields. It was a win-win situation, because opium poppies are much more profitable than chickpeas or cereals. In 2018, the Abellós made around €69 million from the sale of Alcaliber to the British investment fund GHO.', 'The exact location of the 528 legal poppy fields is secret, but in the springtime it is impossible to hide those 11,000 hectares dotted with white poppies that exist in Spain, according to data from the Health Ministry. A caravan of consumers and dealers from all over Europe can be seen traipsing through the country these days in search of “the flower of laziness,” as the poet Pablo Neruda called it. The banks of the Tagus River are one of their favorite destinations, notes a 24-year-old native of Cádiz who has traveled to Ajofrín from Barcelona to collect opium. “Thanks to word of mouth, it is a well-known fact that you can always find them in Toledo and its surrounding areas. From there, well, you just put diesel in the tank and you start driving around the towns,” explains this young man, who is sporting a mohawk and a T-shirt featuring the Soviet satellite Sputnik.', 'Alcaliber refused to answer questions from EL PAÍS, but this newspaper has confirmed several incursions into its crops in Toledo, despite constant patrols by private security guards with night-vision goggles. In 2011, the Civil Guard arrested two Italians who had sneaked into an Alcaliber plantation in Polán. The two men, ages 24 and 26, had collected around 84 grams of opium in a liquid yogurt container and a Coca-Cola bottle, with an estimated black market value of nearly €3,400 euros. They wore knee pads so they could crawl among the flowers without being seen. They were sentenced to one year and eleven months in prison for drug trafficking and attempted robbery. In 2014, a Portuguese man was caught with 81 grams of opium on an Alcaliber poppy field in El Carpio de Tajo.', 'The raids are just a minor annoyance for the global opium giant. A decade ago, the Civil Guard began to detect an increase in the number of people who arrived in the area in vans and motorhomes in search of poppies, according to Álvaro Gallardo, spokesman for the Civil Guard’s Toledo Command. “Starting in May, which is when it blooms, young foreigners come who are fully aware that there are large fields of white poppy in this province. They come with the sole purpose of consuming these substances”, explains Gallardo. The wind disperses poppy seeds, so it is easy to see wild plants in the province. You don’t even have to jump fences to get the drug.', 'In June 2019, Ryan – the 20-year-old Irishman – and a friend were collecting opium in a wild poppy field in Polán, not far from the legal crops of Alcaliber. Ryan ingested the drug one day at noon and that same night he had difficulty breathing. By the next morning he was unconscious and was transferred to the town’s health center, with his left lung full of foam, according to the chemists María Antonia Martínez and Carlos García Caballero, who published the case in the scientific journal ', '. Their team at the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences concluded that Ryan had died “from lethal opium intoxication,” possibly aggravated by cannabis use.', 'García Caballero is very forceful. “This tourism by people who come to Spain to consume opium is a dangerous trend - dangerous for them, because they cannot control the dose of morphine they are taking,” he warns. Morphine, he notes, can cause serious breathing problems, especially in high doses or combined with alcohol. “These people are at high risk of having an adverse reaction, including dying from respiratory failure. Just because it’s a natural product doesn’t mean it’s good. Opium is dangerous,” warns García Caballero.', 'Ana, a talkative 28-year-old woman from Barcelona, is also touring Toledo province in search of opium. She doesn’t think it’s reckless. “We are not afraid of overdosing and dying, because you have to be very stupid for that,” she says, despite the fact that she spent last year collecting opium in Polán, where Ryan died. Ana met another group of collectors there and stayed with them in an abandoned residential project in the outskirts of town, a ghostly place full of half-finished buildings. “We like to travel, move around and earn our living,” says Ana. A gram of opium sells for around €40 in the black market.', 'The young man from Cádiz and Ana arrived together in Ajofrín and it was there that they met the three French friends on a similar mission. The five of them begin to slice poppies as if they were lifelong colleagues. Justin, who is from the Perpignan region in southern France, pulls out his cellphone and plays a hypnotic techno song that he has written himself. “The plant inspires me because it relaxes me and I have another vision of music,” he maintains in a very slow voice, while his dog runs among the poppies.', 'The striking opium flowers proliferate along the ditches of some roads in Toledo, in part because the seeds fall from the trucks that transport the poppy straw to the Alcaliber morphine factory, which is protected by concertina wire. The agronomist Javier Seseña, who works for the company, believes that the abundance of wild opium poppy on the banks of the Tagus has helped prevent more attacks on legal crops. “The hippies know where our plots are and we know where they are. The Civil Guard and our guards talk to them and we respect each other. They go about their business, which is the plant that grows wild, and we go about ours, which involves plants with a pharmaceutical use,” he says.', 'The 11,000 hectares of opium poppy fields run by Alcaliber are mostly concentrated in the large estates of Castilla-La Mancha, but can also be found in the provinces of Valladolid, Burgos and Palencia, according to Seseña. “We try to give out very little information to avoid attacks from these people. We don’t need to reveal too much, because our customers, the growers, already know us”, he stresses. Ignacio Méndez de Vigo is one of them. His family business has been growing opium poppy for Alcaliber in Malpica de Tajo for the last 30 years. On their plots they alternate medicinal opium —up to 40 hectares— with green peas and wheat.', 'Méndez de Vigo says that he has never had problems with the “opium vampires.” “We had never seen foreigners around these parts, but now tons of vans are showing up with a lot of hippies from all over Europe, as if these were the beaches of Cádiz. These poor people, in this June heat, are taking water from the irrigation canals, which is water from the Tagus, and they are washing with it. It’s horrifying. In order not to disturb anyone and avoid getting into trouble, they take the wild opium poppy plants and get high with it”, explains the 56-year-old businessman, a marathon runner who combines the management of his 300 hectares with a managerial position in an insurance company.', 'Legal opium no longer brings in as much money as it did a few decades ago. “It is a crop that does not give you much trouble and gives you a good, reasonable return, but it is not a panacea. It’s not like growing marijuana,” says Méndez de Vigo. The agricultural engineer on his land, Ildefonso Alonso, explains that opium poppy had always been known as “the crop of €1,000 per hectare,” but now the profitability has dropped to about €700, just a little more than barley. The businessman Juan Abelló, the king of morphine, has in fact ', ' after obtaining the first license to cultivate medicinal cannabis in Spain.', 'Ana, the young woman from Barcelona, explains that she consumes opium in every way except injected: ingested, drunk as an herbal tea, smoked or even rectally. “Through the ass, you avoid the vomiting that you can have if you eat it, and it is better absorbed,” she explains graphically.', 'The early 20th-century writer Emilia Pardo Bazán portrayed a woman addicted to morphine in her novel ', 'It was published in 1905, a time when some Spanish artists, ', ', were flirting with opium. The drug, according to Pardo Bazán, opened “paradise for brief moments” and caused “a kind of sweet unconsciousness” that made one forget the pain and allowed “escape from the prosaic world.” But the novel also warned that it was “the disease of an entire generation, the slow suicide, [...] the drug of death.”', 'The chemist María Antonia Martínez agrees with the Galician writer. “I am not a moralist, but ', ', can only lead you down two paths: to the cemetery or to jail,” says Martínez, head of the Drug Service of the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences in Madrid. The scientist warns that ingesting opium in the field is “extremely dangerous.” “With one milligram of morphine you can kill a person. You can have an overdose on the spot, ”warns Martínez, who also investigated the death of the Italian Pasquale in Albacete.', 'A few days before the start of spring, Spain’s official tourism channel published a spectacular Instagram image of Polán’s fields packed with red poppies, which are related to the opium poppy, but without the opium. The town’s mayor, Pedro Cano, urged tourists to visit his municipality, but not to secretly harvest opium. “In Polán there are beautiful poppy fields,” proclaims the mayor. “But they’re there to be photographed.”']}
2022-06-01 23:01:27 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/a/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/a>
2022-06-01 23:01:28 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:29 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/i/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/i>
2022-06-01 23:01:31 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/l/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/l>
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2022-06-01 23:01:33 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1>
2022-06-01 23:01:35 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/u/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/u>
2022-06-01 23:01:36 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/b/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/b>
2022-06-01 23:01:37 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/d/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/d>
2022-06-01 23:01:38 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/-/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/->
2022-06-01 23:01:40 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/y/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/y>
2022-06-01 23:01:41 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/m/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/m>
2022-06-01 23:01:43 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/o/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/o>
2022-06-01 23:01:44 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/c/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/c>
2022-06-01 23:01:46 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/n/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/n>
2022-06-01 23:01:47 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/e/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/e>
2022-06-01 23:01:49 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/a/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:49 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/a/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:01:49 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:49 [scrapy.core.scraper] ERROR: Spider error processing <GET https://english.elpais.com/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/utils/defer.py", line 132, in iter_errback
    yield next(it)
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/utils/python.py", line 354, in __next__
    return next(self.data)
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/utils/python.py", line 354, in __next__
    return next(self.data)
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/core/spidermw.py", line 66, in _evaluate_iterable
    for r in iterable:
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/spidermiddlewares/offsite.py", line 29, in process_spider_output
    for x in result:
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/core/spidermw.py", line 66, in _evaluate_iterable
    for r in iterable:
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/spidermiddlewares/referer.py", line 342, in <genexpr>
    return (_set_referer(r) for r in result or ())
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/core/spidermw.py", line 66, in _evaluate_iterable
    for r in iterable:
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/spidermiddlewares/urllength.py", line 40, in <genexpr>
    return (r for r in result or () if _filter(r))
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/core/spidermw.py", line 66, in _evaluate_iterable
    for r in iterable:
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/spidermiddlewares/depth.py", line 58, in <genexpr>
    return (r for r in result or () if _filter(r))
  File "/Users/pedrosanchezsanchez/.pyenv/versions/3.9.5/lib/python3.9/site-packages/scrapy/core/spidermw.py", line 66, in _evaluate_iterable
    for r in iterable:
  File "/var/folders/f1/fnygmb715z391j0kp68y3hpw0000gn/T/ipykernel_87030/208658359.py", line 11, in parse
    pagination_links = "https://english.elpais.com/" + response.xpath("/html/body/div/main/div/div/a/@href").get()
TypeError: can only concatenate str (not "NoneType") to str
2022-06-01 23:01:51 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/i/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:51 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/i/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:01:52 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/l/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:52 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/l/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:01:53 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/g/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:53 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/g/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:01:54 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:55 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/u/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:55 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/u/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:01:56 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/b/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:56 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/b/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:01:57 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/d/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:57 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/d/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:01:58 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/-/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:01:58 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/-/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:00 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/y/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:02:00 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/y/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:01 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/m/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:02:01 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/m/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:02 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/o/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:02:02 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/o/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:03 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/c/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:02:03 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/c/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:05 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/n/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:02:05 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/n/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:06 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/e/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:02:06 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/e/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:06 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/:/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/:>
2022-06-01 23:02:07 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/s/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/s>
2022-06-01 23:02:09 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-01-13/redesigned-el-pais-app-adds-new-features-for-more-intuitive-experience.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:02:09 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://plus.elpais.com/newsletters/lnp/1/333> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/spain/2021-06-09/sign-up-to-the-el-pais-english-edition-newsletter.html>
2022-06-01 23:02:09 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-01-13/redesigned-el-pais-app-adds-new-features-for-more-intuitive-experience.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-01-13/redesigned-el-pais-app-adds-new-features-for-more-intuitive-experience.html', 'date': '13 Jan 2022', 'title': 'Redesigned EL PAÍS app adds new features for more intuitive experience', 'author': 'El País', 'text_art': ['The EL PAÍS mobile app has been redesigned for a cleaner, more intuitive user experience that makes it easier to access multimedia content. The new version is available on Android and iOS.', 'The app changes mirror the ', ', which tackled the challenge of today’s chaotic, incessant information streams with a more selective and orderly approach, combining in-depth stories and exclusives with breaking news and reports on new discoveries. Now, this focus on highlighting quality content is reflected in the app as well.', 'Among other functionalities, readers can now enjoy ', ' without leaving the app. Each story available in audio format or containing a podcast includes a player that lets users listen directly.', 'Another new option lets users search for news, authors and topics through the search box. Typing in “Manuel,” for instance, will yield a list of news stories containing that name, but there will also be tags for topics that contain “Manuel,” for example Manuel Chaves (a former deputy prime minister of Spain), as well as EL PAÍS writers who have Manuel as their first name or surname.', 'There is another improvement on articles that are saved to read later. These can now be read on any device with installed access to EL PAÍS with the same user account.', 'Website users and sports fans already know that the results of any given sports event can be followed on a scoreboard at the top of each related article. From now on, the app also includes this scoreboard for soccer, basketball and tennis matches, both during and after each game.', 'Users who already have the EL PAÍS app do not need to take any action to download the new version. If the changes do not take effect automatically, check that update options are activated in App Store or Google Play.', 'These new app features come on top of existing ones, such as offline reading, following topics and writers, or for subscribers, access to the last 30 days of print editions. Users can also choose their preferred edition (Spain, America, Mexico, Catalonia or In English) and personalize what kind of alerts they wish to receive.', 'The app is available on ', 'and ', '.']}
2022-06-01 23:02:11 [scrapy.extensions.logstats] INFO: Crawled 30 pages (at 30 pages/min), scraped 12 items (at 12 items/min)
2022-06-01 23:02:12 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-15/vin-diesels-tensions-on-the-fast-furious-set-can-the-man-who-launched-the-franchise-end-it.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:02:12 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-15/vin-diesels-tensions-on-the-fast-furious-set-can-the-man-who-launched-the-franchise-end-it.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-15/vin-diesels-tensions-on-the-fast-furious-set-can-the-man-who-launched-the-franchise-end-it.html', 'date': '15 May 2022', 'title': 'Vin Diesel’s tensions on the ‘Fast & Furious’ set: can the man who launched the franchise end it?', 'author': 'Jaime Lorite', 'text_art': ['Vin Diesel, recording in selfie format, announces to his Instagram followers the start of filming on ', ', the tenth installment of ', ', scheduled for release in May 2023. Seated on his left is an uncomfortable Justin Lin, director of most of the films in the franchise, who diligently answers the questions that the star fires at him: “What do you think, Justin?” “What are you feeling?” “Could we be facing the best of the saga?” “From the heart, yes,” Lin manages to reply, though his facial expressions and eye movements suggest otherwise.', 'When Diesel posted the video on April 22, commenters humorously noted the feeling that the Taiwanese filmmaker was being held captive by the actor, whose size could make anyone feel kidnapped. The jokes only grew in intensity when, just four days later, Justin Lin posted a statement on his Instagram profile informing of his decision to leave the shoot.', 'Lin has been officially replaced by Louis Leterrier, the director of ', 'and the first two installments of ', '. Lin’s departure took the saga’s fans by surprise: he directed five of the nine previous films, and his guidance had turned ', ' into a critical favorite, a previously unimaginable feat: it didn’t receive acclaim until the fifth episode, which boasts an unprecedented 77% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Internal sources leaked that the director had “creative differences” with Vin Diesel, who is also a producer of the tenth film. According to ', ', despite the fact that filming had already started, Diesel submitted a series of annotations to Lin’s script. The disagreement escalated until the director slammed the door and declared, “This movie is not worth my mental health.”', 'As ', ' reported, workers from other installments of the franchise spoke of Diesel’s creative control and frequent last-minute changes. “The whole process is like a mosaic that doesn’t stop moving,” declared one of the sources, acknowledging that the actor, who has played the saga’s protagonist Dominic Toretto for 21 years, also supervised the writing and design of the action scenes. But other information from the set, echoed by the ', ', indicated that the alleged “creative differences” could have been just the straw that broke the camel’s back for Lin. In addition to Vin Diesel’s perfectionism and demanding style, the actor repeatedly arrived late for filming, in poor shape and without knowing his lines.', 'Diesel, in fact, had already had to confront comments in the past by detractors who thought his physique was deteriorating: “For decades I have had the best body in New York City,” he replied in an interview with ', ' in 2015. In ', ' (2017), the third installment of one of the titles on which he built his fame, a Steven Seagal-like drift was noted in the fight scenes, seemingly to conceal Diesel’s army of stunt doubles. And his supposed issues with professionalism had already caused him to butt heads in ', ' with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.', '“Some colleagues are true professionals, but others are not. [...] When you see the movie, if it seems to you that in some scenes I am not acting and my blood really boils, you will be right,” Johnson wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post prior to the 2017 premiere of ', '. As confirmed later, he was talking about Diesel, with whom he shared only one shot in the film. The Rock was bothered by the protagonist’s frequent delays and last-minute cancellations.', 'That was not the only controversy between Johnson and Diesel around that film. The latter also cut an exchange between Johnson and Jason Statham that served as an advertisement for the spin-off ', '(2019), a solo film that the star did not approve of. The Rock did not return in the ninth installment, but Vin Diesel has unsuccessfully tried to smooth things over in order for him to return in ', '. Last summer, he justified his treatment of Jonhson to ', ', explaining that it was a technique to extract a better performance from him: “Not Felliniesque, but I would do anything I’d have to do in order to get performances in anything I’m producing.” His counterpart told ', ' that he laughed at his co-star’s statements, ruling out the possibility of returning to the saga.', 'Reconciliation attempts ended up in disagreement again when, in November, Diesel publicly requested The Rock’s return on Instagram–clearly the F', 'team’s favorite platform. He wrote a post in which he referred to his former colleague as “little brother,” claimed that his children called him “Uncle Dwayne” and invoked a promise to the late Paul Walker, co-star of the franchise until his fatal accident in 2013. Offended, Johnson insisted on CNN that he would not return and called Diesel “manipulative” for involving Walker and his children.', '“Vin Diesel has been very belligerent on set, and his ego has brought various headaches and schisms, but he has also certainly protected the saga’s integrity,” says the critic Daniel de Partearroyo, who has closely followed the franchise since its beginnings. When Vin Diesel returned in the fourth installment of ', ' as a leading actor and producer, after his absence in the second and a small cameo at the end of the third, he adopted the series’ success “as a personal mission,” Partearroyo says. His success is clear: ', ' is Universal Pictures’ highest-grossing franchise in history, surpassing ', ', with a total gross of over $6 billion worldwide.', 'Meanwhile, Diesel has tried to keep active the other two great sagas for which he is known: ', ', both now on their fourth film. In recent years, however, Diesel’s ventures outside of those titles have not gone well. The actor’s talent once caught the attention of Steven Spielberg, who gave him a small role in ', '(1998). Sidney Lumet, the director of ', ' and ', ', had also been awed by Diesel’s acting, casting him as the lead in ', ' (2006) at the request of mobster Jack DiNorscio, who was impressed by the actor’s performance in', '.', 'There was a time when Diesel won his peers’ favor. In her biography ', ', Asia Argento, who acted in the first installment of ', ' (2002), spoke of the action star as a great friend. She noted that he had pressured major studios to stop working with Rob Cohen, director of said film and of the first ', ', after she told him in confidence that the filmmaker had drugged and raped her, years before many other accusations of sexual abuse by Cohen came to light.', 'On whether artistic demotivation could have caused a certain apathy in Diesel’s professionalism, Daniel de Partearroyo believes that “in his case there is something of a reflection of the entropy of sagas and IP [intellectual property] in which Hollywood has been immersed for the last two decades.” “', ' is the only viable saga that he has, and that pressure can lead him to make more visceral and cavalier decisions,” he says. For the critic, though, Justin Lin’s absence from ', ' (announced as the first part of a joint epilogue with ', ', presumably the final episode) is “heartbreaking” news. “He has been the great architect of the saga as we know it. He injected personality, formal robustness and sympathy towards the characters. He liked his vision of the material so much that he resurrected the main saga starting from an appendix!” he recalls, referring to the director’s incorporation of ', '(2006), an independent installment that ended up becoming integrated a posteriori in the canon through an adjustment in the narration timeline.', 'Much speculation has been made about the “creative differences” capable of dissolving the long partnership between Lin and Diesel. Together, they have shot already iconic sequences of contemporary action cinema: the escape and chase involving a safe dragged through the streets of Rio de Janeiro in F', ' and the mobilization of tanks and military planes from ', '. Some rumors posit that it may have to do with a time-travel plot, taking literally Diesel’s statements of taking the saga “back to where it all began”. Others wonder about a crossover with the dinosaurs of ', '. After two of the characters traveled to space in the previous delivery, anything is possible in ', ' Next year’s premiere of', ' will clear up any doubts about the plot, Louis Leterrier’s directing and the Rock’s absence–unless any more unforeseen events take place.']}
2022-06-01 23:02:13 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-20/tom-cruise-the-evangelist-of-the-movie-theater-i-will-never-release-films-on-streaming-platforms.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:02:13 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/u/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/u>
2022-06-01 23:02:13 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-20/tom-cruise-the-evangelist-of-the-movie-theater-i-will-never-release-films-on-streaming-platforms.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-20/tom-cruise-the-evangelist-of-the-movie-theater-i-will-never-release-films-on-streaming-platforms.html', 'date': '20 May 2022', 'title': 'Tom Cruise, the evangelist of the movie theater: ‘I will never release films on streaming platforms’', 'author': 'Gregorio Belinchón', 'text_art': ['With his long hair and a brilliant, snow-whte smile, he has reached the epitome of ', ' stardom. The adoring masses at ', ' received Tom Cruise this Wednesday with overwhelming applause and wild screams. The star took over the Cannes festival with a premiere that featured a red-carpet flyover by the French Air Force, all to celebrate the European release of ', 'Shortly before the event, the actor, dressed in black from head to toe, spoke to a crowded room about his career and his passion: ', ' Cruise did not share any major revelations with the audience of 1,300, but he did offer up a handful of notable anecdotes. He first attended the French festival 30 years ago, when', ' with Nicole Kidman, closed the 1992 edition. The actress, his ex-wife, did not appear in the video presenting Cruise’s filmography, but he mentioned her on stage when recalling the shooting of ', 'and his conversations “with Stanley [Kubrick] and Nic.”', 'The actor has not budged an inch from his identity as “a friend of the cinema.” Over the course of the conversation, he repeated three mantras: “I make movies for the big screen.” “I make movies for the public.” “It is different to write and create a film for ', ' than for cinema.” Cruise recounted that during the pandemic, he called theater owners to assure them that both ', ' 7 and 8 and ', 'would be released in theaters. Before the coronavirus altered the world, ', 'was slated for a June 24, 2020 release date. Could it have been released on a platform? “That did not happen and will not happen. Ever,” he replied. The film will finally hit theaters on May 26.', 'For the actor, after the last two years, it is a “great privilege to be here, in a room without masks, seeing each other’s faces.” And he insisted that he still goes to theaters to see films. “Movies have to be seen in theaters. There you feel part of a community, you share the experience. I know the business, but I like the experience of making big-screen, long-running movies. Cinema is my passion. I always go to the movies when they come out. I’ll put my cap on and sit in the audience with everyone.”', 'Cruise recalled that he has loved watching movies since age four. “I also wrote things, characters, and I climbed trees. I was a dreamer. In my teens I sold Christmas cards door to door or mowed the lawn. What I earned I spent on going to the movies,” he recalled. “At 18, I made my own videos. I did not go to film school, but I learned on the set.” He repeated his commitment to learning from everything and everyone. “You have to work hard to learn. I shoot in different parts of the world, and I like to immerse myself in their cultures and languages. People interest me. History interests me.”', 'went into detail explaining his natural habitat, the film set. “Each film is an accumulation of knowledge from the previous ones. My second film was ', ', and there I sat down to chat with George C. Scott. I imposed myself. He shared with me all kinds of knowledge, memories. He gave me great advice when I explained that I wanted to dedicate myself to this for the rest of my life: ‘All you have to do is work your best every day,’” he recalled. “That’s why I love collaborating with film crews. I’ve worked with incredible creators like Tony Scott [who directed the first ', ' in 1986]. Everything is important. ', ' was an incredible five-week apprenticeship. I even watched the daily material we shot. They taught me how light communicates different feelings even if the actor does the same thing.”', 'Aren’t you afraid of acting in so many dangerous action sequences? “Of course.” So why does he do it? “Would you ask Gene Kelly why he does all his own dancing?” And he recalled: “I was four and a half years old when I climbed onto the roof of the garage of my house, while my mother was in the kitchen, and I jumped with a parachute made from a sheet. The moment my feet left the roof I realized that this was not a good idea. Either it would kill me or later my mother would.” He knows that his passion for risk benefits his films: “I think of the audience and their experience.”', ' has no special effects besides the explosions. The actors actually flew on jets. Cruise recalled that in the first installment, in 1986, many aerial shots were ruined by the actors’ vomiting. This time, he planned and executed a detailed flight immersion plan for his younger colleagues. Why has it taken 36 years to shoot the second part? “They offered it to me, but at that time I had to grow as an artist. The sequels have to dialogue with the public. This has been years and years in the making. I even discussed it with Tony [Scott, who passed away in 2012]. I put a lot of time and energy into each project.” And does he consider this the end of his career? “No, because I keep learning, making movies, looking for stories. I think about the next one, and the next one, and the next one, and collaborating with a team and seeing how I can help and how they can help me.”']}
2022-06-01 23:02:14 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/b/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/b>
2022-06-01 23:02:17 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/d/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/d>
2022-06-01 23:02:17 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/-/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/->
2022-06-01 23:02:18 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/y/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/y>
2022-06-01 23:02:18 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/m/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/m>
2022-06-01 23:02:19 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/o/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/o>
2022-06-01 23:02:20 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/c/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/c>
2022-06-01 23:02:22 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/a/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/a>
2022-06-01 23:02:23 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/i/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/i>
2022-06-01 23:02:25 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/:/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:02:25 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/:/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:27 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/l/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/l>
2022-06-01 23:02:27 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/s/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:02:27 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/s/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:29 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://plus.elpais.com/newsletters/lnp/1/333> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:02:29 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://plus.elpais.com/newsletters/lnp/1/333>
{'url': 'https://plus.elpais.com/newsletters/lnp/1/333', 'date': '', 'title': '', 'author': '', 'text_art': []}
2022-06-01 23:02:30 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/g/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/g>
2022-06-01 23:02:31 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/n/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/n>
2022-06-01 23:02:33 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/u/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:33 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/u/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:34 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/b/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:34 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/b/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:35 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/d/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:35 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/d/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:36 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/-/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:36 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/-/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:37 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/y/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:37 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/y/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:38 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/m/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:38 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/m/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:40 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/o/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:40 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/o/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:41 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/c/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:41 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/c/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:42 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/a/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:42 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/a/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:44 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/i/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:44 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/i/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:44 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/e/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/e>
2022-06-01 23:02:46 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/l/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:46 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/l/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:47 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/:/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/:>
2022-06-01 23:02:48 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/s/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/s>
2022-06-01 23:02:50 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/g/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:50 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/g/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:52 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/n/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:52 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/n/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:02:52 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/p/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/p>
2022-06-01 23:02:53 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/t/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/t>
2022-06-01 23:02:55 [scrapy.downloadermiddlewares.redirect] DEBUG: Redirecting (301) to <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/h/> from <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/h>
2022-06-01 23:02:57 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-03-12/what-you-should-know-and-ask-yourself-before-opening-a-joint-bank-account-with-your-partner.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:57 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-03-12/what-you-should-know-and-ask-yourself-before-opening-a-joint-bank-account-with-your-partner.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-03-12/what-you-should-know-and-ask-yourself-before-opening-a-joint-bank-account-with-your-partner.html', 'date': '12 Mar 2022', 'title': 'What you should know (and ask yourself) before opening a joint bank account with your partner', 'author': 'Carlos Megía', 'text_art': ['Sharing a bank account is probably one of the most frequent and life-changing steps in a couple’s life. Sooner or later, at some point in the relationship there will be an opportunity or need to combine savings in order to pay rent, bills, mortgages, or simply to materialize the idea of a joint project in something tangible like a checkbook. However, there are many unresolved questions around this crucial step, and the hesitation is already evident in the statistics: according to a study by Bank of America, 28% of couples made up ', ' (between 25 and 40 years old) choose to keep their finances separate, compared to 13% in their parents’ and grandparents’ age brackets. To shed light on the complexities of this financial dilemma, four experts answered the most frequently asked questions they hear from clients.', 'The four experts agree that we should ask ourselves the following question before taking the step: “What do I want it for?” “It is important to establish your objectives as a couple, as well as the actual point of opening the account. Also, economic rules must be established and needs must be communicated,” states Patricia Caro, a financial coach. Susana Núñez, a financial advisor, recommends making a basic calculation of fixed common expenses that the couple will have to assume, “to determine what share each one is willing to contribute.” And Silvia Sanz, a psychologist and sexologist, stresses the importance of communication as an essential tool to solve any issues that might arise. “Sometimes, difficulties in relationships are not so much about sharing an account, but about not negotiating first or discussing differences between both individuals.”', 'Núñez answers this question with an emphatic ‘yes.’ “When a young couple sits down with me and tells me that they intend to open a joint account, I always recommend that they also keep their personal accounts open. Today, young couples like to keep their finances separate. It’s pretty commonplace for the younger generation.”', '“Common ground must be determined. This means estimating what each partner will contribute to pay for rent, supplies and food. Everything else is managed individually: the spender can spend and the saver has no issue with the other part spending. However, when long-term relationship goals come into play, it is necessary to agree on how to achieve them, and that means making commitments and agreeing on how to manage the money,” states Maria Angeles González, an economist and financial coach for entrepreneurs.', 'Whether you are not ready yet to share your savings, or you are the one proposing to open the joint account, the first step is to talk about it openly and honestly, sharing arguments. “Respect should be the foundation of the relationship and good communication its guide; being able to ask and express what you want is crucial for a relationship to work in a free and healthy way. Opening a joint account doesn’t always mean moving forward, as the meaning each one assigns to money and the fact of sharing it must also be taken into account. Evolution doesn’t always imply sharing whatever the other one wants. Everything depends on the needs of the moment and each one’s philosophy of life,” explains Sanz.', 'Each couple is different, and it is impossible to set universal timeframes, but experts agree on the need of sharing a project first, whether or not they live together, in the mid- to long term. “By then the couple will have some experience communicating about money issues and the confidence to show their needs and share them with the other person,” says Caro. “Sharing and managing our money with another person is a step that must be taken only when we’re ready for it,” adds Susana Núñez, who suggests having a “firm approach” with one’s partner before going to the bank.', 'Maria Angeles González confirms that fairness is one of the main concerns of the couples that hire her services, in particular if there is a notable difference between their incomes. Her solution, to avoid having one partner push the other one towards unrealistic expenses, is that each partner should contribute proportionately to their income. “For example, if one of them earns $2,000 they can dedicate 30% ', ', so $600. If the other partner’s income were $1,000, 30% would be $300. Between the two of them, they can pay $900 in rent while making a financial effort that reflects their own incomes.”', '“Well, that depends on the relationship’s foundations and values,” explains the specialist in couples therapy. “If priorities are shared and there is trust in finance management, then it shouldn’t be an issue. At the end of the day, any difference that arises in how to handle a bank account is an opportunity to deal with a problem like any other that may emerge in the relationship.”', '“Family structure has been evolving, and millennials have other life goals. If they have a partner, most of them see the relationship from a more individualistic perspective. They may live together, but each one is financially independent,” confirms Patricia Caro. Silvia Sanz agrees with this change in expectations when it comes to one’s sentimental future: “They feel that everything is more finite, and they are a more individualistic generation, where growth, evolution, and moving forward in a relationship doesn’t always involve signals such as sharing an account, putting labels on the relationship, having to buy a place together or ', '.”']}
2022-06-01 23:02:59 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-03-13/cryptocurrency-a-lifeline-for-russian-oligarchs.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:02:59 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-03-13/cryptocurrency-a-lifeline-for-russian-oligarchs.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-03-13/cryptocurrency-a-lifeline-for-russian-oligarchs.html', 'date': '13 Mar 2022', 'title': 'Cryptocurrency: A lifeline for Russian oligarchs?', 'author': 'Manuel G. Pascual', 'text_art': ['The ongoing economic sanctions against ', ' may have a weak point: cryptocurrency. Data shows that Russian interest in the digital currency has spiked since ', '. There are growing concerns that the country’s magnates are converting rubles to bitcoin in order to skirt the global restrictions on their accounts. The nature of cryptocurrency – which exists in a closed system and is not regulated by central banks – could allow Russian users to hold onto their capital and eventually convert it to dollars.', 'What’s more, while the ruble has fallen in recent days, bitcoin is on the rise, meaning the oligarchs would not lose any purchasing power. Cryptocurrency movements are not tied to a user’s identity, unlike bank transactions, which have been affected by the decision to ban Russia from the SWIFT payment platform and the fact that Visa, Mastercard and American Express have suspended all operations in the country.', 'So are Russian oligarchs using cryptocurrencies to avoid the West’s economic sanctions? That could be the case. But most of their capital was probably already safe before the sanctions were introduced. “We have to take into account that these oligarchs may have their fiscal residence in another country, or have groups of companies that operate in different jurisdictions, making it possible to at least partially avoid the new sanctions,” said Moisés Barrio, a lawyer for the Spanish Council of State and the author of the book ', ' (or, Cryptocurrencies. Challenges and regulatory obstacles).', 'But there has been movement. As the French financial daily ', ' noted, some of these magnates began buying up cryptocurrency months ago. But it’s yet to be seen whether they will be able to recover their money. This will largely depend on how much digital currency platforms, also known as exchanges, decide to get involved in the conflict.', 'On Monday, February 28, representatives from the White House and the United States Treasury met with some of the major exchanges to ask them to stop operating in Russia in order to comply with ', '. On Thursday, Binance, one of the largest trading platforms, refused. “We differentiate between the Russian politicians who start wars and the normal people, many normal Russians do not agree with war,” Chanpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, told BBC Radio 4 on Thursday.', 'The following, Coinbase, another major exchange, also refused to comply. “We believe everyone deserves access to basic financial services unless the law says otherwise,” said Brian Armstrong, the company founder, in a ', '. Jesse Powell, the founder of the trading platform Kraken, also justified his ', ', arguing: “Sometimes the hardest thing about having power is knowing when not to use it.”', 'Many cryptocurrency enthusiasts argue that gatekeeping the sector goes against the technology’s spirit. Though most exchanges are following the European Union and United States’ requests to stop operating in Russia, some have chosen only to block access to certain accounts. To do this though, they need to know who to go after.', 'When someone wants to buy bitcoin, they need to find a seller. There are two ways to do this: they can carry out the transaction over the internet – and run the risk of getting scammed – or they can use an exchange, which may or may not be regulated. Most users opt for regulated exchanges, such as Binance, Kraken and Coinbase, in order to protect their transactions.', 'These platforms are key for two reasons: firstly, they require their clients to identify themselves, and secondly, they are the only large bitcoin forks. Bitcoin is built on blockchain, a technology that shows the amount of money that each address or user holds. “The addresses with the most bitcoin are the exchanges. An oligarch who wants to buy large amounts of bitcoin will have to go through one of those platforms,” explained Javier Pastor, sales director of the Spanish cryptocurrency platform Bit2Me.', 'In order to register on a regulated exchange, users need to upload a passport and corroborating identification. If they want to buy cryptocurrency, they must also show the source of the money that they will use to buy it. “The idea is that all exchanges can be useful in police investigations, including ones on money laundering,” Pastor added.', 'No one can stop a person from giving a $50-bill to someone else. The same is true of bitcoin transactions. But intermediaries – such as banks or, in the case of cryptocurrency, exchanges – can be blocked.', 'Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), said on February 25, the day after the invasion began, that the EU needs legislation to regulate cryptocurrency transactions, among other measures to control the movement of Russian capital. The law already provides for ways for the government to intervene in cryptocurrency accounts, known as wallets.', '“In Spain, the Tax Agency, through the National Fraud Investigation Office [ONIF], has specific measures to detect cryptocurrency transactions. Your property must be recorded in the declaration of assets abroad and your earnings are subject to income and patrimony tax,” Barrio explained. “The Spanish courts can block wallets operated by providers based in Spain or with branches in our country, and use judicial cooperation mechanisms in other cases,” he added.', 'Anyone who deposits large sums of dollars derived from bitcoins in Swiss bank accounts, as Russian oligarchs are prone to do, or in another tax haven, will automatically raise red flags. For French economist Thomas Piketty, pursuing these movements is actually simple: “It would be enough for Western countries to finally create an international financial registry that would keep track of who owns what in the different countries,” he wrote in an opinion piece for EL PAÍS.', 'Authorities can also selectively intervene before the currency conversion takes place. “There are companies, including the exchanges, that can mark wallets that have been identified as being related to the Russian government or its collaborators, just like those that come from hacking or drug trafficking. These transactions should be monitored and blocked, but not transactions from all Russian citizens,” said Jorge Soriano, co-founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Criptan.', 'Many industry professionals prefer blocking only certain blacklisted accounts over cutting off an entire country. “It’s hard to do, but it can be achieved if intelligence services identify bitcoin addresses of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin or other key people and then tell exchanges not to accept their transactions,” said Raúl Marcos, CEO of the exchange Carbono.com.', 'The use of cryptocurrencies, especially bitcoin, has skyrocketed in Russia and Ukraine since the war began. In a few days, over 140 million dollars worth of rubles has been converted to bitcoin, according to CryptoCompare data aggregated by ', '. Russian citizens have turned to the decentralized digital currency as a way to maintain their purchasing power in the face of the ruble’s collapse, just as Venezuelans and Argentines did before them, when their economies began to flail. In Ukraine, which before the invasion was the fourth in the world in terms of crypto adoption, people have been converting their money into bitcoin so it can be easily transported – they can carry their savings on a USB drive, and protect them from devaluing at a time of deep uncertainty.', 'Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government is also relying on cryptocurrency donations to finance the', '. The government’s official Twitter account has encouraged those who wish to help, to donate money to their bitcoin and Ethereum addresses. By March 1, donors had transferred more than $15 million in crypto. The Ukrainian NGO Come Back Alive has also raised $8.5 million in bitcoins since its founding in 2014, following the Russian invasion of Crimea.', 'Ukraine also plans to issue NFTs (non-fungible digital tokens) to support the war against Russia, according to the ', '. Last week, one of the founders of the Russian activist group Pussy Riot auctioned an NFT of the Ukrainian flag for more than €6 six million ($6.7 million), with the proceeds going to support those affected by the war.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-03-15/why-being-a-workaholic-is-the-only-socially-acceptable-addiction.html', 'date': '15 Mar 2022', 'title': 'Why being a workaholic is the only socially acceptable addiction for women', 'author': '', 'text_art': ['Those of us who were born in the 1980s and 1990s grew up with the idea of progress and firmly believed that if we studied and worked hard enough, we could be successful like the television characters Ally McBeal (from the show with the same name), Alicia Florrick (', ') or ', '. The narratives in early 21st-century fiction drew on a ', ' where a woman’s identity and value was built around her role in the capitalist system.', 'So while McBeal did some serious overtime to prove that she was more than just a lawyer in a miniskirt, Bradshaw wrote her newspaper column anywhere, anytime. There were no schedules to live by. Both characters earned the kind of money that made them financially independent and allowed them to live in expensive city centers. This appealed to teenage viewers who wanted to grow up to be financially independent too. The message between the lines was that if you wanted to be financially successful and independent, you had to live for work.', 'When we are young we work for free because we need to prove our talent in exchange for a future job contract. When we are no longer so young we keep putting in extra hours because we don’t want to be left behind if we have children. And when we are 48 and should be peacefully enjoying everything we have gained, we continue to strive for recognition because we don’t want to get fired after so many years of hard work just because the company wants a “fresher” vision. In other words, we ', ' because we’re seen as too old.', '“The main problem with being addicted to work is that it’s not even considered an addiction. Most of the time, people say they are workaholics with a smile on their face,” says Jara Pérez, a psychologist specializing in systemic and transfeminist therapy. “What’s more, in the current system, it is viewed in a positive light if, besides your paid job at a company, you have professional projects to spend your free time on. That is why addiction to work does not define itself as such. Society does not see it as a problem that we use to cover up other problems, but rather the opposite: it is linked to the idea of success.”', 'If, to these cultural references of the past two decades, we add a job market that’s been defined by precarious conditions since ', ', we have all the ingredients to develop a toxic relationship with work. Fear of losing that long-term contract makes us agree to have a meeting outside working hours or take a work call on weekends. We say yes to everything because we’d rather do that than live without the financial independence to make our own decisions.', '“We are very afraid of being economically dependent,” adds Pérez. “When we are forced to deal with a period of financial vulnerability due to a dismissal, sick leave or a job-retention scheme, it often triggers that fear inside of us. And even though we consciously trust our partners not to use that vulnerability to exercise power over us, there is such a long history of abuse against women that we feel all that fear the moment we start feeling dependent.”', 'In fact, we are so scared that we make ourselves believe that merit on its own will ', ' and close the gender gap. And we keep doing overtime because capitalist culture has instilled in us the idea that our identity is built on our work-related achievements.', '“Historically, a woman’s value was built on the concept of caregiving, but now, with women’s liberation through the job market, work also adds value to us. But when our identity is tied to a career, what’s at stake is a lot more than financial independence, and we end up becoming a brand. If our work fails, we end up with the feeling that our social capital is not valid,” says Pérez.', 'Writers like Jenny Odell, author of ', ', say that with the advent of social media it has become increasingly hard to escape the narrative linking one’s identity to work. We live in a world where we reveal our career on our Instagram profile and use a job-searching network even if we already have a job. LinkedIn not only whitewashes addiction to work, it actually encourages it, sending alerts and emails to make sure you never let your guard down, because you never know when a new offer might pop up for a better job than the one you’ve got now.', 'And just like browsing through real estate websites often leads us to imagine what our life might be like if we lived in that home we can’t afford, starting a job-selection process makes us project what life would be like if we were picked for that well-paid job that’s in such high demand. We figure it would mean we’ve finally made it after all that effort. And that’s a sure sign that we’ve been seduced by capitalism.', 'But in the real world, things have a way of turning out not quite as expected. Nobody told us that all that hard work that defined a successful woman in all those TV shows probably came at a high personal cost measured in Valium pills. And since we are not Carrie Bradshaw or Ally McBeal, we will not go out for a Cosmopolitan after leaving the office at 9.30pm. More likely than not, we’ll head straight for the convenience store to pick up a bag of salad and some ready-made hummus to have for dinner at home.', 'It should come as no surprise that the consumption of anxiolytics is a direct consequence of our addiction to work. Statistics show that women consume twice as much psychoactive medication as men. According to the experts, they are subjected to greater pressure and are more vulnerable to anxiety and depression.', 'Although we were sold on the idea of earning success through sheer talent, women have to deal with structural problems in the job market: we earn less for the same work, and this means less decision-making power.', '“To me, self-exploitation is born out of a need to compensate with more work for the feeling of a lack of opportunities. I feel I have to work twice as hard to achieve half of what men achieve,” notes Olga Iglesias, a Spanish scriptwriter who co-authored the play ', ' (or, How we got here).', 'Pérez says that, at one point, realizing that ', ' is just one more step in the life of an adult woman. “We have to accept that this idea does not exist,” she says. “Trying again and again even though our expectations for success are broken is what leads to burnout.”', 'New strategies may be required, says Pérez, such as “realizing that we are valuable beyond the professional sphere.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-03-16/rising-gas-prices-spark-panic-in-the-us-its-crazy.html', 'date': '16 Mar 2022', 'title': 'Rising gas prices spark panic in the US: ‘It’s crazy’', 'author': 'Luis Pablo Beauregard', 'text_art': ['As the cost of gas continues to rise in the United States, drivers in Los Angeles – ', 'driver capital of the country – are becoming increasingly panicked. Last week, the price neared $8 a gallon at many gas stations in the city. While the price hikes stalled over the weekend, the situation continues to concern drivers, whose wallets have been hit hard by weeks of inflationary pressure and ', '.', '“It’s crazy,” says Beth Rooney, a 26-year-old designer at Culver City gas station, where the cost of a gallon reached $6 on Friday. “Luckily, I can continue working from home, but many of my friends have returned to the office, only to see their salaries disappear [on fuel]. It’s becoming more and more difficult to make ends meet.” According to Rooney, just a few weeks ago, it cost 30% less to fill up her tank.', 'The rise in fuel prices is coinciding with the return to normality following ', '. While some people can continue to work remotely, millions more have returned to the office in California, which was one of the last US states to relax its Covid-19 prevention measures. California has lived with a chronic drought for decades, but in recent weeks there has been widespread unease over the most vital liquid for the functioning of the state: gasoline.', 'Joel, a 32-year-old Salvadoran gardener, is struggling to cope with the high prices in Los Angeles, a city where the average car drives 21 miles (34 kilometers) a day. A few days ago, he was at a gas station in the Castle Heights neighborhood, in the center of the city, where he had traveled to for work. There, the cost of a gallon was less than $6. “I was lucky because I work here and I don’t have to drive around to find cheaper prices. As they say, when God shuts a door, He always opens a window,” he says, laughing. He becomes serious though when he admits he is close to asking his clients for more money, and is concerned he might lose work if his prices go up. “It’s a difficult situation, and we don’t know when it will be solved,” he says.', 'The American Automobile Association (AAA), which monitors the cost of fuel nationally, says that it doesn’t yet know when the crisis, which has been exacerbated by the ', ', will begin to ease. “The cost of oil accounts for about 50% of what drivers pay at the pump,” says Andrew Gross, AAA spokesperson. “This war is roiling an already tight global oil market and making it hard to determine if we are near a peak for pump prices, or if they keep grinding higher. It all depends on the direction of oil prices.”', 'US President Joe Biden said last week that the conflict in Ukraine was going to have an impact on fuel prices. “Defending freedom will have costs for us,” he said after announcing that the US would ', ' in retaliation for the country’s invasion of Ukraine. This move has compounded the inflationary pressures the US has been facing the past year. The rate of inflation is now close to 8%, the highest figure in 40 years.', 'On Monday, the average cost of a gallon was $4.32, up 26 cents from last week and a rise of $1.46 since 2021. In January 2019, the average cost of a gallon was $2.25. The state of Utah has seen prices spike by 50 cents in just a week, while in Arizona, they rose by 48 cents.', 'The situation is of concern to many politicians. Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, which has the most expensive gas prices in the country ($5.74 a gallon), said recently that his government is studying contingency plans. One idea is to cut a state tax that adds 51 cents to the cost of a gallon. This tariff, the highest in the US, was approved by the Democrats in 2017. Most of the money raised by the tax, which will amount to around $8 billion this year, goes toward road and street maintenance in the cities. The state government is considering axing the tax, but fears that gas stations – not the consumer – will benefit most from the move.', 'The high cost of gas is even leading to crime. On Monday, the Los Angeles police department warned drivers to watch out for gas thieves, with reports that some criminals were drilling into the gas tanks of parked cars to steal fuel.', 'In Houston, a gang of thieves stole more than a thousand gallons of fuel from an underground storage tank. Last week, on Long Beach, in the south of Los Angeles, a man was arrested after paying $20 for fuel, when in reality he had forced the valve open to fill two large tanks which were hidden in a construction truck. The AAA believes that these incidents are likely to increase in the coming weeks, with prices set to continue to rise.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:02 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-03-21/russian-central-bank-warns-of-production-bottlenecks-as-it-struggles-with-sanctions.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-03-21/russian-central-bank-warns-of-production-bottlenecks-as-it-struggles-with-sanctions.html', 'date': '21 Mar 2022', 'title': 'Russian central bank warns of production bottlenecks as it struggles with sanctions', 'author': 'El País', 'text_art': ['Russia’s central bank is, for now at least, sticking to the initial decisions it adopted to counter the major crisis triggered by the Ukraine invasion and the ', '.', 'But it warned about the possibility of supply shortages and runaway inflation. “Companies in many industries are reporting bottlenecks in production and logistics due to the imposed trade and financial restrictions,” said the bank in a statement. Business adaptation to the situation, including restructuring of productive and supply chains, will be “the determining factor in price dynamics in the coming quarters.”', 'The agency led by Elvira Nabiullina raised interest rates from 9.5% to 20% on February 28, four days after President Vladimir Putin ', ' on Ukraine. At its monthly meeting, the central bank decided to keep the rate at this level, and warned it could go even higher depending on inflation, risk assessment and market reaction to the same.', 'One of the first expected consequences is a significant drop in loans, and the bank said that state lending programs will be key to propping up businesses facing a slowdown in activity as well as higher borrowing costs.', 'The central bank suspended stock trading on February 25 and over three weeks later it remains closed. Trading in Russian stocks in global markets such as London has also been suspended after these shares lost over 90% of their value.', '“The Russian economy is entering a phase of massive structural adjustment,” said the bank in its statement, warning about an inevitable period of great inflation which it hopes to see back down at 4% by the year 2024. A couple of months before the invasion, the official inflation rate was 8.4%, according to the statistical agency Rostat, due to logistical problems arising from the coronavirus pandemic.', 'For several days it was unclear whether Nabiullina would remain at the helm of the central bank. On Friday, Putin himself handed parliament his proposal to renew her in the post for another five-year term. Nabiullina, whose current term expires in June, took the job in June 2013, under Putin’s turbulent second decade in power.', 'In this time she has earned a good reputation, and her agency is viewed as one of the few that remain relatively independent from the Kremlin. In close to nine years of service, the chief banker has had to deal with the effects of ', ' and with a tsunami of sanctions that began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, followed by the war in eastern Ukraine that same year, the poisoning of the spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in 2018 and of the ', ' in 2020, accusations of meddling in the American presidential election of 2016, and now, the invasion of Ukraine.', 'From one day to the next, Russia watched sanctions put a freeze on $640 billion in gold and foreign exchange reserves, an initiative that even Switzerland has joined. Meanwhile, the Russian central bank has over 2.3 billion tons of gold that cannot find any buyers due to fears of sanctions. In the first three weeks of the war, the ruble lost 30% of its value.', 'In a video made a week after the start of the war and aired on March 2, the central banker addressed employees to ask them for unity. “Our economy is facing an extreme situation, completely out of the ordinary,” she said, promising to do everything possible to ensure Russia’s financial system and central bank can cope with any shocks.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2022-03-22/the-economic-landscape-after-the-war.html', 'date': '22 Mar 2022', 'title': 'The economic landscape after the war', 'author': 'Ángel Ubide', 'text_art': ['When I started writing these lines a few weeks ago, the intention was to discuss the economic effects of the war against the pandemic. Because crises destroy paradigms, and the most persistent effect of a crisis – of course, beyond the ', ' and, in the case of the pandemic, the tragic increase in mortality – is the narrative consensus that is formed about its causes and the solutions needed, and the policies adopted.', 'The emerging market crisis of 1997-98 ended fixed exchange rate regimes, giving way to large-scale accumulation of exchange rate reserves and fiscal and monetary discipline to manage flexible exchange rates. The 2007 financial crisis ended the model of lax banking supervision that relied on market discipline, giving way to a significant tightening of bank capital and liquidity requirements. The euro crisis of 2010 ended the fantasy that a monetary union could be built without common fiscal institutions, laying the foundations that allowed for a rapid common and mutualized reaction to the pandemic. The languid recovery after the financial crisis, suffocated by harsh fiscal discipline that led to a long period of excessively low inflation and zero interest rates, ended the aspiration of expansionary fiscal contractions, giving way to a more active role for fiscal policy.', 'The rapid recovery after the Covid-19 crisis benefited from all these advances. Fiscal policy led the stimulus, supported by monetary policy. The healthy macroeconomic situation of emerging markets allowed them to weather the storm without requiring external help: no systemic emerging country needed an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program. The abundant capitalization of the banking system allowed it to survive the pandemic unscathed and support growth. The eurozone quickly adopted a common fiscal response, including the issuance of eurobonds, generating a faster and more stable recovery.', 'The innovation of the pandemic was ending the idea that the flexibility of the labor market must always include easier dismissal. The now famous furloughs, adopted in various ways in most developed countries (with the exception of the US), made it possible to keep labor relationships intact and generated a faster recovery in the labor market. To a certain extent, this is what economic theory recommended: in general, it is more efficient to reduce hours worked than to fire workers, since it minimizes the friction and cost generated by both the dismissal and the subsequent hiring. But the idea of subsidizing this process was taboo, as it was feared it would impede the reallocation of resources and spawn legions of zombie companies. In the end, the fears have been unfounded, and the budgetary impact of furloughs, considering the greater economic recovery they have generated, will have been neutral or even positive. Furloughs have come to stay.', 'I had written up to here when Russia decided to invade Ukraine. And in a few weeks, the world economy has changed in potentially radical ways. Unfortunately, we still do not know how long this war will last, nor what the ceasefire will be like, nor how the reconstruction process will take place in Ukraine. But we can already see the paradigm shifts that will result from the crisis generated by the Russian invasion. After the fog of war clears, the world, and especially Europe, will have changed radically.', 'Resilience, a concept that was already on the rise, has become the top priority. In the same way that to be physically fit, a healthy diet and weight control are not enough and must be complemented with an investment in a solid abdominal core and robust and flexible muscles, wars – military, diplomatic or economic – are not won just with fiscal discipline but also require military and financial power. The German decision to end decades of military austerity, and the recently announced European energy plan, are accelerating the trend towards the return of the protective state, in search of both technological and energy resilience (or independence). This requires deploying abundant resources and investing in structures that may seem redundant during peace time, but are essential during conflict.', 'As Russia has realized, fiscal discipline, sound external accounts and abundant exchange rate reserves are not of much use in the face of sanctions that have generated an embargo that ', ' with something akin to a globalization sudden stop. Faced with this sudden paradigm change, many countries will be considering the usefulness of accumulating abundant international reserves and wonder if, perhaps, it would make more sense to invest them in strengthening their economic infrastructure and in guaranteeing access to technology and natural resources.', 'The Russian invasion has culminated the process of weaponizing economic interdependence: strengthened by the Trump administration’s trade war, which adopted the use of tariffs as a geostrategic instrument, it has accelerated with the ', '. From a model based on global trade relations as a path towards economic efficiency and interdependence as a guarantee of security, we are moving to a model of economic blocks and self-sufficient resilience as a defense mechanism, with uncertain consequences for future global economic growth.', 'Inflation, already high due to the pandemic-related bottlenecks and the impact of the ecological transition on energy markets, has also come to the fore due to the consequences of the Russian invasion. The ', ' of all kinds of raw materials, not only energy but also food, will increase inflation to levels not seen in generations, reaching double digits in some countries. The dilemma that governments and central banks face – rising uncertainty, very high inflation with already tight labor markets and, in Europe, a material worsening of the terms of trade – is very complex and will require smart fiscal support. In the EU, this support will have to be mostly mutualized to allow monetary policy to adjust and manage inflation expectations. The resolution of this dilemma will lay the foundations for the economic policy of the coming cycles.', 'Until recently, the narrative consensus celebrated the success of the combination of expansionary fiscal policies and patient monetary policies adopted to counter the pandemic. If this inflation scare is not well managed, there is a risk that the narrative consensus will focus on the inflationary failure, and forget the success of the rapid recovery of full employment. And that would be a disaster for future economic growth.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-03-23/carl-icahn-the-road-from-corporate-raider-to-animal-welfare-activist.html', 'date': '23 Mar 2022', 'title': 'Carl Icahn: The road from ‘corporate raider’ to animal welfare activist', 'author': 'Luis Pablo Beauregard', 'text_art': ['An oil painting of Napoleon’s Battle of Friedland hangs at the offices of billionaire investor Carl Icahn on New York’s Fifth Avenue. It is an image painted by Ernest Meissonier about the victory of French troops over the Russians, a decisive triumph for ', '. One of Wall Street’s most feared sharks, a man who has bankrupted and reawakened companies, counting dozens of CEOs amongst his victims, and someone who has amassed immense wealth through the arts of boardroom intrigue, makes a reflection: Napoleon was undoubtedly a great strategist but he lost everything to arrogance. “It doesn’t stay forever if you’re not careful,” says Icahn in a recently premiered documentary.', ' –an HBO documentary– is a portrait of one of the most influential and feared men in the US market. The investor rejects the “corporate raider” label, coined by the specialized media who made him famous in the 1980s. With a net worth of around $16 billion, Icahn prefers the term “activist investor,” someone willing to work on behalf of the small shareholders. His work revolves around driving the necessary changes, however painful these may be, at the top management in companies in order to increase their value. This strategy, implemented since the 2000s, has allowed him to reach a spot in Forbes’ top 50 richest list (at number 43). His company employs over 20,000 people with about $10 billion in annual revenues.', 'Bruce David Klein, a documentary filmmaker, clarifies that Icahn, 86, has never feared a confrontation within a management board, the billionaire’s battleground for decades. At the origins of his story, in the late 1970s, is his takeover attempt on Tappan, a kitchen appliances manufacturing company. The son of a schoolteacher and a synagogue cantor, Icahn was a student with an unfinished medical degree as well as a successful broker specializing in options trading, and he devised a strategy to remove Tappan’s CEO, who was finalizing the acquisition of a rival. The hostile shareholder labeled the deal a disaster and convinced board members that the share price, then seven dollars, was below its potential. Time proved him right when the Swedish company Electrolux bought Tappan a few months later for about $18 per share.', 'Today, at 86, Icahn is far from retirement. His days begin with several hours of exhaustive reading of the press. Although cameras capture him playing tennis at his exclusive mansion in the Hamptons, on the East Coast, there is a phone with several lines next to him whenever he appears seated in the documentary. His wife, Gail Golden, describes him as a “bulldog” who does not stop until he gets what he wants. He prefers to sum up his vision in a word with a strong Queens accent: winning. A mindset tying him to Donald Trump, under whom the billionaire served as a special advisor during Trump’s presidency until mid-2017.', 'The media continues to provide detailed reports of his most recent movements. Most recently he exited the energy company Occidental after three years of investment, generating over $1 billion in profits. A few days ago, he took on a proxy fight ', ', buying 200 shares in the burger company and nominating two women who are experts in sustainability to its board of directors. Icahn has set a goal of holding the restaurant chain to the commitment it made a decade ago to end the use of large-scale pig farms that mistreat pregnant animals. It remains to be seen how successful he will be in this latest venture. In the last year, McDonald’s has seen its share price grow by 18%. The fast-food chain is far from sailing the same troubled waters as the companies that Icahn the pirate usually raids.', 'A lifetime devoted to investment has taken him to multiple industries and companies such as Hertz, Netflix, eBay, Texaco, Uniroyal, Caesars casinos and Tropicana, besides MGM Studios and Lions Gate, among many others. He has never been without controversy. In the mid-1980s he was able to put the advice he kept for others to the test when he became president of TWA. The experience was one of his worst failures. In 1992, the airline declared bankruptcy after having the flight attendants’ union as the company’s main adversary.', 'Another episode of failure came during his time in Marvel, one of the most recognized brands today. Icahn held a battle against Ronald Perelman, another ', ' titan who also earned a reputation as a corporate raider after shifting the fortune of cosmetics giant Revlon. In 1989, Perelman bought Marvel, which had 70% of the market, for $82 million. His management was a disaster. The clash of egos led to a series of cutbacks resulting in the dismissal of artists and writers, diluting the quality of the comics and causing fans to turn their backs on them. In 1996, the company held only 25% of the market, having to file for bankruptcy by the end of that year. “The only thing Icahn achieved was a toxic trading of insults [with Perelman],” points Dan Raviv, a journalist, in his book ', '. A few years later, Marvel would star in one of the most successful comebacks in decades.', 'His closeness to Donald Trump has added to his controversy in recent years. In 2019, federal authorities launched an investigation to determine whether Icahn had benefited from insider information following his role as a White House advisor (for which he did not receive a salary). In early 2018, his firm sold $30 million worth of his stake in crane manufacturer Manitowoc. The operation happened months before Trump’s administration ', ' on U.S. steel imports. Icahn rejected the allegations. In the documentary, the millionaire explains on camera what many consider a stroke of luck in the game of capitalism. “Frankly, I made this money because the system is so bad. Not because I’m a genius.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-03-23/im-taking-on-a-new-challenge-why-its-so-hard-for-us-to-admit-that-were-unemployed.html', 'date': '23 Mar 2022', 'title': '‘I’m taking on a new challenge’ – Why it’s so hard for us to admit that we’re unemployed', 'author': 'María Sánchez', 'text_art': ['Being fired unexpectedly doesn’t just force you to face ', '; it can also be a blow to your self-esteem and confidence. In a world that places more and more importance on public image and displaying personal achievements, it’s hard to know how to share the news about ', '. On social media, professionals are now more likely to announce the start of new projects or sabbaticals than admit that they’re unemployed. Just as divorce has turned into “uncoupling,” the pressure to hide the truth of getting fired can give way to endless euphemisms.', 'LinkedIn, the social network dedicated to networking and job searching, offers a subtle tool to indicate that a user is seeking work. It consists of a green label with the phrase “Open to work.” The platform also gives the option to label pauses in a CV as paternity or maternity leave or volunteer opportunities.', 'Rosario Sierra, who is the head of sales at LinkedIn Spain and Portugal, explains that her company began a campaign ', ' in order to support those who had lost their jobs. “Something we could prove in the studies we did was that many professionals consider it negative to find themselves unemployed. In fact, 48% said that they had, at some point, hidden it even from their closest circle, either because of shame [41%] or because they didn’t feel comfortable [35%],” Sierra explains. “However, with the arrival of the pandemic, the percentages have changed significantly. Seven of every 10 professionals polled believe that this exceptional situation has helped ', '.” The platform attributes the change to the empathy generated by the pandemic, and to the fact that more and more people now dare to share the news about their new situation.', 'Agustín López, who works in the communication sector, has been fired a few times. He now believes that it hasn’t been as bad for his career as some may think. In job interviews, he explains, “I have always been honest, and I’ve told the truth trying to explain well what happened. But I do think that maybe ', '. It doesn’t have to be like that.” In personal contexts, “sometimes I have told people that I was fired, and sometimes I haven’t.” On his social media profiles, he shared it after thinking over the message. “In the world of communication, I think it’s important for you to tell your own story and give clues about your work life and where you are, but in this case, I didn’t use the word ‘fired.’ I tried to think carefully about what I wanted to express and share.”', 'But not everyone opts to be so proactive. David Pérez, for example, didn’t update his CV after being fired until he could state that he had been hired by another company. “They fired me suddenly when my daughter was less than a year old, so I still had weeks of paternity leave to enjoy. Because of that, at first, I didn’t post anything on LinkedIn. Later, when I started to do some work for another company, I updated my profile to indicate that I was freelancing, but I never directly stated that I had left the previous job.”', 'Why is it still so hard for us to deal with this topic? Why do we keep seeing rejection in the work environment as something shameful? José Javier García López, a Spanish psychologist, says that it’s common to feel guilty about the loss of a job, and that this affects how we express it to others. “The person sees it as a negative thing about themself, and for that reason, they tend to either see themselves as a victim, complaining and blaming the company, or they can take responsibility for their role in the firing, which creates a certain sense of stigma.” He also points out that we avoid talking directly about getting fired “because it turns us into vulnerable people to others, and we tend to avoid letting ourselves be seen that way. That’s why we tend to use euphemisms to say that, though my boat has gone off course, I’m going to right it.”', 'Getting fired usually makes workers feel insecure about entering the job market. But recruitment experts tend to understand those situations intuitively. “If the profile fits for a position I’m looking for, I don’t discard a candidate just because of that,” explains José M. Serrano, Principal Talent Acquisition Consultant for the EMEA regions at software and technology company Sabre. “I just ask in the interview about the reasons and circumstances around that firing.”', 'Serrano notes that, though it’s not common, there are people who anticipate that question and indicate the reasons for having left a company on their CVs. “In firings, a lot of factors come into play that don’t have to be related to a candidate’s professional value,” the recruiter explains. “They normally follow restructuring within companies or the unexpected end of projects. It can also be because of bad luck, and that won’t mean that the doors close for them automatically. When it’s time to make a final decision, if they are just as qualified as another candidate, it could have some influence if someone has been fired multiple times compared to someone who’s never been in that situation. But just one firing wouldn’t affect the decision.”', 'Rosario Sierra also believes that talking about being fired is becoming more common, both on LinkedIn and in professional contexts. “There are a lot of reasons that can lead us to be unemployed, or to take a pause in our careers, and it doesn’t need to be something to be ashamed about. It can be a moment to share new lessons, evaluate our options and look for new ways to reinvent ourselves and grow professionally,” she says.', 'Sierra points out that a good strategy is to express the situation from an inspirational perspective. “On LinkedIn it’s not just about sharing our achievements, but also about those situations that have given us challenges to confront to become the professionals we want to be. Only by speaking transparently about our own experiences can we connect with possible recruiters or contacts who can help us in this new phase,” the professional says.', 'In 2016, Princeton psychology professor Johannes Haushofer decided to publish a CV of rejections to demonstrate that failed projects are part of the path to success. Haushofer explained that if we only see the positive aspects of another person’s process, we tend to think that they’ve never faced rejection. That’s why it’s so important to accept failure as a normal part of life that we don’t need to be ashamed of.', '“Thinking that a project that didn’t work out is a failure sees us go down with our own ship and makes us consider ourselves unworthy of continuing,” the psychologist José Javier García López argues. “We have to remember that once we get over the initial pain of being fired, we need to find our path once more. A failure is the best way to recognize that we need certain changes to get to our goals, as long as we see it as an opportunity and not as a reason to give up.” He adds that “platforms such as LinkedIn are windows onto our work lives, and as in all windows, we need people to enter ‘our store.’ Once they’re inside, we can show our products with their strengths and weaknesses. That’s the best time to be honest and display the challenges that our work lives have given us and that we have been able to overcome.”']}
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2022-06-01 23:03:09 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/e/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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2022-06-01 23:03:11 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-03-27/would-you-like-to-own-a-luxury-mansion-for-2400-head-to-the-metaverse.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-03-27/would-you-like-to-own-a-luxury-mansion-for-2400-head-to-the-metaverse.html', 'date': '27 Mar 2022', 'title': 'Would you like to own a luxury mansion for $2,400? Head to the metaverse', 'author': 'Sandra López Letón', 'text_art': ['The real estate world is making itself at home in the ', ', that digital kingdom in which thousands of intangible properties are sold for millions of dollars every day, and where someone can also become the owner of a stunning mansion for no more than $2,400 – provided you can pay in the cryptocurrency the platform requires.', 'Just as in the physical real estate market, the final cost depends on when the deal is done, the metaverse in question, the size of the property and its location. With great speed, a colossal digital real estate market is coming into being, above all since last year, when Mark Zuckerberg changed Facebook’s name to Meta. Since then, interest in this parallel universe has taken off, and the key factors are speculation, major asset volatility, and reasonable doubts as to whether all these bricks, ', ', will create a new internet bubble.', 'Sales in the four principal metaverses – Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels and Somnium – reached $501 million in 2021, according to MetaMetric Solutions. During 2021, 268,645 virtual properties (digital assets) were sold. Of these, 62% belonged to Sandbox and had an average price of $12,700 per plot. This metaverse and Decentraland are the most popular, although also the most expensive. In fact, some sales have exceeded several million dollars. It’s estimated that in 2022 sales will double, up to a billion dollars. The cofounder of the digital real estate business Metaverse Group, Michael Gord, explained the potential to ', ': “Imagine if you came to New York when it was farmland, and you had the option to get a block of SoHo.”', 'That’s why there is a growing number of real estate businesses and luxury real estate agents jumping feet first into this universe, where the participants interact using avatars. This week the residential properties of a new metaverse, Keys, have gone on sale. Up for grabs are 8,888 digital mansions, realistic and rendered in 3D, and available for the holders of the currency key.', 'The owner of Prestige Realty Group, Tony Rodríguez-Tellaheche, who operates in Miami, has bought 18 of these residences, which is the maximum for each virtual wallet. The price per mansion is about $2,460 (which corresponds to 0.88 ethereum, according to its value last Friday). “It’s like the real world. I want to resell various metamansions in the future, but I’d also like to hold onto others for a longer time. Sometime in the future we want to have a meeting like this [referring to the video call] in my mansion in the metaverse,” he says. Following the sale of its residential zoning, this metaverse will sell properties where one can construct whatever they like. For example, “you can open a furniture company for digital mansions or for physical sales, with shipments to your real house,” he says.', 'Rodríguez-Tellaheche is convinced of the potential of the revaluation of the mansions that he has just purchased, as has already happened in other metaverses. “I sell real estate in Miami, where houses are 35% more expensive than two years ago because there’s no stock and a lot of demand. In the Keys metaverse the same thing will happen, some will have more value than many real-world houses,” says this agent, who is convinced that the next bubble is coming.', 'The virtual real estate development business Everyrealm, which was previously known as Republic Realm, is present in 13 metaverses. It has the world record so far for the highest such payment: $4.3 million for a virtual plot in Sandbox. The seller was the video game company Atari. Their business strategy, as announced, is to achieve an attractive cost effectiveness adjusted to risk through the acquisition, management, development and sale of digital plots. The brand has already created a museum of digital culture for NFTs, a mall and the first university – all in the metaverse. In August 2021, it designed Fantasy Islands, a luxury residence in Sandbox anchored in 100 islands, which sold out within 24 hours. The starting price was $15,000, although resales have reached $300,000.', 'Another example is that of Metaverse Group, which has bought a property in Decentraland for $2.43 million to host fashion events and retail stores. A host of businesses, large brands and investors is beginning to buy properties to build their commercial spaces. No one wants to miss this train, although many companies don’t know at the moment if it will arrive to its destination or fly off the rails. Nike, Adidas, Sotheby’s, PwC, JP Morgan, Samsung – the list is immense – have already spent a fortune. There’s enormous commercial opportunity for these businesses, which can advertise themselves and organize events for a younger digital audience.', 'That’s what’s happening in the first Spanish metaverse. Uttopion is the platform selected by Lanzadera, the startup accelerator created by Juan Roig, the president of Spanish supermarket chain Mercadona. This metaverse has recently put its first thousand properties on presale for a price of between $2,200 and $22,000. It’s divided into communities. “We have two, one focused on music and another on sports. In each there are 500 finite properties. There aren’t going to be any more because they’re created using NFT technology,” says Soraya Cadalso, the cofounder. In their digital properties, which for now can be bought with euros, it’s possible to build a virtual replica of a club, a concert hall, a stadium or a festival. Although there are also plots for other activities: cryptobanks, trade... “The buyer can do anything from position their brand to sell products or give exclusive content to clients,” Cadalso explains.', 'Once acquired by the owner, each property is an NFT guaranteed by a unique code through a digital contract which can be used, sold or rented. “Fewer than 20 days ago we closed the presale registry and we began with the sale of the Terras [as their properties are named]. Since then 30% of the Terras have been sold,” Cadalso says. The sizes run from about 4,300 square feet for the smallest ($2,200) to 42,000 square feet for the largest ($22,000).', 'Also in Spain, Metrovacesa is the first promoter to immerse itself in the metaverse, although still in a limited form. It doesn’t sell digital property, rather real property, thanks to its alliance with the Spanish start-up Datacasas Proptech. This test of concept begins with the promotion of Málaga Towers in Decentraland, with the possibility of accessing other virtual worlds in the future.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:11 [scrapy.extensions.logstats] INFO: Crawled 60 pages (at 30 pages/min), scraped 24 items (at 12 items/min)
2022-06-01 23:03:11 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-03-28/russian-oligarch-mikhail-fridman-i-have-to-eat-at-home-and-i-am-practically-under-house-arrest.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-03-28/russian-oligarch-mikhail-fridman-i-have-to-eat-at-home-and-i-am-practically-under-house-arrest.html', 'date': '28 Mar 2022', 'title': 'Russian oligarch Mikhail Fridman: ‘I have to eat at home and I am practically under house arrest’', 'author': 'Pilar Bonet', 'text_art': ['The oligarch Mikhail Fridman, a citizen of Russia and Israel who was born in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, is skeptical about the sanctions that the West has imposed on Russian entrepreneurs like himself as a response to ', '. “Populism is very attractive, but from a practical point of view, sanctions are counterproductive because they push these entrepreneurs to return to Russia, since they cannot go elsewhere,” says the 57-year-old founder of the multinational conglomerate Alfa Group in a conversation from London, where he has been residing since 2015.', 'Fridman feels like he is in confinement. He has stepped down from the board of LetterOne, the investment group where he and his business partner Petr Aven have a stake of a little under 50%; LetterOne’s investment portfolio includes Alfa-Bank,', ', and DIA, a Spanish discount supermarket chain.', 'Additionally, his credit cards have been blocked and he cannot travel to European Union countries. “Authorities in Great Britain have to assign me a certain amount so I can take taxis and buy food, but it will be a very limited amount if you look at the cost of living in London. I still don’t know whether it will be enough to live a normal life without excesses. I can’t even take anyone out to a restaurant. I have to eat at home and I am practically under house arrest,” he says.', 'Fridman says he still does not know whether he will be able to keep the house he bought and restored when he and his family moved to the British capital at a time when instability was starting to affect investments in Russia. One of the reasons for moving to London was to diversify his assets from the sale (to the state-owned Rosneft) of his stake in the private oil consortium TNK-BP. “It’s unclear whether I’ll be able to keep living in London or whether I’ll be forced to go, which I cannot do right now and don’t want to for many reasons.”', '“Things won’t go any better for the West if it forces many brilliant and interesting entrepreneurs to go to Russia, instead of integrating them more and trying to get them to take a stand, even if it is obvious that private business has zero influence over [Vladimir] Putin,” he asserts.', 'Fridman thinks it is “idiotic” to believe that oligarchs can force the ', ' to stop the war, a word which he carefully avoids, instead describing this bloody reality with euphemisms and expressions such as “disaster” and “what is happening (in Ukraine).”', '“I don’t want to create a risk for the numerous people who depend on me,” he explains, alluding to the 400,000 to 500,000 employees who, according to Fridman, work for him or have direct ties with his companies in Russia.', 'Fridman believes that even though private entrepreneurs cannot influence Putin, they could “try to convey their point of view if they had more freedom to choose.” In the current situation, however, sanctioned individuals “will have to return to Russia, where they will have no option other than being absolutely loyal, and where they will continue to work because they are energetic, brilliant and talented individuals, and they will create businesses and jobs.”', 'The conversation is not unlike walking on a tightrope, where any loss of balance – in this case, verbal – could ', ' regardless of the direction of the fall. Sanctions in the West, fallout from irascible leaders in Russia. Sources in Moscow said that personnel working for various Russian entrepreneurs currently residing in the West have been questioned by security services to find out whether their bosses have any intention of returning to the homeland.', 'The oligarch insists that the West should understand there are different types of Russians and that it can’t punish them all. “The West should be smarter, because punishing Russians just out of the fact of being Russian increases the confrontation and the number of supporters of anti-West policies in Russia.”', '“I have been in London for eight years, I have invested billions of dollars in Great Britain and other European countries, and the response to this is that they seize everything from me and throw me out,” he complains.', 'There is no bond that unites oligarchs. “There is ', '. We are all different people,” he says. “We were exclusively focused on business and never wanted to get close to power.” According to Fridman, the goal was to maintain a constructive relationship with the authorities and avoid any kind of conflict with them. “Putin did not accept any debate on domestic policy,” he says about his business activities in Russia.', 'In 2003, when Putin drew a line for the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky (who ended up behind bars), it became clear that “any participation in political life was unacceptable,” says Fridman. “After that, we did not back any politician, because we felt that it would have been a transgression of the framework that the Kremlin demanded from the business world.”', 'Although he says he has not financed political parties, Fridman admits to an exception with Boris Nemtsov, of the Union of Right Forces (SPS in its Russian acronym) when this group still had representation in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. He did so because of the party’s business orientation, and because “Nemtsov was a good friend of mine, a real politician, absolutely honest, incorruptible and open.” Nemtsov was assassinated near the Kremlin in February 2015.', 'Fridman concedes that some economic sanctions can be efficient because they put ', ' and as a result influence the opinion of national leaders. “But sanctions against private entrepreneurs make no sense, because the majority of them have built their business through talent, effort and personal qualifications,” he holds.', 'When Brussels included Fridman on its list of entrepreneurs targeted over their alleged ties to Putin, the oligarch stepped down from all of his positions, both in his own companies and in cultural organizations. This includes the board of the investment firm LetterOne, as well as the supervisory board of the Babi Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, a project that was launched in October 2021 with the ', ' in attendance. The memorial’s location is at a spot near Kyiv where occupying Nazi forces exterminated nearly 100,000 Jews between 1941 and 1943.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:12 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/p/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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2022-06-01 23:03:17 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-04-08/us-targets-putins-daughters-leading-russian-banks-in-new-round-of-sanctions.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-04-08/us-targets-putins-daughters-leading-russian-banks-in-new-round-of-sanctions.html', 'date': '08 Apr 2022', 'title': 'US targets Putin’s daughters, leading Russian banks in new round of sanctions', 'author': 'Iker Seisdedos', 'text_art': ['There was still a lot of ammunition left in the sanctions arsenal that the United States, the G-7 group of countries and the European Union is deploying against Russia due to its ', '. The trigger has been the horrific images ', ', a suburb of Kyiv from which Russian troops withdrew this past weekend, leaving behind what US President Joe Biden has described as “war crimes.”', 'The massacre prompted a White House announcement on Wednesday of new punishments, including a ban on new investments, increased financial difficulties for the operations of Russia’s biggest financial institutions, and ', ' of government officials and some of their families. Among the latter, of note are the two “adult” daughters of Vladimir Putin, Maria Vorontsova and Katerina Tikhonova. In practice, “this action cuts them off from the U.S. financial system and freezes any assets they hold in the United States.”', 'The list of figures being sanctioned by the United States also extends to the wife and daughter of the Foreign Minister of Russia, Sergey Lavrov, as well as members of the Russian Security Council, including former Russian president and prime minister Dmitry Medvedev, and the current prime minister Mikhail Mishustin, who have been accused by Washington of having “enriched themselves at the expense of the Russian people.”', 'For its part, the United Kingdom also announced that it is increasing ', ' that it has set its sights on, with eight new names. Among them are Moshe Kantor and Andrey Guryev, both fertilizer magnates, Sergey Ivanov, the CEO of the biggest diamond producer in the world, and Leonid Mikhelson, the founder of the natural gas company Novatek.', 'The statement from the White House also detailed “full blocking sanctions” for Sberbank, which is the biggest financial institution in Russia and accounts for a third of the sector in the country, as well as its biggest private lender, Alfa Bank, which implies freezing the assets of both institutions. US citizens have also been banned from doing business with them. The United Kingdom has also blocked dealings with Sberbank, as well as with the Credit Bank of Moscow. The British foreign secretary, Liz Truss, promised on Wednesday that imports of Russian coal and oil would be halted before the end of the year.', '“President Biden will sign a new Executive Order that includes a prohibition on new investment in Russia by US persons wherever located, which will ', ' from the global economy,” the White House statement reads. “This action builds on the decision made by more than 600 multinational businesses to exit from Russia.” This action, Washington believes, will ensure a lasting weakening of the global competitiveness of the Russian Federation.', '“Russia is a global financial pariah – and it will now need to choose between draining its available funds to make debt payments or default,” the White House statement continues, also setting out its support for sectors that are essential to humanitarian activities: “Ensuring the availability of basic foodstuffs and agricultural commodities, safeguarding access to medicine and medical devices, and enabling telecommunications services to support the flow of information and access to the internet which provides outside perspectives to the Russian people.”', 'Experts cited by the White House calculate that these measures, in addition to the previous waves of sanctions imposed since the start of the offensive on February 24, will see the GDP of Russia contract up to 15% this year, wiping out the last 15 years of economic gains, according to the statement. “Russia will very likely lose its status as a major economy, and it will continue a long descent into economic, financial, and technological isolation,” the document reads.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:18 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-14/russian-railways-first-to-officially-default-due-to-western-sanctions.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-14/russian-railways-first-to-officially-default-due-to-western-sanctions.html', 'date': '14 Apr 2022', 'title': 'Russian Railways first to officially default due to Western sanctions', 'author': 'El País', 'text_art': ['For the first time since the start of the Ukraine war, a Russian company has been officially declared in default of its debt payments after ', ' obstructed Russia’s access to the global financial system.', 'The state-owned Russian Railways failed to make interest payments on $268 million of bonds that were due in March, causing the International Swaps and Derivatives Association (ISDA), a global financial committee that determines when default insurance must be paid out, to announce on Monday that the company is now considered in default.', 'The decision was made by ISDA’s Credit Derivatives Determinations Committee for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region, which said that “a Failure to Pay Credit Event occurred” in connection with a Swiss franc bond issued by RZD Capital to finance a loan for Russian Railways.', 'The company for its part said on Tuesday that it had met its obligations but that the money didn’t reach creditors because intermediaries blocked the payments as a result of ', ', according to Bloomberg. Another Russian Company, EuroChem, has missed payments for the same reason and is technically in default as well.', 'The Russian government is ', ' after the United States blocked Russian government debt payments with US dollars from accounts at US financial institutions. Last week Moscow entered a technical default on two payments that it tried to make in rubles. Ratings agencies have described this as a technical default, although Moscow has a 30-day grace period to make the payments or it will officially enter into default for the first time since 1998.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:19 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-15/elon-musk-launches-a-43-billion-hostile-takeover-bid-for-twitter.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-15/elon-musk-launches-a-43-billion-hostile-takeover-bid-for-twitter.html', 'date': '15 Apr 2022', 'title': 'Elon Musk launches a $43 billion hostile takeover bid for Twitter', 'author': 'Álvaro Sánchez', 'text_art': ['The average multimillionaire spends their money on yachts, cars and houses. But Elon Musk isn’t your average multimillionaire. The richest man in the world, whose fortune Bloomberg estimates around 260 billion dollars–followed by Jeff Bezos at 180 billion–wants to own a social network. He has offered 43.4 billion dollars (40 billion Euros) to buy Twitter at a price of 51.4 dollars per share.', 'That is a 38% increase from the company’s stock price as of April 1, when Musk had yet to make known his interest. Its stockholders have received the news with increases less than 1% on Wall Street, above 46 dollars but below the magnate’s offer, a sign that investors are not completely convinced that the operation will move forward.', 'Twitter has 217 million daily users, according to data from the last trimester of 2021. That means that Musk would pay 185 Euros for each one of them. The owner of aerospace company SpaceX and CEO of the Tesla electric vehicle company became Twitter’s largest shareholder just a few days ago, when he bought 9.2% of shares. Until then, the platform was just one of his favorite forms of entertainment, an ideal space to let loose in a content where his popularity is indisputable, as shown by his 82 million followers. (He is the account with the eighth-largest number of followers, on a list headed by United States ex-president Barack Obama, who has 131 million followers.)', 'Now, Musk is going a step further. He wants to take total control in a takeover bid. It remains to be seen if there will be resistance. “My offer is my best and final offer and if it is not accepted, I would need to reconsider my position as a shareholder,” Musk warned in a letter to Twitter president Bret Taylor.', 'The phrase can be read as a threat. Twitter’s stockholders now see their shares growing in value, but if Musk doesn’t achieve his goal and decides to sell off his share, the fall could be as sharp as the recent increase. Musk’s changing whims are not unusual: last year, he announced that Tesla would accept Bitcoin as a payment method to buy its cars, and he reversed the policy three months later, citing environmental reasons linked to the impact of cryptocurrency mining.', 'The current directors of Twitter acknowledged that they received the offer, but they did not give clues about whether they would accept it. In a statement, they said that they would “carefully review the proposal” before deciding what is best for the company and its stockholders. They called for an emergency meeting to address the issue.', 'Unlike many other wealthy magnates, Musk tends to court public spectacle, and his announcement of the investment was no different. This morning, he posted on Twitter his intention to buy Twitter. “I made an offer,” he tweeted, alongside a link to the American regulatory agency where the proposal’s details appear. Before his announcement, speculation had centered on how Musk would get involved in Twitter with his 9%. On Sunday night, there was news: Musk had declined joining the company’s board. But the bomb exploded on Thursday with his plan to add Twitter to his list of companies.', 'In Thursday’s missive, Musk makes clear that he does not want to take charge in order to keep the boat on its course. He explains that one of the reasons that pushed him to increase his participation was converting Twitter into the platform for freedom of speech. “Since making my investment I now realize the company will neither thrive nor serve this societal imperative in its current form,” he wrote. “Twitter needs to be transformed as a private company.”', 'That would involve removing Twitter from the stock exchange. And if Musk succeeds, it is likely that his changes would not stop there. Ten days ago, he posted a Twitter poll asking whether the social network should include an edit button. The option does not currently exist, so if someone publishes content that they later regret, they must erase the post and trust that no screenshots are circulating. 73% of participants in Musk’s poll voted in favor of including it.', 'The move brings social media back to the forefront years after other celebrated acquisitions. The increase in stock prices demonstrates Twitter’s growing influence and its current boom of users. In 2006, Google bought YouTube for 1.65 billion dollars. In 2012, Facebook took over Instagram after spending 1 billion dollars. In 2014, Mark Zuckerberg’s company again participated in a multimillion-dollar operation, acquiring WhatsApp for 19 billion dollars. And Microsoft paid even more for LinkedIn in 2016, when it bought it for 26.2 billion dollars.', 'If accepted, the purchase would lead to a series of questions. ', '. Will Musk try to use that influence in some way to further his own interests or those of his companies? Twitter has not achieved profitability, in 2021 losing 221 million dollars despite investing 5.077 billion. Would Musk be able to make it profitable? The trend is positive: in 2020 the losses were much higher, at 1,135 million, but the company has not made a profit since 2019.', 'Elon Musk’s (Pretoria, 1971) position on rankings of the world’s richest people is indisputable, but his money is not in his checking account. Musk’s fortune fluctuates daily with the share prices of his companies. Electric car maker Tesla is the jewel in his crown. He currently owns around 17% of the company, whose stock market value is around a trillion dollars , the sixth largest listed company on the planet after Apple, Microsoft, Aramco, Alphabet and Amazon. His share alone is worth about 170 billion dollars. Despite the large number, Musk parted with a package valued at 16 billion dollars last year, and donated shares worth another 6,000 million to charities, which made him the second largest donor of 2021, surpassed only by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.', 'His social commitment, also a way to reduce his tax obligations, contrasts with his position on taxing the world’s richest. Last December, Elon Musk publicly complained about the amount of taxes he pays. “For those wondering, I will pay over $11 billion in taxes this year,” he said on Twitter. The message came just a few days after getting involved in a Twitter debate with Democratic Senator from Massachusetts Elizabeth Warren, who had asked to tighten taxation policies so that Musk would pay taxes and “stop freeloading off everyone else.” The billionaire responded harshly:', '“If you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-17/risk-of-cyber-attacks-rises-following-ukraine-invasion.html', 'date': '17 Apr 2022', 'title': 'Risk of cyberattacks rises following Ukraine invasion', 'author': 'Irene Ruiz de Valbuena', 'text_art': ['In 2021 there were 40,000 cyberattacks per day, up 125% from the previous year, according to security solutions company Datos101. But while it is true that the number of cyberattacks has been rising in recent years, there are certain factors, such as the pandemic and widespread teleworking, that experts say contributed to the exponential growth in 2021. Now, in the midst of', ', the threat has increased once more.', 'Prevention is the best strategy against the threat of cyberattacks, and this is where lawyers have a fundamental role to play, specifically in the adjustment of organizations to the protective regulatory framework.', 'Since ', ' began, critical infrastructure suppliers such as energy companies, public agencies and technology firms such as Microsoft and Apple, as well as many banks have been subjected to this type of attack.', 'However, they are not the only targets of cybercrime. Cyberattacks continue to occur on a significant scale in all types of companies, from SMEs to multinationals. “In Russia, there are organizations that take advantage of any conflict to step up cyberattacks,” explains Cristina Cajigos, account executive at Grupo Paradell Technologies, a consulting firm specializing in digital and corporate risk. As for the underlying motive for a cyberattack, Jesús Yáñez, a cybersecurity partner at the law firm ECIJA, admits that it can be tremendously varied, “from economic ransom to gaining access to secret information, to an act of revenge by a former employee who knows that the security measures of his former company are minimal.”', 'Now an increasing number of companies have a cybersecurity compliance program, through which risks and vulnerable areas are identified and the likelihood of a cyberattack assessed, as Natalia Martos, founder of the law firm Legal Army, explains. “Tests are carried out, controls are installed and their effectiveness verified,” she says. “A repository of evidence is created and measures to mitigate risk are generated.”', 'It is a control strategy that also involves evaluating the company’s technology suppliers in terms of security, and even demanding effective measures from them, as Yáñez points out. “It is necessary to negotiate with them,” he says. “These negotiations are not easy, but they are necessary. This will not only help to avoid possible breaches, but will also serve to demonstrate commitment and diligence in this area.”', 'Employees must also be made aware of risks and trained accordingly. “Ninety percent of cyberattacks in SMEs are due to human responses, which are strongly linked to a lack of awareness and the working environment,” says Cajigos. The most frequent involves the user being fooled into believing they are entering their access credentials on legitimate sites, according to Yáñez. These are cases that involve the assumption of corporate identity or the identity of its representatives, with the aim of defrauding third parties and obtaining an economic benefit. “One of the most common is the falsification of invoices, with the account number where payment should be made being changed,” says Jesús Iglesias, a partner at Clyde & Co.', 'Companies whose identities are assumed “suffer terrible consequences, as their clients are often the target of theft and extortion which, initially, might appear to be their responsibility,” says Martos, who says that the company that has fallen prey to a cyberattack should record all the details of the attack and immediately contact the specialized units of law enforcement to contain it and, ultimately, try to find out who is behind it. “This is really complex due to the lack of traceability in the cyberworld,” she acknowledges.', 'Meanwhile, Cajigos adds that to reduce the impact, victims should try to detect the origin of the attack and inform the Data Protection Agency in the event of losing critical data. That said, she insists that prevention is the best policy. “If you prime the infrastructure for intrusion detection, have decentralized backups of critical data, a disaster recovery plan and a business continuity plan, the impact will be greatly reduced,” she explains.', 'Taking out cyber-risk insurance, according to Iglesias, “helps companies to respond to and adequately manage a cyberattack, reducing the financial, legal and reputational damage it can cause.” Such insurance policies usually include incident response management services while providing access to an array of different providers, such as technicians, legal advisors, and public relations firms, who will intervene if the need arises. They also typically cover administrative fines that may be imposed by data protection authorities, reimbursement of ransom payments in the event of cyber extortion, and any potential civil liability arising from the attack.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:21 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-04-18/the-spanish-education-platform-taking-the-us-by-storm.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-04-18/the-spanish-education-platform-taking-the-us-by-storm.html', 'date': '18 Apr 2022', 'title': 'The Spanish education platform taking the US by storm', 'author': 'Elisa Silió', 'text_art': ['The Spanish ', ' is taking off in the United States. It is used consistently by at least one teacher in 80% of schools, while in Spain, 11,000 schools are actively using the program. In total, it has spread to 150 different countries. Edpuzzle allows teachers to edit educational videos that present students with questions that they must answer either in writing or by responding out loud. In 2017, ', ' magazine included its four founders – Quim Sabrià, Jordi González, Santi Herrero and Xavi Vergés – in its', ' list of top young entrepreneurs in Europe.', 'The idea for Edpuzzle came from an unexpected need. In 2012, Sabrià was doing an internship to become a secondary school teacher at a school in Badalona, in Spain’s northeastern region of Catalonia. The school had a problem with absenteeism, and the teenagers were disinterested in class. “Teaching classes was very enriching, but very, very difficult,” recalls Sabrià by video call from California. However, “things fell into place by fate,” he says. By chance, three of his childhood friends, Jordi González, Santi Herrero and Xavi Vergés – who he met when he was just three years old – had gone on to become telecommunications engineers. He would tell them about his “battles in class with the students” and wonder what he could do to keep his students interested. They all agreed on the answer: audiovisual material.', '“When a student doesn’t understand something, they go to YouTube, not to a library. Videos are the best way to connect with your students,” says Sabrià. His three engineering friends wanted to translate what they knew about building web pages into a teaching platform for him.', '“It’s very difficult to say no if someone offers to make a tool for your class,” he adds.', 'But Sabrià wanted to do more than just share YouTube videos, which he says promotes “passive behavior.” “With Edpuzzle, by embedding questions, the student has to think, respond,” he explains. The teacher can edit other people’s videos or create their own, which other teachers may then use.', 'Rosa Liarte, a history teacher at an institute in Fuengirola, in the southern Spanish province of Málaga, says she was a “fan from the beginning” of Edpuzzle. She says that she does not agree with the argument that technology dehumanizes education. “On the contrary, it brings me closer to my students,” she explains. “What I would explain in 20 minutes, they can see in a seven-minute video and I can use the class to do other projects.” Liarte estimates that about 20 teachers, out of a faculty of 37, use Edpuzzle in her school.', 'In 2013, the founders of Edpuzzle decided to make the leap and move to the United States in search of funding. “We didn’t think twice,” says Sabriá. “The difference [between the US and Spain] was very significant. Earlier, they gave you $100,000 [€92,000] – now it’s half a million – and in exchange, you gave them 6% of the company. And in Spain, it was €25,000 [$27,000] and they kept a very high percentage.” That year the four settled in Mountain View, south of San Francisco, near Google’s headquarters, with the support of startup accelerator Y Combinator – which previously backed Dropbox and Airbnb. In separate funding rounds, Edpuzzle raised up to $4 million (€3.4 million) to get started.', '“We decided to treat the first 10 users better than our mothers. I’m a friend, I’ve been to their birthdays, to their houses,” says Sabrià laughing. “I was going to visit them with coffee and cookies every Friday to find out how the week had gone, how the students had responded.” Edpuzzle is free to use, but to store many videos there is a monthly fee of $12.50 (€11.50) per teacher or between $1,080 (€1,000) and $1,620 (€1,500) per year per school (depending on the size).', 'That same year, the three engineers returned to Barcelona and opened a second office in the city. Of the quartet, only Sabrià remained in California. Before the coronavirus pandemic, there were 40 workers in the Spain and US headquarters. Now, just the office in California has 62 employees. During the health crisis, which saw millions of students ', ', demand for Edpuzzle skyrocketed: the number of teachers who use the platform rose elevenfold.', 'The first effects of the pandemic were detected when Hong Kong was ', '. “Overnight, we went from being used in zero to 100 schools,” says Sabrià. “On Monday they had to teach and the teachers were desperate.”', 'Edpuzzle is now looking to grow its presence in Argentina, Brazil, Spain, France, Hong Kong and Australia. The platform, which they intend to translate into at least 15 languages, was free during the worst moment of the pandemic and its founders continue to support social causes. In response to the ', ', they have developed content in Ukrainian to help teach children who are refugees or who are studying remotely. “We already have math and science videos,” says Sabrià. But these are not the only subjects that can be found on Edpuzzle, he adds, explaining that videos on nutrition and physical education are also available.', 'What’s more, while most of the videos are aimed at students in their last years of elementary school and high school, there is also university-level material, such as a video on astrophysics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). And they are building a global community of teachers so that professors can build upon the work of their colleagues.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:22 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-04-18/families-in-despair-over-im-academy-the-crypto-sect-has-kidnapped-our-children.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-04-18/families-in-despair-over-im-academy-the-crypto-sect-has-kidnapped-our-children.html', 'date': '18 Apr 2022', 'title': 'Families in despair over IM Academy: ‘The crypto-sect has kidnapped our children’', 'author': 'Rebeca Carranco', 'text_art': ['“They have kidnapped our children,” says a woman who has seen her daughter transform into another person in the space of two months. “They have turned her inside out like a sock.” This mother and around 40 other families are united through RedUNE, an association that works to prevent recruitment by sects. They are on the warpath against the New York-based IM Academy, a group that’s been called a “crypto-sect” and ', ' and which is under investigation by Spain’s police for fraud.', 'IM Academy, which supposedly teaches how to ', ', held a large event in the northeastern Spanish city of Badalona on April 9, attracting more than 9,000 young people from all over Europe. They came away believing they have found the magic formula to get rich without working; their parents instead believe their children are being “brainwashed” and turned into sales people for the company.', 'The story always begins with the courses that IM Academy offers online. “We didn’t see anything wrong with her doing it,” recalls Raquel, 53, who now regrets having paid for her daughter’s course. She, like the rest of the mothers in this article, used an assumed name to preserve what’s left of her relationship with her daughter. In two months, the latter dropped her studies to focus on “personal development,” which essentially means “recruitment and consolidation within the sect,” says Raquel.', 'IM Academy courses cost €150 a month. But if each student recruits two people, the training is free. With three recruits, members start earning money and climbing the ranks of the organization, turning into Platinum 150 members; with 12 new recruits, you become Platinum 600 (you earn $600) and so on until you reach the top, that of chairman with 30,000 subscribers. It is a “pyramid scheme sales practice,” according to the complaint that several families filed with Spain’s National Police, leading to the arrest of eight people on March 23. This newspaper has unsuccessfully tried to reach IM Academy for comment.', '“You’re going to get rich. Your parents won’t understand, nor will your friends. You are a visionary who is aligned with today’s times,” says Raquel, recalling the lines that her daughter repeated to her. “She became a different person.” The day her parents refused to continue paying for her courses, “she took her backpack and left,” laments her mother. “She has forgotten her family, her group of friends… I don’t even know where she lives. And now I’m her enemy because I don’t understand her and I don’t support her.”', 'Another common element is speed. Ángela’s 18-year-old son began to be interested and he was suddenly hooked “24 hours a day.” His attitude changed. Ángela has managed to maintain a good relationship with him, but she is desperate. “The psychologist tells me that I cannot criticize the group,” she explains about the assistance she has received from the RedUNE support group. “He gets up, goes to the computer and when he goes out it’s just to recruit new people.” Angela is “tired, exhausted and pissed off” to see how her son has ended up “in a monetary sect.” He, too, has dropped out of school.', 'All of them have also developed “dialectical skills” that surpass their mothers’ own. “They teach them what to say at every step,” says Encarna, 58, whose 20-year-old son has joined IM Academy. He has gone from being “a normal guy who got good grades” to dropping out of school. “He says that’s an outdated paradigm,” she explains. And he is dedicated to “opening people’s eyes” and to “digital empowerment.” “They are young, smiling and they give you lessons on how to live life,” says Encarna. “They don’t ', ', they teach them abduction,” she says, adding she is fed up with her son’s glibness and how he is “always on everyone’s case” to try to recruit them. She is reaching her limit. But she is afraid that if she challenges him, she will lose.', 'Marta’s 19-year-old son dropped out of IM Academy three months ago, but he bears a grudge against his mother for it. In the half a year that he was in the group, he did things like writing a diary with phrases like “I’m Platinum 500, I’m successful, I have my cars.” He, like the others, dropped his studies. He has never been the same again. “He has not been vaccinated [against coronavirus]. He thinks that everything is a setup, even the war in Ukraine,” regrets his mother. He follows “weird groups” and makes “survival” purchases like matches or flashlights. “He has become obsessive,” she summarizes, and has “disconnected from his family.” Marta even doubts that, despite working and not having time, he has not returned to IM Academy. The problem, the woman repeats, is not that they are losing money, it is the “brainwashing” and the fact that they are being turned “against their parents.”', 'Marc, who is in his twenties, has participated in IM Academy talks. But he couldn’t see the allure. “Around 95% of it is talk, like a movie with a happy ending, not trading,” he says. He, unlike his brother, who is hooked on the crypto-sect, will not join. “Why would I go there? For a fool to tell me that I have a poor man’s mentality? No, thanks.”', 'The judicial investigation into the activities of IM Academy in Spain focuses on allegedly fraudulent investment ', '. The online training courses and their pyramid structure are just the structure that supports everything else. The key to the network is what is known in the jargon of the academy as “signals”: investment orders in certain products that the leadership sends to the intermediate cadres and these, in turn, relay to the victims. On March 23, after a year of investigation, the police arrested eight people for an alleged scam that may affect more than 2,000 young people, some of them underage. Albert F., Iván B., Cristian A. and José Francisco T. are some of the suspects being investigated by a Madrid court. The initial complaint, on behalf of the victims, accuses them of fraud, misleading advertising, psychological coercion, criminal organization, and crimes against public finances and against the Social Security system.', 'The whistleblowers were young people who have gone through this phase, but who, after losing hope and money, abandoned a group that they say has elements of a cult. The online training is “nonexistent or scarce,” explains the lawyer who filed the complaint, Carlos Bardavío. The teachers’ effort shifts from trading', 'to the need for students to attract other clients, and getting them to invest. Through a “referral link,” the leadership launches its “signals,” which are investment orders on certain financial products. Whether the operation goes well or not, the leadership always wins through commissions. And the alleged victims become an “instrument of the scam” because they end up recommending the operation to others.', 'The “team leaders” (the Platinums) forward those links by specific applications and Telegram groups. And so they also get a piece of the cake. They earn money, but not by investing, but because others close the operations previously recommended by the leaders. To convince the students, the recruiters show income statements with many zeros. According to the complaint, these documents are partial (losses are hidden), false or simple demos.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:23 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-19/russias-central-bank-says-that-the-economy-will-plummet-in-the-second-trimester-and-putin-is-ignoring-the-warning.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-19/russias-central-bank-says-that-the-economy-will-plummet-in-the-second-trimester-and-putin-is-ignoring-the-warning.html', 'date': '19 Apr 2022', 'title': 'Russia’s central bank says that the economy will plummet in the second quarter and Putin is ignoring the warning', 'author': 'El País', 'text_art': ['The Russian economy has made it through the first blow caused by the sanctions imposed by ', ', according to the president of the Russian Central Bank, Elvira Nabiullina. But she warned representatives at the Duma this Monday that the country’s reserves are near their end, and the real crisis will hit between the second and third quarter this year. Hours after Nabiullina sounded the alert, ', ' himself rejected her warning. “Russia has resisted unprecedented pressure. The situation is stabilizing,” the head of state said in a press conference about the country’s economic situation.', 'Nabullina emphasized that the economy is far from returning to normal. “The period when the economy has been able to live on the reserves is over. In the second quarter or at the beginning of the third, we will enter a phase of structural transformation,” said the economist, whose tenure leading the financial organism was set to end this year and was renewed for five years at Putin’s decision.', 'In her opinion, sanctions “affected financial markets at first, but now they will start to affect sectors of the real economy more and more.” The head of the Russian Central Bank noted that the problem is not the financial system, but the lack of materials that factories and companies will receive in the near future. “The main problems are not with the sanctions on financial institutions, but with restrictions on imports and, in the future, exports of Russian products,” she added.', 'Additionally, Russians will have to accept their loss of purchasing power. For the time being, the Central Bank will not attempt to compensate for inflation. “We will not attempt to reduce it in any way, because that would stop companies from adapting. Restoring the supply of imported components is more difficult and expensive, and it will inevitably affect the price of the final product,” she explained. Many companies find themselves scrambling to solve the problem. Some airlines have announced that they will leave part of their fleet grounded and use the parts to repair other airplanes.', 'The telecommunications sector calculates that its stock of replacement parts will last until the summer before system failures will begin. The year-on-year inflation rate reached 20% in March, the first month of the war, and many companies have suspended exports to Russia until the ruble’s value stabilizes. Before the war, Russian authorities estimated that 80% of critical sectors had replaced imported goods for nationally produced products.', 'Nabiullina also played down the country’s holdings in foreign currencies. Half of the fund of $620 billion (€592 billion) was frozen by the West, and the rest has been used to protect the ruble. According to the bank, it is not enough. “It consists of gold and yuan, which does not allow us to manage our currency in the internal market,” she emphasized. Hypothetical buyers of the precious metal would face sanctions, and because of Beijing’s controls, the Chinese currency has less liquidity in the international market than that of the US or Europe.', 'Nabiullina’s pessimism contrasts with the victorious declarations that Putin gave shortly afterwards. “We can say with confidence that the policies against Russia have failed, and the economic blitzkrieg has not succeeded,” he said. The leader declared that the West “tried to quickly break the economy and provoke panic in the stock exchanges, collapse the financial system and provoke a major shortage of products in supermarkets.” According to his version, the central bank’s initiative helped the country avoid that fate. “The ruble’s exchange rate has returned to its levels from early February,” he said, before insisting that foreign currencies “are returning to the country’s banking system and individual deposits are growing.”', 'When the sanctions began, a few days after', ' started, the Russian government and the agency led by Nabiullina imposed a limit on capital movement and increased interest rates from 9.5% to 20%. Among other restrictions, it forced companies to exchange 80% of their holdings in dollars and euros for rubles, prohibited banks and exchange houses from selling those currencies to civilians and banned foreigners from divesting from stocks in the Moscow Exchange.', 'The central bank now faces the delicate task of ending those measures and returning to a market economy. The exchange rate of the Russian currency, which has previously reached 160 rubles per euro, closed this Monday at 83, after the financial institution allowed banks to sell the few dollars and euros that they had received since April 9.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:25 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-04-22/chief-of-eu-diplomacy-countries-can-act-on-their-own-to-cut-off-russian-oil-and-gas.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-04-22/chief-of-eu-diplomacy-countries-can-act-on-their-own-to-cut-off-russian-oil-and-gas.html', 'date': '22 Apr 2022', 'title': 'Chief of EU diplomacy: ‘Countries can act on their own to cut off Russian oil and gas’', 'author': 'Guillermo Abril', 'text_art': ['Every time ', ', Josep Borrell, is on the phone with a EU foreign minister and he gets asked where he is, he invariable replies: “Buying gas.” The High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, one of the key people in Brussels’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, considers it essential for the 27 members of the EU to achieve energy independence from Moscow. But he also acknowledges that right now the EU lacks the necessary unanimity to apply an embargo on the oil and gas imports that feed the Kremlin’s coffers every day. As an alternative, he proposes voluntary schemes to cut Europe’s ties to fossil fuels, and he insists on supporting Kyiv by sending weapons to Ukraine. “The war will have to be decided on the battlefield,” he said this Thursday in a video interview with news organizations that are part of the LENA alliance, including EL PAÍS.', ' The Kremlin ', ' nearly two months ago already. How do you see the situation?', 'Russia’s initial attempt at a swift operation has failed. They have not been able to take Kyiv. They have had to withdraw, change their tactics and concentrate all their efforts ', '. So far they have lost. For the Ukrainians the price to pay is very high: they have suffered heavy casualties, destruction of infrastructure, civilians fleeing and dying, but Russia has failed. Let’s see about the next battle.', ' A phrase of yours sparked controversy a few days ago: "Wars are won or lost on the battlefield."', ' When the Austrian chancellor [Karl Nehammer] returned [from his recent visit to Moscow] saying that Putin does not want to negotiate, and that he is preparing a major offensive in the Donbas, he said that the war in this case will have to be won on the battlefield. It is the logical consequence. If someone says they don’t want to stop or negotiate and will instead continue to fight, then the war will have to be decided on the battlefield. I don’t see why people say, “My God, what did he say!”', 'Would you go to a negotiating table ', '?', ' I would go tomorrow. Now, the problem is that Putin is saying that he will continue the war. Until when? I do not know. Meanwhile, we have to commit to supporting the Ukrainians because they have been attacked, being aware that the more weapons we provide, the more we are committed.', 'Every time there is talk of more and more deliveries of weapons, tanks and planes. Are we at risk of being considered co-belligerents?', ' It’s a delicate balance. We support one of the parties in a war without wanting to be part of it. We provide weapons, they suffer the consequences of war. We will continue to make this effort and increase it, without becoming belligerent. We just want the Ukrainians to be able to defend themselves.', 'Will they be supported to the point where Ukraine manages to recapture even Crimea, for example?', ' There are people who criticize us, saying that sending weapons means that the war will be longer and will cause more deaths, and that it must be stopped. Yes, certainly: if Ukraine is no longer armed, the war will stop. Then what? Doesn’t it matter how it stops? It is not only a question of when, it is also a question of ', '.', 'When will new sanctions that include Russian oil and gas be approved?', ' I can’t give a date. Everyone can speculate, but as far as I know, there is no proposal on the table. But there are options on the best way to do it: a tax? An import ban? The Iranian system? Many economists say that the rational thing would be to make gas and oil more expensive so that incentives are created to look for alternative sources. None of these proposals has achieved the necessary unanimity. It is a decision that must be made by the European Council [the body where the leaders of the 27 sit]. It is high-level politics. And there hasn’t been an agreement yet.', ' What needs to happen in Ukraine for the EU to completely sever ties with Russia instead of carrying on almost as usual? An Auschwitz? A nuclear bomb?', 'No, no. Nobody is carrying on as usual. The European Council has not provided guidance for approving a tax or a ban on imports [of oil and gas]. There are some member states, you know which ones, that have clearly said that they will veto it. If this is the case, then whether we like it or not, a unanimous decision cannot be made. I’m sorry, but it’s like that.', 'Do you see any solutions?', ' If someone doesn’t want to participate, others can. Unanimity is not needed to act voluntarily, following a plan. They can decide to act according to a collective decision, which is not officially an EU decision. It will not be unanimously, but they can act on their side. This is what is already happening now and it is working. The effect will not be felt tomorrow, it is a reduction path. Germany has assured that it will get rid of Russian oil by the end of the year. And remember that Russia gets much more money from oil than from gas. It is already happening. The decrease in oil bought from Russia is very important. And we are replacing the gas with gas from different sources. We don’t act like it’s nothing. We talk to everyone and push for everyone to act. When Germany says that by the end of the year there will be no more Russian oil, it is making a big effort.', 'And the gas?', 'Oil is much easier because it is not a raw material for industry. It’s just a power source. Gas is indeed a raw material; in the petrochemical industry, it is irreplaceable. But it will happen. Russia will see how the money from the sale of oil and gas decreases. If we could have unanimity I would be more than happy, and I am pushing for it, proposing arguments, exploring possibilities, looking for alternatives. Every time I call a colleague at the Foreign Affairs Council and they ask me where I am, I say: ‘Buying gas.’ I am somewhere in the world, in the Middle East, in the Congo, in Algeria, doing what? Buying gas.', 'How is the autonomy of the EU after the crisis in Ukraine?', ' Autonomy is a very broad concept, not just a military one. It is the ability to act without being limited by others. And it is clear that in many aspects Europe lacks autonomy, and the most important one today is energy. We are crucially dependent on supplies provided by someone with whom we have a very bad relationship today. So it is clear that Europe has to fight to have that energy autonomy, as a first step. This is the most important thing today. We can be criticized that it should have been done much earlier, when Putin took Crimea. Now we are seeing the real danger. And the whole world is decreasing its energy consumption and dependence on Russia.', ' And in military terms?', 'Now everyone is going through their stockpiles to see what kind of material we have to provide to the Ukrainians. It’s a good check. What kind of military supplies to wage war do we have? What is its quality? It is a good lesson for building greater military capacity.', 'What effects will the war have on the rest of the world?', ' We are concerned by the narrative that sanctions against Russia are creating world hunger. Yesterday I was speaking with the foreign minister of Indonesia, whose country will host the G-20 summit. And I was warned about how retaliation is perceived among emerging countries. They are going to suffer negative effects because energy and food prices will increase. Why? Because of the war. But Russia is making a great effort to spread – and China is echoing it – that this is a consequence of Western sanctions. We are going to witness a narrative battle like the one about masks and vaccines.', 'What kind of world will emerge from this war?', 'It will be much more fragmented and this will create economic disruption. Wheat will also become a kind of weapon. Russia is already saying: “Our wheat will be for our friends; those who are not our friends will not have it.” There will be a new political landscape, with Russia and China on one side; the West on the other. And a lot of emerging countries will lean to one side or the other, depending on the circumstances. Remember during the Cold War, when we talked about non-aligned countries? We are witnessing the rebirth of a similar phenomenon.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:26 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-26/what-will-elon-musk-do-with-twitter.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-26/what-will-elon-musk-do-with-twitter.html', 'date': '26 Apr 2022', 'title': 'What will Elon Musk do with Twitter?', 'author': 'Jordi Pérez Colomé', 'text_art': ['Twitter’s board of directors has finally decided to sell the company to Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and head of electric vehicle maker Tesla as well ', '. On the digital conversation platform itself, the new owner’s personality has triggered a huge debate and started several global trends. There are those who believe that Musk will help the company achieve new goals, and those who feel that the only alternative is to flee Twitter forever; very few seem to have nothing to say about it.', 'Musk’s own statements about Twitter imply that he is buying it to improve it, not for money or influence. He offered an analysis of his views ', ' on April 14, the same day that his offer became public. His theory was that Twitter needs more clarity in its rules, more transparency in its algorithms and more freedom of speech. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans,” he said. Details were, however, scant.', 'His overarching goal, according to his own words, is to save democracy. At the TED talk he said that Twitter has become a “de facto digital town square” and that “it’s really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law.”', 'This resource is essential for the functioning of democracy in the US and in many other countries, he added.', 'Musk also thinks that the Twitter algorithm should be posted on GitHub, the open source platform used by computer programmers, and that it should be open to comments and suggestions, “just like Linux and Signal.” Users must also be perfectly aware of why decisions are made: any action on why a tweet is promoted or not should be evident, so that there is no ', ', whether algorithmically or manually.', 'On freedom of expression, he admitted to being “a free-speech absolutist” and defined freedom of expression as a situation where someone you don’t like can say something you don’t like. “If that is so, we have freedom of expression,” he said.', 'After he uttered that statement, journalists were quick to bring up numerous examples of times when Musk tried to silence or limit the speech of someone he does not like, such as when he called a caver who helped rescue children ', ' a “pedo guy,” or when he spied on a former employee for speaking to the press or when he blocked the account of a Florida youth who was posting all of Musk’s flights on Twitter.', 'This is where the real debate begins about what it means for the richest person in the world to be able to do what he wants with one of the world’s main communication platforms. This purchase is not Jeff Bezos acquiring ', ' ', ' or Rupert Murdoch acquiring ', ' ', ' When asked why he thought the richest person would buy Twitter, his response was to laugh at Mark Zuckerberg, noting that because of Meta’s share ownership structure, “Mark Zuckerberg the 14th will still be controlling these companies.” That won’t happen with Twitter, he said.', 'Musk also said that he was not buying Twitter for profit. “It’s not a way to make money. My intuitive feeling is that having a platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization,” he said. But it’s one thing not to care about money and another not to perceive ways to exploit the benefits of Twitter. The tool has already given him a lot: his tweets about Tesla, SpaceX and even the dogecoin ', ' have made him richer.', 'Permanent access to such a platform, and maintaining influence, are essential, and few people understand the importance of attention today like Musk. Twitter has 10 times fewer users than Facebook, YouTube or Instagram, but its weight is not proportionally lower.', 'At the TED talk, Musk discussed the concept of permanent bans on Twitter, saying it is better “to be reluctant to remove things and be cautious about permanent bans. I think temporary suspensions are better than permanent bans.” The most famous suspension from Twitter ', '. A hypothetical return to Twitter in 2022 would help the former president prepare a new run for the White House in 2024. The Republican Party is favorably viewing Musk’s acquisition of Twitter.', 'Musk may want to return his account to Trump as a sign of freedom of expression, but it would also be clear that he would be doing him a favor that the hypothetical future president of the United States could return once in the White House, either by favoring his companies or helping with Musk’s problems with the the Securities and Exchange Commission, the market watchdog. Other governments could also aspire to use Twitter more freely or without labels such as “state-owned media.” If it’s something that could harm Tesla’s interests, as in China, the conflict of interest would be obvious. Suspicions about Twitter’s decisions will be pinned on Musk, for better and for worse. But he has probably already thought it out.', 'In his talk, Musk said that he will not edit tweets personally, but it is difficult to believe that the most relevant decisions will not pass through his hands.', 'Within Twitter, a company accustomed to public disturbances, the atmosphere was even more tense than on other occasions. Aside from all the public debate about Musk, the entrepreneur is famous for pushing his companies toward excellence through an iron-fisted business organization. The story about how he slept at the Tesla plant during the most difficult days of the company is the stuff of legend. At Twitter headquarters in San Francisco, the shock may be especially noticeable.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:27 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-27/what-is-lab126-amazons-secretive-research-laboratory.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-27/what-is-lab126-amazons-secretive-research-laboratory.html', 'date': '27 Apr 2022', 'title': 'What is Lab126, Amazon’s secretive research laboratory?', 'author': 'Miguel Ángel García Vega', 'text_art': ['Amazon is one of those few companies that can turn a whisper into a promise. “It is going to launch.” “It will arrive in Europe.” All the promises become headlines. And it all happens in Sunnyvale (California), where the company founded by Jeff Bezos has a secretive laboratory named Lab126. This is the place that has created Kindle readers, Fire tablets, the Alexa virtual assistant, the Echo smart speaker, the Amazon TV or the Astro home robot. But also where failures like the Fire Phone (2014) came from. That mistake cost $170 million dollars in cancellations, according to news reports of the time; a trifle for the juggernaut’s hardware-testing ground.', 'Discretion —or secrecy— is inseparable from the lab. Just look at the photograph that illustrates this story. Where was it taken? At the laboratory? In a private home? In neither of the two places? The only thing that is certain is the identity of the person smiling next to the Astro robot: Gregg Zehr, a hardware genius and president of Lab126. The conversation took place by videoconference, although much was left unsaid. “I can’t tell you how many people [several hundred] work at the lab.” “Nor when Astro will arrive in Europe or its price.” Nor of course could he discuss his upcoming projects. The interview revealed a very cordial individual who, like an enormously talented kid, enjoys the most difficult tasks at school.', 'Perhaps those days are not too far away. Gregg Zehr grew up on a farm, a place that the writer Truman Capote could well describe as “out there,” the words with which his non-fiction novel ', ' starts. “We had cows, chickens; that was the environment,” he recalls. He soon excelled in math and followed in his older brother’s footsteps by enrolling in engineering at the University of Illinois. He started designing products for children. “I love them and also working with researchers who don’t know anything about engineering, and with engineers, like me, who don’t know anything about human behavior. The perfect team.”', 'Then, the intermittent journey of open and failed start-ups that the ambition of Silicon Valley entails. He was vice-president of hardware engineering at Palm Computing (where he led the team that developed handheld devices like Zire), vice-president of engineering at VA Linux, then ', ' thanks to some colleagues from Motorola. He never met Steve Jobs. “It’s funny. He left just when I arrived, I saw him once in the parking lot, ”he recalls. He was there for nine years, seven in the area of desktop computers and two as vice-president of PowerBook engineering. In 2004 he joined Amazon. “I was interviewed by Jeff Bezos [founder of the company]. He is a great guy, it is true that he is complicated, but he was very involved in developing new products”, he reflects. “He is very demanding and always has new ideas.”', 'From that hyperactivity, in October, the laboratory emerged. The name comes from the Amazon logo, which draws a line that joins the "A" and the "Z". In the English alphabet, A is letter 1 and Z is letter 26. Lab126.', 'The first success came with the e-reader Kindle. It was launched (after three years of work) on November 19, 2007 and in five and a half hours all 90,000 available units were sold out. Bezos wanted to keep up the pace with CDs, videos, music, but Zehr convinced him not to. “It was the beginning of everything, a company that sold books. We had to start with this type of downloads,” he says. The first flop also arrived: the Fire phone. “We learned a lot. We knew that the market was saturated but we believed that there was room for the development of a new interface,” he defends. It was not so. Apple and Google had already cornered the market with a tide of apps of all kinds.', 'However, failing in the San Francisco Bay has a different meaning than in Europe. It just means starting somewhere else. Such as home robots. “Five years ago Bezos told us: we need to design those products,” says Zehr. So they created a kind of start-up within Amazon to produce them. “Jeff said, okay, and we did it. We needed engineers, sensor experts, camera designers... Lots of people. Because the robot had to answer two questions: where am I? Am I going to move safely?” Astro represents five years of work. “You can imagine how many times we failed, but it’s a lot of fun,” he concedes. In fact, they have a specific area where the products go through extreme shock, water, heat tests and any kind of random situations, even the most crazy ones, that come to mind. And it’s all with the backing of a colossus of artificial intelligence, ', ' and cloud computing, where its subsidiary AWS is a powerhouse. They’re like the Lego pieces of the future. “Crazy ideas are my favorites,” admits the president of the laboratory.', 'Perhaps there is no greater madness and uncertainty these days than in the future. At Lab126 they have their own technological premonitions. “I think there is still a lot of work to be done between the human being interacting with large amounts of information; we have to make it easier. And for that, artificial intelligence and Alexa are a good starting point”, says Zehr, who envisions a different tomorrow where people’s heads will not be continually bent over consulting “the stupid cellphone” as they walk around. There will be an assistant in each house, perhaps hanging on the wall or moving on the floor, and through it financial transactions will be carried out, we will control the lights in the house, select the music to be played or carry things from one place to another, he posits. Humanistic technology? Or an iridescent oxymoron? ', ' is building prodigious hardware (in competition with Samsung, Apple, Google or LG), but what is his social involvement? Should Bezos pay a 90% tax rate, as the French economist Thomas Piketty argues? “I’m afraid I don’t have a good answer to your question,” notes Zehr. “I’m a successful farm-raised inventor and engineer, and I’m very involved with young people. However, as a species, we have to ask ourselves what world we want to live in.” That, perhaps, is the biggest secret of all.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:27 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-04-26/mexicos-electricity-commission-turns-to-us-court-in-battle-versus-whitewater-midstream.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-04-26/mexicos-electricity-commission-turns-to-us-court-in-battle-versus-whitewater-midstream.html', 'date': '26 Apr 2022', 'title': 'Mexico’s electricity commission turns to US court in battle versus WhiteWater Midstream', 'author': 'Isabella Cota', 'text_art': ['The Mexican Federal Electricity Commission (CFE) has opened a legal case in the United States in an effort to obtain information about the contractual dealings that made WhiteWater Midstream, a Texas energy company founded in 2016, into ', ' during the previous administration. The CFE opened the case in the US District Court for the Western District of Texas on April 14. The case seeks to gather evidence against former CFE executives Guillermo Turrent and Javier Gutiérrez, both of whom are part of a criminal proceeding in Mexico, according to the nearly 1,100-page legal filing.', 'In July 2021, EL PAÍS revealed that executives from WhiteWater Midstream, a recently formed natural gas company, had ties to Turrent that dated back more than 20 years, to their time together as employees at Royal Dutch Shell. Under the administration of former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto, CFE International (CFEi), the privately operated foreign arm of the state company based in Houston, awarded WhiteWater hundreds of millions of dollars worth of contracts to supply Mexico with natural gas, which is used to generate electricity.', 'Following publication, the CFE hired a private investigation company in the US to explore possible corruption, influence trafficking and damages to the Mexican state. It was this US-based private investigation company that submitted evidence to the court in Texas in support of CFE, which alleges that the contracts awarded to WhiteWater and its founder, Matthew Calhoun, were done in violation of Mexican law. A criminal proceeding has been opened in Mexico by the Attorney General’s Office and the Office of the Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor, according to the court filing.', '“The Mexican Criminal Proceeding involves claims that, in December 2016, Javier Gutiérrez Becerril, a former executive of CFE and former Chief Operating Officer of CFEi, and Guillermo Turrent Schnaas, a former executive of CFE and former Chief Executive Officer of CFEi, as public servants, violated the Mexican Constitution and Mexican criminal and procurement laws by improperly awarding a US company, WhiteWater Midstream LLC and its subsidiaries and affiliates, massive natural gas contracts to build, transport capacity, and market gas on a Texas pipeline whose construction was sponsored by CFE,” says the text of the case submitted to the US District Court for the Western District of Texas, which was reviewed by EL PAÍS.', '“These contracts, with an estimated revenue to WhiteWater Midstream of hundreds of millions of dollars over the lifetime of the deal, were awarded by Gutiérrez and Turrent for the benefit of WhiteWater Midstream and to the detriment of Mexico and its people,” it says. The filing of the case in the US was ', ', a legal news website based in Miami.', 'One of the existing contracts between the two companies, in which the CFE committed to pay WhiteWater Midstream more than $3 million per day for 15 years for natural gas supply, is at the center of a renegotiation dispute led by Mexican authorities that seek to eliminate WhiteWater from the deal for being an “abusive intermediary.” The documents submitted to the Texas court reveal that at least four other contracts were awarded to Calhoun, the founder of WhiteWater and of a second company called Antaeus Group, which the CFE is also investigating.', 'CFE presented its case to the Texas court in hopes the US judiciary will order Antaeus Group to turn in information and documentation that include communications and interactions the company had with Turrent and Gutiérrez. Additionally, evidence presented in the case alleges that Gutiérrez was employed at Antaeus Group months before joining the CFE, which could represent a conflict of interest.', 'According to a 2018 document issued by the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the CFE awarded Antaeus Group rights to construct a natural gas pipeline in the state of Texas. Antaeus Group didn’t construct the pipeline and leased its rights to a third-party company to build and operate the project. In exchange, Antaeus Group and a partner were to receive a fixed monthly lease payment of $2.1 million as part of the agreement.', '“Calhoun, through Gutiérrez and Turrent, sought to orchestrate, and in some cases succeeded in orchestrating, transactions with CFE in which Calhoun, through Antaeus Group, stood to benefit,” the court filing reads.', '“It is against this backdrop of a close, long-standing relationship among Calhoun, Gutiérrez, and Turrent, including Gutiérrez’s role as a principal of Antaeus Group, that Antaeus Group sought numerous business opportunities with CFE and CFEi, eventually culminating in Turrent’s and Gutiérrez’s awarding the Waha Connector Agreements to Calhoun’s newly formed company, WhiteWater Midstream, in contravention of Mexican procurement laws.”', 'The filing of the case by the CFE in a US court confirms criminal proceedings being carried out in Mexico against Turrent and Gutiérrez and pressures US authorities to investigate the deals in question, given corruption is alleged in their formation. On July 16, the CFE issued a statement that claimed contracts signed between the state company and WhiteWater were under investigation in both the US and Mexico.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:30 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-27/top-pastry-chef-jordi-roca-opens-us-ice-cream-shop-in-houston-with-a-neurodiverse-workforce.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-27/top-pastry-chef-jordi-roca-opens-us-ice-cream-shop-in-houston-with-a-neurodiverse-workforce.html', 'date': '27 Apr 2022', 'title': 'Top pastry chef Jordi Roca opens US ice cream shop in Houston with a neurodiverse workforce', 'author': 'Rosa Rivas', 'text_art': ['It all started in 2012 in the city of Girona, in Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region. Then it spread to Barcelona and Madrid. Now the United States is getting its first taste of Rocambolesc, the ice cream shop that the pastry chefs Jordi Roca and his wife Alejandra Rivas created to capture the spirit of El Celler de Can Roca, twice named the best restaurant in the world by the annual ', '.', 'Rocambolesc Houston, which opened on April 22 in the Texas city, is the first leg of a project that aims to expand to other American cities as an example of gastronomy as a social tool. The ice cream shop’s team is made up of young people with neurodiversity (people with cognitive and emotional processes that are different from the norm: ', ', dyslexia, dyspraxia, hyperactivity...).', 'The goal is to create job opportunities for people who need them. As such, the new company has been set up as a Public Benefit Corporation, with the commitment to “increase public awareness through these job opportunities and support the career potential of workers,” say the drivers of the project. For this reason, “Rocambolesc USA is associated with organizations specialized in educational and training programs for people with neurological differences, such as The Center for Pursuit and The HUB Houston, which provide employees with the tools to be successful in their jobs and achieve career options, growth and independence.”', 'Rocambolesc’s American adventure has been carried out in collaboration with the Catalan families Roger and Torras, who own the BCN and MAD restaurants. The shop in Texas is just a first stop, as Rocambolesc USA plans to expand. “We are very satisfied with the warm welcome from the people, very enthusiastic about the opening. For now we are going to establish one more store and then we will see. The idea is to replicate this initiative to continue working with people with ', ' in the stores that we open in the United States,” Jordi Roca and Alejandra Rivas told EL PAÍS.', 'Both pastry chefs are continually exploring the creative possibilities of ice cream, sweets and treats, with impeccable technical skill and great humor. “We want to open new horizons to fill the world with sweetness and happiness in the form of ice cream,” they said regarding the international expansion plans.', 'America’s first Rocambolesc boasts a playful, fantasy-world decoration developed by the interior designer Sandra Tarruella. As in all Rocambolesc shops, the dessert creations of Jordi Roca (recognized as the World’s Best Pastry Chef by The World’s 50 Best in 2014 and by The Best Chef Awards in 2019) are brought to ice cream shape by his accomplice in life, Alejandra Rivas, creating a synergy in which the toppings achieve a bold and complete version of the original dessert.', 'The Houston clientele will be able to taste all the offerings that Roca and Rivas serve in Spain, such as the strawberry and rose water popsicle or the coconut and milk popsicle, and soft ice cream with more than 18 flavors inspired by the Jordi Roca desserts. There is also the ', ' one of the star products, a brioche filled with ice cream, cold on the inside and toasted and sealed on the outside, which is made in a ', ' machine invented by the pastry chefs.', 'The new Rocambolesc location is on Uptown Boulevard, an elegant, open-air shopping area in the most vibrant area of Houston, with a wide range of exclusive shops, restaurants, bars, cafes, concerts and theater performances. Houston, which has more than 10,000 restaurants, hosted the BBVA tour of the three-Michelin star Celler de Can Roca in 2015, in which it offered traveling meals and cooked up cuisine from different cities around the world.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:31 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-28/poland-bulgaria-say-they-have-gas-reserves-to-offset-halt-of-russian-supply.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-28/poland-bulgaria-say-they-have-gas-reserves-to-offset-halt-of-russian-supply.html', 'date': '28 Apr 2022', 'title': 'Poland, Bulgaria say they have gas reserves to offset halt of Russian supply', 'author': 'Gloria Rodríguez-Pina', 'text_art': ['Poland and Bulgaria say they will not be particularly affected by Russia’s decision on Wednesday to cut off its gas supply to both countries following their failure ', '. Both governments, which import 50% and 75% of their natural gas from Russia respectively, have asserted that they will not yield before ', 'The Polish government said the move will not affect consumers, while Bulgaria gave assurances that it has enough reserves for a month and that it is working to secure alternatives. Both countries have announced legal measures against the supplier, Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, for breach of contract.', '“This is a direct attack on Poland, revenge for the sanctions imposed on Russia by our country,” said Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in parliament, in statements reported by ', '. “I want to assure you that this blackmail will not affect Polish households.” Morawiecki added that “starting in autumn, Poland will not need Russian gas at all.” The country has been moving to reduce its dependence on Russia for years with several projects, including one to bring in gas from Norway.', 'On Tuesday, the Polish government had announced new ', ' with business interests in Poland. These measures will include the freezing of funds and assets, as well as the confiscation of their rights to shares and dividends obtained in Poland.', 'As for Bulgaria, the message was similar. “The government is prepared for a scenario where Gazprom stops gas supplies to our country. I want to assure the Bulgarian citizens that in no way will there be a reduction in gas supply to consumers,” said Prime Minister Kiril Petkov at the cabinet meeting on Wednesday, according to a government statement. “The Ministry of Energy has a clear action plan, including alternative sources of supply. The suspension of natural gas by Gazprom is a gross violation of the contract and blackmail for the use of an out-of-contract payment plan in rubles through third parties (...)We will not succumb to such racketeering.”', 'The move on Wednesday constitutes Moscow’s harshest response so far to the sanctions imposed by the West for the war in Ukraine. Russian gas continues, however, to flow to other European countries through the network of Russian gas pipelines, including the Yamal-Europe, which runs through Polish territory.', 'Bulgaria has asked Brussels ', ' on this measure, which the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has described as “unacceptable blackmail.”', 'The Yamal-Europe gas pipeline, which crosses Belarus and Poland, not only supplies these countries but also serves to route part of the Russian gas to other European states such as Germany. Gazprom has warned Poland and Bulgaria that they must not “illegally” extract the gas that will continue to transit through the sections of the gas pipelines that run through their territory.', 'Other European countries, such as Germany and Austria, have warned that they are not ready to end their dependency on Russian gas. The European Commission has called for a two-thirds cut in imports of Russian oil and gas this year.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:32 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-28/elon-musk-agrees-not-to-disparage-twitter-in-buyout-deal.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-04-28/elon-musk-agrees-not-to-disparage-twitter-in-buyout-deal.html', 'date': '28 Apr 2022', 'title': 'Elon Musk agrees not to ‘disparage’ Twitter in buyout deal', 'author': 'Miguel Jiménez', 'text_art': ['Announcements are one thing and contracts are another. American businessman Elon Musk has claimed he wants to ', ' to protect freedom of speech. But Musk himself has agreed to bite his tongue and not criticize the social network on Twitter, while he completes the process to acquire the company. That’s according to the terms of the merger, filed on Tuesday to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).', 'As is to be expected in this type of deal, the contract regulates what can be said about the acquisition. The general principle is that the two parties should consult one another and agree on press releases and other statements. What is not usual is the end of that clause of the contract: “The Equity Investor [Elon Musk] shall be permitted to issue Tweets about the Merger of the transactions contemplated hereby so long as such Tweets do not disparage the Company or any of its Representatives.”', 'The Tesla founder is a compulsive Twitter user and has been practically live-tweeting his every movement – from his initial purchase of 9% of shares to the final agreement to purchase the company for $54.2 a share, or $44 billion in total. In recent weeks, Musk has gained more than five million followers on Twitter and now has a total of more than 87 million. Up until now, Musk has never been shy about criticizing Twitter or its executives and its decisions.', 'On Tuesday, Musk tweeted: “By ‘free speech,’ I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.” Or that goes beyond the contract, given his companies often require workers to sign confidentiality agreements or clauses to prevent them from discrediting the businesses or presenting Musk as anything less than the ', '” he describes himself as.', 'While the deal does not stipulate what will happen if Musk breaks this clause, it does include a $1-billion termination fee. This applies to both parties. For example, if Musk is unable to close the financing to carry out the operation, he will have to pay Twitter $1 billion. But if Twitter breaks the agreement and does not recommend shareholders vote in favor of the operation or if it ends up accepting a competing offer, it will have to pay Musk the termination fee. The end date for the operation is October 24, but it can be extended for another six months.', 'Meanwhile on Tuesday, Tesla share prices fell 12%, wiping $126 billion off its valuation. Some analysts said the drop was due to fear that Musk would sell some of his stocks in Tesla to finance the purchase of Twitter.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:33 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-03/error-by-citi-trader-causes-european-stock-markets-to-lose-300-billion-in-minutes.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-03/error-by-citi-trader-causes-european-stock-markets-to-lose-300-billion-in-minutes.html', 'date': '03 May 2022', 'title': 'Error by Citi trader causes European stock markets to lose €300 billion in minutes', 'author': 'Miguel Jiménez', 'text_art': ['A mistake by a single stock trader caused a €300 billion ($315 billion) flash crash in the ', ' on Monday. The US-based Citi group acknowledged on Monday night that one of its traders had triggered a sudden, sharp fall in European shares in a matter of minutes, with an equally rapid recovery afterwards.', 'The Reuters news agency reported in an exclusive story that the US banking group was behind this collapse, and Citi ended up confirming that one of its traders “made an error when inputting a transaction.” The statement added that “within minutes, we identified the error and corrected it.”', 'A few minutes, however, go a long way on the trading floor. The epicenter of the shock was the Swedish Stock Exchange. The OMX index, the country’s main reference, fell shortly before 10am, registering a drop of up to 8%; shares in ', 'and the telecommunications company Telia retreated by 10% in a matter of minutes.', 'Besides having a lot of automated functions, the markets work a bit like a herd. The effects of that single error by a Citi trader did not stop in Sweden. The contagion effect was felt in stock exchanges throughout Europe, the only ones that were open at the time. Spain’s blue-chip Ibex 35, for example, lost 200 points all of a sudden, a drop of more than 2.3%. And European stock markets as a whole lost over €300 billion as a result of the so-called Nordic flash crash.', 'Stocks rallied quickly and in a matter of minutes were back to where they started. Nasdaq Stockholm clarified that the crash was not due to a technical failure. Everything pointed to human error. According to unnamed financial sources cited by Bloomberg, the trader who made the mistake works at Citi’s London trading desk.', 'Sharp falls in prices often automatically trigger sell orders to limit losses when certain levels are breached. The most notorious case of an instantaneous crash took place in 2010 in the US, when indices like the S&P 500, Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite Stock Exchange slumped suddenly. On that occasion the flash crash was not triggered by an error but by fraudulent operations that were amplified ', '. There were shares that went from trading at $74 to less than a cent in a matter of minutes.', 'The Singapore Stock Exchange in 2013, the British pound in 2016 and the ', ' (which went from $300 to 10 cents in minutes) in 2017 have seen similar episodes of sharp drops followed by immediate recoveries.', 'Citi has not provided information on whether or how many losses its trader’s error has caused the banking group to incur.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:34 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-03/new-york-warehouse-deals-blow-to-amazon-union-movement.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
2022-06-01 23:03:35 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-03/new-york-warehouse-deals-blow-to-amazon-union-movement.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-03/new-york-warehouse-deals-blow-to-amazon-union-movement.html', 'date': '03 May 2022', 'title': 'New York warehouse deals blow to Amazon union movement', 'author': 'María Antonia Sánchez-Vallejo', 'text_art': ['The movement to unionize ', ' in the United States suffered a blow on Monday when an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York voted against unionizing. The workers at the package sort center, called LDJ5, voted 618 to 380 against unionizing with the newly formed Amazon Labor Union, according to the count by the National Labor Relations Board. But there was also a high abstention rate: of the 1,600 employees with the right to vote, most of whom are part-time workers, only 1,000 participated.', 'The vote is a setback to the ALU, which won an unexpected victory in April at a nearby Amazon fulfillment center called JFK8. The historic vote established Amazon’s first-ever union. Until the launch of ALU in April, Amazon had managed to stop all ', '.', 'JFK8 and LDJ5 are both located on Staten Island, just down the street from one another, but there are key differences between them. JFK8 is a larger distribution center, and most of the workers are full-time, while at LDJ5, most of the employees are on', '.', 'The vote on Monday is the latest chapter of the movement to unionize Amazon workers. These efforts have been met with a series of setbacks. Last year, workers at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama voted overwhelmingly against unionizing. A federal ruling found that the retail giant had unfairly influenced the election, and a re-vote was held in March, which also ended in defeat. Amazon is now seeking to overturn the union victory at JFK8 on the grounds the ALU intimidated workers to vote for the union. It also accuses the National Labor Relations Board in New York, which is in charge of supervising the vote, of being biased.', 'Following the defeat on Monday, there is now concern the setback could not only weaken the union mobilization of Amazon workers, but also the trade union movement more broadly. This movement has been on the rise, buoyed by a pro-union US president and the imbalance in the labor market, with more supply than demand – especially in poorly paid positions. Since 2021, the number of requests to hold union votes has jumped 60%. These unionizing efforts have not only been seen among workers in the service sector, but also among professionals in fields such as architecture and media.', 'And Amazon is not the only large American company to watch, stunned, as trade union consciousness awakens. Workers at the Starbucks coffee chain and the sports equipment company REI have also held union votes. But all eyes are on Amazon: not only because it is the second-largest employer in the US, after the department store Walmart, but also because of the type of work that is carried out and the contractual relationship the company has with its workforce.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:36 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2022-05-03/the-growing-threat-of-a-global-recession.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/1/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2022-05-03/the-growing-threat-of-a-global-recession.html', 'date': '03 May 2022', 'title': 'The growing threat of a global recession', 'author': 'Kenneth Rogoff', 'text_art': ['A recession in Europe is almost inevitable if the ', ' escalates, and Germany, which has been fiercely resisting calls to pull the plug on', ', finally relents. China is finding it increasingly difficult to sustain positive growth in the face of draconian Covid-19 lockdowns, which have already brought Shanghai to a screeching halt and now threaten Beijing. In fact, the Chinese economy may already be in recession. And with US consumer prices currently increasing at their fastest rate in 40 years, prospects for a soft landing for prices without a big hit to growth look increasingly remote.', 'Private and official economic forecasts have recently started to highlight growing regional risks, but perhaps understate the extent to which they multiply each other. Widespread lockdowns in China, for example, will wreak havoc with global supply chains in the short run, ', ' in the US and lowering demand in Europe. Normally, these problems might be attenuated by lower commodity prices. But with no clear end in sight in Ukraine, global food and energy prices are likely to remain high in any scenario.', 'A recession in the US, especially if triggered by a cycle of interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve, would curtail global import demand and trigger chaos in financial markets. And although recessions in Europe normally radiate globally mainly through reduced demand, a war-induced slowdown could radically shake business confidence and financial markets worldwide.', 'How likely is each of these events? China’s growth trajectory has long been slowing, with only a combination of luck and mostly competent macroeconomic management preventing a severe downturn. But no amount of careful macroeconomic stewardship can save the day if the Chinese leadership has made the wrong call on Covid-19.', 'Most Asian countries have now exited zero-Covid strategies and are moving on to regimes that manage Covid-19 as an endemic threat, but do not treat it as a pandemic. Not China. There, the government is spending massive sums to convert empty downtown office buildings into quarantine centers.', 'Perhaps the new quarantine centers are a brilliant idea, providing a way to redirect China’s bloated construction sector toward more socially useful activities than piling more new projects on top of years of overbuilding (something that the International Monetary Fund economist Yuanchen Yang and I warned of in 2020). Perhaps China’s leaders know something their Western counterparts don’t about the urgency of preparing for the next pandemic, in which case the quarantine centers could look positively visionary. More likely, however, China is tilting at windmills in trying to tame the increasingly contagious virus, in which case the centers will prove to be a vast waste of resources, and the lockdowns futile.', 'The ', ' has surely skyrocketed, with the main uncertainties now being its timing and severity. The sanguine view that inflation will decline significantly on its own, and that the Fed will therefore not have to raise interest rates too much, is looking more dubious by the day. With savings having soared during the pandemic, the more likely scenario is that consumer demand will remain strong, while supply-chain problems become even worse.', 'True, the US government appears to be scaling down its stimulus policies, but that will increase recession concerns even if it helps mitigate inflation somewhat. And if stimulus programs continue full throttle – and, in an election year, why would they not? – it will make the Fed’s job even tougher.', 'As for Europe, blowback from economic slowdowns in China and the US would have threatened its growth even without the war in Ukraine. But the war has greatly amplified Europe’s risks and vulnerabilities. Growth is already weak. If ', ' resorts to using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons, Europe will be forced to cut the cord decisively, with uncertain consequences for both its economy and the risk of further escalation, which might mean imposing sanctions on China as well. Meanwhile, European governments are under considerable pressure to increase significantly their spending on national defense.', 'Clearly, emerging markets and poorer developing economies will suffer mightily in the event of a global recession. Even energy and food-exporting countries, which until now have benefited economically from the war because of high prices, would likely have problems.', 'With luck, the risk of a synchronized global downturn will recede by late 2022. But for the moment, the odds of recession in Europe, the US and China are significant and increasing, and a collapse in one region will raise the odds of collapse in the others. Record-high inflation does not make things any easier. I am not sure politicians and policymakers are up to the task they may soon confront.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-06-01/mexico-bans-vaping.html', 'date': '01 Jun 2022', 'title': 'Illegal and dangerous: Mexico bans vaping', 'author': 'Darinka Rodríguez', 'text_art': ['The President of Mexico, ', '(popularly known by his initials AMLO), signed a decree on Tuesday that prohibits the “circulation and marketing” of electronic cigarettes or vaping devices as well as tobacco heaters. Combined with the passing of a General Import and Export Tax Law earlier this month, these products are now banned from being imported and sold within the country.', 'The decision also follows a maximum health alert issued by the country’s federal health risks commission, which declared that all alternative tobacco smoking products can cause major illness. Federal and local authorities have launched several campaigns to locate and seize these devices in at least a dozen states.', 'The health alerts and legal measures have prompted a debate about vaping devices that are being smuggled into the country. During the Senate debate about the tax law, Senator Luis Ortiz proposed regulating the market, saying that distribution is being ', ' in the absence of companies being able to import the products and pay taxes and salaries.', 'Although the legal market for vaping products has grown in the country, it still represents a tiny fraction compared to that of conventional cigarettes. Philip Morris International, one of the marketers of these alternatives, went from having 35,000 to nearly 42,000 users of tobacco heaters. According to official government estimates, in the last five years the tobacco industry increased its sales from about 846 to 1.2 billion pesos (about $64 million) a year.', 'At the same time, according to a study carried out by the Mexican federation of business chambers, illegal tobacco represents 19% of the total market. Between 2019 and 2020, although there was an increase in tobacco taxes due to the Special Tax on Products and Services (IEPS), payment of the taxes contracted due to the trade in counterfeit tobacco products.', 'One of the arguments used to ban all types of vaporizer devices, whether with or without nicotine, is that various flavorings are used to “hook children and adolescents who will later be consumers of other drugs,” Senator Lilia Valdez said before the bill’s approval.', 'In debating the ban, lawmakers such as Senator Lilia Valdez expressed concern that the various flavorings used in vaping devices “are used to hook children and adolescents” who will then become ', '.', 'Andrea Constantini, head of Regional Scientific Engagement for Latin America and Canada at Philip Morris International, says that the ban creates more channels for minors to access unregulated products. Prohibitions, she says, simply lead to a further “lack of control” over the market, with minors acquiring products of varying quality through illicit channels.', 'According to data from various marketers of alternative products with and without nicotine, these products contain substances that can be up to 95% less harmful to the health of the user. Conventional cigarettes, by comparison, have a high risk of causing the lung disease Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and various types of cancer.', 'The main argument of the companies that market alternative products to tobacco is that, unlike cigarettes, they do not use combustion to deliver the substance to the user’s system. This argument has been taken up by various national health regulators such as the United Kingdom Public Health Agency, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the New Zealand Ministry of Health.', '“The decision must be made based on scientific evidence, not on dogma or ignorance about the alternatives,” says Constantini.', 'Regulation has not always been able to protect adolescents from consuming prohibited substances. In the United States, where the FDA has regulated electronic cigarettes since 2016, it is estimated that just over two million young people between the ages of 14 and 17 vape.', 'For Constantini, “it is essential to regulate” alternative tobacco products, so that “quality products are available to adults who already smoke, while protecting minors and people who do not smoke.”']}
2022-06-01 23:03:37 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-31/paraguay-searching-for-two-german-children-abducted-by-covid-denialist-parents.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-31/paraguay-searching-for-two-german-children-abducted-by-covid-denialist-parents.html', 'date': '31 May 2022', 'title': 'Paraguay searching for two German children abducted by Covid denialist parents', 'author': 'Santi Carneri', 'text_art': ['If 10-year-old Clara Magdalena Egler were in Germany, she would be going to her gymnastics and acrobatics classes, but her mother hasn’t seen her for six months and she thinks she may be in Paraguay. Lara Valentina Blank, another missing German child, would soon be celebrating her 11th birthday with her father and neighbors, but she has been missing since November 27 and is probably being hidden by her mother in some German ', ' in Paraguay.', 'Clara and Lara entered Paraguay in the company of two adults who no longer have custody of their children: the couple formed by Clara’s father, Andreas Rainer Egler, 46, and Lara’s mother, Anna Maria Egler (née Schapf), 35, an opera singer.', 'Both are suspected of taking their respective daughters to Paraguay without proper authorization from each child’s other biological parent. “Presumably they intended to live in some anti-vaccine community in the interior of the country [...] because they belong to Covid denialist groups,” reported the Children and Adolescents’ Rights Coordinator (CDIA), a non-profit group that has been providing assistance with the search.', '“She loves being with her friends, she always needs friends to do her stunts,” said Anne Maja Reiniger-Egler, Clara’s mother, at a news conference in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay, where she traveled to look for her daughter. On Monday, as she addressed the media at the Prosecutor’s Office, she cried before the cameras as she asked the Paraguayan people to help her find her daughter.', 'Clara’s mother first came to Paraguay in February with her current husband and with Filip Blank (Lara’s father). They have conducted their own search through Paraguay, without success so far.', 'Meanwhile, legal and criminal proceedings have been activated in both countries, including an extradition request for Andreas Rainer Egler and Anna María Egler, who are required by the German justice system “for the punishable act of ', ',” according to the CDIA. Paraguay authorities have also issued a “red alert” for their arrest, according to police officials at the news conference.', 'The German courts had taken away custody from Andreas Rainer Egler and Anna María Egler, and granted exclusive parental authority to Anne Maja and Filip, respectively.', 'Both Anne Maja and Filip say they had a good relationship with their ex-partners, until now: “We were the best separated parents. The best parents that Lara could have,” Filip said in a video now posted on social media where he begs his ex to come back.', 'Initially, the fleeing couple reportedly sought to settle in a German neighborhood located near La Colmena, in the Paraguayan countryside, about three hours by car from the capital. “Currently it is believed that they are in the area of Villarrica or Colonia Independencia,” said the authorities, alluding to other German communities, some of them established many decades ago, and which are currently swelling due to new arrivals who are taking advantage of the laxity of Paraguayan laws to avoid vaccination or hide from the laws of their country of origin.', 'Authorities are also not ruling out the possibility that Andreas and Anna Maria fled with the girls to other areas or illegally crossed the border from Paraguay to Brazil or Argentina.', '“We have very closed German communities that make the investigative task a bit difficult,” said Mario Vallejos, the commissioner and deputy chief of Anti-Kidnapping of Paraguay, at the press conference. This official requested citizen cooperation and guaranteed that informants’ identities would remain secret.', '“Andreas, please, put an end to this situation that is robbing me and so many others of sleep. Please contact us or the lawyers or someone you trust. Let us find a solution together. Clara and Lara surely do not feel very well with this situation. They cannot spend the rest of their childhood on the run,” said Clara’s mother in Asunción. “I am placing all my hope in the Paraguayan people. Please help us, I am a desperate mother,” she added.', 'The German Embassy has expressed its concern about this case, which might not be an isolated event. According to the German Federal Office of Justice, in 2017, there were 186 cases of parents taking their children from the other parent; in 2020 there were 242 new cases of child abduction; in 2021, the number rose to more than 250.', 'During the pandemic, Germany became the European nation with the largest number of ', '. They are already the third-largest immigrant community in the country, behind Brazilians and Argentines. At least 1,644 Germans completed their settlement process in Paraguay in 2021, as reported to EL PAÍS by the Migration Directorate. That is almost triple the figure for 2020. And, as of March 30 of this year, another 575 had completed their application process.', 'Some religious and right-wing communities see Paraguay as a refuge from vaccine mandates. Officially, there are 7,731 Germans living in Paraguay, but the real figure is hard to know due to the permeable borders of the country, where anyone who wants to can enter or leave by walking or sailing through numerous spots along the 3,739 kilometers of land and river that it shares with Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia. The German embassy in Asunción handles different numbers: the German consul Frank Gauls estimates that between 22,000 and 30,000 Germans are living in Paraguay.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:38 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-05-27/children-with-hypertension-how-poor-diet-advances-illnesses-that-typically-affect-the-elderly.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-05-27/children-with-hypertension-how-poor-diet-advances-illnesses-that-typically-affect-the-elderly.html', 'date': '27 May 2022', 'title': 'Children with hypertension: How poor diet advances illnesses that typically affect the elderly', 'author': 'Raúl Limón', 'text_art': ['The effects of a poor diet in childhood and other harmful lifestyle habits start to be seen at the age of 20. This is when health problems more commonly found in older people such as cancer, diabetes, diseases cardiovascular and respiratory start to be detected. Emilia Gómez Pardo, a nutritionist and doctor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, believes that ', ' to future health.', 'That’s why the health expert is encouraging the public to empty their refrigerators and pantries of “unhealthy food,” which she says is promoted by “', '. Doing this will help prevent the negative health effects of poor dier, which are manifesting at increasingly younger ages.', 'Obesity is the most immediate and obvious consequence of a poor diet and other harmful habits, such as a sedentary lifestyle. According to Gómez Pardo, “the environment that surrounds us is absolutely obesogenic: everything is made in a way that makes people become overweight.” The prevalence of obesity among children is especially alarming. According to the data provided by Gómez Pardo,', ': “It is an unacceptable situation because it is directly related to hypertension, cholesterol, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, fatty liver, eating disorders and depression.”', 'Some of these pathologies, which typically affect elderly people, are already manifesting in childhood. Gómez Pardo says that “22% of Spanish children have high cholesterol levels, more than 200 milligrams, that is, what is stipulated for hypercholesterolemia in adults.” While 32% have hypertension.', '“Millennials [born in the last two decades of the 20th century] have double the risk of contracting cancer due to the Western lifestyle and the negative effects of [poor diet] in childhood,” she explains. “Taking into account alcohol consumption and excess weight, it can be said that one in three tumors is connected with inadequate nutrition.”', 'What’s more, types of cancers that until now were only detected in adults are now being recorded at younger ages. According to Gómez Pardo’s estimates, it now takes half as many years as in previous generations for a person to build up the mutations that lead to the development of cancer.', '“The most significant case is colorectal cancer, which has advanced its age of presentation,” she says. “There are studies that predict that, in the next decade, if the current lifestyle is maintained, there will be a 90% rise in colon cancer cases among people between the ages of 20 and 30, and a 124% rise in rectal cancer.”', '“And everything indicates that poor nutrition is responsible for this dramatic rise,” says Gómez Pardo. “What’s more, younger generations around the world are experiencing earlier and longer-lasting exposure to excess adiposity [excess fat] during their lifetime than previous generations, which is translating into a significant increase in multiple myeloma and endometrial cancer.”', 'The goal is for children to reach adulthood without risk factors caused by poor diet. To achieve this, Gómez Pardo recommends parents “lead by example,” explaining that “lifestyle is inherited.” She encourages parents to buy fruits, vegetables, legumes, unsweetened dairy products, eggs, ham, fish, nuts and whole grains, and avoid unhealthy food – “anything that come in a package with many ingredients” – such as red meats, sausages, pâtés, cured meats and sweets, including those made at home.', '“We are what we eat, but we eat what we buy and we end up eating it because we are human and because the products are designed for us to like them,” she says.', 'Eating a healthy diet can ', '. “Between 30% and 50% of cancers are attributable to modifiable risk factors,” explains Gómez Pardo', 'What’s more, eating a diverse diet with at least eight to 10 grams of soluble fiber a day can reduce microbial resistance to antibiotics in the intestines, according to a study published in ', 'Microbes resistant to several commonly used drugs pose a big health risk. Their ability to resist drugs is related to the gut microbiome, as this is where microorganisms develop genetic strategies to survive contact with antibiotics.', 'According to Danielle Lemay, a molecular biologist from the US Agricultural Research Service and the lead author of the ', 'study: “The results show that modifying diet has the potential to be a new weapon in the fight against resistance to antimicrobials.” She adds: “It’s not about eating an exotic diet, but a diverse diet, adequate in fiber.”', 'Soluble fiber is found in grains such as barley and oats, legumes such as beans, lentils and peas, seeds such as chia, nuts such as walnuts, fruits, and vegetables such as carrots, artichokes, broccoli and pumpkin.', 'In addition, a healthy diet also improves mental health. Young men between the ages of 18 and 25 with symptoms of depression reported improved mood when they changed switched to the ', ', according to a study by researchers at the University of Technology in Sydney in ', '.', 'In this study, the participants ate more vegetables, legumes, whole grains, oily fish, olive oil and salt-free nuts. While their intake of processed foods, sugar and red meat was reduced. “There are many reasons why we scientifically believe that food affects mood,” says Jessica Bayes, the lead author of the research paper. “For example, about 90% of serotonin, a chemical that helps us feel happy, is produced in the gut by microbes. There is emerging evidence that these microbes can communicate with the brain through the vagus nerve, in what is called the gut-brain axis.”', '“In order to have healthy microbes, we need to feed them fiber, which is found in legumes, fruits, and vegetables,” she explains.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:39 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-05-26/tomatoes-that-produce-as-much-vitamin-d-as-eggs.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:03:40 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-05-26/tomatoes-that-produce-as-much-vitamin-d-as-eggs.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-05-26/tomatoes-that-produce-as-much-vitamin-d-as-eggs.html', 'date': '26 May 2022', 'title': 'Scientists develop tomatoes that produce as much vitamin D as eggs', 'author': 'Miguel Ángel Criado', 'text_art': ['Vitamin D is an essential element for bones to process calcium, but it is not abundant in nature. The compound is primarily generated through the sun’s action on the skin. In its absence, fish oil, the liver of some animals and eggs are some of the few alternatives ', '. Now, a group of researchers has managed to make tomatoes produce as much vitamin D as the amount contained in two eggs, using a genetic modification technique. This is good news for vegans and for the more than one billion people who are deficient in the essential micronutrient.', 'Vitamin D is a hormone resulting from the action of medium wave ultraviolet rays (UVB) on human skin. This action converts a substance called 7-dehydrocholesterol (7-DHC), a precursor to cholesterol, into the vitamin. 7-DHC is present in tomato leaves and in green tomatoes. But, as the fruit matures, it is lost. Five years ago, it was discovered that the plant has two metabolic pathways for 7-DHC. One is used to produce defenses against pathogens. But the other, for unknown reasons, is not used.', 'Researchers from centers in several countries have used this second route to activate the production of 7-DHC, also called provitamin D3. The main author of the study, Cathie Martin, a scientist at the John Innes Centre, a British horticultural research institute, explains the process: “Provitamin D3 is synthesized in the tomato as an intermediate in the production of cholesterol and steroidoglycyl alkaloids [substances that ', ']. We removed the activity of the enzyme that converts 7-DHC to cholesterol, which allowed 7-DHC to accumulate in high amounts in the leaves, but also in higher levels in green fruit and even ripe fruit.” To deactivate this enzyme, the scientists used the CRISPR genetic modification technique.', 'The next thing they did was to recover a natural process. By passing leaves and fruits through UVB rays, they converted 7-DHC into vitamin D. The amounts were very significant and never before detected in a vegetable. The leaves reached a concentration of 200 micrograms per gram of leaf. In the fruit, the amounts are smaller: 0.3 micrograms per gram in green ones and 0.2 in ripe ones. But a tomato would be enough to get between 20% and 30% of the daily vitamin D that humans need. The study’s authors believe that greater exposure to ultraviolet rays, including in the process of drying tomatoes in the sun, would increase the concentration.', 'When altering a metabolic pathway that, among other things, is involved in the generation of hormones, it is key to discern whether development or defenses are affected. “In other species, deletion of the gene that encodes 7-delta sterol reductase [the enzyme that converts 7-DHC into cholesterol] affects plant growth because this enzyme is necessary for the biosynthesis of brassinosteroids, a plant hormone that it intervenes in several development processes, especially height,” recalls Martin. In fact, investigations with lettuce or arabidopsis, the base plant of vegetable research, showed that blocking this route caused them to grow almost like bonsai. Tomatoes’ advantage is that they have a double pathway. “In Solanaceae (tomato, potato, aubergine and pepper) there is a second gene that specifically synthesizes cholesterol that is not necessary for the synthesis of brassinosteroids. That is what we eliminated so that our plants would not remain dwarfed.”', 'Gloria Torres Cortés, head of research and development of pre- and probiotic products at the MAAVI Innovation Center of the Kimitec biotechnology company, highlights that the challenge remains to increase the concentration of 7-DHC. “The leaves, which are currently ', ', could be a source of vitamin D. In addition, the strategy could be improved if other plants were edited [with CRISPR],” says the scientist, who has not participated in the study. The same method could be used to make other nightshades, such as peppers or aubergines, also generate the provitamin.', 'José Blanca, a genetics professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, is an expert in the history and genetics of tomatoes. “The new CRISPR technology makes it possible to create mutants with unprecedented simplicity. This has allowed them to create mutant tomatoes for a key enzyme in the production of defense compounds, which effectively now produces and accumulates vitamin D,” he says.', 'But Blanca doubts that this advance will come out of the laboratories soon. “In Europe, and especially in Spain, vitamin D deficiency in the population is quite common, so these tomatoes, or other vegetables or fruits in which the same is done, could be a good public health tool. Unfortunately, this will be difficult to achieve without a change in legislation because it is currently almost impossible to produce CRISPR-bred varieties in Europe due to anti-GMO legislation.”']}
2022-06-01 23:03:42 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-17/what-downton-abbey-doesnt-show-you-the-dark-side-of-life-as-a-servant-in-britains-mansions.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:03:42 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-17/what-downton-abbey-doesnt-show-you-the-dark-side-of-life-as-a-servant-in-britains-mansions.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-17/what-downton-abbey-doesnt-show-you-the-dark-side-of-life-as-a-servant-in-britains-mansions.html', 'date': '17 May 2022', 'title': 'What ‘Downton Abbey’ doesn’t show you: The dark side of life as a servant in Britain’s mansions', 'author': 'Raquel Vidales', 'text_art': ['In 1879, shortly after starting work at the age of 10 as a servant in a mansion in a suburb of London, Harriet Brown wrote in a letter to her mother: “I am up at half-past five and six every morning and do not go to bed till nearly 12 at night and I feel so tired sometimes I am obliged to have a good cry. I do think I should have been laid up if it was not for the Cod Liver Oil I am taking.” Two decades later, history would repeat itself with her daughter Ellen, who at the same age became the eighth of eight maids in another house in the British capital. As a newcomer, she had the toughest tasks. She had to scrub bare-boarded floors with a mixture of soft soap and silver sand that left her hands and forearms raw. Most nights she cried herself to sleep.', 'The story of Harriet and Ellen appears in the book ', ' by Frank Victor Dawes, a late British journalist who in 1972 published an advertisement in ', ' ', 'in which he asked people who had worked as servants to send him letters recounting their experiences. The Spanish publishing house Periférico has published it for the first time in Spanish with a translation by Ángeles de los Santos. Its launch coincides with the premiere of ', 'a new movie based on the popular TV show ', 'This British historical drama, which first aired in 2010, paints an idyllic picture of the life of a Victorian family and their servants, in line with its predecessor, the 1970s TV show ', ' Neither TV show offers a glimpse', 'of the suffering of servants, as reflected in the testimonies in Dawes’s book. Everything seems to be where it should be, both objects and people: everyone happy in their rightful place.', 'This image is far from the experience of Elizabeth Simpson, born in 1853, who also began working as a maid at the age of 10 in a mansion in the county of Yorkshire. As her granddaughter told Dawes, she had to get up at 4am to scrub the stone floors of the dairy with cold water and churn butter until her arms ached. At those early hours, she worked by the light of a single candle which she pushed ahead of her as she moved across the stone flags on her knees. She was kept working all day. Under the rules of the mansion, which were strictly enforced, she was never to be seen by any of the family. If, by some mischance, they happened to meet, she was not to talk to them, but curtsey and disappear as quickly as possible.', 'When he published that advertisement, Dawes intended to tell the true story of domestic workers in the United Kingdom – from the peak of the sector in the mid-nineteenth century to its progressive decline after ', '. Dawes, who was the son of a maid who began to serve at the age of 13, wanted to investigate the reasons for this drop: until the beginning of the First World War, close to 1.5 million women and girls were employed as indoor servants, a number that dropped to 100,000 in the 1970s. He received nearly 700 letters in the space a few months, and these served as the basis for his book', 'which became a best-seller when it was published in 1973, at the height of interest over ', 'From the first pages of the book, it is clear that the servants of Victorian houses lived in conditions close to slavery. They barely had a few free hours a week, they could be fired on a whim and they slept in terrible conditions. Violet Turner, who worked in a boarding house shortly before World War I, recalls having to sleep in the bathroom on a folding bed: “When I got up in the morning I had to fold my bed up and put it on the landing in time for the ‘paying guests’ to have their bath.”', 'And worst of all, both servant and master were fed the idea that their position in life responded to divine order. “The Bible was used to convince them to recognize the superiority of those they served,” explains Dawes. Bible passages such as this one from the ', ' reached servants from the pulpits: “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.” Religion was used to ensure submission to the system.', 'The masters, for their part, lived with a clear conscience because socially the servants were considered “different” beings, if not “inferior.” That helped to morally justify child exploitation and sexual abuse. “As for the servants and women of lower classes […] they all fornicated in secret and were proud to have a gentleman to cover them. That was the opinion of men of my lifestyle and my age,” recounts a Victorian gentleman in his memoirs, which he published anonymously in 1890 under the title ', ' “If, as happened all too often, a servant girl became pregnant by one of the family, the blame was placed squarely on her shoulders, not his,” writes Dawes. Often these women were fired without a reference, which left her the alternative of the workhouse or prostitution.', 'This idea that servants were “inferior” also explains why the ', ' for better rights ignored them until well into the 20th century. And it helps explain why servants were met with greater resistance when they attempted to organize. “I regard any possibility of the introduction into the conditions of domestic service of the type of relations now obtainable between employers and workers in industrial life as extremely undesirable and liable to react in a disastrous manner on the whole foundation of home life,” the Marchioness of Londonderry wrote in a letter in the 1920s. It took another decade for servants’ demands for minimum wages and free time to be recognized, in part because the need for female labor in factories during World War I meant that many women discovered that they could access better jobs. The salaries might not have been better, but at least the women weren’t treated like slaves. And the shortage of maids began to be a real problem in the country.', 'It was the beginning of the end of the golden age of servants in the UK. And also the end of a way of life in which the social position of a family was measured by the number of servants they had.', 'But certain stigmas about domestic work persist not only in the UK, but throughout the world. “‘Maid’ is a dainty word, redolent of tea trays, starched uniforms, Downton Abbey. But in reality, the maid’s world is encrusted with grime and shit stains. These workers unclog our drains of pubic hairs, they witness our dirty laundry literally and metaphorically. Yet, they remain invisible,” writes American activist Barbara Ehrenreich in the prologue to the best-selling book ', ' in which Stephanie Land recounts her years working as a cleaner while looking after a young daughter in charge', 'Meanwhile, last Friday, an 86-year-old woman in Brazil was rescued from a house in Rio de Janeiro, where she had been ', '. The woman had worked for three generations of a family without ever receiving a salary or having time off. When they found her, she was sleeping on a sofa at the door of her master’s room, who was also in her eighties.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:42 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/opinion/the-global-observer/2022-05-03/how-are-putin-and-musk-alike.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:03:42 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/opinion/the-global-observer/2022-05-03/how-are-putin-and-musk-alike.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/opinion/the-global-observer/2022-05-03/how-are-putin-and-musk-alike.html', 'date': '03 May 2022', 'title': 'How are Putin and Musk alike?', 'author': 'Moisés Naím', 'text_art': ['They can’t be more different. Putin is a ', ', and Musk is a brilliant inventor.', 'The Russian leader is responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people. Elon Musk is responsible for the world’s best-selling electric cars, for pioneering innovations in battery technology and for technological advances such as Paypal that allow for digital payments. He’s also behind SpaceX, which builds rockets that can be launched into space, recovered and quickly reused. Then there is the hyperloop – a pneumatic mass transit system that will be able to carry people and goods very fast over long distances. And don’t forget Neuralink, a company whose mission is to develop technologies that will allow the brain to communicate wirelessly with a computer.', 'Both Putin and Musk want to change the world: Putin by destroying and Musk by creating. They both have the power and the money to finance their ambitions. According to ', 'magazine, Musk is the richest person in the world. According to the estimates of several intelligence services, Vladimir Putin is secretly the richest. In addition to his personal fortune (estimated at perhaps $200 billion), Putin is also free to use Russian state funds to finance his ventures.', 'In this, the dictator and the entrepreneur show some parallels. Putin wanted Ukraine and Musk wanted Twitter. The first illegally invaded the neighboring country and the second legally bought a company for $44 billion.', 'Both decisions were made by a single person. The protocols and processes that normally influence the making of such important decisions were irrelevant. Naturally, the invasion of Ukraine and its aftermath of death and destruction is infinitely more serious than the purchase of a very expensive company whose operation has enormous political and social implications. But both the invasion and the acquisition happened because these two men wanted it. Period.', 'Putin justifies the invasion with arguments from the past, while Musk explains his interests in terms of the future and the challenges facing our civilization. The ', ' maintains that Ukraine was always part of Russia and should become so once again, and that his military incursion is simply seeking to correct a geopolitical blunder made after the collapse of the Soviet Union. For him, the Kremlin should have never allowed its Russian-speaking satellites to become independent countries.', 'Musk instead thinks that a revamped Twitter may be the best instrument for protecting freedom of speech throughout the world: “My strong intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.” he said.', 'The billionaire innovator has been worrying about the world’s future for years. In one of his talks, he made this bold prediction: “The future of humanity is going to bifurcate in two directions: Either it is going to become multiplanetary, or it’s going to remain confined to one planet and eventually there is going to be an extinction event.”', 'The contrasts between the brilliant visionary out to transform our civilization into a multiplanetary one and the bloodthirsty dictator trying to ', ' could not be more sobering. But the invasion of Ukraine and the takeover of Twitter illustrate how weak accountability is in authoritarian regimes and among the ultra-rich tech titans. In both cases, the boss makes the decision without showing much concern for the opinions of those who disagree with them, or for the fact that they might not know what they don’t know: one of the most common reasons why dictators fall and companies fail.', 'Let’s hope that, at least in this regard, Musk and Putin are different.']}
2022-06-01 23:03:44 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-24/secret-police-files-put-a-face-to-chinas-repression-in-xinjiang-child-prisoners-and-shoot-to-kill-orders.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:03:44 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-24/secret-police-files-put-a-face-to-chinas-repression-in-xinjiang-child-prisoners-and-shoot-to-kill-orders.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-24/secret-police-files-put-a-face-to-chinas-repression-in-xinjiang-child-prisoners-and-shoot-to-kill-orders.html', 'date': '24 May 2022', 'title': 'Secret police files put a face to China’s repression in Xinjiang: Child prisoners and ‘shoot to kill’ orders', 'author': 'Óscar Gutiérrez', 'text_art': ['China’s extensive and brutal campaign of repression against ', ' is taking on a face for the first time. Tens of thousands of police files, photographs and official documents by senior officials of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to which EL PAÍS has had access offer unparalleled proof of the magnitude of the prison system established in China’s far western region of Xinjiang and the paranoia that guides Beijing’s policies against ethnic minorities. The investigation was led by Adrian Zenz, a German scholar and expert on the Xinjiang internment campaign, in collaboration with 14 media outlets from 11 countries.', 'Named the Xinjiang Police Files', 'the cache of secret documents makes it possible to identify thousands of inmates in so-called re-education centers built by China, including minors; to determine their internment status; and to show through images taken inside the facilities how officers practice detention, interrogation and abuse. The files also detail instructions for the police officers that are ', ', and contain transcripts of public speeches by top leaders of the CPC in Xinjiang, among them the former regional secretary Chen Quanguo, showing support for the doctrine of maximum security against prisoners, and advising to open fire if a prisoner compromises the safety of the camp or tries to escape.', '“Behind this systematic repression is the fear and paranoia expressed by [Chinese President] Xi Jinping about the resistance of the Uyghurs to the state’s attempt to control them,” said Zenz, Director and Senior Fellow in China Studies at the Foundation, in a telephone conversation with EL PAÍS. According to the study carried out by this academic, the confinement of Uyghurs in re-education camps is the “largest internment of a religious ethnic minority since the Holocaust.” At least one million citizens, most of them Uyghurs, have been locked up in re-education camps scattered across the geography of Xinjiang, according to a figure that is widely agreed on by journalists, academics and the United Nations.', 'The Xinjiang Police Files have been obtained by an anonymous third party by hacking into computer systems operated by the Public Security Bureau (PSB), which has police functions, in the Xinjiang counties of Konasheher, located in Kashgar prefecture, and Tekes, in Ili Kazakh prefecture. This individual, who prefers not to be identified for security reasons, acted on their own initiative, without conditions or a mandate from any of the researchers involved in the project. The documents and images have been authenticated by this group of journalists, as well as the existence of three re-education centers from which the files were obtained, thanks to a geolocation process based on the photographs taken by the officers.', 'The prefecture of Kashgar, located in what is officially the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, on the the border with Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, is precisely one of the stops planned on the official trip initiated this Monday by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet. Her visit to the re-education centers for Uyghurs, the majority ethnic group in this region of some 25 million inhabitants, was one of the fundamental demands made on Bachelet by human rights organizations. The Xi government first acknowledged the existence of these facilities in a white paper (a reference document that guides state policy) in October 2018. However, Beijing rejects the accusations about the repression of minorities in Xinjiang. and claims that these centers serve for the education and training of “students” who are free to move around. The regime calls these camps Vocational Skills Education and Training Centers.', 'The Xinjiang Police Files show a very different reality. As an example, according to an analysis of thousands of police files in Konasheher (the records of the security services covers about 286,000 citizens, almost the entire population of this county), and based on the census in the 2017-2018 period, it emerges that at least 12.3% of the adult population suffered some type of internment in re-education centers, detention centers (for inmates awaiting sentencing), or prisons.', 'Asked about the contents of the leak', 'a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in the United States, Liu Pengyu, stated in an email: “Xinjiang affairs are related, in essence, with the fight against violent terrorism, radicalization and separatism, not human rights or religion. Faced with the serious and complex anti-terrorism situation, Xinjiang has taken a series of decisive, solid and effective de-radicalization measures. As a result, Xinjiang has not seen any cases of violent terrorism for several years in a row.”', 'On Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin described the information as “a new example o', ' trying to slander China,” EL PAÍS correspondent ', ' reported from Beijing. “It’s just a repetition of an old trick. Spreading rumors and lies will not deceive the world or conceal the fact that Xinjiang enjoys stability and prosperity, and their residents enjoy safe, happy and fulfilling lives.”', 'The Xinjiang Police Files', 'contain, among other documents, 5,074 mug shots taken in police stations or confinement centers in Konasheher County between January 6 and July 25, 2018. This is one of the great contributions made by this research project to the study of Chinese repression. Of these photos, 4,989 have been attributed to an individual with detailed information on file. EL PAÍS has analyzed a final sample of 2,884 photographic records of detainees that have specific data attached from the files obtained from the PSB computer networks. The bulk of internees are under 30 years of age (69%), for a total of 2,001 citizens. Men also predominate: 2,490 (86%) compared to 394 women (14%). Among the inmates, there are people of all ages (between 15 and 73) and of all educational backgrounds (from those who never went to school to university students).', 'This investigation follows several others that since 2019 have tried to prove the magnitude of the systematic repression campaign carried out by China’s communist regime against the Uyghurs, most of whom are Muslim. Xinjiang, which borders seven Central Asian countries to the west, is of special relevance to Beijing, first because it is a commercial crossroads on its revitalized Silk Road, and, secondly for security reasons: inner China is dominated – socially, politically and economically – by the majority Han ethnic group. This region, located in the eastern part of historic Turkestan, between the Caspian Sea and the Gobi desert, with a history and culture linked to the Turkic peoples, and differentiated facial features, has maintained a traditional desire for autonomy that Beijing has rejected and practically annihilated.', 'The relocation of Han citizens in an effort to change the demographics of Xinjiang led to heavy fighting in the late 2000s. One of the bloodiest episodes was the clash between Uyghur and Han ethnic groups in July 2009 in Urumqi, the region’s capital, which ended with around 200 deaths. After several attacks by armed separatist groups, Xi gave the green light in May 2014 to the campaign called ', ', in which the current repression throughout the region is framed.', 'The Uyghur citizen Abdurahman Hasan is one of the relatives who has confirmed the veracity of the police records by identifying his wife during an interview held in Istanbul (Turkey) with the British news channel BBC News, which is part of the media group behind this investigation. Hasan, a businessman from Kashgar who frequently traveled abroad, an activity that regularly arouses suspicion in Beijing, left Xinjiang in January 2017 amid a crackdown. In the summer of that year, his wife, Tunsagul Nurmemet, then 21, was arrested, along with Hasan’s mother. According to her file, Nurmemet was convicted of “gathering a crowd to disrupt the social order, picking fights and causing trouble.” “Her life revolved around her family and she didn’t interact much with others,” Hasan explained during the conversation in the Turkish city. “She only visited relatives, I don’t know if she had many friends. She didn’t have a big social network, so how was he able to gather a crowd?” Her sentence amounts to 16 years in prison.', 'The picture obtained from the Xinjiang Police Files', 'shows an unrecognizable Nurmemet in relation to the ID photo available in databases of Uyghur victims of Chinese repression. According to the information that Hasan received in the summer of 2017, his wife and mother had been “taken off to study.”', 'This version coincides with many others heard by overseas relatives. This was the case with a woman named Nursiman Abdureshid, 33, interviewed by EL PAÍS in Istanbul. Her relatives appear on police records in Kashgar prefecture. In the summer of 2017, Abdureshid, who had been living in Turkey for two years, learned through a call to relatives that her father and younger brother had been taken to an “education program.” The eldest of her brothers had been locked up since 2016 for an alleged debt. They asked her not to call anymore, that her relatives were fine. In June 2020, Abdureshid managed to get the Chinese embassy in Turkey to confirm the sentences imposed on her family members, all exceeding a decade behind bars. “I asked about the reasons why they had been sentenced,” Abdureshid recounted during the interview. “They told me that it was for ‘disturbing the peace’ and because they might have the intention of participating in terrorist activities.” The woman’s father had been a state official and a member of the CPC. She believes that her departure from Xinjiang, as well as her sister who lives in the US, may have triggered the repression against her family.', ' also contain dozens of photographs taken by authorities and security services in Tekes County, Illi Kazakh prefecture. Around 30 of these images, taken between April 2017 and September 2018, capture scenes inside the re-education center of that county. Contrary to what is publicly claimed by Beijing, the attitude of the officers inside the facilities, their weapons and the treatment of the inmates is far from what could be expected from a professional training center.', 'The photographs show the inmates with hoods over their faces and their wrists handcuffed together when they are transferred from one place to another. There are officers with batons, who are usually of Uyghur ethnicity, while others – typically Han Chinese officers – carry assault rifles and riot gear. According to the photos from Tekes Detention Center, the inmates are interrogated in so-called “tiger chairs” – a steel chair with iron legs and handcuffs designed to restrain people, often in painful positions. These chairs are one of the many instruments of torture used against the Uyghurs, according to the NGO Human Rights Watch. Photographs from the police files confirm what was exposed in the 2019 leak of 400 pages of internal Chinese documents: inmates injected with unknown substances, forced to recite the rules of the camp and listen to the propaganda of local authorities.', 'It is estimated that one million people have passed through China’s re-education centers, but this is likely to be a very conservative figure. The leak includes a transcript of a speech by China’s Minister of Public Security Zhao Kezhi on June 15, 2018 In this speech, which is classified as “secret,” Zhao warns that more than two million people in southern Xinjiang alone had been “severely influenced by the infiltration of extremist religious thought.” These are two of the three “demons” on Beijing’s axis of evil: terrorism, separatism and radical Islamism.', 'In the speech, Zhao celebrates the “success” of the “strike hard” and “de-extremification” campaigns in Xinjiang, and claims that 20,000 “terrorists” had been eliminated – without specifying how. This number is five times higher than what has been reported in the past 10 years.', 'The leak also contains transcripts of speeches delivered by then-Xinjiang Party Secretary Chen Quanguo. Chen is considered the mastermind of China’s repression against the Uyghurs, and the man responsible for the spread of re-education centers, which have been growing in number since 2017. Before being appointed Xinjiang party secretary, Chen had made a name for himself in Beijing for his ruthless securitization of Tibet.', 'In a speech on May 28, 2017, the Communist leader describes the detention centers as “humane” because inmates have air conditioning, daily food rations and the possibility of receiving visitors. While an analysis of the documents from the 2019 leak suggests that most inmates were detained for a year, his 2017 speech indicates that this may not be the case. “If they leave,” the transcript reads, “the problems come back immediately, this is the reality of Xinjiang.”', 'Chen’s rhetoric is even more aggressive in a 2018 address. The text advises guards to open fire on any inmate who tries to attack the center, stating: “kill first, report later.”', 'His advice did not fall on deaf ears. Several documents in the leak indicate that his policy has become fundamental to policing Uyghur inmates. If a so-called “student” tries to escape, local authorities are advised to close the road and call for special forces. The document states that armed police may fire a warning shot. If the prisoner continues to flee, they have orders to “shoot to kill.”', '“The re-education camps,” concludes Zenz, who has been sanctioned by the Beijing authorities for his influential research on Xinjiang, “are designed to the change the minds of the Uyghurs, their hearts, to break their loyalty to their culture, history, their Turkic heritage, including religious faith; to change all that, nip it in the bud and steer it towards the Communist Party of China.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-27/the-algerian-activist-who-may-face-the-death-sentence-after-being-deported-by-spain.html', 'date': '27 May 2022', 'title': 'The Algerian activist who may face the death sentence after being deported by Spain', 'author': 'María Martín', 'text_art': ['A former Algerian serviceman called Mohamed Benhalima was handed over by the Spanish government to the Algerian authorities on March 24. This happened just five days after Algeria withdrew its ambassador in Madrid in protest against Spain’s decision to support Morocco’s autonomy plan for ', ', which brought to an end its decades-long policy of neutrality on this longstanding territorial dispute. For Spain, Benhalima was just an illegal immigrant. But for Algeria, the 32-year-old was a highly vocal dissident who they wanted back on home ground. But if the Spanish Interior Ministry’s goal in returning the 32-year-old was to mend relations with Algeria, it has not worked. Two months later, Algeria still does not have an ambassador in Spain. But Benhalima’s life, as he warned before he was deported, has been destroyed. He is doomed to spend decades in prison, or even the rest of his life.', 'The former military officer arrived in Spain on a visa in September 2019. He fled to Spain, fearful of ending up in prison in Algeria for taking part in pro-democracy protests months earlier. The Hirak Movement, the name given to the 2019-2021 mass protests, had no visible leader, but the regime', 'until the movement was crushed. From exile, Benhalima became popular on social networks, where he denounced the corrupt practices of the senior members of the Algerian army.', 'Benhalima requested asylum in Spain, but Spain – which was the first country in the West to show its support for the Algerian regime when the protests broke out – refused his request. The Spanish authorities made this decision on the grounds that he posed “a danger to national security” and could “harm Spain’s relations with other countries.” But the alleged “well-founded” reasons upon which it reached this conclusion have never been explained.', 'Benhalima then sought protection in France, but this request was also denied: under European Union rules, the first country that has recorded the asylum request is in charge of the process. Afraid that France would return him to Algeria, he tried again in Portugal, also in vain. He tried to return to France. But during the journey, when he was in Spain, Benhalima was stopped at a police checkpoint in Zaragoza, in the northeastern Aragon region. As he was in an irregular situation, the police requested that he be detained in an ', 'and a judge accepted this request.', 'The ex-serviceman ended at a CIE in Valencia in southeastern Spain. From there, he requested asylum again, but this time it was not even admitted for processing, even though the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) said it should be studied. A day before he was deported, Benhalima recorded a video warning that he could be tortured in his country. “Algeria is a country of military dictators and they do not accept opinions other than their own, I want to ask [Spanish Interior Minister] Mr. Marlaska and [Spanish Prime Minister] Pedro Sanchez to review their decision and save my life. My life is at risk,” he warned.', 'His pleas for help, and those of ', ', were to no avail. At 7.45pm on Thursday, March 24, as reported by the police to the Ombudsman, the plane chartered by the Spanish authorities to transport the activist, along with half a dozen irregular immigrants, took off from Valencia. Benhalima arrived handcuffed an hour later at the Algerian airport of Chelf, where Algerian guards put him in a black straitjacket.', 'Benhalima is accused of belonging to the Islamist group Rachad, which claims to be peaceful and opposed to the “theocratic” state. But in May 2021, Algerian authorities classified it as a terrorist group.', 'Only three days after his arrest in Algeria, the country’s General Directorate of National Security released a video in which the ex-army corporal is heard asking the country’s president, Abdelmayid Teboun, for forgiveness. In the video, he admits to “having damaged the reputation of several people.” Sources familiar with the case told EL PAÍS that Benhalima revealed during an interrogation the names of 24 policemen and members of the army who were allegedly his informants.', 'Before being deported to Algeria, Benhalima warned in a video that if he appears to confess it is because he was “subjected to torture.”', 'Benhalima appeared before the Bir Mourad Raïs court in Algiers on May 9. He has been accused of spreading false information that threatened the security of the country and the integrity of the territory, and faces up to 10 years in prison.', 'But humanitarian organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch claim that the activist has been sentenced to death by a military court. In Algeria, there has been a moratorium on capital punishment since 1993, and such sentences have not been applied for 30 years. Often, capital punishment is converted into life imprisonment. However, no organization has had direct access to Benhalima’s sentence and Spanish government sources claim that Algerian authorities have categorically denied this.', 'During the court session, Abdelkadir Chohra, one of his lawyers, indicated that Benhalima had been transferred to a prison in Saoula, a neighborhood of Algiers. The defendant took the floor and stated: “The state has destroyed a life. Things have happened to me in the Saoula police station. I am not going to say what now. That will happen in due course.” These statements can be interpreted as a veiled reference to torture.', 'The Spanish Interior Ministry maintains that Benhalima’s deportation followed the usual procedure with all the proper guarantees. But this was not the protocol for deporting immigrants in an irregular situation. Once Benhalima was locked up in the Valencia CIE, authorities rushed to send him back to Algeria. His lawyers did not have time to appeal his expulsion. According to Jaume Durá, a lawyer for the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR), he was notified of Benhalima’s deportation at 5.38pm and less than two hours later he was already on the plane. By the time a judge had resolved all the precautionary measures filed to stop the process, Benhalima had been in Algeria for days.', 'What’s more, Algerian immigrants in an', ' are normally sent back by ferry, which can carry a larger number of people. Chartering a plane to expel a handful of people – as happened in Benhalima’s case – is highly unusual.', 'This is not the first time Spain has tried to please Algeria by returning dissidents. In August 2021, the activist Mohamed Abdellah, a friend of Benhalima’s and former member of Algeria’s Gendarmerie, who became popular on social media for his criticism of corruption within the Gendarmerie, was also handed over. After arriving in Algeria, Abdellah revealed that he had been tortured.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-24/how-wine-is-produced-at-12000-feet-altitude-in-the-driest-place-in-the-world.html', 'date': '24 May 2022', 'title': 'How wine is produced at 12,000 feet in the driest place in the world', 'author': 'Antonia Laborde', 'text_art': ['In the driest place in the world, at 3,600 meters (almost 12,000 feet) above sea level, a vineyard breaks through the ', '. The half hectare (about 50 acres) of vines sprouts in the remote village of Socaire, nestled between ravines with views of the salt flat. Farmer Cecilia Cruz, 67, a native of the area, walks through the volcanic sand floor covered with dry leaves. With her hands, molded by working the land, she picks one of the few grapes that are on the vine after the harvest season: “Never in my life had I seen a grape being produced here in the highlands,” says the owner of Caracoles vineyard, the highest in Chile. “My neighbors didn’t think I could harvest the grapes. Now they ask me to come see the bunches, to taste the grapes, they can’t believe it,” she adds, proud of her viticultural feat. As she speaks, a fox prowls around the vineyard. “When the fox eats the grape, it’s good,” says a local resident.', 'Like most of her neighbors, Cecilia was dedicated to harvesting and selling corn, broad beans and alfalfa. In 2010, a man invited her to occupy land in the highlands to grow vines. After discussing it with her three children, she agreed to be part of the Atacama Fertile Land program of SQM (Chilean Chemical and Mining Society). She was given plants and sticks and was advised by engineers and winemakers. Irrigation? The village is supplied by the melted snow in the ', ' that flows down a natural channel. In the neighboring towns, the water that arrives has such a ', ' that it is not suitable for growing grapes. But in Los Caracoles vineyard, after four years of failed attempts, and applying the irrigation system once a week, the clusters yielded fruit.', 'In 2017, Cecilia joined the High-Altitude Vintners Cooperative Lickanantay, made up only of producers descending from the native Atacama residents of Socaire, Toconao, Celeste and San Pedro de Atacama. Of the fifty producers who started, 18 continue. The rest left because they were unable to harvest the grapes due to the extreme weather conditions or they did not dedicate the necessary time and care to it, says Fabián Muñoz, winemaker at the Ayllú vineyard, which brings together all the cooperative members.', '“In the central valley, the vine is in its optimal growth conditions. Here it is the opposite, the plant is naturally stressed. The fact that the vines grow in rocky soils, at high elevation, with less oxygen, subjected to sudden changes in temperature and high solar irradiation, means that this stress generates quality control by itself, the skin of the grape is thicker, and its flavor is more intense. But we must be much more aware of generating the necessary conditions so that it does not die on us,” explains Muñoz.', 'In each bottle of the seven Ayllú lines, an assembly of the product of the 18 cooperative members is carried out. Two of its wines (Ayllu Sweet Muscatel 2020 and Ayllu Orange 2020) received gold medals at last year’s international extreme wine competition', ' held in Italy. This year their goal was to harvest 18,000 kilos (about 39,680 pounds) of grapes, and they reached 22,000 kilos (48,500 pounds). The goal is to increase another 2,000 kilos (4,410 pounds) at the next harvest. “When the cooperative began, we dedicated ourselves to agronomic work, then to winemaking. In 2020 we changed our image to focus on marketing. We have won medals, and now we are expanding nationally and internationally,” says the winemaker. Chile is the fourth leading world exporter of wine.', 'Between pucarás (indigenous fortresses) and cemeteries of the ancient Atacameño people, chemical engineer Samuel Varas, 43, set up the Chajnantor vineyard in Zapar. It is one of the cooperative’s most innovative vineyards. “Through trial and error, we managed to achieve grape production with more technology,” he explains. “Due to an ecological issue, we did not want to accumulate water-cell batteries, so we work with solar panels. These capture sunlight and transform it into alternating current. That current works like traditional batteries,” he says amid his 2,000 vines fed by an automated irrigation system. Part of the financing was obtained from a government program that subsidizes indigenous ', '. The first year of production yielded 150 kilos (330 pounds), the third 500 (1,100 pounds) and for the next, he aspires to a ton.', 'In some areas of the desert there are records of vine plantations since colonial times. Cooperative members explain that they have always worked with ordinary black grapes. The innovation consists of planting premium varieties such as Syrah, Cabernet, Petit Verdot, among others. Héctor Espinola, 71, has been in winemaking for almost half a century. He used to sell wine of ', '. He also cultivated pears and quinces, but in recent years the competition from other areas lowered prices and he no longer broke even. For this reason, when he was invited to join the cooperative, he uprooted all his fruit orchards and harvested a hectare (about 100 acres) of Malbec grapes. Today he owns the San Juan vineyard in Bosque Viejo, 2,500 meters above sea level. “We deliver the grapes, and the winemakers turn it into wine. Each bottle is sold for $12, and they give me 60% of the earnings. This year I put out 500 bottles,” he says. “I am doing much better than when I was selling pears and quinces.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-28/the-battle-for-the-ends-of-the-earth-australia-the-us-and-china-dispute-the-islands-of-the-south-pacific.html', 'date': '28 May 2022', 'title': 'The battle for the ends of the earth: Australia, the US and China dispute the islands of the South Pacific', 'author': 'Macarena Vidal Liy', 'text_art': ['Fiji. Kiribati. The Solomons. Tonga. The names evoke tiny tropical paradises, shirtless Olympic flag bearers or bloody World War II battles. But they are also islands in a key strategic position to either give access to the South Pacific or block vital sea routes, a short distance from Australia, for decades the region’s great protector. The territories are now the scene of an intense struggle for control between the great powers: on the one hand, Australia and the United States; on the other, China, which has begun its power play by sending high-ranking government officials to the region and promising investments, security agreements and infrastructure construction.', 'Alarm began to spread in Canberra and in the United States last month as a result of the unexpected signing of an agreement between China and the small Solomon Islands, with 687,000 inhabitants. The agreement covered trade, fishing and–most importantly–security, allowing Chinese security forces to be sent to maintain social order and protect lives and private property at the request of the national government. Chinese military ships will be able to make visits to the islands and carry out “logistical replacement.” Although the two signatory governments deny the prospect, both Canberra and Washington fear that the pact could open the way for a future Chinese military base in the area, less than 2,000 kilometers from Australian territory.', 'China’s growing diplomatic and economic activity in the area has not stopped there. This past Thursday, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Honiara, the capital of the Solomons, to begin a 10-day tour of eight Pacific island nations: the Solomons, Fiji, Kiribati, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and East Timor. Upon his arrival, he expressed his hope that relations with Honiara will serve as an example for other Pacific islands.', 'Beijing describes itself to the island nations as a “sincere and reliable” partner, appealing to the disenchantment that their governments may feel for the cavalier treatment or even neglect they may have received from Australia and the United States.', 'Wang will meet with Pacific foreign ministers in Fiji during his tour. The Chinese minister will present a cooperation plan, the China-Pacific Island Nations Common Development Vision, which has already been sent to a dozen governments.', 'With this initiative, similar in language to the pact signed with the Solomons, China hopes to strengthen its ties with the region. It is offering millions of euros in assistance and the prospect of a free trade agreement giving products from these islands access to the huge Chinese market. Beijing is also offering local police training and ', ' cooperation. In exchange, the country seeks access to the area’s natural resources and the ability to draw highly detailed marine maps of its waters.', 'China’s aggressive courtship of the islands, until now firmly anchored in Australia’s orbit, has unleashed the fear of a change in the nations’ geopolitical alignment. In addition to their strategic position, their votes in international institutions can be decisive. “We know that China sees [its Development Vision proposal] as the first of many,” said the new Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. “It is trying to expand its influence in the region of the world where Australia has been the primary security partner ', ',” he added.', 'After taking office on Monday, Albanese promised to increase his attention to the island nations. His initiative begins with assistance ', ', the great concern of states particularly vulnerable to the effects of greenhouse gases and an issue that his predecessor, the conservative Scott Morrison, disdained. Canberra has also announced a plan for 500 million Australian dollars (€330 million) in development aid. One of Albanese’s first acts was sending his foreign minister, Jenny Wong, to Fiji to meet with prime minister Frank Bainimarama before the arrival of the Chinese representative.', 'The United States has not been left behind. In February, Washington announced the reopening of a US embassy in the Solomons after a 29-year absence. In April, the White House chief for Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell, traveled to the area.', 'The competition has picked up speed this month. In addition to Labor’s victory in the Australian elections, US President Joe Biden’s tour of Asia has contributed to the growing tension. At the Tokyo summit on Tuesday of the Quad, the informal alliance between the US, Australia, Japan and India, the four leaders devoted part of their discussions to China’s growing influence in the South Pacific. They announced the creation of an initiative, the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness, that will include the islands of the area to respond to humanitarian disasters, in addition to combating illegal fishing.', 'This week, during the Chinese and Australian diplomatic campaigns, Campbell spoke by video with Bainimarama about economic agreements and improving security. Meanwhile, according to the ', ', Beijing is preparing a new bilateral agreement with Kiribati, although the latter country has denied the collaboration. Minister Wang will visit Tarawa, its capital, for four hours this Friday.', 'The countries in the region had traditionally been diplomatic allies of Taiwan and therefore had no formal ties with Beijing. After the victory of President Tsai Ing Wen in 2016, though, the Xi Jinping government began courting Taipei’s partners to break ties with the self-ruled island and engage with China. Amidst allegations of corruption and bribery, the Solomons took the step in 2019, just four months after Manaseh Sogavare came to power.', 'The relationship with the islands has become an important element for Beijing in its strategic rivalry with the United States and its allies, particularly since Washington’s September announcement of the formation of Aukus. The Pacific military alliance also consists of Australia and the UK and is intended to respond to China’s rise.', '“The United States is trying to tame China’s rise with its Indo-Pacific strategy, but now China’s footprints are ubiquitous in the region, showing that the taming strategy is not working,” wrote the newspaper ', ', owned by the Communist Party.', 'Meanwhile, the islands are accepting the support now coming from all sides. In a tweet this Thursday, Bainimarama wrote, “They ask me about the Fiji agenda. At all tables, what matters most is our people and our planet, as well as our respect for International Law.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-30/former-mexican-president-enrique-pena-nieto-settles-in-spain-with-a-golden-visa.html', 'date': '30 May 2022', 'title': 'Former Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto settles in Spain with a golden visa', 'author': 'María Martín', 'text_art': ['Mexico’s ex-president Enrique Peña Nieto has settled in Spain. The former head of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which governed Mexico between 2012 and 2018, applied for a two-year residency and work authorization that was granted in October 2020, according to sources familiar with the case. The permit that Peña Nieto has is known ', ', a procedure that awards legal papers to foreigners who spend at least €1 million on acquiring Spanish assets, who have a business project or who buy at least €500,000 worth of real estate (10.5 million Mexican pesos). It is the formula that dozens of Russian, Chinese and Venezuelan entrepreneurs have used over the years to settle down in Spain.', 'In 2020, Peña Nieto purchased business premises with a surface area of 105 square meters and an indoor patio in a building in the posh Madrid neighborhood of Chamberí, according to the local property registry. The real estate website idealista.com estimates that this property is worth more than €500,000.', 'The property deed was signed on September 18, 2020, and shows that there was no mortgage involved. The unit has undergone a recent reform and is now a “luxury apartment,” according to one of the building residents. The property remains empty, said this source, although people have occasionally gathered to dine in the patio and the diners had a Mexican accent. The former president of Mexico has even participated in at least one homeowners’ meeting, according to the owner of an apartment who has declined to provide more details about it.', 'Peña Nieto, however, does not reside in the Spanish capital but instead some 40 kilometers to the north, in the municipality of San Agustín de Guadalix, in an exclusive development called Valdelagua where his neighbors include actors ', ' as well as celebrities who feature regularly in gossip magazines, as stated by two residents and confirmed by a third source.', 'Peña Nieto’s regular residence, according to the property registry, is a stand-alone house built on a 2,500-square-meter plot of land with two floors and a basement that holds the garage and a wine cellar. The rest of the property is taken up by a garden. A cypress hedge protects the privacy of the former Mexican leader, who has hung a huge Spanish flag at the entrance. Nobody is allowed into this tree-lined estate dotted with yellow Ferraris and the latest luxury cars without an invitation from one of its residents. That is part of what makes it so exclusive, along with the private security that makes continuous rounds through the silent alleys that connect nearly 300 luxury homes.', 'This property does not belong to Peña Nieto, but to a construction company that acquired it through a €889,500 mortgage, according to the registry. The owner of this construction company is an entrepreneur who also ventured into computer consulting and went global in markets such as Chile and Mexico. Reiterated attempts to reach him for comment went unanswered.', 'Peña Nieto’s residence and work authorization expires in October of this year. After that two-year period of legal stay in Spain, the former Mexican president could apply for Spanish nationality or simply renew his current permit. In the latter case, he would obtain a residence permit for another five years. EL PAÍS has contacted the law firm that managed his application, and which specializes in international mobility, immigration law and acquisition of Spanish nationality, but the reply by one of the partners was: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Two former aides to the former president declined to comment. The former spokesman for his administration claimed that he does not know how to reach him, while his former chief of staff has not responded to this newspaper’s request for comment. EL PAÍS has not been able to confirm whether Peña Nieto has other financial assets in Spain in addition to the Chamberí property.', 'Peña Nieto, ', ' between 2012 and 2018, headed an administration that sought to embody the renewal of the PRI, the party that had governed Mexico uninterruptedly for 70 years in the 20th century. But he left behind a trail of scandals: from the official version of ', 'involving irregularities in the investigation of the disappearance of 43 students, to the purchase of a mansion in an exclusive neighborhood in Mexico City – formally owned by his then-wife, the actress Angélica Rivera –, built by a company that contracted with his executive.', 'His administration, however, was marred above all by the corruption scandal involving ', '. One of Peña’s trusted aides. Emilio Lozoya, former director of the state oil company Pemex, was arrested in early 2020 in a luxury development on the outskirts of Málaga, in southern Spain, extradited to Mexico and jailed for money laundering, criminal association and bribery. Lozoya’s initial strategy to get out of prison or obtain a sentence reduction consisted of providing evidence that would incriminate the leadership of the previous government, including the former president himself. To this date, the Prosecutor’s Office has rejected a deal.', 'By leaving his country, Peña Nieto has followed in the footsteps of other PRI presidents who came before him over the past 30 years: Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1988-1994) settled in Ireland shortly after completing his term and Ernesto Zedillo ( 1994-2000) left to teach at Yale University in Connecticut. Information about Peña Nieto’s decision to leave Mexico began to circulate in early 2019, months after handing over the baton to his successor and political rival, ', '. However, the former president has never publicly acknowledged it and even denied it on Twitter in February of that year. “It is absolutely false that I have bought or rented a property in Madrid.” In that message, he asserted that he lived in Mexico with his family and that he was not planning to move “to Spain or to any other country.” He was not lying then, because he had not yet applied for residency in Spain. He did so a few months later.', 'In 2020, the issue made headlines again following the publication of a story by the magazine ', ' which provided some clues about Peña Nieto’s new life in Madrid. The publication mentioned the Valdelagua estate, but did not explain under what circumstances the president had managed to settle in Spain on a regular basis. The magazine also pointed out some habits of Peña Nieto, such as his love of golf in the most select clubs in the capital, something that EL PAÍS has also confirmed.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-31/mexicos-pink-lagoon-the-ecological-danger-lurking-behind-the-tourist-attraction.html', 'date': '31 May 2022', 'title': 'Mexico’s pink lagoon: The ecological danger lurking behind the tourist attraction', 'author': 'Jon Martín Cullell', 'text_art': ['Strange things began to happen a few years ago in La Escobilla lagoon, on the ', '. Stupefied snook and snappers swam around disoriented, and the locals could just stick their hands in the water to catch them. Then bloated mojarras and popoyotes (also known as the Chiapas killifish) began to wash up on shore smelling strongly of sulfur.', 'The biggest shock was yet to come. In early May, everyone who came to the lagoon did a double-take: the water had turned pink. Hericel Ramírez, a 28-year-old guide, went for his daily morning run and then headed to the lagoon, a 40-hectare (100 acres) stretch of water separated from the sea by a sand barrier. He got there and was stunned by what he saw. “Oh no! Why is it like this?” He couldn’t believe it. Ramírez, who works at a nearby sea turtle sanctuary, timidly stuck his hand in the water and noticed that it was warmer than normal. He decided not to taste it, thinking that maybe someone had spilled a toxic substance in the water. “The lagoon had never turned pink before. I took videos to send to some specialists,” he tells EL PAÍS by phone.', 'Biologists and students from the University of the Sea (Universidad del Mar - UMAR) in the Oaxacan city of Puerto Escondido rushed to La Escobilla, a community of two dozen houses scattered between the road and the waves. They took water samples for laboratory analysis and quickly ruled out a toxic spill. The researchers believe that persistent drought and lack of rain have stimulated the production of pink pigments by bacteria and microalgae in the water.', 'The phenomenon is well known. La Escobilla is the third coastal lagoon in the state of Oaxaca to turn pink in the last six years. In 2016, it happened in Coyula, which is part of a protected wetland area, and also in 2019, in Manialtepec. The first time it happened, locals muttered about biblical plagues, and biologist Eugenio Villanueva, a member of the Huatulco Clean Beaches Committee, had to come and provide a scientific explanation. “We told everyone that while it may look pretty, it’s really a sign of pollution and ecological stress,” he explains. “But it’s still a shock when it happens, even though those of us that work in environmental science immediately recognized the cause.”', 'The', '. The rainy season is now shorter, and rainfall is more infrequent. Some of the rivers that feed the coastal lagoons have become seasonal waterways, or have dried up altogether. The entire Oaxacan coast is yellow on the Mexican government’s drought maps, designating it as “abnormally dry.” Only the Yucatan peninsula, Tabasco, and some small pockets of Mexico are not in a drought.', 'Hericel Ramírez says that La Escobilla lagoon was 10 meters deep during his father’s lifetime. Now, it’s usually only a meter and a half deep, and gets up to five meters during the rainy season. “We’ve had very little rain for the last five years. It might rain for three days, and then nothing for the next month and a half,” says Ramírez. The mouth of the lagoon doesn’t open into the sea anymore since its water level is so low in the fall, so the lagoon water is never replenished.', 'Compounding the problems produced by the ', ' are high temperatures that cause more evaporation and increase salinity. “The outflow of water by evaporation is greater than the inflow from rivers and the sea,” says biologist Nieves Trujillo, who teaches at UMAR and has studied the phenomenon since it first appeared in 2016. “This increases salinity to around 45 units, which is very high. Normal salinity for an ocean is 30 units.”', 'As salinity increases, the microalgae in the lagoon activate a kind of defense mechanism that produces an orange pigment. Over time, the microalgae are displaced by halophilic bacteria that like the high salt concentration, and these produce a red pigment. Under extreme conditions such as those at La Escobilla, the entire lagoon is permeated by the red pigment, which looks pink on the surface. “Salt concentration and light intensity cause these microorganisms to become stressed and react this way,” explains Trujillo.', 'The fish in the lagoon die due to the low oxygen levels of the water, also caused by high salinity. The crocodiles simply change their diet – instead of fish, they eat carrion. However, storks and roseate spoonbills no longer flock to the lagoon because there is nothing left to feed on. Local fishermen now have to go out into the open ocean to fish. “The lagoon used to feed the community, but there has been no fishing for two years. The few fish that remained have all been caught and the rest died,” says Hericel Ramírez.', 'The tourism boom in this area of Oaxaca, invigorated by two international airports within 100 kilometers (62 miles), is requiring more and more resources. The highway that runs along the coast and past La Escobilla is being widened, another obstacle for the rivers that carry freshwater to the coastal lagoons. People that live along the tributary streams are extracting sand and gravel to use in construction. “The systems are degrading at a high rate,” says Villanueva. “To restore the lagoon, it would have to be dredged, and the freshwater streams that feed the lagoon would have to be cleaned up.”', 'However, the two root causes of the problem –', ' – are beyond the capabilities of any well-meaning biologist. Like Coyula, the La Escobilla lagoon also runs the risk of drying up completely. “I wish we could open up the hydrant and replenish the lagoon with seawater,” says Trujillo. “If we have another year of drought, these types of phenomena are going to last longer or become permanent.”', 'Meanwhile, the community of La Escobilla is determined to make the best of a bad situation. The lagoon has run out of fish, but its bright pink color has attracted ', '. Word has spread and they are coming to see if what they read on social media is true. And, of course, to take pictures, despite scientists’ warnings that the striking color is a sign that something is wrong in the ecosystem. To take advantage of this sudden interest, the town’s festival committee has begun to control access to the lagoon and ask for voluntary contributions from visitors. It is not yet sea turtle nesting season – a big tourist attraction for the town – and the pink lagoon can provide an additional source of income.', 'No one knows how long this will all last. Biologists say that the color will fade when the rains start. A brief shower fell on the lagoon recently, but it’s still bright pink. The community is praying that it will last a little longer. Just in case, Hericel Ramírez walks to the lagoon every morning to make sure. “If it goes back to the way it was, it won’t be a tourist attraction anymore, and there’s not a single edible fish left to catch,” he says. “The only thing to do is make the most of the tourists.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-15/j-balvin-the-reggaeton-artist-speaking-out-about-mental-health-sometimes-you-work-and-work-and-you-fail-is-because-you-don39t-stop.html', 'date': '15 May 2022', 'title': 'J Balvin, the reggaeton artist speaking out about mental health: ‘Sometimes, you work and work and you fail because you never really stop’', 'author': 'Abraham Rivera', 'text_art': ['He has a wide smile, lime-colored hair, a white T-shirt and an elegant semi-transparent jacket. J Balvin, the Colombian reggaeton star whose life has just been turned upside down by fatherhood, is once again collaborating with Guess, a reprise after he first designed a collection with the brand in 2019.', 'The new clothing line is inspired by the documentary ', ' released by Amazon Prime last spring. In the film, the Colombian opened up to his fans about his struggles with anxiety, loneliness and depression. “For the people who have seen it, it makes sense, because now they understand that it is a real problem,” he confesses over a Zoom call from New York. “I have no problem commenting on it. There need to be people with a global reach who make mental health visible. There are people who know what we do, who follow us, and if there are issues that they don’t feel comfortable with, that they’re afraid to tackle, and we talk about them, they may have more confidence.”', 'The new collection, called Guess Originals x J Balvin Amor, features words including “peace” and “love” printed on pants, t-shirts and coats. “The other collection was very bright and colorful, which was what I was feeling at the time. In this case I tried to do something more balanced: peace, love, well-being and mental health,” says Balvin, who repeats the same mantra throughout the conversation: “I am very happy. I feel very comfortable with what I have done. When it comes to collaborations, for me, everything has to have a purpose. In this case, it is to feel better and bring peace and mental health.”', 'His team has prohibited mentioning the name of the rapper ', '. Two months ago, the former frontman of Calle 13 participated in Argentine producer Bzarrap’s BZRP Music Sessions with an eight-minute song mocking Balvin. The video garnered millions of views on YouTube and seems to have stoked the artist’s fears. He recently suspended the tour that would take him to the United States. “I think it is a good time to share more time with my people, with my family. And start to value it. It is priceless,” he says, explaining that this period has been a particularly spiritual time and has brought him to embrace meditation.', '“Now I am in a good place. I have time to think,” he says. “In life, sometimes you work and work and work and the reason you fail is because you don’t really stop to reset your head and get stronger, bigger, faster.” Balvin, now renamed José, has taken on a more relaxed tone, now focused on his family and returning to his roots.', 'His latest album, “José,” was released in September of last year and featured artists including Dua Lipa, Tokischa, Ozuna, Jhay Cortez, Skrillex and Arcángel. José Álvaro Osorio Balvín continues to delve into the universe of Latin rhythms, now playing songs that are closer to him. “There are really two songs in which I talk about myself and my problems,” he notes, referring to compositions including “7 de Mayo” or “Querido Río,” the latter of which is dedicated to his newborn son with the Argentine model Valentina Ferrer.', '“I still believe that I am an emerging artist, that I have a lot to learn, many things to do, to think about, to offer the world. This album was more personal. It even reflects my taste for a certain type of reggaeton,” he says.', 'Balvin says goodbye with a reflection about his current state, after cancellations, births and the controversy with the “spiritual guide of the movement,” ', ': “I feel very good. Every day is a lesson. Being a father teaches me a lot about patience, love, how to seek the best for others, especially my son and my family. And to be very aware of not transferring my fears to my children. Because fears, most of them, are passed down. They are not really part of us.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-19/amber-heard-vs-johnny-depp-witnesses-testify-in-defense-of-actress.html', 'date': '19 May 2022', 'title': 'Amber Heard vs Johnny Depp: Witnesses testify in defense of actress', 'author': 'Miguel Jiménez', 'text_art': ['The ', ' between actor Johnny Depp and his ex-wife, Amber Heard, is entering its final chapter. If there are no delays, experts hope that it will be over by the end of next week, with each side giving their closing arguments.', 'Depp is suing Heard for $50 million for defaming him in an ', 'in 2018, in which she described herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” Heard responded to Depp’s complaint by suing him for $100 million, claiming that he smeared her by calling her a liar. While Heard maintains that Depp ', ' and even sexually assaulted her with a bottle, the actor says he ', ' and was, in fact, the victim in the relationship.', 'Depp and Heard have both taken the stand, presenting contrasting versions of what happened in their relationship. On Wednesday, it was Heard’s witnesses’ who took the stand. These included Heard’s friends and sister, Whitney Henriquez, who took the surname of her husband.', 'None of the witnesses claimed to see Depp physically abusing Heard, but several said they noticed scratches, bruises and other signs of possible aggression on the actress. Others heard him yelling or swearing and behaving in an uncontrolled and violent manner. Given all of the witnesses on Wednesday were called by Heard, their testimony did not come as a surprise.', 'Henriquez, who closely resembles her sister, said Heard went from being a cheerful, bright and happy person to being a ghost of her old self. She told the court that Heard’s weight dropped to “100lbs soaking wet” and she was “emaciated, not sleeping, she developed a heart condition, her eyes were sunken in.” Henriquez –who tried her luck as an actress, appearing in the movie ', 'said Depp was lovely, kind and generous when sober, but became violent and threw objects when he was drunk.', 'Henriquez said that she suspected Depp of hitting her sister. Under cross-examination, ', ', put her on the spot by asking if she herself had ever encouraged Depp to hit Heard. Henriquez admitted that she had joked about it, but only because she wasn’t aware of the abuse at that point. “I would never have said that knowing what I know now.” She also told the court about the kinds of vulgar expressions Depp used, especially when he was drunk or high.', 'Henriquez appeared in court, but most of the witnesses on Wednesday gave their testimony in pre-recorded video depositions made in the leadup to the trial between 2019 and 2022. One of the most emotional testimonies was from Raquel Pennington, Heard’s friend and neighbor, who described, between sobs, seeing signs of physical violence in photographs of the actress: black eyes, swollen nose, a bloody lip. Pennington said she had never seen Depp hit Heard, but had seen cuts and signs of injury on Heard’s body.', 'When asked if Heard had faked the injuries with makeup, Pennington replied: “No, the opposite. She often had to cover bruises and injuries on her face with makeup', 'She also denied conspiring with Heard to make it appear as though Depp had trashed the actress’s penthouse.', '“I was scared for Amber. I was sad for her and I was also sad for Johnny as he was my friend too [...] I was worried that when he turned he might accidentally do something that was worse than he ever intended,” she said, adding that she heard Depp directly refer to himself as “the monster.”', 'Other witnesses included one of Heard’s ex-girlfriends, who reported being afraid of Depp and seeing the actress’s face red and swollen; Heard’s former make-up artist Melanie Inglessis, who testified that she had covered injuries on Heard’s face before a December 2015 appearance on ', 'and Kristina Sexton, Heard’s former acting coach, who said the actress came to most sessions in tears.', 'The trial was interrupted when one of the court observers broke into a fit of uncontrollable laughter and had to leave the courtroom.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-20/ghosts-of-the-past-testify-against-johnny-depp-at-trial.html', 'date': '20 May 2022', 'title': 'Ghosts of the past testify against Johnny Depp at trial', 'author': 'Miguel Jiménez', 'text_art': ['Things are getting increasingly difficult for members of the jury in ', ' pitting Johnny Depp against Amber Heard. Judge Penney Azcarate warned them on Thursday, before the sessions were suspended until Monday, that for the next three days they cannot talk to anyone about the trial that everyone else is talking about. Jurors are going to have to isolate themselves so as not to read, see or hear anything about the trial, either on television, newspapers, magazines, websites, social media or anywhere else.', 'The trial, which has turned into a media circus, is nearing its end. The judge gave each party 61 hours and 15 minutes to defend their position. The plaintiff (Depp) has 18 and a half hours left and the defendant (Heard), has eight hours and 15 minutes. The sessions are scheduled to end on Friday, May 27, with the closing arguments. Then the jury will deliberate.', 'At stake are $150 million (€142 million): $50 million that the actor is claiming from his ex-wife and $100 million that she is countersuing for. But no matter who wins the case and the money, both actors are ', ' from the public exposure of their relationship and their problems.', 'Trying to ruin a party’s reputation and credibility is a common strategy at trials, especially when the jury has to decide. Both sides have worked hard at it. Amber Heard’s defense on Thursday presented testimony from Johnny Depp’s former agent, from his more or less fleeting ex-partner Ellen Barkin, from a former bandmate and from his ex-business manager.', 'Tracey Jacobs, Depp’s agent for 30 years, spoke of his “extraordinary talent” as an actor, that “he became the biggest star in the world”, but also how his behavior in the last years of their relationship was being “unprofessional”.', '“He was showing up late to set consistently on virtually every movie. I would get yelled at,” said Jacobs. “I told him, ‘You have to stop doing it. This is hurting you.”', 'Depp’s lawyers claim that the domestic abuse allegation made by Heard in ', ' in ', ' in 2018 damaged his career, but Jacobs went on to say his star was already “dimming” through his own fault. Depp fired Jacobs in 2016. Asked about it, the former agent stated: “He terminated essentially everyone in his life and I was along for the ride, I guess.”', 'His former business manager, Joel Mandel, declared that Depp led a life of excess and waste, that drugs and alcohol became habitual for him and that he stopped moderating his public behavior. Mandel estimates that Depp earned around $600 million during the nearly two decades he represented him. He also denied accusations that he stole money from Depp, and said that he was never formally charged or held responsible for financial wrongdoing. The actor fired his manager in 2016 and the two reached a settlement in 2018.', 'Actress Ellen Barkin said that her relationship with Depp lasted several months. “The friendship went from purely platonic to a romantic one,” she said, then added, “Can you change romantic for sexual?” Her recorded testimony was of special interest to Heard’s defense because in it she said that one time there was “a fight going on” in a hotel room in Las Vegas, and Depp threw a bottle of wine across the room, mirroring the ill-treatment that ', ' to have suffered.', 'A Disney executive called to testify by Heard’s defense said she had not found any company document suggesting that the cancellation of the project to shoot ', ' was due to the publication of Amber Heard’s column in ', '.', 'A social media expert called by Heard’s defense testified about the impact of the case in the virtual realm. Ron Schnell, from Berkeley Research Group, said his analysis had found millions of negative interactions for the actress and that the most common ', ' were ', ',', 'r, #', ' and ', '.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2022-05-16/new-virus-new-covid-19-wave.html', 'date': '16 May 2022', 'title': 'New virus, new Covid-19 wave', 'author': 'Javier Sampedro', 'text_art': ['Anyone wishing to know what the future of ', ' looks like would do well to watch South Africa. It’s not because several forms of SARS-CoV-2 first emerged there and later spread across the planet – that, too – but because of the quality of its epidemiological research, conducted by scientists who put raw reality ahead of diplomatic discretion. Thanks to them, we’ve just learned that Covid waves are tied to the emergence of new variants with a greater ability to infect and to escape our immune systems. This strongly indicates that the evolution of the virus is much like an arms race between SARS-CoV-2 and our own antibodies, in what amounts to a classic mechanism of evolution. The crab’s shell becomes thicker to avoid being eaten by a lobster, and the lobster’s claws get bigger so it will keep catching as much food as before. Inside the body of a ', ', antibodies become increasingly efficient while the virus becomes ever more slippery. It’s the laws of nature.', 'The initial waves of 2020 were caused by the original Wuhan strain and a few others derived from it. The wave of winter 2020-2021 is linked to the beta strain, which was later replaced with the delta variant in the 2021 waves. In late 2021, when things seemed to be quieting down, we had the omicron strain, which came in two flavors or subvariants: BA.1 and BA.2. And now we have BA.4 and BA.5. Each new iteration spreads more than its predecessor and does a better job at eluding human antibodies. As expected, BA.4 and BA.5, the latest designs of viral evolution, are exceptionally good at bypassing our immune system. And they are starting to gain traction in South Africa and parts of Europe. Everything seems to indicate that we will see a new wave, this time caused by SARS-CoV-2 omicron BA.4 and BA.5.', 'But let’s remain calm: there is no indication that these two subvariants are going to cause a rise in serious Covid cases and hospital admissions. The population’s immunity, either through vaccination or previous infection, can accomplish very little to prevent contagion, but it does protect the infected individuals from developing serious Covid. Some scientists say, half-jokingly, that a single omicron wave could be viewed as a natural vaccination campaign. Of course, people with low defenses – those who are immunocompromised – would do well to protect themselves from infection. It is hard to predict what the virus could do to them, and not even vaccines can guarantee them the same degree of protection as the general population.', 'Virologists have made a family tree of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. It shows that neither alfa nor beta nor gamma nor omicron are children of delta, but come from other strains that emerged at the same time as delta. This eliminates the mystical aura around omicron: it did not fall out of the sky six months ago, but simply revealed itself later than other variants. All this knowledge is helping identify which specific mutations are behind the high infection rate and ability to escape immunity. ', '.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/opinion/the-global-observer/2022-05-17/democracies-in-danger-of-extinction.html', 'date': '17 May 2022', 'title': 'Democracies in danger of extinction', 'author': 'Moisés Naím', 'text_art': ['This past decade has been rich in world-changing events. Some were impossible to ignore, but others were more gradual and went almost unnoticed. Among the most important of these is the global crisis of democracy.', 'On all continents, democracies are dwindling while undemocratic systems are on the rise, currently accounting for 70% of the world’s population, that is, affecting 5.4 billion people. According to studies by the V-Dem Institute at the University of Gothenburg, a decade earlier the percentage of people without democracy was 49%. Not since 1978 has there been such a low number of countries in the process of democratization.', 'There are two reasons why this democratic backsliding didn’t cause alarm or provoke a significant reaction. The first is that there were just too many other urgent problems that made it difficult for champions of democracy to successfully compete for the attention of leaders, the media, and public opinion. The pandemic and the global financial crisis are just two examples of a long list of events that left no room for less immediate concerns. The second reason is that most attacks on democracy were deliberately opaque and difficult to perceive, which, as a consequence, made it much more difficult for people to fight back.', 'Let’s consider the primary cause of this global neglect of democracy, a phenomenon that Larry Diamond, a respected professor at Stanford University, calls “the democratic recession”: how could you mobilize the population to defend democracy while the pandemic was causing millions of deaths around the world? According to the World Health Organization (WHO) between 2020 and 2021 alone, 15 million people died from Covid-19 and its variants.', 'In the past decade, the effects of global warming have also intensified. Wildfires, extreme heat, floods, hurricanes, typhoons, and melting ice caps became more frequent, deadly and costly.', 'There were also financial problems. Between 2007 and 2009, a deep financial crisis was unleashed in the United States, caused serious damage to that economy, then infected other countries and left enduring political repercussions. Perhaps the most important of these is growing economic inequality.', 'This problem has worsened in the past decade and continues to be a major source of political conflict and social instability. One of the countries where it has been most acute is China, which has emerged as one of the most lopsided societies in the world. But the world’s attention has not been focused on China’s inequality, but rather on its rapid economic growth. Between 2010 and 2020, the Asian giant’s economy more than doubled in size and—depending on how you calculate it—is now the first or second largest economy in the world. In that same period, the Chinese regime deepened its authoritarianism. In 2018, President Xi Jinping managed to remove the rule from the constitution that, since 1982, limited the presidency to two five-year terms. Thanks to this constitutional reform, Xi can be president until he dies.', 'The past decade also saw Brexit, the unexpected and traumatic withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. It was also the period in which there was an explosive increase in the economic, political and social influence of social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok. And, of course, the decade of Putin’s many wars. The Russian military fought inGeorgia’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Ukraine’s Crimea and Dombas as well as in Syria. Those ten years we also saw the rise of Donald Trump, his conquest of the Republican Party and his rise to the Oval Office.', 'Many of these events were shaped and driven by the rapid rise of smartphones. Today more than six and a half billion people (84% of the world’s population) own one.', 'While all this—and much more—distracted our attention, a group of ', ' took over a large number of the world’s democracies.', 'The evidence of the deterioration of democracy in the world is surprising and worrying. But even more surprising is the shocking lack of a response in the face of these attacks by anti-democratic forces.', 'This is because many of the assaults on democracy are happening in such a stealthy way that they are practically invisible. And of course, a problem that is never detected will never be solved. The world’s democracies are facing a dangerous problem, but a problem we’ve not fully awakened to. We need to acknowledge it, publicize it and confront it.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-05-25/moises-naim-democracy-was-destroyed-in-the-last-decade-and-we-didnt-realize-it.html', 'date': '25 May 2022', 'title': 'Moisés Naím: ‘Democracy was destroyed in the last decade and we didn’t realize it’', 'author': 'Jesús Ruiz Mantilla', 'text_art': ['Moisés Naím understands power. And that’s why he is warning about how it is being abused. It’s a subject he addressed in his last two non-fiction books ', '(2022) and ', '(2013), as well as in the novel ', '(2018). Naím wielded power himself as Venezuela’s minister of trade and industry under the administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez. These days he studies, observes and analyzes it from within organizations such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC – where the 69-year-old Venezuelan lives –, as well as his television program ', ' (or Naím Effect) and ', '. He continues to be alarmed by the ', ', and the rise of mafia states masquerading as democracies.', '. Are former US president Donald Trump and leaders such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, Matteo Salvini in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France, Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and the Spanish far-right party Vox all working for', '?', '. The oligarchs too, who also work for him... Well yes, they are some of the people who destroyed democracy in the past decade and we didn’t realize it.', ' In ', 'there is a chapter called ', '. Is this what we will end up in?', '. It is a perverse and dangerous mutation of corruption. From this, we move to kleptocracy and from there to a third variant, the one that Putin embodies: the criminal state. This implies that the criminals are not outside the government trying to influence it, but that the criminal is the government itself.', ' How do you define the three P’s – post-truth, polarization and populism – that are behind this demise?', ' All three have always existed, but now they have become more powerful due to technological and social change, and economic and geopolitical transformations.', 'In what ways has this happened?', 'Each of them is connected. Populism, to start with, is not an ideology, but rather a tool. It is the same old idea of divide and conquer. This in turn leads to polarization that increases fractured identities. And all this is partly produced by post-truth, which is another strain of propaganda: it’s putting forward an alternative story to reality. This is how they invent stories.', ' You once wrote: “Putting a KGB agent on Twitter is like leaving a child in a candy store.”', ' That’s right…', '. Why didn’t it occur to anyone that these technological toys would also fall into unscrupulous hands, which would take advantage of them to grab power?', ' When the internet first began, the heads of tech companies told us that their inventions were going to be tools of liberation. Over time, to a large extent, they have become elements of repression. The intelligence services working for tyrants saw that they could identify their opponents there. Now they coexist. They help foster democracy and repression.', ' What was to blame for this outcome? Were these technological forerunners guilty of naiveté or greed?', 'Of political naiveté. Nothing in their past had prepared them to understand that you cannot separate politics. I have attended meetings in which some of them believed that they would be able to dismantle politics, that parties would not be necessary because the people would end up choosing their leaders. That they wouldn’t need to go to Washington.', 'Until they became the powers that be?', ' Until today, when they have become the biggest lobbyists. Reality has made it clear to them that politics exists and matters.', ' That’s what tech companies realized and cashed in on in the pre-Trump era, when they requested millions of dollars from the US government to develop the NSA surveillance project. Is former US president Barack Obama innocent in all this?', '. There are trends that transcend leaders. This is what I explained in my previous book, ', ', which argues that power is easy to obtain, difficult to use and easy to lose. This is illustrated by fact that they [tech companies] requested $150 billion for that service. But technology companies now face several pioneering laws in the United States and another in Europe, the Digital Services Act, which will be essential to controlling them.', 'Have you regretted being right about the concerns you raise in your books, specifically your latest one?', '. What I regret is not having been clearer and more vocal about the attacks against democracy in the world.', ' Do you mean more radical? You are a paradigm of moderation.', ' Not really. We just have to conscientiously work to expose autocrats masquerading as democrats. It’s difficult, because they are secretive. So far I have not been successful.', ' Do you feel powerless? Or, rather, do you think that those who are trying to defend democracy will be overcome by feelings of impotence?', ' We must remain hopeful. For example, I think that Putin, with his war [on Ukraine], has made a mistake. A big one.', ' A mistake made out of desperation or ego?', ' We mustn’t speculate. But he made a mistake. There is no way to understand it, not even when considering his own interests. He was wrong about the', ', he was wrong about the capabilities of his army and about the resistance of the Ukrainians, which has surprised us all, even though it shouldn’t. On the other hand, Russia is poor, it is also isolating itself from the rest of the world. It is going through a demographic crisis and is going to suffer a major brain drain. Any young person from Russia has the world ahead of them and sees no need to sacrifice their future in a society with medieval codes. Many of them will go.', '. The war is leading to a crisis that is having a financial impact. And it’s true that historically there has been a correlation between high inflation and fascism, as seen in the 1930s.', '. The term fascism has become an empty insult, which has left the word without meaning or power. I prefer autocracy: it captures it better.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:00 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-05-23/louis-vuitton-nike-and-virgil-abloh-an-exhibition-celebrates-the-designer-and-his-last-exclusive-sneakers.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:04:00 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-05-23/louis-vuitton-nike-and-virgil-abloh-an-exhibition-celebrates-the-designer-and-his-last-exclusive-sneakers.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-05-23/louis-vuitton-nike-and-virgil-abloh-an-exhibition-celebrates-the-designer-and-his-last-exclusive-sneakers.html', 'date': '23 May 2022', 'title': 'Louis Vuitton, Nike and Virgil Abloh: an exhibition celebrates the designer and his last exclusive sneakers', 'author': '', 'text_art': ['When an artist’s death takes the world by surprise, observing their final works tends to elicit a mixture of awe and melancholy. Such is the case in the New York exhibition of 47 pairs of Louis Vuitton and Nike Air Force 1 sneakers created by Virgil Abloh. The shoe represents part of the legacy of Virgil Abloh, the American designer who died on November 28, 2021, at the age of 41, after a private battle against cancer.', 'The exhibit, which was inaugurated on May 20 and remains open to the public through May 31, features the sneakers first seen in Louis Vuitton’s spring-summer 2022 menswear collection, which debuted in June 2021.', ' houses the exhibition, which does not charge an admission fee. The building announces the show with an electric orange façade painted for the occasion, flanked by a sculpture of a breakdancer wearing sneakers from the collaboration between Louis Vuitton, Nike and Abloh.', '. The 47 pairs in the show, all manufactured in the Louis Vuitton atelier at Fiesso d’Artico in Venice, Italy, are playfully arranged around a space that feels like a house of mirrors. The walls are adorned with clouds, a reference to the visuals of Abloh’s presentations and campaigns, while the sneakers appear on magnetic walls that allow them to be seen from all angles.', 'The sneakers include Abloh’s signature quotation marks around the word “Air,” emphasizing the shoes’ distinctive, countercultural identity. The color palette ranges from neutrals to rich tones, with vibrant textures of whites and reds, whites and blues, golds and multicolors, some featuring a graffiti print. Each shoe in the exhibition is accompanied by a screen with a three-dimensional digital version that the spectator can manipulate.', 'The exhibition ends in a tree house, a reference to the haven that so many children desire. The viewer finds inside an audiovisual record of Abloh’s design process, including inspiration boards and a video that shows the designer in action.', 'The exhibition precedes the commercial launch of nine models of the high-end sneakers: the mid-tops will be sold for €2,500 while the low-tops will cost €2,000. Pre-orders will be available to a selection of the Louis Vuitton community, while the June launch will take place through a special digital campaign, the brand said in a press release.', 'Abloh founded the fashion house Off White in 2013 and was artistic director of the Louis Vuitton menswear line from 2017 to 2021. His unexpected death elicited many reflections on his place in fashion. “The world lost a fashion superstar, an innovator, a creator for the history books,” designer Donatella Versace said.', 'Each design in the exhibition reveals Abloh’s urban influence, the vocabulary of materials juxtaposing leather alongside the Louis Vuitton monogram and checkerboard pattern. The installation quotes the questions that shaped Abloh’s creative process: “Who did it first?” “Where did that idea come from?” “Is this idea new?”', 'Aside from his bold work for Louis Vuitton, Abloh’s collaboration with Nike brings together two cultural icons: 2022 marks 40 years of the Nike Air Force 1, a pop culture symbol. The basketball shoes, designed by Bruce Kilgore and presented in 1982, combine references to hip-hop and streetwear and have become part of the collective imagination.', '“I’m not comfortable with the status quo,” Abloh said in a 2018', ', discussing his aim to elevate streetwear and celebrate black culture’s influence on fashion. That goal echoes through the show.', 'The sneakers have had significant market success: in early 2022, 200 pairs were sold at Sotheby’s for a total of', '. Proceeds from the auction went to', ', an organization that advance’s Abloh’s mission to promote equity and inclusion in the fashion industry by providing scholarships to promising students of African-American and African descent.', 'The scholarship, in collaboration with the Fashion Scholarship Fund, is a crucial effort to address the lack of diversity and inclusion in the fashion industry. An ', 'announcing the designer’s death noted that Abloh regularly stated, “Everything I do is for the 17-year-old version of myself.” The words are reflected by his faith in the scholarship fund and his youthful aesthetic.', 'Apart from celebrating Abloh’s art, this show underscores the designer’s optimism. The exhibition is a memory of his life, his vision and his work, as his heartbeat continues reverberating through the fashion industry.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:01 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-21/the-thyssens-disputed-pissarro-a-masterpiece-that-symbolizes-the-ongoing-struggle-to-return-nazi-looted-art.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:04:01 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-21/the-thyssens-disputed-pissarro-a-masterpiece-that-symbolizes-the-ongoing-struggle-to-return-nazi-looted-art.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-21/the-thyssens-disputed-pissarro-a-masterpiece-that-symbolizes-the-ongoing-struggle-to-return-nazi-looted-art.html', 'date': '21 May 2022', 'title': 'The Thyssen’s disputed Pissarro: a masterpiece that symbolizes the ongoing struggle to return Nazi-looted art', 'author': 'Iker Seisdedos', 'text_art': ['On December 15, 1897, Camille Pissarro wrote a letter to his son Lucien in which he announced he had rented a room at the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, from where he could work. “I’m delighted to have the opportunity to paint these Paris streets that we tend to consider ugly, but which by contrast are so silvery, luminous and full of life. They are the height of modernity!” The doyen of the impressionists was 67 and suffering from an illness affecting the tear duct of his left eye, which had forced him away from fields where for decades he had lent a new dimension to painting in the open air. Avoiding the dust and wind of Paris’ thoroughfares, he settled for looking out of his window and completed 15 paintings of a city that was in the throes of the Dreyfus Affair and Émile Zola’s famous J’Accuse…! letter published in L’Aurore that laid bare ', ' of the Third French Republic. Pissarro’s art dealer, Paul Durand-Ruel, sold one of the most admired of the series, titled Rue Saint-Honoré, dans l’après-midi. Effet de pluie (“Rue Saint-Honoré in the Afternoon. Effect of Rain”) in 1900 to the Cassirers, a family of Jewish industrialists and art collectors. Now, 125 years after Pissarro sat at his window to paint, the work is at the center of an international dispute that has lasted for more than two decades.', 'The sole living descendant of the first owners of the painting, David Cassirer, is a retired 67-year-old musician living in San Diego. As he tells EL PAÍS in a lengthy telephone conversation, he is determined to take a battle “started 23 years ago” by his father, Claude Cassirer, “to its conclusion.” Cassirer wants the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation to remove the painting from display at its museum in Madrid and return to the family a work of art that was looted from his great-grandmother, Lilly Cassirer, by the Nazis in 1939.', 'After two court rulings against the Cassirer family, one in Los Angeles in 2018 and another on appeal at the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the case reached the US Supreme Court in January. On April 21, it found in favor of the Cassirers. The decision, which more than anything was concerned with unifying procedural processes, did not rule on the fate of the painting. The Supreme Court was, however, categorical in its decision to knock the ball back into the Court of Appeals as it ruled the judge had erred in applying the conflict of laws, which decides which of Spanish and Californian law prevails in a dispute that involves a US citizen as plaintiff and a foreign state as defendant: the Spanish state acquired the Pissarro in 1993 along with a further 775 works from the collection of Baron Hans Heinrich von Thyssen-Bornemisza for $350 million. If the federal conflict rule is applied, as it was previously, then Spanish law prevails, and Spain’s view is that the Pissarro is perfectly fine where it is. But if state conflict law is applied, what happens then? As with much of the entire story, it depends who you ask.', 'According to Cassirer’s lawyers, the “logical” answer is that California substantive law will prevail, which states that a person who receives stolen assets cannot consolidate a title of ownership no matter how much time has passed. The Thyssen Foundation’s lawyers, meanwhile, are “99%” certain that the merits of the case will be decided by Spanish law, under which the right of usucaption states that the public possession of the painting for a period of six years is sufficient to consider the museum its legitimate owner (12 had passed between the museum opening its doors and the 2005 complaint lodged by the Cassirer family in Los Angeles).', 'Taddheus J. Stauber, an attorney with the Nixon Peabody global law firm that has represented the Foundation since then, pointed out that the judge who first handled the case in 2018, John Walter, went through the exercise of imagining what would happen is the state conflict rule was applied and obtained the same result that led him to rule against the Cassirers. “There is little or no relation between California and the painting in question. It was acquired with Spanish public funds and has been in Europe for decades, since the baron bought it in 1976. Its only link with California is that the plaintiffs [David Cassirers’ parents, who have both since died] moved to San Diego when they retired. We have no doubt that Spanish law will prevail,” Stauber says.', 'In the view of Bernardo Cremades, whose family law firm took up the case as amicus curiae in 2017 to assist the Cassirers on behalf of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain and the Jewish Community of Madrid, that argument is weak, because Walter’s theoretical test was carried out “in a very superficial manner.”', '“It was done in passing, and without getting to the crux of the issue. Anticipating what a judge is going to decide seems to me to be pure speculation,” says Cremades. “I am surprised that Spain continues to lean on technicalities not to comply, unlike other countries, with international agreements regarding the return of are stolen ', '. I am referring to the Washington Principles [on Nazi-Confiscated Art] and the Terezin Declaration [on Holocaust Era Assets].”', 'Judge Walter also made reference to both treaties – signed by Spain in 1998 and 2009 respectively – in is ruling. The last paragraph of the April, 2019, ruling reads: “The refusal of the museum to return the painting is incompatible [with the agreements]. However, the court has no alternative but to apply Spanish law and cannot force the Kingdom of Spain or the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation to comply with its moral commitments.”', 'David Cassirer celebrated the Supreme Court ruling as a great victory: “We thought we could win, but I never dreamed of getting a unanimous verdict,” he said of the decision that brought the nine magistrates of one of the most divided Supreme Courts in decades into rare agreement. “It is very encouraging, and it sends a message to Spain and to museums around the world: it is not right to profit from the Holocaust. This painting was stolen from Holocaust victims by the Nazis. Spain should return it instead of carrying on with this costly litigation.”', 'On the score, all parties are in agreement. According to data provided by the Thyssen, Spain has paid €2,735,845 in lawyers’ fees and €310,947 in other costs. Cassirer says that his expenditure is “between $10 and $20 million,” leading him to suspect the numbers released by the Foundation are “a lie.” If he managed to recover the Pissarro, Cassirer says he will have no choice but to sell it. “I have thought about doing it on the condition it is publicly displayed,” he adds. The three firms that have worked on Cassirer’s case, led by one of the most famous attorneys in the US, David Boies, whose previous clients include Al Gore, Harvey Weinstein and Virginia Giuffre, have all staked their fees on a favorable ruling. “We have a lot of mouths to feed,” says Cassirer.', 'Whatever the outcome of one of the most famous cases of its kind in history, the fact that it went to the Supreme Court has served to put the spotlight back on the history of a canvas and a family that were closely mirrored by the fate of many of Europe’s Jews during the darkest', 'period of the 20th century. To reconstruct the sequence of events it has been necessary to view judicial documents and archives in Washington and to carry out dozens of conversations, many of them confrontational, with Cassirer, representatives of the Thyssen Foundation, lawyers for both parties, experts on Pissarro and specialists in the recovery of stolen art.', 'The painting came to the family via the famous gallery that Bruno Cassirer, a leading expert on the impressionists, and his cousin Paul operated on 35 Viktoriastrasse in Berlin. The Cassirer family was one of the most famous Jewish lineages in Europe, with members including the philosopher Ernst Cassirer and the orchestra director Fritz Cassirer. The latter inherited the Pissarro from his father, Julius, in 1924 and he in turn left it to his wife, Lilly, when he died two years later. The couple had an only child, Eva, who died when she was young, during the influenza pandemic of a century ago, shortly after giving birth to her only descendant, Claude, who launched the action against the Thyssen Foundation before passing away in 2010.', 'Lilly remarried at the age of 63, to a famous doctor called Otto Neubauer, who was stripped of his practice in Munich when the Nazis came to power in 1933 due to his Jewish lineage. In 1939, fearing “arrest by the Gestapo, without and apparent reason, and deportation to Dachau,” the couple fled Germany for England, where Neubauer was employed by the University of Oxford to continue his study of cancer.', 'Shortly before they left, an art dealer sent by the Third Reich arrived at their home to assess what cultural property the Nazis were planning to remove from the country. They were handed 900 marks for the Pissarro, an “insulting” price as an Allied document noted at the end of the war. Lilly didn’t even receive the money: it was paid into an account that was already blocked. The dealer then exchanged the Pissarro, who as a Jewish painter carried little interest in Germany at the time, for three pieces by 19th century German artists. They were owned by another Jew, Julius Sulzbacher, who unsuccessfully attempted to take the Pissarro with him on his flight to Brazil. Requisitioned by the Gestapo, it was sold at a 1941 auction in Dusseldorf to a man named Ari Walter Kampf. The work was sold again two years later in Berlin for 95,000 marks. All trace of it was lost for a decade, until it reappeared in Los Angeles in 1951.', 'Lilly Cassirer was unaware of the canvas’ journey: she assumed it had been lost or destroyed during the war. She died in 1962 in Cleveland, where she had moved after being widowed for a second time to live with the family of her grandson, the photographer Claude Cassirer. Four years earlier, after a decade of litigation, Lilly received compensation of 120,000 marks from the Federal Republic of Germany, of which she had to pay 14,000 marks to the painting’s previous owner, Sulzbacher. The agreement also stated that Lilly would not relinquish the right to ask for the restitution or return of the painting, if the case arose.', 'Both parties are more or less in agreement that the compensation, fixed by the market value of Pissarro at the time, was fair, but they differ on how the implications of the deal should be interpreted. In Cassirer’s view, the museum’s stance that it compensated his great-grandmother is merely to “clear their conscience.” “They want to make us out to be greedy, to imply that we are looking to be compensated twice. It’s a classic: stirring up stereotypes about Jews. But there is a big difference between reparation and restitution, and anyway, the money we received would have to be reimbursed to Germany if they return the painting,” he says. Evelio Acevedo, managing director of the Thyssen, counters: “It is often forgotten that they were compensated, and when it mentioned the impression is that the amount they received was miserly, which is not the case. They could have bought another Pissarro.”', 'Cassirer shows a photograph of the canvas hanging in Lilly’s elegant Berlin apartment in the 1930s to underline that the family does not want “another Pissarro,” but the same one that was in the family for 40 years. Cassirer still possesses many of the other items in the photograph. When his parents moved to San Diego to be close to their children (David had a sister, Ava, who died in 2018), he commissioned a copy of the Pissarro to hang in the sitting room of the new house. Before moving to California, Cassirer’s parents had lived in Cleveland, where they arrived “without a cent” in 1941. The German occupation of France caught them by surprise but they were able to flee to Morocco, where they nearly died of dysentery in a refugee camp. A Jewish association directed them to Cleveland, where there was sizeable Hebrew community. There, Claude became a “very popular photographer, with important clients,” according to his son. Whenever they announced an upcoming trip to Europe, “I would always show them a picture of the Pissarro, to see if they came across it,” he says.', 'The eureka moment arrived in December, 1999, when a friend of the family sent a photograph of an image of the Pissarro in a catalog of Baron Thyssen’s collection in Lugano, Switzerland. “Overcome with shock and anger, my father decided he would not stop until Lilly’s painting no longer honored the legacy of a family of steel industrialists who supported Hitler at the beginning,” Cassirer says, in reference to Fritz Thyssen, who contributed to the Führer’s rise but ended up being persecuted by the Third Reich. “Without him, this monstrous being would never have been more than an average painter. Wouldn’t that have been a better world,” he adds.', 'It took the Cassirers a few months to discover where the painting was, with the help of Ronald Lauder, president of the World Jewish Congress: it was by then property of the Spanish state and hanging in the Villahermosa palace in Madrid. After asking fruitlessly for its return, the Cassirers filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles in 2005, buoyed by the success of Randol Schoenberg (grandson of the Austrian composer) before the Supreme Court, which granted him the right to litigate in California what was surely the most famous case of the recovery of Nazi-looted art ever undertaken: Maria Altmann’s claim against the Austrian state for the recovery of five Klimts stolen from her family. Their eventual restoration was the stuff of Hollywood, to the extent that it ended up as a movie, The Woman in Gold, starring Helen Mirren and Ryan Reynolds. The most famous painting in the collection, Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, also known as The Woman in Gold, sold for a then-world record $135 million in 2006.', 'After locating the Pissarro, the Cassirers started to piece together its history. From the time Lilly lost track of its whereabouts to when it was bought by the baron in Los Angeles for $300,000 in 1976, it had been around the block a few times. The painting arrived in Los Angeles in the possession of a German merchant called Frank Perls, who was Jewish – “ironically,” notes Cassirer, who describes him as a “super-thief.” During the war, Perls had worked as a translator for the US Army. He sold the work to a noted art lover called Sidney Brody, who was also Jewish and returned it a few months later because, according to Cassirer, he found out that it was a looted piece. A year later, Perls sold the painting again to the heir to a department store fortune in Saint Louis, where it remained for 20 years. It was offered to Baron Thyssen-Bornemisza through a well-known New York dealer, Stephen Hahn.', 'Cassirer describes all of these transactions as conspiracies carried out stealthily, “by a bunch of crooks on the stolen art black market.” Stauber, the Foundation’s attorney, says that the reputation of these dealers “is beyond doubt,” pointing out that none of them appear “on any of the lists published at the end of the war of art dealers who collaborated with the Nazis,” adding: “I find it appalling that he would throw such accusations against members of his own community lightly.”', 'Cassirer also considers it relevant that the painting still bears part of the stamp of the gallery belonging to his predecessors, Bruno and Paul Cassirer, which was discovered when an expert was dispatched to Madrid to look at the canvas. When it was removed from the wall at the Thyssen Museum and the frame removed (evidence, notes Acevedo, of the “transparency” the museum has exercised “at all times”), fragments of the stamp could be seen: “Berlin,” “Vikto” – part of the street name – and “Kunst und Verla,” for Kunst und Verlagsanstalt, the name of a gallery and publisher. Cassirer believes that “someone erased the names of Bruno and Paul at some point” and that “Hahn knew exactly what that stamp meant as did, as an art lover, the baron.” Cassirer suggests that they didn’t’ want to see the stamp “through the blindness of self-interest. It is outrageous that the Spanish specialists state they did not realize what was in front of their eyes when they bought the painting as part of the lot. It was one of the most famous galleries in Europe!”', 'Stauber says the Foundation does not know if the stamp was intact when the baron bought the painting, or in what condition it was when it arrived in the hands of the Spanish state. “But it doesn’t matter, because a stamp of this kind only indicates that the painting passed through that gallery, nothing more. It does not prove in any case that it was the property of Lilly Cassirer, and Judge Walter made that very clear in his ruling. Curiously, this issue of the stamp has only entered the conversation in the last few years, at the same time as they have run out of arguments. When the lawyer changes, the story changes.”', 'In the initial ruling it was also established that the Thyssen Foundation bought the Pissarro “in good faith,” although historian Miguel Martorell, author of a book on the Nazi looting of art, advises caution. “Bad faith is very difficult to prove in usucaption; it is not the kind of intent you put down in writing. What does seem clear to me is that the baron did not do enough to verify the provenance of the painting,” he says, adding that the museum lacks perspective on the matter. “They sometimes give the impression that they have forgotten, among so much legalese, the story that lies beneath, which is that of a victim of the Holocaust seeking reparation for terrible damages.”', 'Stauber points out that the Pissarro does not feature on any list of stolen art compiled in the 1970s, because the family had not registered it, and that awareness of the issue at that time was not what it was in the 1990s. Acevedo, meanwhile, notes that the Washington Principles “do not establish an obligation in every case to return pieces that were looted. They aim to protect the rights of all parties in an operation. Those that bought in good faith, as the Foundation undoubtedly did, also have rights, which are protected by these Principles. Those affected by looting were duly compensated, and as such the spirit of these Principles has already materialized in this case.”', 'Stauber, who participated in the drawing up of the Washington Principles when he was a young attorney, adds that the multilateral agreement “is also designed to encourage respect for the laws of other countries. We cannot impose US law around the world. Imagine a Spanish court accepting a claim against The Smithsonian, for example. It’s unthinkable.”', 'Another matter on which the two parties differ is what the baron did with the painting before selling it to the Spanish state. Cassirer is in no doubt: everything possible to keep it hidden. To back his theory, he produces a photograph published in Architectural Digest in 1988 in which the Pissarro can be seen hanging in a small room at Villa Favorita, Heinrich Thyssen’s Lugano', 'mansion. The Foundation, on the other hand, says this proves quite the contrary. “If he was seeking that [to keep the painting hidden] why would he let one of the biggest decoration magazines in the world publish something he didn’t want seen?” asks Stauber.', 'The Foundation also commissioned a report from historian Laurie Stein, an expert in stolen art. In it, Stein says that between 1979 and its eventual arrival in Madrid, the painting was displayed at exhibitions in nine different countries, from New Zealand to Germany. Cassirer, however, says this is not the case. “They have used archive photographs to fake that the painting was in London or Tokyo. They have not been able to produce anything, not a single image or newspaper article. How is it possible that one of the most famous works by one of the most famous of the impressionists passed through these capitals without trace?”', 'Stauber responds to this accusation by pointing out that the baron’s collection “was one the best-known in the world” and that when it was put up for sale “it was courted by the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles, by the UK and Germany. The announcement that it would end up in Madrid was global news, impossible to keep secret,” he says. One of the reasons the baron decided to sell to Spain was that the government promised to maintain the collection intact, an agreement sealed by law. When asked if this law will have to revised if a California court rules the Pissarro must be returned, Acevedo replies: “This scenario is not even on the table, because there are no reasons to believe that the current ruling is going to change.” Cassirer, once again, is not in agreement with that statement.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:02 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-29/the-bittersweet-story-of-bitter-sweet-symphony-the-song-that-ended-britpop-and-that-the-rolling-stones-appropriated.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:04:02 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-29/the-bittersweet-story-of-bitter-sweet-symphony-the-song-that-ended-britpop-and-that-the-rolling-stones-appropriated.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-29/the-bittersweet-story-of-bitter-sweet-symphony-the-song-that-ended-britpop-and-that-the-rolling-stones-appropriated.html', 'date': '29 May 2022', 'title': 'The bittersweet story of the song that ended ‘Britpop’', 'author': '', 'text_art': ['In the music video for The Verve’s', ', a man walks down the street alone complaining that “life is a bittersweet symphony.” When it was released on June 11, 1997, it was immediately clear that the song was destined to make history. At a time when radio still played a major role in musical success, the song had constant airplay. It brought the band, led by Richard Ashcroft, to the forefront of Britpop just as the movement was breathing its last. After the Oasis concert at Knebworth the previous summer, as Blur turned towards American-influenced indie rock on their self-titled album and Radiohead changed the paradigm with ', 'and The Prodigy with ', ', the hegemony of the sound associated with ', 'was one step away from dying. ', ', with all its majesty, its existential reflections, its ambition, its loftiness, its length of over six minutes and its iconic aura, was the genre’s last great anthem, Britpop’s swan song.', 'The video clip undoubtedly influenced the song’s success. Its director, Walter A. Stern, in fact wanted to pay tribute to Massive Attack’s ', ', another definitive nineties anthem whose video had the same structure. In this case, Ashcroft’s attitude not only demonstrates an extreme stubbornness, but also an exaggerated individualism characteristic of the time, with the protagonist completely oblivious to everything around him. The video elicited a wide range of interpretations, including one theory about the shot when the protagonist stops to let through a car with tinted windows, said to have been a tribute to his friend Noel Gallagher. Oasis started their career opening for The Verve, then did the reverse when they became famous, and the frontmen of both bands had dedicated songs to each other (', ' and ', ') on their respective 1995 albums. The video also spawned a mythical route for fans who followed the path as if it were their own Abbey Road. (This one was a loop through Hoxton, Purcell and Crondall streets in East London.)', 'The Verve was founded in 1990 in Wigan, a city in the Manchester belt famous for having been the site of the Wigan Casino, the Vatican of a 1970s movement called ', '. The group’s rise was linked to the ', 'Sound and the style known as shoegaze. Their first albums were dense atmospheres of saturated psychedelic guitars. After several EPs and two albums (', ' in 1993 and ', 'in 1995), the creative and personal conflict between guitarist Nick McCabe and the vocalist, who wanted to leave behind the group’s more experimental side, led the former to dissolve the group. It wasn’t the first time he’d done so, nor the first time he’d reconsidered. He knew that he had an ace up his sleeve that could change things, and that to complete the mission he needed his bandmates.', ' was the first single from ', ', a third LP for which the band recruited as producer Martin ', 'Glover, a member of Killing Joke and The Orb who was becoming one of the most renowned technicians in British pop. The event was closely associated with one of the great scandals that dazzled the British press at the time: two years earlier, Ashcroft had secretly married Kate Radley, the girlfriend of Jason Pierce of the band Spiritualized. Radley was still a member of Pierce’s group, which simultaneously released another of the year’s most acclaimed albums, the despondent ', '“I wasn’t actually the first option. Before me, they tried ', '. I came to the recording recommended by Kate,” recalls Youth from the home studio that he currently owns in Granada. “And that’s ', '. I had already worked on some successful albums, like ', ' by Crowded House, but ', ' is one of the best songs ever recorded. It is still appearing on many lists of all kinds. There are very few pop hits that have an impact like that.”', 'Some consider The Verve to be a one-hit wonder, but that’s far from the truth. In fact, the song only reached number two in sales in the United Kingdom. The band’s next single, ', ', was the only one of their career to reach number one. “The amazing thing about ', ' is that Richard came up with all these amazing songs. He had left behind the space rock improvisations that characterized the band and came out with more concrete pop songs. Even his B-sides were better than the best tracks on other people’s albums,” says Glover. “Owning that material made it all very easy, so my biggest challenge as a producer was to let the songs soar, to do them justice.”', 'But working on ', ' was complicated and almost traumatic. It was Richard Ashcroft’s idea to build his unmistakable string sound through a sample of the Rolling Stones’ ', ' using not the best-known version, but one included in an orchestral album by producer Andrew Loog Oldham. The sample led to one of the most talked-about intellectual property lawsuits in pop history.', 'The original sample was just five looping notes, and the song was released before the Rolling Stones office approved it, as The Verve’s record label thought there would be no problem. It was a big mistake. Seeing that the single’s success was blowing up, Allen Klein, the manager of the Stones, went on to ruin the band’s lives. The Verve believed that the rights would be divided 50-50, but Klein, who is said to have left the lawyer’s office with a smile worthy of a movie villain, got 100%. All authorship of the song was credited to Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Andrew Loog Oldham, despite the fact that the Stones’ vocalist and guitarist had contributed absolutely nothing. The musicians of The Verve weren’t the only ones affected: David Whitaker, the true composer of the string arrangements sampled, was also excluded from authorship.', 'The recording was a meticulous piece of work, as Youth recalls. “Richard didn’t believe in the song at first. There was a version prior to my arrival, and I encouraged him to try recording it again.” The producer emphasizes that the Loog Oldham sample is not as noticeable in the final version, since it is hidden among almost 50 layers of instrumentation. “I persuaded a string section to play the melody over the top, with new arrangements, without Richard knowing, at a time when he wasn’t in the studio. I knew it would be worth it, even if he got mad,” he says. On the appropriation by the Stones, he says that “it was very unfair. It is true that we reproduced the same melody and the same arrangements. It can be understood as a version. But Richard wrote a completely new lyric and deserved more credit.” He ironically declared that ', ' was “the best Rolling Stones song since ', '” after it was presented at the Grammy Awards ceremony as a Jagger and Richards composition. Not only did the Rolling Stones get all the credit and the economic benefit, but their manager also had all the power over the song’s licensing for commercials and movies. When he allowed its use in a Nike campaign, Ashcroft flew into a rage.', ' was a huge success at all levels. That year, The Verve packed all the big venues in which they performed, but the dispute over their emblematic song’s authorship remained stuck in the vocalist and led him into depression. The band did not last much longer together. In 1999, its leader announced its dissolution with a phrase worthy of Morrissey or the Gallagher brothers: “It is more likely that you will see ', ' together on stage again than The Verve.” But in 2007, they came back again for a couple of years, recording a fourth album and doing another tour, the last one so far. Ashcroft began a solo career that enjoyed considerable commercial recognition, especially at the beginning, but always under the long shadow of ', '. New musical icons like Chris Martin recognized the group’s impact on the following generations. At Coldplay’s Live 8 mega-event concert in 2005, their frontman invited Ashcroft on stage to cover the song with him, after presenting it as “probably the best song ever written.” The leader of The Verve kept fighting for his authorship, and the story finally had a happy ending: in 2019, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards agreed to revoke their rights and acknowledge that the song was by Richard Ashcroft.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-26/romy-schneider-the-empress-of-free-women.html', 'date': '26 May 2022', 'title': 'Romy Schneider, the empress of free women', 'author': 'Elsa Fernández-Santos', 'text_art': ['Romy Schneider said that she owed it all to Luchino Visconti. The actress, born in Vienna in 1938 and who died in Paris 43 years later, was referring to how the director of ', ' saw something more in her than the beautiful girl who starred in Ernst Marischka’s ', 'trilogy of films about the Empress Elisabeth of Austria that enchanted the world in the', ', and subsequently Alain Delon. In 1961, Delon and Schneider were Europe’s golden couple and Visconti, on the urging of the French actor, cast them together in the play ', ', by the Elizabethan playwright John Ford, about an incestuous love affair that ends in a massacre.', 'Neither Delon nor Schneider had ever been on stage before, but the play was such a success that those who saw it still remember the sparks flying between that perfect pairing at the Théâtre de Paris. Visconti said he only agreed to put on the play to be able to work with them both and to unleash through them some of the most unharnessed passions. The old Communist aristocrat knew a lot about such things.', 'Schneider is the focus of an ongoing exhibition and retrospective at the Cinémathèque Française, and a documentary about her life by Lucie Cariès, ', ', has premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival. Also screening at the festival last weekend was Corsage, by Austrian director Marie Kreutzer. Starring Vicky Krieps, Kreutzer’s movie explores the decadence and rebelliousness of Elisabeth of Austria, portraying a heroin-addicted Sissi who smokes and is fed up with men and the world, obsessed with her weight and her public image, capricious, who tattoos her body and has suicidal impulses, and who has a closer relationship with her dogs and her horses than with most humans. Kreutzer’s psychological portrait plays on those anachronisms that Sofia Coppola inaugurated to a pop soundtrack in Marie Antoinette, the occasional extemporaneous object and an enveloping mise-en-scène that takes full advantage of the scars of the past still present in the palaces where the movie was shot.', ' is perhaps not a great documentary, but it is of little matter. There is a wealth of little-known material and anybody could spend hours looking at photographs and listening to interviews with a woman whose spontaneity and photogenicity remain unparalleled. In one of the in movie’s best segments, Schneider remarks: “I’m bored of looking at myself in the mirror.” Hers was a face in which old and new Europe merged as never before, to the extent that a palate as refined and complex as Visconti’s could not overlook it.', 'Schneider’s parents were actors and following in their footsteps was for her something more than a vocation: it was a necessity. Both were supporters of ', ', and even feature in home-shot movies with the Führer. They spent summer near his residence and Magda Schneider was one of Hitler’s favorite actresses. When the ', ' ended, Schneider’s parents found themselves out of work and it took many years for the stigma to be erased. It was Magda who encouraged Romy to act alongside her, and they played mother and daughter in the ', 'trilogy. But at the same time, Magda’s star was on the wane, Romy’s began to shine and her role as the empress turned her into a popular icon of the late 1950s.', 'Non-conformist and, as the documentary title states, profoundly free, Schneider soon felt the need to spread her wings and seek a change of scenery. It would be a recurring theme throughout her life. When she moved to Paris, her career took a radical turn. She met Delon, who was not as famous as her at that time, and the clash of social classes led to a tempestuous relationship that only over the passage of time resulted in a fresh understanding sealed with the 1969 Jacques Deray classic ', ', which brought them back together through Delon’s insistence.', 'Schneider was always upfront and never attempted to hide her family’s past ', '. In fact, it became one of her most intense crusades. She spoke about it publicly and made a point of acting in films about the Holocaust. Her work under the tutelage of Claude Sauset in the 1970s became the movies that best shaped her career and her profile as a liberated woman who never tired of anybody, including feminist movements. She had husbands and lovers, she never identified as Austrian, German or French and, without ever losing her radiant smile, she went about doing her best to do whatever she wanted.', 'Parallels with Sissi haunted Schneider like a fatal destiny. Elisabeth of Austria will always be associated with Schneider’s teenaged face, but Kreutzer’s movie concentrates on the same dark recesses as Visconti explored in ', '(1973), in which Schneider reprised her historical character during Elisabeth’s descent into decadence. Idealized for her beauty, the empress went down in history as a very controversial figure due to her excesses and her fight against her own body. In ', ', she is a 40-year-old woman humiliated by her age and changes to her physiognomy, which she punishes with the garment of the title. The deaths of her first-born daughter in infancy and her son Rudolf, heir to the throne, in suspicious circumstances (there has been speculation Rudolf committed suicide) led her into a chronic depressive state. Schneider also experienced that pain when her son, David, was involved in a horrific accident.', 'Harry Meyen, Schneider’s first husband, killed himself in 1979. He also suffered from chronic depression as a result of being tortured by the Nazis as a youth. In July 1981, at the age of 14, the couple’s son David, named in honor of the Jewish people, died after trying to climb a spiked fence at his stepfather’s  home in Paris. He slipped and punctured his femoral artery. Schneider’s life was destroyed. She became addicted to pills and alcohol and suffered mental health issues, dying a year later at her home on May 29, 1982, at the age of 43. Although suicide was suspected, it was ruled out by an examining magistrate and cardiac arrest was recorded as the cause of death. During the filming of her final movie, ', ', she had asked for an in memoriam to be added to the credits: “For David and his father.”', 'Sissi, who had been looking for a lover for her husband, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, so as to avoid her matrimonial obligations, spent her later years wearing a black veil over her face. She was assassinated by Italian anarchist Luigi Lucheni in Geneva on September 10, 1898, with a needle file that was so thin the empress initially thought it was just a scare and continued on her way. Shortly afterward, as she boarded the steamship Genève, she collapsed.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2021-11-15/el-pais-offers-free-spanish-lessons-with-gymglish.html', 'date': '15 Nov 2021', 'title': 'EL PAÍS offers free Spanish lessons with Gymglish', 'author': 'El País', 'text_art': ['EL PAÍS has partnered with language-learning company Gymglish to offer online personalized lessons in Spanish. Readers who sign up before the end of the year will ', ' ', ', with no further commitment required.', 'The lessons only take 15 minutes and are available online. Before starting the course, students will be given a free language assessment to determine their current strengths and weaknesses. This information will then be used to adapt the Spanish lessons to their needs, abilities and goals.', 'Every day, students will receive a new 15-minute class that is sent to their inbox. At the end of each lesson, students will be given immediate corrections and personalized explanations about their mistakes. Gymglish uses AI software to then customize the next daily lesson.', 'Once the course is completed, readers will receive a diploma with statistics on their level of Spanish, learning progression and participation.', 'The ', ' is called Hotel Borbollón, and uses storytelling and humor to motivate students. It follows the story of Ana Borbollón who must choose between her successful career as a surgeon in Argentina and taking over her family’s struggling hotel in Madrid.', 'The setting and personalities – including the hotel’s disgruntled staff – are designed to expose the student to various accents and different personal and professional situations.', 'Founded in 2004, Gymglish creates adaptive language courses aimed at optimizing long-term gains and memorization by providing students with short but regular 15-minute classes – instead of long and intensive training.', 'The lessons are also designed to be fun: the content uses up-to-date issues, native accents and authentic cultural references. Students can also choose the topics that interest them.', 'Gymglish is based in Paris and is made up of a team of 50 people. In addition to English, the company also provides courses in French, Spanish and German.', 'In its 15-year history, Gymglish has worked with more than 50 million users across the world.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-30/hayden-christensen-on-reprising-darth-vader-role-in-obi-wan-kenobi-id-recommend-patience-to-my-19-year-old-self.html', 'date': '30 May 2022', 'title': 'Hayden Christensen on reprising Darth Vader role in ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’: “I’d recommend patience to my 19-year-old self”', 'author': 'Eneko Ruiz Jiménez', 'text_art': ['On May 11, 2000, Hayden Christensen was just another Canadian, handsome, yes, but unknown to most. By the following day, the 19-year-old had become the most desirable man in Hollywood–and perhaps in several galaxies. That day it was announced that the youthful-looking actor had beaten out 442 candidates, ', ', Heath Ledger and Paul Walker, for a role that would make him an icon in film history: he was chosen to be the young Darth Vader/Anakin Skywalker. His face soon began appearing on lists of the 50 hottest bachelors and ', ' magazine’s sexiest men in the world. But being in the public eye had a less glamorous side. The ', ' prequels were viewed suspiciously, and in 2003 and 2006 Christensen received a blow in the form of two Razzie Awards for Worst Actor. His story is the definition of Hollywood cruelty.', 'Over a Zoom interview from London, the 41-year-old tells EL PAÍS that he would advise his younger self that “everything comes at the right time and everything happens as it should.” Christensen is back on his journey to a galaxy far, far away. And he’s excited for the round of reunions involved in promoting the new series about Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi, which premiered this past Friday on Disney+. Despite being the face of an empire, he now embraces staying in the background.', 'Nobody would have bet on it in 2005, but both the actor and the franchise’s fans have been highly anticipating his new appearance in George Lucas’s galaxy. “It’s been incredibly heartwarming to experience the support that I have from the fan base. Those films mean a lot to them. I genuinely believe that it’s been their support that has allowed us to come back,” explains Christensen. “There’s a strong sense of nostalgia. Ewan McGregor and I had an incredible time working on the prequels. We became very close, and I love the man like a brother.”', 'That nostalgia is also part of the plot. The Jedi Master, played by Ewan McGregor, has already retreated to the desert of Tatooine, where he was in the first Star Wars movie (then played by Alec Guinness). He is a broken man who spends his days watching ', ' from afar. The child is growing up with his aunt and uncle, not knowing that his father, formerly known as Anakin Skywalker, is now a Sith Lord and the leader of the Dark Side. “This is about how all of the events of Episode III have affected these two characters,” summarizes Christensen, picking his words so as not to reveal any secrets.', 'Christensen sees the characters as brothers, although Deborah Chow, the first female director in the saga, always saw a platonic love story. That’s what she wanted to explore in ', ': reordering the legacy and giving new meaning to the legendary battle of the 1977 film. But inside the Lucasfilm studio, discussions went on for months about whether presenting a new angle on the battle was the right thing to do. Altering the legacy is always a delicate subject for the franchise’s ardent fans, and Christensen knows that better than anyone else. Vader, moreover, did not even appear in the Stephen Daldry movie that began the series. Was there anything left to say about him? The actor never imagined having to deal with this chapter: he was hired to bring Anakin to life, and he only wore the suit for a few minutes of footage. The imposing voice of James Earl Jones did the rest. But the novelty piqued his interest: “It was a real honor to be cast. He’s a complex character wherever you find him in time.”', 'Christensen had to be aware, moreover, that he was reopening a door that he closed after a partial withdrawal from the public eye, motivated by the attacks and by notorious failures like ', ' and ', '. During this time, the Canadian has taken on Obi-Wan’s introspective mindset, living on a 200-acre farm in Toronto far from the crowds. Still, today, Christensen finally seems to enjoy himself as much as he did on that day in 2000 when he was told he was going to be Darth Vader and he celebrated by dueling his roommate in an invisible light saber battle.', 'Today, the actor feels like a different person. He sees the great movie villain as a prisoner of power: “I’m in a different place in my life and that influences the character. Vader has an inherent identity struggle and we’re going to see that contrast. I always empathize, which is easy because we saw his descent into the dark side. The audience also feels bad for the character now. He made some bad choices, but it was very circumstantial. This is 10 years after', ', and he’s imprisoned in his choices.’', 'Since the prequels were released, there have also been significant technological advances. Actors no longer have to imagine everything around them. Now they work with a massive LED screen, nicknamed The Volume when it was created for ', '. It takes the place of a green screen, and real backgrounds are projected on it: “Now we can see the stage where we are. You literally step into Star Wars. That immersion helps make everything more credible.” No more actors complaining in interviews about the difficulty of working without external references: Lucasfilm already has three such screens set up, one in Los Angeles, one in Vancouver and one in London.', 'Vader will continue to hide under his iconic helmet. “Most of my work on this was done in preparation to take on the physicality of the character. We could have just added some padding underneath the suit and filled it out that way, but I really wanted to feel it. I had to change my diet and started working out with a trainer a lot.” He admits that he got emotional when putting on the Vader suit.', 'In Christensen’s absence, ', 'and ', 'series, created by Dave Filoni, gave Anakin a new backstory. “The animation has made the prequels better,” he says. “I have tried to study everything, although there is a lot of material.”', 'That path will help him understand Vader’s possible next steps. Because, like everything in ', ' these days, nothing ever dies. It is more than likely that Christensen will appear in the new series about the padawan Ahsoka. The show was announced by Rosario Dawson in a post on Instagram that she had to delete after a call from Disney. Christensen hopes to break the curse of Darth Vader, which afflicted his predecessors David Prowse and Jake Matthew Lloyd: “I would be thrilled to get to play Anakin and Vader more.”', 'As Anakin Skywalker did when he blurted out “I am your father,” Christensen has dealt with his ghosts. Ewan McGregor has followed the same path of reconciliation, as he told Vanity Fair: “It wasn’t easy when they came out because they weren’t very well received,” he said. But he was eager for the opportunity to return to the Star Wars universe.', ' opened a new television hope for Star Wars. But nostalgia continues to be the engine of the Disney industry, especially this series. That sentiment has even rehabilitated the prequels. ', ' tries to close the Skywalker chapter, while paving a path away from the theater, a necessary move due to the need to rethink the distribution strategy. Soon, the series ', ', ', ' and ', ' will be released, taking viewers on a new journey to the times of Jedi splendor.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-25/sophia-roe-the-kitchen-activist-everything-is-political-food-is-political.html', 'date': '25 May 2022', 'title': 'Sophia Roe, the kitchen activist: ‘Everything is political, food is political’', 'author': 'Ana Fernández Abad', 'text_art': ['For Sophia Roe, the key is to question everything – to turn things upside down and share experiences. That’s why she started cooking. “My first memory of cooking was probably pancake-related. When I was like four or five, I would watch [the TV show] ', ', these incredible chefs that had flames coming out of their oven. I was living in Florida and had an electric oven, and I remember making pancakes for my mom. I always felt the urge to not just feed myself, but to feed other people,” she says in a video call with EL PAÍS.', 'Now Roe has her own cooking show ', 'on VICE TV, and also posts videos about recipes on her Instagram page. But the 33-year-old talks about more than just food, she also tries to make people more conscious about what they eat and ', '.', '“I think that we need to understand, why am I eating this? Do I need to be buying a bunch of things in plastic? Are you sure you don’t have the time to cook? We drive to work and we drive home. We order things on the internet. We don’t know where it’s been, where it’s made, how it got here,” she says from her sunny Brooklyn studio, where she prepares her dishes and records her live shows.', 'Roe says we need to address this complacency.', '“It’s making us feel comfortable in mindlessness,” she says. “We’re just scarfing down things, we don’t understand the labor. We say ‘oh, I love brioche.’ It takes literally 36 hours to make a loaf of brioche! So I just want people to insert a little bit of discomfort into their lives to end up being a more mindful person.”', 'For Roe, “everything is political, food is political.” She says that cooking is the most human activity a person can do, explaining “there’s no other species that does it.', ' She wants people to reflect and fight for change.', '“We are all suffering some facet of trauma, and food just felt kind of like the simplest way for me to go about healing,” she says. Roe grew up in a difficult environment, and the kitchen was always her safe space. “My mom is a drug addict,” she explains. “Every single person struggling with addiction deserves redemption. It is a sickness. It’s really not their fault.” For Roe, the blame should not be placed on the individual: “Instead of saying horrible things about people experiencing addiction, I think we need to hold these big pharma companies accountable, we need to hold the systems accountable, the institutions accountable. I see people on the internet mad that someone is eating meat. You can’t be mad that the person is eating meat. Culturally, we’re taught to eat meat. It’s not the person, it’s the system.”', 'Roe is also an anti-racist activist. It’s an issue she discusses in her Pillow Talk sessions on Instagram, an intimate conversation series where she and her followers discuss their experiences. “You can’t speak monolithically about anything, and definitely not about race,” she says. “Racism is not an opinion. Racism is real, xenophobia is real.”', 'Before she set out on her own, Roe worked in a number of upscale restaurants, where she was discriminated against for being a woman and Black. But she says a lot has changed since then. “In my generation, in 2008, it was very rough, but now I believe the United States is really doing a great job about not just centering women in the kitchen, but highlighting them and acknowledging them.”', 'Recognition is important, she stresses. Roe is direct and speaks with confidence. That caught the attention of the organizers of the ', ', the prestigious annual fashion event. In 2021, Roe was one of 10 New York chefs chosen to help curate the menu for the event.', '“It just felt so great to finally see not just the cooks being acknowledged [at the Met Gala 2021] for what we were making, but also to be allowed into the fashion conversation. Fashion and food have been intersected since fashion and food were a thing. Food is just a medium for creativity. Just like fashion. It’s all art,” she says.', 'And like everything, they are both wrapped up in politics. She explains: “The very idea that a cook has to be wearing all white and has no fingernail polish, that it has to look a certain way, it’s such a dated concept. Who made those rules? Surely a man made those rules, like the idea of a chef coat. Those chef coats were never even really designed to fit a female body. At the end of the day, I feel like what I wear when I cook is my business. If I want to wear a rainbow apron and have blue eyeshadow on and red lipstick when I cook, that’s my prerogative. You have to show yourself as you are, whether you are a cook, a politician or a teacher. Whatever makes you feel good”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-05-28/more-skin-more-genders-mens-underwear-in-2022.html', 'date': '28 May 2022', 'title': 'More skin, more genders: Men’s underwear in 2022', 'author': 'Mario Ximénez', 'text_art': ['Journalist Mark Simpson christened it ', ', a mix between sport and porn. “Sport is the new gay porn. Sportsmen on this side of the Atlantic are increasingly openly acknowledging and flirting with their gay fans,” wrote Simpson in 2006 in ', ' magazine, mentioning David Beckham and Freddie Ljungberg: ripped, handsome men on the playing field had become unadulterated objects of lust.', 'In the three decades that have passed since Simpson penned his article on ', ' what was previously an implicit allusion in sports advertising is today ', '. Álvaro Ramos is the founder of On Tracks, a brand of underwear and sportswear with an aesthetic that combines homoeroticism and nostalgia: cotton t-shirts and briefs in solid colors, wrestling jumpsuits, ribbed boxer and crop top sets. “Brands today are focused on new patterns, designs and materials,” explains Ramos, who wants instead to create a kind of modern vintage look for On Tracks. The ads for the brand show men’s bodies intertwined as if wrestling, and muscular men in sports socks and underwear.', 'Men have reached a point where they can express themselves personally through clothing, says Ramos. They are “breaking with certain canons” of fashion and appearance and not afraid to be themselves. On Tracks echoes the boldness of other contemporary men’s underwear brands, such as Leak NYC, Menagerié or Wicked Mmm which caters to all genders, their motto being: “Your gender expression is all that matters.”', 'An open-minded approach that has also reached mass-reach firms such as Rihanna’s Savage x Fenty line which, according to ', ', launched its first men’s collection in 2020 and sold out in 12 hours. For the singer’s brand, men who are corpulent, bald or paunchy (or all of the above), pose in gear that once upon a time would have only been seen on a Victoria’s Secret model: red briefs, semi-transparent shirts, satin halters.', 'When Tom Ford took the reins at Gucci in the mid-1990s, he was known for putting the male body in the foreground. “I believe we live in a culture that objectifies women, draping them naked over anything it wants to sell,” Ford told ', ' in 2019. “But as soon as it’s a man on show, there’s a real phobia and everyone’s outraged. I knew nudity’s controversial, but we had to go over this sexist cliché.” [sic]', 'The male eroticism of Ford’s Gucci campaigns has a parallel in this latest breed of men’s underwear brands, which emerged as a reaction to an aesthetic that seemed stuck at Mark Wahlberg for Calvin Klein, his boxers peeking out over denim, or coloured briefs with their logo on the elastic band. Álvaro Ramos says that “often we conceive of clothing as something we should wear, period, but we forget that it can make us feel ourselves and even part of a larger group. Being able to feel sexy is just another step along the way.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-05-28/how-to-cook-eggplant.html', 'date': '28 May 2022', 'title': 'Queen of summer: Cooking with eggplants', 'author': 'Mònica Escudero', 'text_art': ['At EL PAÍS we like them in every way, shape and form: spreadable in sandwiches, chunky in omelets, or velvety in stews. Here follows our ode to eggplant.', 'Eggplants are usually classified by their shapes and colors: the most cultivated include the Paula, Diva or Cava varieties, which are dark purple in color and neither too flat nor too elongated in shape. The round ones like Bonica (Catalan variety), Rondona or Black Beauty have a flattened shape and are quite productive varieties, with fruits weighing 300-400 grams and some weighing up to a kilo.', 'Then there are the striped varieties such as Leire, Angela or Sicilian, easy to recognize by their striking combination of colors ranging from white to purple, increasingly easy to find in greengrocers as they can be grown over an extended season. Within the elongated eggplants are the varieties Mirabelle, Helena, Mileda or Violet – originating from Asia, thin and with sweet flesh –, while a variety called “meter” can exceed 40 cm per fruit.', 'Good specimens should have a smooth skin and tight flesh, be heavy in proportion to their size and not yield easily when squeezed (this may mean that they have many seeds). The stem, or peduncle, is also a good indicator of freshness: if it is dark green and looks fresh, it is a good sign; if it tends to be gray and looks limp, pick another one. Be careful because these stems can have small prickly thorns (if you thought that “Stinging Peduncle” could be a drag name, that makes two of us), although most of the varieties grown today have been domesticated and do not have these thorns. You can keep them in the fridge – in the least cold part –, and never in plastic bags: if you want to extend their shelf life, pickle them, sterilize them in jars and you will be able to enjoy them for a long time.', 'The flesh of eggplants has an intrinsic bitterness that is pleasant when they are at their best, but can become too harsh, for example if they have a lot of seeds or if they have been harvested a long time ago and have become soft. Not all eggplants have to go through this process, but if you want to do it you can add a little salt on top and let them stand for half an hour, then drain the bitter water they have released (you can put them directly on a strainer to make it easier). Normally they are usually cut in slices before putting the salt on top, but you can also cut them in two lengthwise and leave them on a sieve face down: you will notice the difference. I have read that soaking them in cold water also works, though I have never tried it.', 'One of the characteristics of eggplant flesh is its sponginess – a texture which is good for many things, though it will absorb a lot of oil if you don’t use the right technique.', 'Try eating your fried eggplant simply with honey or with quince mayonnaise; seasoned with citrus and your favorite spices. You can also stuff them, Cretan-style, with vegetables and feta (although prepare plenty of oil, which you will need).', 'For battered eggplant, slice the fruit thickly, dipping the slices in beer and then dredging them in wheat or chickpea flour before frying them.', 'You could bread them with egg and breadcrumbs, but I do not think this is the best way: the bread burns easily before the eggplant is cooked, and if you lower the temperature to prevent burning, the vegetable gets soaked in oil.', 'At 180ºC, or a little more if the oven is very full, we can cook eggplants, peppers, carrots, potatoes, ', ', onions and more, as long as we remember to take each thing out at the right time. You can also roast eggplants on the barbecue, and if they get burned or the fire goes out too soon, pop them in the microwave for three or four minutes to soften the texture.', 'Wash the eggplants and have metal tongs handy. Over medium heat, place the eggplants on the burners, resting on the grills. Turn them every five minutes so that they cook through; they are ready when they are soft all over and have blackened skin. Add a drizzle of oil, a creamy cheese, salt, pepper and lemon zest or some fresh herbs', 'Another advantage of roasted eggplants is that you can prepare more elaborate dishes with them: dressed with yogurt and romesco, stuffed with a textured soybean stew, gratinated with cheese or bathed in garam masala curry. Roasted eggplants are also a must for escalivada, ', ' made with onions and peppers.', ', you can do many of the things we have mentioned in the previous sections. You can roast eggplants, placing them in the air fryer and turning them over from time to time; you can spray with oil and fry them, or even make a kind of “dry” ratatouille. Remember, it is important to stir frequently, so the food is in contact with the hot air.', 'Stew eggplants to cut down cooking time, cutting them into small pieces, so they become tender more quickly, added to sauces, wine, broth, water, or other vegetables that release their juices.', 'Cut four eggplants lengthwise and put them flesh side down in a frying pan or casserole over medium heat, with a drizzle of oil. Leave them for three or four minutes and then pour a small can of chopped tomatoes on top. Add a little more oil, salt, spices or herbs to taste (I use za’atar), cover, but not completely, leaving the lid off a small part, and cook over medium heat for about 12 minutes.', 'After that time, uncover more so that the water evaporates and the sauce concentrates, between five and 10 minutes more. Once off the heat, add a clove of garlic, finely chopped and well distributed so that it cooks with the residual heat, a little more of the spices and some fresh herbs (I used parsley). They can be served on toast, with brown rice or couscous or eaten cold, as a salad.', 'Grilled eggplant is simple and relatively quick but has one risk: they dry out, and can end up looking like jerky. To avoid that, use the juiciest and freshest eggplants, cut them somewhat less than a centimeter, and cook over medium heat in a griddle or frying pan with very little or no oil. You can also marinate the eggplants with spices such as curry powder, paprika, and garlic before grilling to add flavor.', 'It may sound strange, but boiling eggplant is a very valid cooking method for certain types of recipes; either steamed in the microwave for about 15 minutes or boiling in water, previously cut in thick cubes and draining well afterwards. With them you can prepare pasta sauces and tasty Moroccan zaluk. After having tried it this way, I dare say boiling eggplant would also work in dishes that call for roasted eggplant, because it is still mellow and has a much more pleasant texture than it may seem.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-05-31/locomia-spanish-pops-craziest-story.html', 'date': '31 May 2022', 'title': 'Locomía: Spanish pop’s craziest story', 'author': 'Carlos Marcos', 'text_art': ['It has all the elements of a familiar story: sex, betrayal, drugs, fights, death, success and a descent into hell. And it has its own particularities: handheld fans, pointed shoes, songs that became hits in Spain and Latin America, and jail. The creator of Locomía, Xavier Font, sports an ethnic-themed tattoo that covers his bald head. He had it done right after he got out of jail, after he was sentenced in 2012 to three years in prison ', '. Authorities had found ecstasy pills in his house. They also found bottles of poppers, but the substance had evaporated, so Font could not be charged for their possession. “The pills belonged to a friend. The popper bottles were mine. I sold them online to acquaintances. I am repeating the same thing that everyone in prison says, but in my case it’s true. I am innocent. It was an injustice.” Font spent three months in prison and was rewarded for good behavior: he enjoyed his freedom during the day but had to spend each night in a Barcelona detention center. When he was released in 2015, he ', ', married his mother-in-law (“so she could get her papers”) and stayed there for six years. Such a striking chain of events is typical of Font’s life.', 'Font joined EL PAÍS for an interview in Barcelona in the company of his husband, Harold, a 24-year-old Cuban who he married almost five years ago. “I go around the world looking for ', '” [the band’s name is a play on the words “locura mía,” or “my madness”]. But now that I am 60 years old, I hope this will be the last one,” Font explains in a hoarse voice. An upcoming Movistar Plus+ documentary, which premieres on June 22, retells Locomía’s extraordinary story. Titled simply ', ', and subtitled “the greatest soap opera ever danced,” the film, directed by Jorge Laplace, consists of three 45-minute episodes. It features twenty-some voices, and Font’s story forms the backbone of the film. Sitting in a hotel in the center of Barcelona, where he lives, Font says that he wants to turn his husband into the next locomía, although Harold acts fidgety. “We’ll see, we’ll see…,” the young Cuban hems and haws. “He is my last dragon. I am a headhunter. I see potential artists. I’m a fucking fantasy maker. That’s how it all started,” says Font.', 'That’s not quite how it all started, though. Xavier’s father and mother were rural landowners. Their six sons enjoyed a comfortable life in the family’s sprawling farmhouse in Sant Boi. “We had all shiny new things. My father squandered a fortune at the casino. He was a gambler. With my mother I always got along well and received a lot of love. Both of them accepted my sexuality without any trouble. I was never in the closet. My father would come into my room and see me with my boyfriend. He took it in stride,” he says. He bought fabrics at the Mercat dels Encants and made tunics, jackets and coats. He was influenced by the style of early-eighties British New Romantic bands, including Duran Duran, Depeche Mode and Spandau Ballet. But he took everything to the extreme: shoulder pads went XXL. One day, at an museum, Font noticed some pointed shoes from the 14th century and went wild. He made his own. He didn’t want to be a designer: he created clothes for himself, then wore them in the most modern places in Barcelona. He liked to attract attention. He wanted all eyes on him. “The shoes were key. People couldn’t stop looking at them.”', 'Font settled in Ibiza in 1984 seeking to create a subculture scene. He had met a Dutchman, Gard Passchier, with whom he had a relationship, as well as Manuel Arjona, a young man from a conservative family of 10 siblings. Over the phone, Arjona says, “When I ', ' it seemed like another planet. I came from Viladecans, where I had to hide my sexual identity. And on the island, if you were a boy and you wore a skirt, no one even looked at you. It was a wild change.” And he recalls that “at that time, Font had a great power of seduction, both professionally and personally.” Font had romantic relationships with both Gard and Manuel. But they needed one more locomía: the ringleader’s brother, Luis Font. The four settled in a house in Ibiza. They designed their flashy outfits and went to the trendy nightclub Ku. They began to attract attention, and the owners hired them. They were paid a million pesetas a month (€6,000 at the time). What was their job? Dancing on tables, showing off, flirting. They performed a dance with fans, which Font designed after seeing some gay New Yorkers dance in a venue in Sitges: “They had small fans, and I noticed a movement that captivated me. I got home and started building. As I am an exaggerated I invented the XXL fans. I got the movement with nine rods that I took from the material of one of my brothers, who worked in model airplanes. I made some holes and used my mother’s sheets.” Font had a nose for business, and he began registering everything legally: the shoes, the suits, the fans, the name Locomía.', 'The group of Ibiza ', ' grew to 16, between members of the quartet who came and went, designers and secretaries. They functioned as a commune. Font was a lover of several of them, sometimes simultaneously. “I had a harem and I invented polyamory in 1984. I could never get enough. Today it’s sad to say, but while I was in a relationship with Manolo and Gard, I was going home with another new guy. I was the forerunner of the whole movement and had a lot of unpaid employees. Of course, they did not lack anything,” he points out without blushing.', 'The timing was important. Spain’s ruling Socialist Party (PSOE), in government since 1982, was seeking to offer a modern and unprejudiced image of Spain. Madrid’s countercultural movement, ', ' was in full swing, and ', ' had just released his fourth film, his most successful to date, ', '. Locomía had a place in this movement, particularly because they were based in hedonistic Ibiza. They represented an aesthetic and sexual freedom that captivated young people in search of references outside of their oppressive classical education. Newspapers covered the rise of Locomía, and they became an attraction on the island that was frequented by stars including Harrison Ford, Grace Jones, Boy George and Freddie Mercury. During a 1987 birthday visit by the Queen frontman, the singer showed up at the boutique that Font had opened in Ibiza. He bought two suits at $1,000 apiece, and Font gave him a pair of his famous pointy shoes. Mercury liked them so much that he wore them in one of his last videos with Queen, the 1991 ', '.', 'After four successful summers at Ku, the group needed to leave the island. Manuel Arjona was having serious drug problems. Their house burned down with all the costumes inside (Font suggests that the fire was caused by people jealous of Locomía’s success). And the dance and modeling group received an offer to become singers. José Luis Gil, then president of major recording company Hispavox, appeared on the scene. He was behind Locomía’s ascent.', 'Gil had notable experience discovering artists and getting their careers off the ground. He had worked with Miguel Bosé, Enrique and Ana, Rafaella Carrá, Nacha Pop, Alaska and José Luis Perales, all household names in Spain. He was known for his nose for future stars. Gil discovered Locomía after attending one of their shows in Ibiza. “I like your visual concept,” he told them. “Have you considered the possibility of singing?” They reached an agreement.', 'Gil’s mission was to turn Locomía’s anarchy into a business. Today, Gil describes the project over the phone: “After four years in Ibiza rubbing shoulders with the most modern folks in Europe, Locomía was just a commune of entertainers directed by a leader of dubious morality who had their house burned down and were expelled from Ku. My offer to turn them into a music group saved them from separating.” And the conflicts began between Font and Gil, two incompatibly strong personalities.', 'Gil won the first battle. Font left the group (“I didn’t like to dance and wear the clothes that Gil told me to wear”), but he kept the brand and continued receiving a salary. The group had to have four members at all times, so Font was replaced. “People think we were just four handsome, tall boys. But there is a lot of work behind that. When Gil arrived, we spent two years taking dance and singing classes. We became professionals. We never stopped working,” explains Arjona. Gil signed on the producer Pedro Vidal, and they began to make music. The first album, ', ' (1989), was a hit. Its songs included ', ' (with its famous line “Disco, Ibiza, Locomía, moda, Ibiza, Locomía, sexy, Ibiza, Locomía”) ', ' and ', '. “The idea was to create a Spanish-language band who played dance music, since there was nothing like that at the time,” says Gil. Javier Adrados, biographer of Mecano and La Unión, was at the launch of the first album in Madrid: “What we saw that night at [Madrid nightclub] Joy Eslava was very relevant. Absolutely modern. There were some cultural phenomena in Spain, such as Almodóvar or Alaska, who opened a thousand and one closets, but Locomía was the definitive door to an ideal world that until then hadn’t existed. For the first time, gay power took over ', ' and, more importantly, the festivals in the most remote towns in Spain.”', 'Gil advised the group members to be ambiguous when talking about their sexuality. “But I never restricted their freedom,” he emphasizes. The group was a perfect fit for variety shows hosted by TV stars of the day like Concha Velasco and José Luis Moreno, who drew large audiences. As Gil’s group ascended, Font grieved (“I had left my herd in Gil’s hands”), brooded over his revenge and continued to get paid for doing nothing.', 'Under Gil’s guidance, the quartet made the leap to Latin America. From Argentina to Mexico to Peru, they ignited a craze. Hundreds of girls waited outside airports for their arrival. Fans climbed the walls of their hotels and burst into tears at their concerts. Teenagers snuck into their beds. Gil’s strategy of keeping the band members’ sexual orientations quiet had had worked: 80% of the fans were female. After the second album, ', ' (1991), came out, Gil received a hefty contract to enter the United States market. Since Font was based in Miami, Gil decided that he should handle the matter. That’s when the bomb exploded. It was 1992. The iconoclast once again employed his power of seduction: Font convinced the four of them to break the contract with Gil. “Gil was stealing from us,” Font argues. “And I felt screwed because Gil had taken my boys from me, and I wanted to screw him over.” Gil contests Font’s account: “The boys’ lack of experience gave Font an unhealthy control, which he exercised thinking only of his ego and his own benefit. We learned in a fax from Miami that the group was leaving the company and breaking their commitments.”', 'Manuel Arjona still regrets that decision today. “We were ungrateful to Gil. It was a big mistake to break the contract. That ended the group. We were four kids who let ourselves be fooled by Font.” But the war had only begun. Gil, who owed the record company another album like ', ', recruited three new guys, who joined Luis Font, Xavier’s brother. “My brother is the Darth Vader of Locomía. He went over to the dark side out of ambition and power,” says Luis about Xavier, justifying his decision. For almost a year, two Locomías battled each other through concert boycotts, calls to industry bosses and lawsuits. The battle culminated in an iconic pop culture moment: Gil’s Locomía was slated to perform on a major Mexican television program, ', '. Fans, encouraged by Font on the phone from Miami, grabbed one of the members by the hair until he bled. Everything was broadcast live.', 'In Locomía’s lowest moments, the group became the target of homophobic mockery. Both versions of the group fell apart, and Locomía’s career came to an end in 1993. The group’s fall coincided with the first cracks in modern Spain: unemployment, corruption and demonstrations occupied more and more space on the news.', 'The war between Gil and Font continues to rage. Font owns the group’s name, and Gil owns the songs. Locomía’s members have been replaced over and over, and their performances are inconsistent–not to mention other misfortunes: in the summer of 2018, two members, 46-year-olds Santos Blanco and Frank Romero, died one month apart. Gil has warned Font against using the songs’ recordings, which he owns, in concerts. Locomía has been lipsynching in their performances for some time. “If he continues with that attitude, I will sue him,” threatens Gil, who is ambivalent about the Movistar documentary, in which he appears. “There is little music and plenty of sensationalism. That’s why I’ve asked for my name to be removed as an associate producer.”', 'Manuel Arjona may be the key character in this story. He was the first locomía, and he has been involved in the project for 35 years. “I have felt used by Font. For him, Locomía is just a business. For me it is work, but it is also my life. The history of Locomía is a group effort. It would not have happened without everyone’s contributions. Five years ago, I had to quit because I wasn’t earning money and I had to take care of my parents.” His father died a year ago, and now he takes care of his 98-year-old mother. Arjona, now 55, is in negotiations with Font for future projects. “But we have to talk. I cannot be an employee of Locomía. We have to be partners.”', 'Font, for his part, trusts that the documentary will reactivate Locomía with him at the helm and with the faces of four new young men. “I also have signed for a reality show in Miami to look for the four ideal locomías. But what I really want is ', '. And above all, I am owed a Grammy. I’m not going to stop until I get it,” he says, waving his ringed hands. The fan clubs that still survive in Spain and Latin America cling to a hope: the locomías are condemned to get along, even though they haven’t succeeded in three decades.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/culture/2022-06-01/johnny-depp-vs-amber-heard-the-form-the-jury-will-use-to-reach-its-verdict.html', 'date': '01 Jun 2022', 'title': 'Johnny Depp vs Amber Heard: The form the jury will use to reach its verdict', 'author': 'Miguel Jiménez', 'text_art': ['The contentious ', ' is now in the hands of the jury. The seven-member panel heard the closing arguments on May 27, and met to deliberate for the first time. Since then, it has concluded two days of deliberations without reaching a decision. The jury will resume deliberations on Wednesday morning, but no one knows how long it will take the jury to reach a verdict.', 'As the end of the trial draws near, people have been waiting in huge lines and even camping overnight outside the courthouse to secure a seat in one of the most-talked-about cases in recent history. It is not a criminal case; the jury will not rule on the allegations of abuse and assault that have been raised in the trial. Instead, they will focus on the subject of the lawsuit: defamation.', 'Depp is suing Heard for $50 million for defaming him in an ', 'in 2018, in which she described herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse.” Although Depp is not mentioned by name, he argues that it was obvious who she was referring to. Heard responded to Depp’s complaint by countersuing him for $100 million, claiming that his lawyer smeared her by calling her a liar. While Heard maintains that Depp ', ' and even sexually assaulted her with a bottle, the actor says he ', ' and was, in fact, the victim in the relationship.', 'To help the jury reach a verdict, the judge has provided the jurors with a special form, ', '. The form does not include the words “guilty” or “innocent,” since the jury has not been asked to judge a crime. They must decide whether either the actor or actress has been defamed by the other.', 'If they rule that Heard defamed Depp and/or that Depp defamed Heard, they must decide on how much compensatory and punitive damages to award.', 'With respect to Depp’s claim, the jury must decide if three specific statements in Heard’s ', 'op-ed were defamatory:', '- “I spoke up against sexual violence – and faced our culture’s wrath. That has to change.”', '- “Then two years ago, I became a public figure representing domestic abuse, and I felt the full force of our culture’s wrath for women who speak out.”', '- “I had the rare vantage point of seeing, in real time, how institutions protect men accused of abuse.”', 'With respect to Heard’s claim, the lawsuit focuses on statements made by Depp’s former lawyer Adam Waldman in ', 'Although the comments were not made by the actor, Heard argues that he said them on his behalf. The actress’s lawyer also made clear that she is not seeking $100 million in compensation, and only set that amount to send a message to her ex-husband.', 'In her case, the jury is asked if the following statements were defamatory:', '- “Amber Heard and her friends in the media use fake sexual violence allegations as both a sword and a shield, depending on their needs. They have selected some of her sexual violence hoax ‘facts’ as the sword, inflicting them on the public and Mr. Depp.”', '- “Quite simply this was an ambush, a hoax. They set Mr. Depp up by calling the cops but the first attempt didn’t do the trick. The officers came to the penthouses, thoroughly searched and interviewed, and left after seeing no damage to face or property. So Amber and her friends spilled a little wine and roughed the place up, got their stories straight under the direction of a lawyer and publicists, and then placed a second call to 911.”', '- ”[W]e have reached the beginning of the end of Ms. Heard’s abuse hoax against Johnny Depp.”', 'For each of the six statements, the jurors are asked a series of “yes or no” questions to determine whether all the elements of defamation have been proven, such as “The statement was false” and “The defamation implication was designed and intended.” If “yes” has been answered to all questions, the jury must set an amount for compensatory and punitive damages.', 'On the final day of the trial, Depp’s lawyers asked the jury to assess Heard’s credibility, arguing the actress was the real abuser in the relationship. Meanwhile Heard’s lawyers claimed her statements were protected by freedom of expression, which is enshrined in the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. They argued that even if the jury did not believe the actress was a victim of', ', if they found evidence of psychological or financial abuse, she would be protected by freedom of expression. The case is now in the hands of the jury.', 'The ruling, however, can be appealed. The case is being heard in Fairfax County District court in Virginia. This location has been chosen because ', ' is printed there and because the newspaper also has its digital servers in the town. But some lawyers have questioned Fairfax’s jurisdiction, given that both Heard and Depp are based in California. While it does not seem likely, the possibility of a new Depp vs Heard trial being heard in the next few years cannot be ruled out.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-05-31/can-exercise-heal-the-mind.html', 'date': '31 May 2022', 'title': 'Can exercise heal the mind?', 'author': 'Daniel Mediavilla', 'text_art': ['For as long as humans have existed, we have had a different survival mode than other animals – adapting the world to our needs as much as possible rather than conforming to it. This capacity for transformation has made humans a successful species, but progress has come at a cost. The invention of agriculture has led to the emergence of great cities, literature and all the glories of civilization, but it has also drastically reduced food diversity and tied most people to land cultivation. What’s more, in recent decades, accelerating technological progress and sedentary lifestyles have multiplied the rates of obesity and diabetes. Modern life also appears to be causing more ', ' and sleep disorders.', 'But according to Jennifer Heisz, a brain health specialist at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, there is an answer to these problems: exercise. In her recently published book, ', ', the neurologist explains how physical activity can improve mental health. Her argument is based on her own experience as an exercise convert, as well as scientific research. Heisz, who directs the research institute NeuroFitLab, recounts in her book how exercise – which she came to love at around the age of 40 – helped her while she was going through a separation. It had such a beneficial effect that she decided to redirect the focus of her research to how movement influences the brain.', '“My evidence-based, how-to approach will help you enhance your own brain health through exercise,” she says in the book. “You will emerge fully equipped with an exercise skill set to help you achieve greater resiliency, a more positive outlook, sharper focus, enhanced productivity, and more meaningful relationships. Yes, you can have it all!”', 'Heisz begins by explaining why exercise can be so onerous, particularly at first. For the first time in human history, too much food is more dangerous than too little. The inclination to avoid wasteful expenditures of energy and to take advantage of all available resources have helped humans survive and pass on their genes for hundreds of thousands of years. But in today’s world of abundance and longevity, these tendencies are now posing a problem. An estimated 1.5 million people worldwide die each year from diabetes, a disease that was almost non-existent in pre-industrial societies. An', 'also put forward the “active grandparent hypothesis” – the idea that physical activity in later years helped to expand human lifespans.', 'In her book, Heisz argues that exercise is “medicine” and each person must put in the effort that is right for them, without comparing themselves to others. According to data from NeuroFitLab, light exercise such as walking for half an hour three times a week reduces anxiety, and these benefits can grow progressively by increasing the intensity or duration of the sessions. Heisz also makes reference to studies such as a 2018 paper published in ', ', which found that one hour of physical activity a week could prevent up to 12% of cases of depression. It did not, however, find a link between exercise and reduced anxiety.', 'The director of NeurofitLab also raises the possibility of', ', at least in some cases. This type of medication has been prescribed with increasing frequency over the last two decades, “especially for mild forms of depression that may not event meet clinical criteria,” says Heisz in the book. According to the researcher, many antidepressants are made on the false assumption that “low serotonin causes all mood disturbances,” meaning they do not work for a significant percentage of people with depression or anxiety. For these mild mood disorders, Heisz believes it is best to assume that a certain level of distress can be overcome without the need for drugs.', 'Heisz attributes the positive impact of physical activity on mental health to the fact that exercise leads to the production of neuropeptide Y – a neurotransmitter linked to reduced anxiety –, and reduces the chronic inflammation linked to many types of depression. Although past studies have found tha', ', in some cases even having a greater effect than antidepressants, it has been difficult to show a causal relationship. Doubt was raised about whether a patient was able to overcome a mental health issue thanks to physical activity, or if it was because their condition was not that serious to begin with. But today, ', ' is providing further evidence for the causal link.', 'Mental health is a complex issue that is influenced by a wide range of biological and lifestyle factors, meaning it is difficult to assess how a specific person will respond to a particular treatment. According to Heisz, physical activity can improve sleep and focus, and help people break addiction. In these cases, lifestyle factors play a big role: people with mood disorders tend to consume more toxic substances which exacerbates the problem. If integrated into a routine, exercise can provide structure as well as physiological benefits such as reduced chronic inflammation and improved sleep.', 'According to Rafael Tabarés, a professor of psychiatry at Spain’s University of Valencia, “the evidence that physical activity has a beneficial effect on mental health is very powerful.” He explains: “Whether you exercise by walking in your free time, going to work, or in a more systematic way at a gym, it can be useful for preventing the symptoms of depression or anxiety.” Tabarés also points to studies that show that physical activity can complement pharmacological treatments for depression and reduce the risk of relapse when the treatment comes to an end. “From my point of view, the big problem we have is that, despite the quantity and quality of evidence of the benefit of physical exercise, it is not used with patients,” he says. In his opinion, doctors need time to ', ', “as this type of activity would have to be administered by physical education professionals or physiotherapists.”', 'Transforming the system into one that not only treats disease but also ', ' requires greater resources and better coordination. It’s a step that could greatly improve health outcomes. Exercise, for example, has already been found to have a positive effect in treating some diseases such as cancer. Alejandro Lucía, a physician and physiology researcher at the European University of Madrid, has observed the benefits of exercise as a complement to chemotherapy in cancer patients, and he believes it would also be useful for mental illnesses. Like Tabarés, Lucía believes that professionals who specialize in this area should be involved with a patient’s treatment. He explains: “Exercise has better results with supervision, particularly in patients who may have greater difficulties, such as those suffering from mental illness.”', 'Exercise can have a positive effect on the body and mind. But for many, the path to a more active life is not easy and there will be a better chance of success with patience and outside help. As Heisz explains in her book, 40% of people who start exercising stop within three months. ', ' also show that people with depressive or anxiety disorders have a greater tendency to lead sedentary lives.', ' has a lot of advice on how to develop an exercise routine. It suggests finding an activity that you enjoy, and one that you can do with other people. It recommends that you go at your own pace and focus on the process, not the end goal. As Tabarés and Lucía note, for people with diagnosed illnesses and who have more difficulty being physically active, change will come when the health system has a more holistic understanding of wellbeing, and incorporates professionals can tap into the positive health effects of exercise.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-05-31/the-software-that-can-detect-if-your-photos-have-been-faked.html', 'date': '31 May 2022', 'title': 'The software that can detect if your photos have been faked', 'author': 'María Fernández', 'text_art': ['A talent for deceit and a few photos were enough for Israeli scammer Simon Leviev to make millions of dollars on Tinder. He seemed to live a life of luxury in a mansion overlooking the sea. Photos showed him flying on private jets, driving luxury cars and vacationing in fabulous hotels. The photos he shared on the dating app looked real. However, combined with a dose of romance, they were enough to ruin dozens of women who didn’t think twice about lending him money that he never paid back. This is the story told in the Netflix documentary, ', ', and also in lectures by Fernando Pérez-González, a professor at Spain’s University of Vigo, who leads the research team that created a software application called Fawrensian. The application detects whether ', ' and can analyze more than one million documents a day. The technology, which is aimed at combatting ', ', has been licensed by a number of companies (including some in Silicon Valley) to ', ' of multimedia content such as personal documents.', 'It all started 15 years ago with a question. “We had been working on image watermarking, which basically consists of hiding information in photographs to protect copyrights and the like,” says Pérez-González in his university office. The team then started thinking about how they could determine if a photograph had been taken by a particular camera. “We’re talking about a specific camera, not just the camera model.” They discovered that a camera’s sensors have imperfections that are reflected in the images, but are undetectable to the naked eye. “It’s like a fingerprint.” That fingerprint can be extracted from a group of photos, including those taken with a cellphone camera. “Then, you can identify the camera that took the photo.”', 'Fawrensian can be used for forensic applications. For example, if the police seize a pedophile’s hard drive, they can determine how many different cameras have taken all the images stored on the hard drive. It’s important to obtain several photos because some low quality images will not allow the extraction of a fingerprint. This process translates into different brackets of probability, similar to those produced by DNA tests to determine whether a genetic sample belongs to an individual. “It’s pretty amazing. Some people call it photographic ballistics, because it’s very similar to ballistic tests that can identify the gun that fired a specific bullet.”', 'Forensic tools have adapted to market demand over time. “We started out thinking about how to identify fake news, but the real money is in ', ' (KYC) processes, such as when a lender asks for an image of your ID card when you apply for a loan. There is a lot at stake here and companies need new tools.” Fawrensian looks for changes to the properties of digital documents in order to detect inconsistencies. There are many examples of altered images circulating on Twitter, such as a discontinued Benetton advertising campaign that used a photo of Pope Benedict XVI kissing a Muslim imam on the mouth. “When compressing a jpg image file, for example, a number of very specific properties are recorded in the image. We can detect traces of that double image compression. Many social media platforms re-compress the photos we all upload, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But if you send a photo of your ID card to a bank, there should be no double compression. We are able to detect and warn you when this happens.”', 'David Vázquez, a researcher with the Fawrensian team, demonstrates the software to EL PAÍS. He changes one number on a photo of his ID card, which takes about five seconds. The change is imperceptible. Vázquez then uses Fawrensian to analyze the image and convert it into a heat map showing the probability of manipulation for each pixel in the image. The heat map clearly reveals the change to the ID card. Vázquez grabs some other images from Twitter posts and processes them through Fawrensian. The program soon detects the manipulation of a photo posted about the 2019 pro-independence protests in Catalonia. One would think that many people would pay to use Fawrensian to check ', ', but there is no plan to market it to individual users. “It would be much more difficult for us to manage. How often would each customer use it? They probably wouldn’t even be willing to pay for it. And we would have to staff a customer service department. It would be a different business model than the one we have now,” say the Fawrensian team.', 'Developed with financial support from the Galician regional government in Spain, Fawrensian is currently licensed only to businesses. Five people from the University of Vigo’s Center for Telecommunication Technology Research (', ') developed and support the application. The team hopes to use product revenue to repay their financial backers. “Our objective is for people to use this product so that we can continue to solve other problems. We hope that the university will continue to market the technologies it develops.” They believe that in a few years, the university will be able to recoup the $377,000 it invested in developing Fawrensian.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:16 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-05-26/teleportation-breakthrough-paves-the-way-for-quantum-internet.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-05-26/teleportation-breakthrough-paves-the-way-for-quantum-internet.html', 'date': '26 May 2022', 'title': 'Teleportation breakthrough paves the way for quantum internet', 'author': 'Raúl Limón', 'text_art': ['Quantum computing is advancing in both tiny and giant steps. Tiny, because what is achieved involves unique breakthroughs of limitations; giant, because each stride opens up a ', '.', 'One such step has been taken by a research team led by Ronald Hanson, a physicist at the QuTech laboratory at Delft University in the Netherlands, which has succeeded in teleporting quantum information via a rudimentary network with no direct connection between sender and receiver.', 'This quantum leap,', ' means we are one step closer to a quantum internet which would then lead to an entirely new kind of computer that could carry out tasks that would take supercomputers thousands of years in a matter of minutes, paving the way for huge progress in the realms of medicine and artificial intelligence.', 'Basic teleportation had already been achieved – Hanson’s team and others have already demonstrated it – but only between two points, or adjacent nodes, named Alice and Bob. Now, Hanson’s team have managed to link this pair at a distance with a third, Charlie. The trio form the first network that, although rudimentary, allows us to contemplate a quantum internet, with infinite possibilities for computation and for observing a hitherto unknown world.', 'Explaining the relevance of this primordial quantum network, Hanson says: “Regarding quantum communication, our work shows how teleportation can be used in a real network environment, with nodes that have no direct connection. In a future quantum internet, such teleportation will be the main way to transfer quantum information over large distances. Our network can be viewed as a modular quantum computer [where the nodes are the modules]; our work shows that nodes can exchange quantum information, even if they are not on a single chip.”', 'To understand the progress made by Hanson’s team, we must look back at the previous achievements in this field. The first of these was the demonstration that teleportation is possible in the quantum world. The late Israeli physicist, Asher Peres, who died in 2005, anticipated the phenomenon in the ', ' in 1993. When a reporter asked him if quantum teleportation could transport the soul as well as the body, the physicist replied: “Not the body, just the soul.”', 'This anecdote is significant for understanding quantum teleportation, where it is not matter that is transported through a medium but the information that confers its properties. As Hanson explains: “The key feature of quantum teleportation is that the', ' itself is actually teleported: it does not travel through space or fiber. The entangled pair of qubits, which is the resource for executing the teleportation – the ‘teleporter’ – is prepared by using a signal through fiber.” Another term for this phenomenon was coined by Albert Einstein: “Spooky action at a distance.” He himself deemed it impossible.', 'Thus, when one particle is previously entangled with another, both cease to be individual particles with defined states of their own and become a system with a single wave function. And any measurement that occurs in Alice is replicated instantaneously in Bob. This is how Hanson explains it: “Measuring one of them immediately causes the other to also choose a state; in a sense, measuring one also measures the other. This is very different from qubit manipulation: if we rotate Alice, nothing happens to Bob. Therefore, the spooky action at a distance [that Einstein spoke of] only refers to the instantaneous correlation in the measurement results. If other things besides measurement were also transferred instantaneously, it would actually be possible to send messages faster than the speed of light.”', 'Teleportation has been under experiment for a quarter of a century, starting with photons and moving on to atoms and more complex systems. Five years ago, Jian-Wei Pan, the leading researcher in this field who works at China’s University of Science and Technology, succeeded along with his team in teleporting photons from Earth to the artificial satellite Micius, orbiting at an altitude of 1,400 kilometers.', 'Jian-Wei Pan himself', 'how these achievements, which are fundamental to quantum computing, have to overcome a “formidable challenge” in the shape of the presence of noise and imperfections. “We need to use quantum error correction and fault-tolerant operations to overcome the noise and scale up the system,” he said earlier this year.', 'If the ', ' can cause a quantum operation to fail on a singular computer in laboratory conditions, the problem is multiplied in a networked operation. And this has been Hanson and his team’s main achievement: efficient quantum teleportation between non-adjacent nodes in a network.', 'The Dutch researcher explains: “Noise and imperfections are a challenge for quantum information processing. In a quantum network, sending information across nodes could be done through the intermediate fibers, but that would make the quantum information subject to noise and fiber channel losses. In contrast, teleportation allows quantum information to be sent between distant nodes without interference from these sources of noise. Teleportation requires entanglement as a resource. Bob helps create that entanglement between Alice and Charlie, who do not share a direct physical connection.”', 'The process comes on the heels of previous research where Hanson got a network to function between adjacent nodes. The challenge was to add a third node and create a state between the three that showed quantum correlations.', 'In the new experiment, Alice and Charlie lack direct connection to each other, but both are connected to Bob. Alice and Bob’s quantum systems prepare the process using an intertwined state between each other, one which Bob stores, freeing him up to create an entanglement with Charlie. “After preparing an entanglement between Alice and Charlie, the state to be teleported is created and then executed,” says Hanson. “What happens then is something that is only possible in the quantum world: as a result of the measurement, the information disappears from Charlie’s side and immediately appears on Alice’s side.”', 'Juan José García Ripoll, research scientist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) Institute of Fundamental Physics and co-founder of Inspiration-Q, says the work of Hanson and his team is very important: “This is a very sophisticated experiment that demonstrates all the principles necessary for the creation of', ',” he says.', 'According to García Ripoll, “sending not only classical information [bits] but also quantum states [arbitrary qubit states] requires a mechanism to distribute an entangled state between two distant points and a quantum memory [memory qubit] to store the information to be transmitted while establishing this communication channel based on entanglement.”', 'Hanson’s experiment uses Nitrogen-Vacancy (NV) centers, “a type of diamond impurity that acts like a qubit and can be optically manipulated,” says García Ripoll. “Through the emission of photons, this qubit makes it possible to create long-distance entanglement.” An NV-center is a defect whereby a carbon atom in the diamond crystal lattice is replaced by a nitrogen atom (N) and a neighboring vacancy (V).', 'A single NV can detect a magnetic moment of a single molecule and has wide applications in quantum technology. According to García Ripoll, “the NV-center or color center can also talk to the magnetic moments of surrounding atoms and, in [Hanson’s] experiment, they use this to gain a quantum memory by passing the NV information to a nearby nuclear spin [in a carbon-13 isotope]. The information to be sent can be kept safe for a long time, freeing the NV to perform the task of establishing entanglement with another communication node.', '“Apart from the quality of the experiment, the demonstration of a sophisticated quantum communication setup with three nodes and very elaborate communication algorithms, lays the groundwork for its extension to scalable entanglement distribution and quantum communication setups that are very promising,” García Ripoll adds.', 'For Adán Cabello, a physicist at Seville University in southern Spain whose first measurement of a quantum sequence was recognized as one of the ', ', it is still too soon to speak of a quantum internet, although the experiment is significant as a teleport to a distant node.', 'Cabello attempts to explain the achievement in simplified terms. “You have a quantum state in a city that could be Seville and you want to send it to another city, say Madrid,” he says. “You need there to be a state of entangled qubits between Seville and Madrid. That is standard teleportation protocol. The interesting thing about the experiment is that the entanglement can only be established at a certain distance. Let’s say, in the example of the cities, it is 500 kilometers. If you want to send qubits from Seville to San Sebastián, you have to overcome the distance limitation. That’s what Hanson has managed: it’s no longer Seville-Madrid, it’s Seville-San Sebastián. The distance has been doubled.”', '“It’s a first review of what a network could be,” adds Cabello. “It’s no longer point-to-point; you can already start to involve more nodes. But to talk about the quantum internet is getting ahead of ourselves. Nevertheless, teleporting quantum information is very useful and will have many applications, no doubt about it.”', 'In the same vein, physicists Oliver Slattery and Yong-Su Kim highlight the breakthrough achieved by Hanson and his team as an important and “critical” step towards the creation of a secure, next-generation quantum internet. They also stress the importance of the innovations developed to achieve the process: the preparation, manipulation and ', '.', 'However, both physicists point out: “Further improvements in multiple system features will be needed to enable multiple rounds of teleportation and produce large-scale quantum networks.”']}
2022-06-01 23:04:16 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-05-21/james-allison-the-cost-of-some-cancer-drugs-is-crazy-theres-no-relationship-to-the-cost-of-making-the-drug-anymore.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-05-21/james-allison-the-cost-of-some-cancer-drugs-is-crazy-theres-no-relationship-to-the-cost-of-making-the-drug-anymore.html', 'date': '21 May 2022', 'title': 'James Allison: ‘The cost of some cancer drugs is crazy. There’s no relationship to the cost of making the drug anymore’', 'author': 'Nuño Domínguez', 'text_art': ['James Allison was 10 years old when his mother died of cancer. Shortly after, the same disease took two of his uncles. More recently, his brother died of a prostate tumor. A few months later, Allison himself was diagnosed with the same tumor. He had surgery and recovered. Another appeared in his bladder, and he received successful treatment. Then a melanoma appeared on Allison’s nose, followed by another tumor on the back of his head. Fortunately, all were detected in time, and he was cured. Suffering and overcoming four apparently unrelated cancers is an extraordinary feat. And Allison, a researcher at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, also happens to have invented the most effective cancer therapy in recent decades: ', '.', 'The first cancer patient treated with immunotherapy was Sharon Belvin, whom Allison met in 2004. The 24-year-old had advanced skin cancer, which at the time meant certain death within six or seven months. Eighteen years later, she has had two children, and she lives cancer-free. “I see she’s quite regular,” Allison says. It is not an isolated case: the therapy, he says, has allowed hundreds of thousands of people to overcome melanomas and other tumors.', 'The drug Belvin received is called Ipilimumab. Its formulation began with a discovery Allison had made years earlier. This 73-year-old Texan is more of a scientist than a doctor. His specialty has always been the study of T lymphocytes, a type of white blood cell capable of locating and annihilating foreign intruders in the body.', '“These cells go through your body, through the tissues and the blood, and defend you,” Allison says. He recalls a conversation with a chemistry professor during his time at the Universty of Texas at Austin in 1969. “I went to see him in his office and said, How does that work? He said, Nobody has a clue. I thought, Well, I’m going to figure this out,” he recalls.', 'He dedicated his life to answering that question. In the 1980s, his research team discovered TCR, a molecule that Allison likens to a car’s ignition key:for a lymphocyte to attack an enemy, it must be activated, but that’s not all. In the early 1990s, his colleague Fiona Harding discovered CD28, another molecule that functions like a car’s gas pedal. But something was still missing for the researchers to be able to control lymphocytes at will. Finally, in 1996 Allison and his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley discovered a third molecule, CTLA-4, which they compare to a brake pedal. The molecule prevents lymphocytes from recognizing and destroying ', '. The drug Ipilimumab —approved in 2011— deactivates that brake, launching white blood cells against the tumor. The patient’s immune system, not the drug, ends up eliminating the ', '.', 'The Japanese cancer researcher Tasuku Honjo also discovered another of these brakes, PD-1, and developed another similar immunotherapy, based on immune checkpoint inhibitors. Allison and Honjo won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2018 for their work. According to Allison, the award marked the first time that the academy gave the prize to a cancer therapy and not to basic discoveries about the disease. That year, Allison also won the Frontiers of Knowledge award from the BBVA Foundation.', 'The researcher now directs a new research center, which bears his own name, at MD Anderson. He works alongside his wife, Padmanee Sharma, an oncologist, immunotherapy pioneer and bladder cancer specialist. Sharma forced him to get tested for bladder cancer when he first discovered blood in the toilet, and she helped to diagnose and remove the cancer quickly.', 'Current immunotherapy works well in some cases—in more than 50% of melanoma patients—but little or not at all in others. Allison is currently working to find new immunotherapies that work in more patients, particularly for the most deadly cancers, such as brain glioblastoma or pancreatic cancer, which have not successfully been treated by immunotherapy.', 'Outside of his rigorous work, the friendly white-haired immunologist is passionate about music. He acknowledges that he made his choices about where to base his research based on the music scene of the destination cities. He plays the harmonica in a blues band made up of other scientists, which has performed at many cancer research conferences, and has shared the stage with idols like Buddy Guy and Willie Nelson. His motto is “work hard, play hard.” In this video interview, the Nobel laureate in Medicine explains about new immunotherapies he is looking for and what the cancer treatments of the future will look like.', 'Your life has been marked by cancer since childhood. What would you say to people receiving a diagnosis?', 'My mother died of cancer when I was about ten, actually had died of cancer. And then I just thought,someday I hope I can do something about this. It drove me all the time, but it was sort of in my head. I actually had hoped that I’d get the CTLA-4 immunotherapy, which was in clinical trials, done in time for my brother, but I did not. Should I have a recurrence, these treatments are there now. It’s very important for people to realize that the diagnosis of cancer is not necessarily death anymore, even for the ones that ten years ago meant almost certain death, such as metastatic melanoma. The median survival after diagnosis was seven months, and fewer than 3% of people were alive five years later. Now, with a combination of Ipilimumab and PD-1, almost 60% of metastatic melanoma patients are alive six years later. Those people are cured. They don’t have to look over their shoulders anymore and worry about it. But we’re not there in other cancers yet. We need to keep working.', ' Do you think that one day we will understand the immune system so well that we will be able to stimulate it so that it completely eliminates all cancerous tumors?', ' That’s my goal. I doubt if we’ll be able to get there in all kinds of cancer. We’ve got a chance with some cancers. With melanoma we can get up to 90%. With bladder, kidney, lung, we’re at 40%. We’re learning more almost every day about what’s going on, and we know we needed to start using combinations of drugs to get melanoma close to 100%. For bladder and kidney, those combinations let us eliminate up to 50%. Then we have glioblastoma and pancreatic cancer, two really lethal tumors that we really don’t have much insight about, but we are gaining information.', ' Has there been any progress with those tumors?', ' When CTLA-4-based immunotherapy was not yet approved, my wife began taking tissue samples from bladder cancer patients receiving the treatment. Almost no one did that. We just looked at statistical improvement and median survival. Thanks to that work we have learned that this is not just about T-cells. People are shocked when I say this at scientific conferences [laughs]. There is another type of cell, called myeloids, that is very different from lymphocytes. You usually see them intervening in wound healing, but sometimes they also help eliminate infections. They are not as specific as lymphocytes, but they help clear the infection.', 'Brain and pancreas tumors are full of these cells, and we have seen that they inhibit the activity of T-cells. It is possible that they do so by expressing checkpoints differently from those we know. We have discovered at least one of these checkpoints, and we are studying it because we may be able to stop these cells from going to the tumor, which may allow the lymphocytes to fight the cancer. It is also possible that we can modify the activity of these myeloid cells and turn them in our favor. This opens up a whole new field of investigation.', ' What is your current approach to finding new treatments?', ' The first thing is to learn the basic biology of all immune cells as quickly as possible. When we’re ready, we’ll start small clinical trials with about 12 selected patients. We treat them, we take biopsies of their cancers, we sequence all the RNA cell by cell, we sequence the entire genome of the tumor, we cut the tumors into slices and analyze each one of them to know what molecules are there, what type of cells are there and how they are interacting. That way we will be able to understand the role of a type of myeloid cells called macrophages, and we will see if they impede the work of lymphocytes against cancer. We need to do this with every patient after every treatment. For now we have a pillar, which is the use of the two immunotherapies mentioned, but we can get a third, fourth or fifth that manage to overcome the problem of resistance in tumors with a worse prognosis. I think we can make it.', ' Why does immunotherapy work so well for some people and not for others?', ' One of the reasons is that the more mutations the cancer has, the better this treatment works. Melanoma, and tumors in the lung, head and neck, bladder, stomach, all tumors associated with tobacco smoke, for example, have many mutations. And lymphocytes are very effective for those: they manage to detect cells with a single change in their genome, a single mutation. The more mutations, the more lymphocytes will be activated against the tumor.', 'Does the microbiome—gut bacteria—influence the success of immunotherapy?', ' It’s been shown now very convincingly by my colleague Jennifer Wargo that in melanoma patients, the kind of bacteria in your gut makes a difference. A high fiber diet is associated with better responses. You ought to be eating a high fiber diet anyway. Some people think that we may be able to find good bacteria and replace bad bacteria with the good ones. It’s a little too early to know about, but it certainly plays a role. In some kinds of cancer, there are actually bacteria surrounding the cancer that are more directly influencing things. Bacteria have receptors called Toll-like receptors that are like a primitive immune system. When they are attached to the tumor, their presence can generate an immune system response. We’re still trying to figure out what that’s all about, but it’s important.', ' What will future cancer treatments look like? Will we have vaccines?', 'A lot of people ask me if chemotherapy is going to go away. The answer is no. It is very effective against some types of cancer. The problem is that chemotherapy and radiotherapy very rarely manage to cure the cancer, to eliminate all the cancer cells. What they do is initiate an immune response. Lymphocytes are activated when they see dead cancer cells because they cause inflammation. The problem is that current treatments do try to eliminate every last tumor cell with radio or chemo. And this is a problem because many lymphocytes are also killed this way. We have to change the way we give these two treatments, not expect to kill all the tumor cells with them. The idea is to use some kind of vaccine to stimulate the immune system and let it finish the job.', 'Regarding these vaccines, I think they will first be therapeutic. We will give them to people who already have cancer. Now it is possible to sequence the entire tumor, determine all its mutations and perhaps make a cocktail of molecules for the immune system to destroy that tumor. Much later are preventive vaccines. There are some cancers that are caused by hereditary genetic factors, such as Lynch syndrome or those suffered by women who have the mutated BRCA gene [which generates proteins that prevent the formation of tumors]. If we manage to identify molecules that are expressed before the tumor appears, we may be able to achieve preventive vaccines. They will not be valid for all tumors, but perhaps for hereditary ones.', 'You say that you have to learn from each patient, and you have criticized that sometimes it is impossible because some pharmaceutical companies do not publish the results of clinical trials in which a drug does not meet expectations. Do you think that the industry hinders the advancement of science in this field?', ' Pharma becomes the bad guys in a lot of stories. Every single person that I know in pharma desperately wants to help cancer patients. It’s just that sometimes the rules lock them in. The FDA requires trials of a certain type. The most frequent objective is to increase patient survival. But it shouldn’t always be because sometimes you stay very close to the target. You may have something very beneficial on your hands, but all the data from that trial remains unpublished because the primary objective has not been achieved statistically. In these cases there should be at least one collection of data at the molecular level from a few patients. We should make sure we have a mechanism that we think is going to get us most of the way there, and then turn it over to somebody to do a big trial to look for survival benefit.', 'Immunotherapy is the fourth pillar of cancer treatment after surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy. What will be the fifth?', ' The fifth pillar is going to be combining the ones that we have. Right now it’s too patchy. They need to be brought together, but they need to be brought together based on mechanisms, not just because one company owns two drugs.', 'Do you think that the personalization of cancer treatments will generate more inequality between patients who can afford it and those who cannot?', ' Some time ago I was at a conference in Taiwan. They nationalized their health system, and they have to ask how much benefit for the dollar are we going to get herewith the treatments. The combinations are very expensive. The two current immunotherapies cost about 220,000 dollars [about 209,000 euros] per patient. That has led to some decisions that influence what’s available in countries with nationalized health insurance, which is a problem. In the US, if you don’t have insurance, it’s very difficult to get access to these things. In a lot of countries, they’re theoretically available, but they’re just financially beyond reach. I know the risk that pharma companies take in developing, on the other hand. They charge a little bit extra with their winners so they can take more chances. But you have to stop at some point. The cost for some drugs bears no relationship to the cost of making them anymore.', 'Have you made a lot of money from immunotherapy?', 'I’ve made some money, of course, but it’s not lucrative, not like if you start a company and then you sell it. I only have one patent. The University of California got half of the proceeds. The other half was distributed among the people in my lab.', ' What is the next big challenge for you?', 'We’re starting this institute here, which is actually named after me, to my surprise. Its goal is to do the sort of things I’ve been talking about, the mechanism-driven trials based on knowledge of fundamental properties and knowledge about how the immune system works. One of the new things is that we can take a single cell and analyze all the RNA that is in it. That gives you information on all the genes that are turned on. We normally define cells based on the molecules they produce. For example, all lymphocytes have a molecule called CD3. And if they are killer lymphocytes they also have the CDA molecule. Then there are others who have CD4. We have realized that these differences are a continuum. You cannot just put them in a box and classify each immune cell, because many fall between one type and another. And they also change depending on the environment they are in. We will be able to clarify what differentiates an activated killer lymphocyte from another that is inhibited and cannot act. We can even learn to train them, to modulate them. Increasing computational power will help us with that. Now it takes a week to analyze a single slice of tissue from a tumor and months to understand it. The complexity is a lot more than we thought.', 'When you were in high school in your hometown of Alice, Texas, you skipped biology class to protest that Darwin’s theory of evolution wasn’t even mentioned in passing. Those responsible for the center did not change the classes, and you had to take the course by mail. Do you consider yourself a religious person?', ' It’s a question that has nothing to do with science. Science helps us understand the universe to the point where we can predict what will happen if we start a biomolecular reaction. That’s science. Evolution is a fact. The problem is that we don’t know the facts about how it all started. What was the origin of everything. I don’t think we can ever know. It comes down to a whole different realm, which is faith and belief. I am spiritual. I believe that there is something out there that was the origin of everything. I don’t identify with any religion, but I respect that others do. What I do not accept is that someone says that they do not vaccinate their child against covid because their religion does not allow it. It’s stupid and counterproductive. Every day I try to get up before the sun rises. For me that is the most splendid moment of the day, when the sky begins to brighten and the birds begin to sing. For me, God is something like that. It’s just a feeling, something personal. The rest of the time I try to do more research on cancer to help people.', ' What do you mean by the second part of your motto “work hard, play hard”? Does it refer only to music?', ' No, it refers to enjoying life. It’s something I’ve always tried to do. For me, the people I work with in the laboratory are almost like my family, especially when we were younger. We finished work and we all went to the bar to party. Always together. Now we don’t do it as much, but I still try to convey the same message to my people. You have to enjoy the work. It has to be fun. If it’s an obligation, it doesn’t work. The ideal is when work is so much fun that you can’t differentiate it from the party, from pleasure. You always have to have fun, working, living and playing.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:17 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-06-01/monkeypox-four-scenarios-according-to-scientists.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:04:17 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-06-01/monkeypox-four-scenarios-according-to-scientists.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-06-01/monkeypox-four-scenarios-according-to-scientists.html', 'date': '01 Jun 2022', 'title': 'Monkeypox: Four scenarios, according to scientists', 'author': 'Pablo Linde', 'text_art': ['As cases of ', ' continue to trickle into various countries around the world, scientists are considering the most likely scenarios. While fears of another pandemic are legitimate, experts consulted by EL PAÍS see it as “very unlikely”; in any case, they say, it would have very different characteristics to Covid-19.', 'Here are the four scenarios projected by our experts, ordered from most to least likely to occur:', 'Óscar Zurriaga, from the ', ', and Raúl Rivas González, professor of the Microbiology and Genetics area at the University of Salamanca, believe that the containment measures that are being put in place – detection and isolation of cases – should be enough to stop the virus.', 'From what is known so far, the pathogen is transmitted by fluids. Therefore, infection can only occur through close contact with another infected person (or animal).', 'Although at the moment cases continue to increase where there is an outbreak, Rivas González says it is likely that it will end between six and eight weeks after its onset.', 'There are still several unknowns that keep this scenario hypothetical only. Airborne transmission of the virus has not been entirely ruled out, as cases can be difficult to track and appear in people who do not seem to have been in close contact with other infected people.', '“I think ring vaccination should start now,” says immunologist and researcher Matilde Cañelles, referring to the practice of immunizing people who have been in contact with infected people, along with their close contacts. France and the United States have already started ring vaccination with the drug used for smallpox, the only human disease that has been eradicated. The smallpox vaccine is believed to provide protection greater than 70% against monkeypox, and includes people of older generations who had the smallpox vaccine as children.', 'Rivas González also suggests vaccinating health professionals, who may come in contact with the virus in their work. Meanwhile, Zurriaga does not rule out mass vaccination being required at some point: ”I don’t think it’s the right thing to do, but if some country does it, I wouldn’t be surprised if others got behind it for more political reasons than scientific ones.”', 'Those consulted agree that vaccinations should be enough to make the virus disappear. But it’s not guaranteed either.', 'One of the main fears of health authorities is that the virus will become endemic in Europe, as it already is in some African countries. This would mean that there would be outbreaks with relative frequency, either because the contagion in humans is not stopped, or because it reaches animals, from whom the virus repeatedly jumps to people. “That is why isolation of those infected is very important, and also their pets,” says Rivas González.', '“And if the virus comes into contact with other animals, it will be much more difficult to control.” That is also why it is so important to discover the origin of this outbreak,” adds the scientist.', '“A pandemic is very unlikely, I would say almost impossible,” says Rivas González, while Zurriaga says it is “very unlikely,”', 'Cañelles does not see it as a likely scenario either, but she is cautious: “We cannot completely rule out transmission by aerosols, as happened with Covid.” If it was confirmed that monkeypox is transmitted through the air, a pandemic would be more likely.', 'José Jiménez, an emerging virus researcher at the ', ' says “there are still too many things we don’t know about the current outbreak.”', '“If there’s one thing we should have learned by now, it’s that viruses can always surprise us,” he adds.', 'Comparisons with Covid are inevitable, but even if monkeypox did become a pandemic, Jiménez points out that there are many differences between the two viruses, noting that SARS-CoV-2 was completely unknown and there were no vaccines or drugs against it - while there are no specific ones for monkeypox, the vaccines used for smallpox seem to be quite effective. It is also a virus that has been known for half a century, has caused frequent outbreaks in Africa and has a much more stable structure than that of the pathogen that has caused Covid.', 'As Cañelles puts it, “We have the tools to stop it.”']}
2022-06-01 23:04:18 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/spain/2022-06-01/spains-supreme-court-confirms-conviction-of-youtuber-who-humiliated-a-homeless-man.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:04:18 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/spain/2022-06-01/spains-supreme-court-confirms-conviction-of-youtuber-who-humiliated-a-homeless-man.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/spain/2022-06-01/spains-supreme-court-confirms-conviction-of-youtuber-who-humiliated-a-homeless-man.html', 'date': '01 Jun 2022', 'title': 'Spain’s Supreme Court confirms conviction of YouTuber who humiliated a homeless man', 'author': 'EFE', 'text_art': ['Spain’s Supreme Court has confirmed a Barcelona judge’s decision to ban a young man from YouTube for five years after he posted a video of himself humiliating a homeless person, whom he fed toothpaste-filled Oreo cookies.', 'Kenghua Ren, 23, who goes by the name of ReSet on YouTube, earned €2,180 from page views.', 'In addition to being banned from having an account on the social network for five years, Ren was handed a 15-month prison term and ordered to pay his victim €20,000 for the moral damages caused by the online distribution of of the video. Under Spanish law, people with no prior criminal record who are convicted to less than two years in jail can request to have the sentence commuted.', 'With his YouTube channel, Ren had become ', ' in Spain and Latin America. At one point he had 1.1 million subscribers, and his most popular videos were the ones where he faced “challenges.”', 'At the 2019 trial in Barcelona, the young man acted much as he did in', ', cracking jokes and making insolent remarks. He told the prosecutor that he seemed too serious and asked lawyers, “Where are you getting this stuff from?”', '“It was all a joke, it was not my intention to offend anyone. You guys are really strict with the law,” added Ren, who mostly seemed to regret having lost viewers over the scandal: his channel once accumulated 120 million views; by 2018, that figure had fallen to four million. “I dropped out of high school to pursue this job. I was doing fine. And then this happened. The media has screwed me over.”', 'When the incriminating video emerged in 2017, the Barcelona municipal police filed a report against Ren for degrading treatment and contempt for the moral integrity of a person at risk of exclusion, compounded by the fact that he had shared the images on the internet. Officers located the homeless man in the neighborhood of Marina del Port and told him he could file a complaint. The prosecution was led by Barcelona’s hate crimes prosecutor, Miguel Ángel Aguilar.', 'The homeless man, who has been identified as Gheorge L., explained that on January 17, 2017 a young man came up to him with a €20 bill and a pack of cookies, without telling them they were filled with toothpaste. On January 22, Ren posted a new video apologizing for his actions following a wave of negative reaction. Ren said that his own immaturity made him do it. “It was my fault, I’m really sorry.”', 'But at the trial, he admitted that he only apologized in a bid to stop the criticism. “This has really sunk me. My videos were attracting advertising and I ', ',” he told the court angrily. “Now my account is worthless. My channel has tanked.”']}
2022-06-01 23:04:19 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-06-01/former-qatari-princess-kasia-gallanio-found-dead-at-her-home-in-marbella.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-06-01/former-qatari-princess-kasia-gallanio-found-dead-at-her-home-in-marbella.html', 'date': '01 Jun 2022', 'title': 'Former Qatari princess Kasia Gallanio found dead at her home in Marbella', 'author': '', 'text_art': ['Kasia Gallanio, the ex-wife of Abdelaziz bin Khalifa Al-Thani, a member of the Qatari royal family, was found dead last Sunday at her home in ', '. The 45-year-old was discovered after one of her three daughters contacted the Spanish police from Paris and warned that she had not been able to contact her mother for days, according to the ', 'and confirmed by police sources.', 'The former Qatari princess – who had dual US and Polish citizenship – was living at an apartment complex called Playas del Duque in the ', ' in ', '. According to police sources, the doorman of this complex allowed several police officers to enter Gallanio’s home on Sunday morning. When the agents entered, they found the woman dead on a bed, with no signs of violence. Authorities believe she may have died from an overdose, but are still awaiting the results of the autopsy, according to ', 'which first reported on the death. Action was taken after the daughter, a minor and French resident, warned that her mother was not answering her calls.', 'Gallanio’s divorce from Sheikh Al-Thani in 2012 sparked a high-profile legal battle over the custody of their three underage daughters – a dispute that has still not been resolved. According to the French newspaper, the 45-year-old suffered from mental health issues and was hospitalized for several months last year. In view of this, a Paris court in May decided to defer a verdict on the case until Galliano was subject to a psychological evaluation.', 'The case has also been rocked by allegations of sexual abuse. According to ', ' one of the couple’s daughters said in mid-April that her father sexually assaulted her when she was between the ages of nine and 15 – allegations denied by the sheik, who is the uncle of Qatari’s current emir. The statements prompted the Paris Prosecutor’s Office to open an investigation for aggravated sexual assault. “My client was devastated by this decision. I think that, above all, she has died of grief,” Gallanio’s lawyer, Sabrina Boesch, told the French newspaper.', 'Boesch traveled to Spain with Gallanio’s two eldest daughters, who identified her body on Monday. According to the lawyer, the 73-year-old sheik has not spoken to his children and is only covering the expenses of “modest hotels or short-term accommodation.” The youngest of the sisters, aged 15, has remained at home, a 5,000-square meter palace on the upmarket Avenue Montaigne in Paris. According to ', 'the teen does not go to school and is “isolated from the world.”']}
2022-06-01 23:04:21 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-06-01/microbe-study-sheds-light-on-a-critical-step-in-the-evolution-of-life-on-earth.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:04:21 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-06-01/microbe-study-sheds-light-on-a-critical-step-in-the-evolution-of-life-on-earth.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/science-tech/2022-06-01/microbe-study-sheds-light-on-a-critical-step-in-the-evolution-of-life-on-earth.html', 'date': '01 Jun 2022', 'title': 'Microbe study sheds light on a critical step in the evolution of life on Earth', 'author': 'Nuño Domínguez', 'text_art': ['A research study on a microscopic microbe found in lakes and seas today is helping scientists understand one of the most important chapters in the ', ' on Earth – the appearance of complex cells 2.5 billion years ago.', 'All animals, plants and fungi are made up of several eukaryotic cells, which have internal organelles unlike unicellular bacteria and archaea. Most scientists think that they originated as a result of one microbe swallowing another. But instead of simply digesting the swallowed microbe, an interdependent relationship spontaneously developed: the larger microbe provided protection from external threats, and the smaller microbe provided food. Two and half billion years of interdependent evolution later, thousands of mitochondria related to that original devoured microbe float inside each of our cells and transform food into the energy needed by the brain to think, and by the heart to beat. Thanks to chloroplasts, plants – another type of organelle – can feed on light through photosynthesis.', 'The appearance of the modern cell “was a revolution for the evolution of life on Earth,” says Victoria Calatrava, a biochemist at the Carnegie Institution for Science in the United States. “Without it, our planet would not look anything like what we see today, nor would we be here to tell the tale.” The 32-year-old Spanish scientist from Córdoba aims to demonstrate exactly how that union happened. It is a difficult problem to solve because time has almost completely diluted all the molecular traces.', 'Calatrava leads a research study of the origin of our cells that examines an aquatic microbe called ', '. This organism is the union of an amoeba that devoured a cyanobacterium, which is a microbe capable of photosynthesis.', 'This type of endosymbiosis has only occurred twice in the history of evolution. The first time was 1.5 billion years ago and gave rise to the chloroplasts that provide energy to plants. The second time produced ', 'a mere 120 million years ago. It’s called a living fossil because many of the traces that evolution erased in other organisms are still visible in this amoeba.', 'The ', '(PNAS), the Academy’s official journal, published a study on Tuesday in which Calatrava’s team explain how the union of two such different living things happened. This could also explain what happened 2.5 billion years ago when mitochondria appeared in the first complex cell.', 'Photosynthetic bacterium began to shed genes that landed in the genome of the host amoeba. A process known as retrotransposition then caused some genes to be copied many times over and enabled them to function more efficiently. Scientists have shown that this adaptive process enabled the amoeba to enhance its genes so that it could tolerate toxic compounds associated with photosynthesis, compounds that would have otherwise killed the amoeba during attachment.', 'It was an irreversible step. The bacterium shed so many genes that it could no longer survive on its own, and the metabolism of the host amoeba changed so much that it could no longer be a predator. “Both benefit from each other’s existence, and they are completely interdependent,” said Calatrava, who advises us not to regard this as a benign process. “I don’t see it as a win-win, cooperative relationship. Rather, they are forced to keep each other alive so that they don’t become extinct.”', 'This compulsion to share resources continues to characterize life on Earth. A human being is composed of 30 trillion human cells, and has another 39 trillion bacteria living in its digestive system. Without these bacteria, humans would not be able to digest food. In return, bacteria are able to exist in an environment with fewer predators than they would encounter outside the body. Nothing prevents these relationships from breaking down, as is often the case with ', ' These are organisms that are posing a medicine exchange resistance mechanisms by using a gene transfer process similar to that seen in the ', '. “The results of our research suggest that this mechanism has played a crucial role in the domestication of foreign genes, in the context of endosymbiosis. It seems very likely that it has also played a key role in the stabilization of endosymbionts, and the evolution of organelles in other systems,” said Calatrava.', 'Juli Peretó, an expert in synthetic biology at the University of Valencia in Spain, emphasizes the importance of this study. “Life on Earth first appeared about 3.5 billion years ago in the form of bacteria and archaea. These life forms invented respiration and photosynthesis. A billion years later, an archaeon phagocytosed a bacterium and complex cells emerged. Another billion years later, a new union between photosynthetic bacterium and a different microbe appeared, giving rise to the chloroplasts that carry out photosynthesis in plants. This study of ', 'provides a standalone framework that enables us to reconstruct the story of how it all began,” said Peretó.', '“It makes sense that everything happened the way this study hypothesizes, although it is difficult to say for sure,” says Toni Gabaldón, a biologist and researcher at the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Spain. Gabaldón believes that the exchange of genes between the bacterium and the amoeba was a process of accelerated improvement, like a poker player who discards a card and draws a new one that turns a lowly pair into a winning hand. The only thing that remains to be demonstrated is whether this lucky card draw can explain the origin of all eukaryotes or only those that carry out photosynthesis.', 'has a clear competitor in this quest to clarify the origins of our cells: the', '. Two years ago, Japanese scientists announced that they had finally succeeded in breeding these creatures outside their deep-sea habitat. Researchers consider it another living fossil. These organisms measure one ten-thousandth of a centimeter and reproduce about once a month, very slowly by microbial standards. Their most striking feature is their long, intertwined tentacles. Scientists do not yet know how they use these tentacles, but believe they are essential to explaining how ', ' arose from very similar organisms.', '“The discovery of the Asgard archaea', 'will be of great help in understanding the origin of complex cells,” says Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo, a researcher at Spain’s Institute of Evolutionary Biology. “I am optimistic and believe that we will succeed in clarifying this issue. We know much more now than we did 20 years ago, and we will know even more in time. One day, a new basal eukaryote or a new archaeon may provide clues that we can’t even imagine right now.”']}
2022-06-01 23:04:22 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-06-01/colombias-trump-rodolfo-hernandez-ideally-women-should-devote-themselves-to-raising-children.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:04:22 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-06-01/colombias-trump-rodolfo-hernandez-ideally-women-should-devote-themselves-to-raising-children.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-06-01/colombias-trump-rodolfo-hernandez-ideally-women-should-devote-themselves-to-raising-children.html', 'date': '01 Jun 2022', 'title': 'Colombia’s Trump, Rodolfo Hernández: ‘Ideally, women should devote themselves to raising children’', 'author': 'Sally Palomino', 'text_art': ['Rodolfo Hernández cannot hide his sexism. In an attempt to clarify a phrase that drew criticism a few days ago, ', ' ended up making it worse. “Ideally, women should devote themselves to raising children,” he said in radio statements on Tuesday.', 'Hernández, 77, was seeking to set the record straight on what, according to him, the media had taken out of context. A week earlier, also on a radio station, he had answered with a resounding “no” to the question of whether it is a good idea for women to have a role in politics or in managerial positions. “It is good for them to make comments and to provide support from their home. But people don’t like to see women involved in government,“ he stated at the time. And he went on: “Because they see her as being invasive, because she’s not the one they voted for, they voted for her husband. If there is something that Socorro, my wife, has to tell me, she is going to tell me about it at home.”', 'These are not the only controversial statements by this wealthy businessman and former mayor of Bucaramanga who has shaken up Colombian politics with a surprisingly strong performance in ', ' of presidential elections last Sunday. Hernández, who will face off with leftist candidate Gustavo Petro at the runoff on June 19, is also known for statements affirming that he admired ', ', although he later said that it was a slip of the tongue and that he was actually thinking of Albert Einstein; he is also on record with misogynistic and xenophobic remarks about female Venezuelan migrants.', 'Dubbed Colombia’s Trump, Hernández favors a populist rhetoric and he reaches out directly to followers through social media while avoiding face-to-face debates with other candidates. His simple message attacking the corrupt elites has gone down very well among citizens', '.', 'Regarding the figure of the first lady and the place she usually occupies in the presidential residence, the Palace of Nariño, Hernández said that “she should not be in there with a car, with a chauffeur, with advisors, spending taxpayers’ money.” His words caused such a flurry of criticism that Hernández felt compelled to speak up about women again this week. By then, however, he had already become one of the two candidates who will become the next president of Colombia after securing 28% of the vote on Sunday.', 'Hernández represents the “macho” Colombia, which can only see women as housewives and not as individuals who can also have a position or a job outside the home. According to him, the only reason women have had to work outside the home is because society is ruined. “Women had to go out to work to contribute to cover household expenses,” he said. Hernández added that while he was mayor of Bucaramanga, a midsize city in eastern Colombia, office, women held almost 70% of the positions. “They were excellent workers,” he said.', 'The vice presidential candidate who is running with Hernández is a woman, 53-year-old Marelen Castillo, in an apparent bid to show that he is not as sexist as he seems. Castillo has defended Hernández and said that he is a “respectful” man. But Hernández’s sexist statements are nothing new. This week, a video was released in which he discussed Colombia’s femicide law, which has existed for six years following the brutal murder of Rosa Elvira Cely in 2012. “The government makes up crimes to solve problems. For example, a woman politician decided to make a flag of femicide, which is a homicide of a woman, and introduced a law, and I think the law was passed, although it is my understanding that the courts threw it out, but this politician became a senator thanks to it. What that senator did, turning a homicide into a femicide – did it stop the violent attacks leading to the death of women? No, it’s not over, it’s still the same or worse.”', 'Rodolfo Hernández does not know that the crime of femicide does exist and was not overturned by any courts, but this Tuesday a trend was created on Twitter under the hashtag #ElFeminicideSiExiste to remind him.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:24 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-06-01/resistance-on-rails-how-ukraines-biggest-employer-is-keeping-the-country-moving.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/)
2022-06-01 23:04:24 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-06-01/resistance-on-rails-how-ukraines-biggest-employer-is-keeping-the-country-moving.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-06-01/resistance-on-rails-how-ukraines-biggest-employer-is-keeping-the-country-moving.html', 'date': '01 Jun 2022', 'title': 'Resistance on rails: How Ukraine’s biggest employer is keeping the country moving', 'author': 'Luis de Vega (Enviado Especial)', 'text_art': ['Ukraine’s national railway company, Ukrzaliznitsya, the country’s largest employer, is headed by a 37-year-old man who you might easily mistake for a young backpacker. Oleksandr Kamishin’s role is critical in Ukraine’s resistance to Russian aggression. Some 130 of Ukrzaliznitsya’s 231,000 workers have died in the conflict and three have been taken prisoner by Russia. EL PAÍS accompanied Kamishin for two days, traveling to the city of Lviv with the 37-year-old aboard a two-car convoy.', 'Since the ', ', the trains have not stopped running, despite attacks on the railway infrastructure. The most serious so far was the bombing of Kramatorsk station in the east of the country which occurred on April 8. Among the citizens waiting for a train, at least 57 people died.', 'The railways are Ukraine’s link to the international community, providing access to Kyiv for political leaders, diplomats and businessmen. Trains are also essential for transporting refugees in and out of the country, as well as humanitarian aid, troops, weapons and other goods.', '“The history of this war is the history of the trains,” Kamishin tells EL PAÍS. His main problem right now, along with the safety of staff and passengers, is the threat of Russian bombs. Since the war began the director has spent most of his time aboard trains and in stations across Ukraine.', 'Watched over by two bodyguards, Kamishin’s daily schedule is secret and he is separated from his family. He carries a gun and his little son’s stuffed owl toy with him everywhere.', 'Since Russia’s attack, says the railway boss, “we [Ukrainians] have shown that we are more European than anyone else,” he says; a reference to his government’s demand for full integration into the European Union.', 'Along the way, the train also stops at two of the six electrical substations attacked by', ' on May 3 so that Kamishin can inspect these critical sites for the infrastructure of Ukraine’s resistance. He offers encouragement to employees and reviews repairs amid burnt-out transformers and new railway sleepers. Later there will be time to replace broken windows and repair other less urgent damage.', 'Not all the Ukrzaliznitsya workers killed since the beginning of the invasion lost their lives while working; some were at home. Of those taken prisoner by Russia, only one has been released. “We need them,” he says of the missing workers.', 'Kamishin, in sneakers, cargo pants, and short-sleeved shirt, says: “I don’t know if I’ll ever wear a tie again.” On his left wrist, he wears bracelets in the national colors of yellow and blue and sports a ponytail tied up with a rubber band on his head which is shaved on both sides. He takes video calls while he walks the platforms, making momentous decisions for Ukraine via the screen of his smartphone. He hardly allows himself the distraction of watching an edited video of Bono, lead singer of the band U2, performing in a Kyiv metro station.', 'During this war, more than four million people have been evacuated via the Ukraine train network, which comprises 107 stations and 22,000 kilometers of railway. Twenty percent of the network is ', '.', 'Of the evacuees from Ukraine, 600,000 were transferred abroad. To streamline the operation, train services were provided free of charge. Three months later, many of those who fled have returned. Right now, there are', 'than leaving.', 'Indeed, ordinary Ukrainians are at the center of Kamishin’s concerns, as is evident at the railway station at Lviv, the largest city in the west of the country. Here, Kamishin monitors the arrival of residents fleeing the fighting in the east as they queue up to get their $80 in state aid, $100 if they have a disability or dependent minors.', 'At the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky himself noted the efforts of Kamishin, saying that the railways are the key to getting millions of tons of grain out of Ukraine now that most of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov ports have been blocked by the conflict.', 'To be sure, up until the Russian invasion, Ukraine exported six million tons of grain every month. By March this year, only 200,000 tons were leaving the country.', 'Okelsandr Pertsovskii, who manages passenger flow for the railway company, says that only two ports – those of Izmail and Reni, on the waters of the Danube River before it empties into the Black Sea – are still operational, and they are not enough. Half of the corn and a third of the wheat imported by the European Union come from Ukraine, worth some €13 billion to the country.', 'The EU and Polish flags mark the impending border with Ukraine as the train comes to a screeching stop and two armed soldiers watch from an iron footbridge over the road. Oleksandr Kamishin walks along the tracks, speaking with staff and expert observers. He confirms that 82,000 tons of grain currently wait in border warehouses. Getting the grain to the border with Poland has not been a problem, he says, but getting it to Europe is. He is calling for more cooperation from the other side.', 'When a Russian attack on the railway network begins, says Oleksandr Pertsovskii, company managers receive images on their phones and make decisions about repairing the damage as fast as possible and with as much care for the employees as possible.', 'Occupied by the Nazis in World War 2, Lviv is no stranger to the', ', as Pertsovskii points out. “My grandfather, who I never met, was in Lviv defending the border against the German Nazis,” he says. “Our family was evacuated on a freight train to Turkmenistan. My grandmother used to tell us stories about the train when I was a child, about how German planes bombed them while they were in the wagons.”', 'Eight decades later, Oleksandr Kamishin took up the role of railway chief in August 2021, having worked in the private sector as well as the Ministry of Infrastructure.', 'After lunch, Kamishin opens the photo gallery on his phone and recounts his life over the past months. “It was 11pm on February 23,” he says, pointing to a photo of his wife and children at home. “We didn’t know the war was going to start.”', 'He scrolls through to a photograph of his son making bracelets in the national colors that they later sell in order to help the Ukrainian army. While touching one of those same bracelets that he wears, Kamishin says, “My family is safe.” With this knowledge, he adds, “I can endure living like this … until death if necessary.”', 'As the train stops once more, Kamishin says goodbye and alights with his team and bodyguards. His hand on the pistol bulging in the zippered pocket of his right leg, the Ukrainian railway leader says: “We are Europeans in Europe', ' and we will never stop.”', 'We fight to the end, he says. “There is only one option, victory.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-05/weapons-mercenaries-and-trade-deals-russia-grows-stronger-in-africa.html', 'date': '05 May 2022', 'title': 'Weapons, mercenaries and trade deals: Russia grows stronger in Africa', 'author': 'José Naranjo', 'text_art': ['In the middle of ', ', Russia and Cameroon signed a military agreement on April 12 for the exchange of information and training of troops, a type of deal that has become common in Africa and already exists in around 20 countries. Over the last decade, Moscow has extended its influence throughout the African continent based on three pillars: the sale of weapons, the presence of instructors and mercenaries, and trade agreements and investments in sectors such as cereals, hydrocarbons, energy and minerals.', 'Nothing happens by chance. In return, a third of African countries abstained on March 2 at the vote condemning the invasion of Ukraine at the United Nations General Assembly. This is taking place against a backdrop of growing popular sympathy for Russia and disaffection towards the West, which is seen as ', '. There is a feeling of Soviet ', ' harking back to the 1960s and 1970s.', 'Last week, two Russian combat helicopters and radars landed in Bamako. Since France decided to withdraw from Mali, the flow of weapons and military vehicles from Moscow to this country has intensified to previously unseen levels. Meanwhile, hundreds of Russian military instructors belonging to a Russian private military force known as the Wagner Group have landed in this African country, according to France and the US, and are already operating on the ground in the fight against jihadism. Since the end of 2021, coinciding with their arrival, reports from human rights organizations have noted an increase in abuses, torture and extrajudicial executions, such as the Moura massacre in which around 300 civilians died in this location in central Mali, according to ', '. Al Qaeda last weekend announced it had captured a Wagner mercenary. And a Russian instructor died on April 19 after the vehicle he was traveling in hit a bomb.', 'While Europe and the United States ', ' against the regime of Vladimir Putin, African countries are maintaining a high degree of collaboration with Russian companies. “It is not that Africa is going to save Russia, but the continent is becoming one of the priorities of the Kremlin’s foreign policy, which will become much more aggressive in conquering African markets and in its propaganda, positioning itself as an alternative to its Western competitors,” says Tatiana Smirnova, an expert on relations between the two territories at the Centre FrancoPaix,', 'at the University of Quebec in Montreal, Canada.', 'Russia’s trade with Africa amounts to around €20 billion a year, according to statements made to Russia’s news agency Tass by the director of the African Export-Import Bank, Benedict Oramah. In any case, it is far behind powers such as China, the United States, France or even Turkey, which has been increasing its trade with Africa since 2014, when the figure stood at about €10 billion. Back then, Africa’s neutrality on the subject of sanctions against Moscow for the ', ' stimulated Russia’s interest in the continent. Investments are also on the rise.', 'In the mining sector, one particularly relevant company is Rusal, headed by the oligarch Oleg Deripaska who is a personal friend of President Vladimir Putin and the target of Western sanctions. Rusal extracts bauxite in Guinea. But there are others such as Norgold, Renova, Alrosa or Vi Holding operating in countries like South Africa, Angola, Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe and the Central African Republic, where they extract gold, diamonds, manganese and platinum.', 'In the hydrocarbon, gas and oil sectors, a handful of Russian companies have become strong in Africa, such as Rosneft, Gazprom and above all the giant Lukoil, headed until a week ago by the billionaire tycoon Vagit Alekperov, who opposed the war in a statement and resigned two months later. These companies are present in countries such as Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria.', 'The link between private businesses and the interests of the Russian state is close and evident in examples such as Alexandre Brégadzé, who is head of Rusal in Guinea, but also an architect and a former ambassador who trained at the Moscow Diplomatic Academy. The security sector also shows these relationships. The activities of the obscure Wagner mercenary group, which is present in Libya, Mozambique, Sudan, the Central African Republic and now also in Mali, are easily confused with those of the Russian Army itself and the group even uses the army’s means of transportation. According to Western intelligence services, Wagner is financed by Putin’s so-called chef, a businessman named Yevgheni Prighozin who has also been sanctioned by the US and the EU, and who met the Russian president when the latter dined at his restaurant in St. Petersburg.', 'More than a third of the weapons that Africa buys come from Russia, its main supplier, according to the Stockholm Peace Research Institute, and the two main recipient countries of this weaponry are Egypt and Algeria, but there are others such as Nigeria, Sudan, Angola and Mali. The equipment includes fighter-type aircraft, helicopters, assault craft, tanks, ammunition and air defense systems. The contracts between the state company Rosoboronexport and 20 African countries cover every kind of weapon these days.', 'Through these deals, African countries with dictatorial or military regimes that are under Western sanctions – such as Mali now, but also Libya or Zimbabwe during the Robert Mugabe regime – can gain access to weapons that other countries deny them.', '“Russia is leaning on the image created in Africa by the Soviet Union, at a time when Moscow supported many liberation movements, trained students and built hospitals. It is perceived as a kind of older brother, a defender of Africa’s sovereignty, embodying an alternative development model to the Western one. But this idealized vision does not match the geopolitical and moral realities of today’s Russia that has unleashed the war in Ukraine,” adds Smirnova, from Centre FrancoPaix.', 'After the fall of the Soviet Union, under which tens of thousands of young African doctors, architects, engineers and soldiers were trained by the great power, relations plummeted. But a little over a decade ago, Putin himself inspired a triumphant comeback that reached a climax at the Russia-Africa summit held in Sochi in 2019, attended by as many as 45 heads of state from the African continent. A second meeting in Moscow is planned for 2022.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-03/chinas-difficult-balancing-act-achieving-zero-covid-policy-and-economic-growth.html', 'date': '03 May 2022', 'title': 'China’s difficult balancing act: Achieving zero-Covid policy and economic growth', 'author': 'Macarena Vidal Liy', 'text_art': ['If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans, so the joke goes. And the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has announced them loud and clear. In 2022, the CCP will celebrate its 20th National Congress, which is set to extend the mandate of General Secretary Xi Jinping. And to mark the occasion, it wanted economic stability. Instead, it is facing a series of challenges: an economic slowdown, the real estate crisis and now, the ', '. But worst of all is the ', ' that have been introduced under the government’s zero-Covid policy, and which affect a quarter of the population.', 'China is today the only large economy today that maintains a', ', which involves tight border controls, limitation of movements and centralized quarantines. The policy is being applied for health reasons – the country’s health system is still very weak, especially outside the big cities, and would collapse in the face of a large number of cases –, but there are political motivations as well: over the last two years, it has been used to defend the superiority of China’s system of government over Western democracies. Thanks to its zero-Covid strategy, China was the first country in the world to report the end of the first wave of the pandemic and to start its economic recovery. Now, the lockdown of Shanghai, the economic heart of the country, is raising doubts about the policy.', 'The Chinese government set itself an ambitious target for 2022, announcing that gross domestic product (GDP) should expand by “around 5.5%.” But in light of the impact of the total or partial lockdowns, which according to the Japanese investment bank Nomura affect 343 million people (a quarter of the population) in 46 cities, analysts believe this figure will be difficult to achieve. The International Monetary Fund has downgraded its growth forecast for China to 4.4%, down from the 4.8% forecast in January. The World Bank has lowered its forecast from 5.4% to 5%. And Nomura has slashed its projections for the second quarter, from 3.4% to 1.8% for the second quarter, while yearly growth has been downgraded from 4.3% to 3.9%.', 'Macroeconomic data from the first quarter hint at the magnitude of the blow caused by the lockdown in Shanghai, where 26 million residents have been confined for more than a month. Although China recorded 4.8% growth, which was higher than what analysts expected, the figures for March – after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and when the Covid cases began to skyrocket in Shanghai – are unequivocally pessimistic: consumption fell by 3.5%; unemployment remained at 5.8%, three tenths above the previous month and the official target for the year. China’s electricity consumption, a key barometer of economic activity, rose 3.5% year on year, compared to 5.8% in the previous two months.', 'Shanghai is only now beginning to ease restrictions following a week-long drop in Covid-19 cases. In the meantime, the city’s port – one of the busiest in the world – has reduced its activity by 40%, and ships waiting to unload container goods are piling up.', 'As a result, supply chains – ', ' – have suffered a new and serious setback, which has caused a huge delay in the imports of raw materials and components, and in the exports of products. While 666 Shanghai-based companies, including Tesla, have been allowed to reopen, the Covid-19 controls are so strict that they are operating at a much slower pace.', '“Although the lockdown is loosening, the economic impact is terrible,” said Alicia García-Herrero, chief economist for Asia at investment bank Natixis. According to García-Herrero, other economic measures, such as the government’s control over the technology sector, are compounding lockdown frustration and leading to “great discontent.” She added: “People who have money are seeing that things are going wrong. Who is going to want to invest?”', 'In addition to the lockdown in Shanghai, China has also seen a sudden rise in ', ' in Beijing, the capital. In this city, authorities have confined all residential buildings and complexes where infections have been detected, imposed limits on capacity in restaurants and closed cinemas and schools in several districts. In response, the yuan slipped to a 17-month low against the US dollar.', '“The worst is yet to come,” said Lu Ting, Nomura’s chief economist for China, in a note. “Global markets have been slow to recognize the dire consequences of China’s zero-Covid policy.”', 'Concern is palpable among Chinese authorities. Li Keqiang, premier of the State Council, has ordered officials to “increase the sense of urgency” in implementing measures to activate the economy. The Chinese government has approved measures to speed up road freight transportation, while the Central Bank (PBOC) has reduced the amount of cash that banks must keep as reserves – although it has not cut interest rates so far.', 'But the Chinese government also wants to send a positive message, and has made it clear that they believe they will be able to achieve their ambitious growth target while keeping the coronavirus at bay. On Friday, the quarterly meeting of the Politburo of the Communist Party on the economy promised “to make great efforts to achieve our goals for this year of economic and social development.”', 'Last Tuesday, President Xi Jinping himself also emphasized the need to invest in infrastructure, a formula that Beijing has historically turned to as a means of addressing ', '. “Infrastructure is the bedrock for economic and social development,” he said. The Chinese president’s development plans include urban rail systems, regional airports, health centers, water and energy conservation projects and data storage centers, among others. “It’s the same story, but told in a different way. Now the emphasis is on innovation, the green economy, digital infrastructure,” said Huang Yiping, a professor of economics and finance at Peking University, in a digital seminar organized by the University of Sydney.', 'But investment in infrastructure alone will not be enough to ensure the government meets its targets, Natixis points out. According to the French investment bank, investment in infrastructure, “would have to increase by 18% to contribute its part to 5% [annual GDP] growth.”', '“It is expensive and has little productivity,” added García-Herrero. Even if China’s nominal GDP growth were to reach 5% this year, the real growth would be much lower, “and that would be very bad news for the world,” she said.', 'Meanwhile, the consulting firm Trivium issued a document arguing that “with so many factors beyond Beijing’s control – Covid, the prices of raw materials, global demand – we believe that there are very firm limits to what Beijing can do” to reach its growth targets.', 'What is clear is that China is not likely to lift its zero-Covid policy, even if it is to the detriment of the country’s economy. Any change, in the eyes of the government, would jeopardize its credibility – and that stability that is important to the country. If the policy is loosened it will happen after the National Congress in November, when Xi’s mandate is set to be extended.', '“They know what zero-Covid means for the economy. It’s just that they can’t use this knowledge to bring about policy change at the moment,” Joerg Wüttke, president of the EU Chamber of Commerce in China, said in an interview with the ', '. “President Xi wants to be confirmed for a third term, so he cannot change his narrative this close to the finish line.”', 'Lu Ting agreed: “By emphasizing the zero-Covid strategy as a display of China’s governance superiority, it has made it more difficult to abandon the nearly impossible mission of eradicating the infectious omicron variant.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-05/tinkov-the-russian-oligarch-who-lost-his-bank-for-criticizing-putins-invasion.html', 'date': '05 May 2022', 'title': 'Tinkov, the Russian oligarch who lost his bank for criticizing Putin’s invasion', 'author': 'Javier G. Cuesta', 'text_art': ['On April 24, the day ', ', Russian business tycoon Oleg Tinkov wished for peace between Russians and Ukrainians. “May the war end as soon as possible,” he wrote in a message on Instagram.', 'It was not the first time the businessman had spoken out against ', '. Shortly after the war began, Tinkov – who is currently receiving treatment for cancer – stated: “I saw for myself how fragile life is. Now innocent people are dying every day in Ukraine, this is unacceptable.”', 'And on April 19, he posted another message on Instagram. “I don’t see ANY beneficiary of this crazy war! Innocent people and soldiers are dying,” he wrote. “The generals woke up from a hangover, realized they have a shitty army. Why would we have a good army, if everything else in the country is shit and mired in nepotism, servility and subservience?” He also described those who support the war by painting the “Z” symbol as “morons.”', 'According to Tinkov, this was the message that set off alarm bells in the Kremlin. Soon afterward, the businessman was forced to sell 35% of his shares in Tinkoff Bank, the company he founded in 2006. In an interview in ', ' the businessman said the Kremlin immediately ordered the bank’s directors to cut their ties with him, or the bank would be nationalized.', '“I couldn’t discuss the price. It was like a hostage – you take what you are offered. I couldn’t negotiate,” Tinkov said in the interview, his first since Vladimir Putin ordered his troops to enter Ukraine on February 24.', 'The 54-year-old said that following the post several friends with contacts in Russia’s FSB security service said they feared for his life. He told ', 'that he is now in a safe place surrounded by bodyguards.', 'Tinkov said in the interview that he was forced to sell his 35% stake in Tinkoff Bank to Vladimir Potanin, a Russian mining oligarch, who, according to the US State Department, is very close to Putin. He said it was “a desperate sale,” but he thanked the businessman for allowing him to walk away with some money from the deal. Although Tinkov did not disclose the price, he said that he received 3% of what he believed was the true value of his stake. According to ', 'Tinkoff Bank was valued at more than $20 billion on the London stock exchange last year. Sources cited by the Russian newspaper ', 'said he sold the stake for around $300 million.', 'Tinkoff Bank, formerly called Tinkoff Credit Systems (TCS) Bank, has announced plans to change its name. In announcing its rebranding after Tinkov’s criticism of the Ukraine invasion, Tinkoff Bank said: “The company has long prepared for this. Recent events have made the decision more relevant.”', 'The bank also tried to distance itself from its founder. “Oleg has not been in Moscow for many years, did not participate in the life of the company and was not involved in any matters,” Tinkoff Bank said in a statement.', 'Although Tinkoff Bank itself has so far escaped ', ', Tinkov was included in the United Kingdom’s March blacklist, despite being one of the few Russian oligarchs who have ', '. Other Russian tycoons who also advocated for peace were sanctioned by the European Union in March, including Oleg Deripaska, the founder of Russian aluminium giant Rusal. “Peace is the priority,” said Deripaska on Twitter. “Negotiations must start ASAP.” The businessman was accused in 2017 of acting as a mediator between the Kremlin and Donald Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and was also investigated for money laundering.', 'In the ', 'interview, Tinkov said that other business leaders and senior officials have told him that they are against the conflict, but are too scared to speak up. That fear has been bolstered by new laws in Russia, which can sentence a person found guilty of “discrediting the armed forces” and spreading so-called “false” information to between three and five years in prison.', 'Despite these pressures, there are still dissenting voices from Russia. Weeks after the new law came into effect, Deripaska quoted on Telegram an excerpt from ', ', Leo Tolstoy’s 1904 article against the Russo-Japanese war. The famous writer’s words, published over a century ago, are still relevant today: “Again war ... and the same men who but yesterday were proving the cruelty, futility, the senselessness of wars now think, speak, and write only about killing as many men as possible, about ruining and destroying the greatest possible amount of the productions of human labor, and about exciting as much as possible the passion of hatred in those peaceful, harmless, industrious men who by their labor feed, clothe, maintain these same pseudo-enlightened men, who compel them to commit those dreadful deeds contrary to their conscience, welfare, or faith.”']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2022-05-09/inequality-and-global-value-chains.html', 'date': '09 May 2022', 'title': 'Inequality and global value chains', 'author': 'Inmaculada Martínez-Zarzoso', 'text_art': ['In the first two decades of the 21st century, we have witnessed greater economic integration at the global level. Countries have become ', ', with increasing fragmentation of production processes on a global scale. The reduction of trade barriers, the opening of new markets and the revolution in information and communication technologies have changed the way we trade from a simple exchange of final products – a la Adam Smith – to a constant transaction of investments, technologies, human capital, intermediate goods and services. Global value chains (GVCs) have been dubbed the “central nervous system” of the world economy, with intermediate inputs crossing borders several times before the final product reaches the customer. Among economists, there is a consensus on the welfare improvements generated from this process, but both the 2008 financial crisis and the bottlenecks after', ' and the ', 'have highlighted the dark side of globalization, i.e., the growing influence of GVCs in the transmission of economic shocks between countries. Moreover, the abovementioned improvements could be poorly distributed, generating tensions between capital owners and workers, as well as between low-skilled and high-skilled workers.', 'According to the economic literature, GVCs have offered new opportunities for countries to ', ' and diversify their exports, improving the productivity of firms through the transfer of knowledge and technology. Moreover, with such participation, per capita income increases, as do employment opportunities. However, this growing integration has coincided with ', ' within countries, giving rise to a debate on the distributional effects of GVC participation with two opposing points of view. On the one hand, it is argued that such participation can create winners and losers, increasing the income gap between rich and poor within countries. On the other hand, a study by the International Monetary Fund claims that GVC trade leads to higher income levels for all. In this line, according to Princeton and Chicago professors Gene Grossman and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg, the productivity effect of GVC participation could lead to a narrowing of the wage gap, if low-skilled workers who lose their jobs could be reemployed in activities that are more productive.', 'Unfortunately, such an assumption does not seem to be very realistic in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, as is the case for Spain. In fact, the data suggest that the owners of capital and the highly skilled workers are the ones who have shared most in these benefits, to the detriment of the less skilled. How can we reconcile these points of view? Two recent studies shed some light on this issue The first, from the OECD, shows that participation in GVCs can reduce wage inequality when such participation integrates low-skilled workers and allows them to improve their employment. A second paper, which I co-authored, includes updated data to cover the protectionist tendencies that emerged after the financial crisis. The results we find suggest that a higher degree of task offshoring increases the level of inequality in the short run, while it is associated with lower income inequality in the long run. That is, it takes time for workers who lose their jobs due to offshoring to find new jobs in expanding sectors, when the economy reaches its new equilibrium. Therefore, it is crucial that a long-term adjustment takes place so that the potential negative effect of GVC participation on income distribution within countries is neutralized and even becomes positive.', 'What would be the message for policy makers seeking to maximize the benefits of GVC participation? To promote a more equitable distribution of income, efforts should focus on improving and reorienting the skills of the labor force. One way to do this would be through updated vocational training, secondary and higher education that incentivizes the development of the skills required for the professions of the future, in the fields of digitalization, green energy and ', ', among others.']}
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-10/el-salvador-expected-to-default-as-bitcoin-plummets.html', 'date': '10 May 2022', 'title': 'El Salvador expected to default as bitcoin plummets', 'author': 'Isabella Cota', 'text_art': ['The Salvadoran experiment to make bitcoin legal currency has hit a wall. As a result of the fall in global markets caused by the uncertainty of the war in Ukraine, rising inflation and the US Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates, the price of the most popular cryptocurrency in the world has plummeted more than 50% from its all-time highs. And with it, so too have the bonds of the ', ', which are trading at 40% of their original value, as investors start to doubt whether the country can meet its next debt payment.', 'Last September, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced that El Salvador would become the first country in the world to ', ' alongside the US dollar. Ratings agencies warned that the volatility of the cryptocurrency would impact the country’s already fragile public finances. But this did not deter Bukele. In October, he announced that the government had purchased nearly $25 million worth of bitcoin. The following month, Fitch Ratings, an American credit rating agency, ', ': “Widespread adoption of bitcoin has been limited by its inherent price volatility, the domestic banking sector’s low financial inclusion and the lack of broad internet availability.”', 'Despite its low adoption among the population, the decision to make bitcoin legal tender had an immediate impact on the Central American country. The International Monetary Fund (IMF), which could provide financing to help the Bukele government to meet its next foreign debt payment in January 2023, urged the country to remove bitcoin as legal currency as this exposes the state coffers to the price volatility of the cryptocurrency. Bukele’s insistence on keeping it as legal tender complicated his negotiations with the IMF.', 'The ups and downs of the market, coupled with the ', ', led several credit agencies to downgrade the country’s rating, which is largely used by the market to assess the likelihood of debt default. A low rating means that the government has to pay creditors higher interest rates as it is considered higher risk. While a credit rating of CCC, described as “junk” in the industry, prevents a country from accessing global markets to issue more debt. In February, Fitch downgraded El Salvador’s rating to this level, while the credit agency Moody’s made the same decision in May.', ', Fitch explained: “The downgrade reflects heightened financing risks stemming from increased reliance on short-term debt, a $800 million Eurobond repayment due in January 2023, a still-high fiscal deficit, limited scope for additional local market financing, uncertain access to additional multilateral funding and external market financing given high borrowing costs.”', 'The firm added that debt to gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to rise to 86.9% in 2022, “increasing concerns around debt sustainability over the medium term.”', '“In Fitch’s view, weakening of institutions and concentration of power in the presidency have increased policy unpredictability, and the adoption of bitcoin as legal tender has added uncertainty about the potential for an IMF program that would unlock financing for 2022-2023,” the report stated.', 'For its part, ', ' that “even if the government finds a way to manage near-term financing pressures from the upcoming 2023 bond maturity, Moody’s view is that the sovereign will continue to face funding pressures that would compromise its ability to service its debt commitments in full.”']}
2022-06-01 23:04:35 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-10/canada-seeks-to-burst-real-estate-bubble-by-banning-foreign-property-purchases.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-10/canada-seeks-to-burst-real-estate-bubble-by-banning-foreign-property-purchases.html', 'date': '10 May 2022', 'title': 'Canada seeks to burst real estate bubble by banning foreign property purchases', 'author': 'Jaime Porras Ferreyra', 'text_art': ['Canada’s housing market is facing a crisis. The problems facing a sector that gives a majority of Canadians a headache were laid bare in the federal budget presented in the lower house on April 7. The government of ', ' has introduced certain measures to tackle the issue, such as preventing ', 'for a period of two years.', 'According to the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA), the average price of a home in Canada in February stood at $816,720 Canadian dollars (€598,000). CREA, which has a membership of around 130,000 real estate agents, that figure is 20.6% higher than in the same month in 2021. The national average cost of a home is reduced by $178,000 outside of Vancouver and Toronto, the two most active and most expensive real estate markets in the country.', 'That average rose by 44% in Canada between December 2019 and February 2022. Assistant Professor in Urban Planning at the University of Montréal, Jean-Philippe Meloche, says that this increase was already in evidence before Covid-19, but the ', '. “A lot of Canadians were carrying out renovations. At the same time, the construction sector was in need of manpower and materials that were not readily available. And a lot of people also bought properties outside the main urban centers. This exacerbated the problem.”', 'The Canadian government’s budget includes some $4 billion for the construction of at least 100,000 new homes over the next five years, double tax incentives for first-time buyers and monthly subsidies for people who are unable to find affordable rent. Taxes will also be raised on flipping: the sale of properties for profit after less than one year of ownership.', 'Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said when presenting the budget: “Our economy is built by people, and people need homes in which to live. Our problem is simply this: Canada does not have enough homes. We need more of them, fast.” Also included in the budget is a ban on non-Canadians – and non-Canadian-held companies – from making property investment over the next 24 months. Exemptions will be put in place for permanent residents, asylum seekers and those holding work or study permits.', 'introduced similar measures in August 2018. Similarly, foreigners are prevented from acquiring property in the Åland Islands in Finland. The debate about the presence of foreign buyers in the Canadian real estate market is not new: the provinces of British Columbia and Ontario already have a 20% tax rate in place for such purchases. However, the federal government has now gone further and proposed a ban on foreign property purchases on a national scale.', 'The issue has been divisive, with some saying it is a step in the right direction as part of a package of incentives designed to tackle the housing crisis. Nicola St. John of Bosley Real Estate told CTV News that non-residents often make elevated offers for properties, skewing the market for Canadian buyers.', 'However, there are also dissenting voices around the government’s plan. One sticking point is that the exact requirements for exemptions have not been clearly defined, which opponents fear could pave the way for loopholes to exploit. Even so, the biggest argument against the proposal is based on its actual impact: “There aren’t really enough foreign buyers to make it likely that this will have a significant effect. To me it seems a more political than practical initiative,” says Meloche.', 'Tsur Somerville, a professor at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and director of the UBC Centre for Urban Economics and Real Estate, tells EL PAÍS: “The presence of foreign buyers has diminished, although they have never represented a serious problem. At the same time, prices have gone up. This ban is not going to be a game-changer.” A report published by Baker Insights Group shows that non-Canadian residents purchased just 1% of all the properties sold in 2020. A year after New Zealand imposed its property prohibition in 2018, the average price of a home rose by 12%; in 2020 and 2021, the increase was 18% and 23%, respectively.', 'Canada’s House of Commons will vote on the budget before long. A ban on foreign property purchases was an election promise made by Trudeau’s Liberal Party during last September’s elections. The opposition Conservatives made the same campaign pledge while the New Democratic Party, with whom the Liberals forged a political alliance, proposed a 20% tax rate at national level.', '“The taxes had an impact, albeit a tenuous and short-lived one. Furthermore, foreigners tend to look in specific areas and don’t buy up any old property,” says Meloche. Somerville concurs: “We have already seen these taxes in cities where there is a lot of interest, such as Vancouver and Toronto. They had little effect. The housing crisis is, overall, an issue linked to domestic factors, although it is easier to point the finger elsewhere instead of at ourselves.”', 'Somerville conducted a joint study with Andrey Pavlov, a professor of finance at Simon Fraser University’s Beedie School of Business. The document shows that after British Columbia imposed the property tax, house prices fell by just 3% to 5% in Vancouver in the city’s areas preferred by foreign buyers. According to real estate agency Re/Max Canada, there were practically no home purchases by non-Canadian residents in the north and east of Vancouver in the first five months of 2021, but 60 properties worth a minimum of $5 million were sold in those areas.', 'Steve Lafleur, an analyst at the Fraser Institute public policy think tank, wrote in a statement that the Liberal government, rather than looking to weed out these supposed “bad” buyers, should instead focus on construction and reducing the red tape that hampers the sector. Canada’s National Housing Council has recommended investment in the sector of $6.3 billion as opposed to the $4 billion set aside in the budget. The Canadian Home Builders’ Association says it is a step in the right direction that the Trudeau administration has acknowledged the dimension of the housing crisis, but has expressed dissatisfaction that the budget contains “few concrete measures” for sectors of society with limited purchasing power.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:36 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-11/el-salvador-reveals-plans-for-bitcoin-city-amid-fears-of-default.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-11/el-salvador-reveals-plans-for-bitcoin-city-amid-fears-of-default.html', 'date': '11 May 2022', 'title': 'Bitcoin City: El Salvador reveals plans amid fears of default', 'author': 'Luis Alberto Peralta', 'text_art': ['The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, presented on Tuesday the first images of Bitcoin City, which will be constructed near the Conchagua volcano on the Gulf of Fonseca in the south-east of the Central American country.', 'The project, which was announced in November 2021, seeks to create a smart city fully based on the use of ', '. Bukele ', ' illustrations and scale models of the metropolis, but he did not clarify when construction will begin.', 'Last year, Bukele announced that El Salvador would become the first country in the world to', ', alongside the US dollar. El Salvador was going to fund the project with $1 billion in bonds. These public debt securities would be secured with bitcoin instead of a fiat currency. These so-called volcano bonds were meant to be issued in March, but the date has been pushed back to September.', 'While Bitcoin City appears golden in the images shared on Twitter, Bukele said in real life it will be full of green areas. He added that it will also be home to monuments, a lookout point over the volcano, commercial and residential areas and an airport. When announcing the project last year, the president explained that Bitcoin City would be free from most taxes.', '“We will have no income tax, forever. No income tax, zero property tax, no procurement tax, zero city tax, and zero CO2 emissions,” he said in a statement in November. “The only taxes that they will have in Bitcoin City is VAT, half will be used to pay the municipality’s bonds and the rest for the public infrastructure and maintenance of the city.”', 'Bukele also announced on Tuesday that his government had bought 500 bitcoins, its largest purchase of the cryptocurrency to date. The news comes as ', '. For the first time since July 31, the price of bitcoin has fallen below $31,000. In his message on Twitter, Bukele said the government had purchased its latest bitcoins at an average price of $30,744.', 'Bloomberg agency estimates that El Salvador has bought 2,301 bitcoins since it became legal tender in September 2021. These tokens currently have a total value of $74 million, well below the $103 million Bukele paid for them.', 'What’s more, the Caribbean country is not in a position to take on such expenses. The cost of El Salvador’s sovereign debt collapsed in April, plunging by 15.1% to historic lows – a fall only superseded by Ukraine ', '. Government bonds are trading at 40% of their original value, as investors start to doubt whether the country can meet its next debt payment in January 2023.', 'While the president of El Salvador’s central bank said there is “zero risk” of the country defaulting on its creditors, credit rating agencies have a more negative outlook.', 'In February, Fitch Ratings downgraded El Salvador’s rating to CCC, described as “junk” in the industry. ', ', Fitch explained: “The downgrade reflects heightened financing risks stemming from increased reliance on short-term debt, a $800 million Eurobond repayment due in January 2023, a still-high fiscal deficit, limited scope for additional local market financing, uncertain access to additional multilateral funding and external market financing given high borrowing costs.”', 'El Salvador’s transition to a blockchain and cryptocurrency-based economy appears to have failed.', ' in 2021 found that of the Salvadorans who downloaded an app called Chivo Wallet – which the government designed to facilitate daily cryptocurrency transactions – only 20% continued to use it after spending the $30 the authorities gave away to promote its use.', 'Given the volatility of bitcoin and its low adoption among the general population, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has urged El Salvador to remove bitcoin as legal currency. Bukele’s insistence on keeping it as legal tender complicated his negotiations with the IMF, which said it must assess the risk of the cryptocurrency before granting El Salvador a loan.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:37 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-12/ethereum-the-movie.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-12/ethereum-the-movie.html', 'date': '12 May 2022', 'title': 'Meet the crypto evangelist who’s going to shoot a movie with Ridley Scott', 'author': 'David Fernández', 'text_art': ['It was nootropics – the early 21st-century Silicon Valley tech workers’ drug of choice for boosting their productivity – that led hedge fund manager Francisco Gordillo to the crypto world.', 'Gordillo explains that, as he was researching the potential of the new industry in so-called “smart drugs,” then illegal, he discovered ', ', “a new concept for me… which was used as a means of payment for these unregulated substances.”', 'Then an investment banker who worked on mergers and acquisitions at Rothschild and Crédit Suisse, Gordillo says this first encounter with bitcoin was “a kind of epiphany.” He is now co-founder and co-investment director of the Malta-based hedge fund Avenue Investment Crypto, serving professional investors (the minimum investment is €100,000 or $105,100). Avenue Investment offered clients a return of 257% in 2021, although it has had a 15.8% drop from January to March of this year.', 'Gordillo acknowledges that the hyperactive world of cryptocurrencies, of which ', 'is one of around 18,000, has certainly attracted its critics. “The possibility of making a lot of money very quickly is a kind of drug,, and he acknowledges that there are a lot of snake-oil merchants about. Further, “there is quite a bit of speculation, as in any new market.”', '“But I don’t see a bubble,” he continues, saying that crypto overall has a “deep and powerful long-term uptrend,” with speculation and scammers a “logical” by-product of “an innovative concept that confronts the status quo.”', 'For Gordillo, who comes from a well-known family of artists and art dealers in Spain, dealing in cryptocurrencies and using blockchain is not just a technology but an approach to life that is based on the principles of decentralized decision-making and the defense of individual sovereignty. He believes that the system will ultimately “help us to build a better world.”', 'Beyond ', ', Gordillo says he is dedicated to “evangelizing” about their benefits. He thought of making documentaries “to fight against the misinformation that surrounds this technology,” but realized it was very difficult to render the complexities of the technology into a simple visual language. Instead, he is now making a film based on Camila Russo’s book ', ' (Harper Collins, 2020). Ethereum is an open-source platform used for cryptocurrency transactions, which Gordillo says is explained very well in Russo’s book. Both will be executive producers on the film.', 'After convincing Russo to bring the text to the big screen, the two set to work looking for financing. They found a perfect match in Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs), a type of digital asset.', '“We put together a group of emerging artists to create a collection of NFTs,” explains Gordillo. “Some of the money will go to fund the film and some will be cashed in by the artists.” They have already raised $1.5 million in a presale of the digital works.', 'The next step was to find an industry expert to bring the idea to the screen: “We proposed it to Ridley Scott.” The ‘Alien’ and ‘Blade Runner’ director, says Gordillo, “is the ideal partner because he is the person who best captured on screen everything connected to technology and science fiction.”', 'Scott “liked the project from the beginning” and will participate as a producer; he also found them a director, Shyman Madiraju.', 'For now, Gordillo and his team are adapting the book to the screen and will then begin casting actors. The film will be called ', ', like the book, and its release is anticipated for the end of 2023.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:38 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-05-12/baby-formula-crisis-deepens-in-the-us-out-of-stock-rate-nears-40-as-parents-forced-to-search-for-food.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-05-12/baby-formula-crisis-deepens-in-the-us-out-of-stock-rate-nears-40-as-parents-forced-to-search-for-food.html', 'date': '12 May 2022', 'title': 'Baby formula crisis deepens in the US: Out-of-stock rate hits 40% as parents forced to search for food', 'author': 'María Antonia Sánchez-Vallejo', 'text_art': ['The infant formula supply crisis in the United States, which has dragged on since last year, is worsening by the day, to the point of forcing the White House to reassure hundreds of thousands of parents – many of whom are putting in long car journeys in search of stock – that guaranteeing the supply of infant formula for all is a top priority of the Joe Biden administration.', 'For months, as a result of the ', ', supermarkets and pharmacies across the country have struggled to stock enough baby formula, even though manufacturers say factories and labs are running at full capacity.', 'The out-of-stock rate for infant formula hovered between 2% and 8% in the first half of 2021, but skyrocketed last July. Between November 2021 and early April 2022, rates hovered around 31%, according to ', '. By the end of April, it hit close to 40%.', 'In addition to the supply shortages that have paralyzed the activity of some sectors, such as the automotive industry, a perfect storm hit supermarkets at the beginning of the year. And infant formula was hardest hit by the crisis. In six states, more than half of the available baby formula was completely sold out during the week of April 24, according to Datasembly. The shortage is especially acute in places like Tennessee, Missouri and Iowa.', 'The combination of several factors, including', ', the ', 'and the withdrawal of some products for health reasons, has left many American parents with nursing children out of options. The restrictions on purchases have been an immediate consequence: the large pharmacy chains CVS and Walgreens confirmed that they have decided to limit each purchase to three containers per customer. The retail chain Target, one of the largest in the country, has also limited the online purchase of these products to four per customer.', 'Asked about it in her daily press conference, the White House spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, assured on Monday that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) will ensure the adequate supply of the product. That includes, Psaki said, “working with major manufacturers to ensure they ramp up production, optimize their supply lines, product sizes to expand capacity and prioritize the lines most in demand.”', 'Psaki stressed the need to speed up entry permits for imported products, as well as to guarantee the supply of specialized formulas, some of which are required in medical treatments.', 'The supply crisis, which has created images of empty shelves in supermarkets and pharmacies and triggered a store-to-store pilgrimage in the hardest-hit states, has also been worsened by the recent FDA-ordered closure of a formula manufacturing plant in Michigan, owned by one of the nation’s leading producers. The closure of the facility followed the withdrawal of three lines of that brand due to the potential presence of bacteria, including salmonella.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:40 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-12/luna-crypto-crash-wipes-out-savings-of-thousands-of-investors-sparking-fears-for-sector.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-12/luna-crypto-crash-wipes-out-savings-of-thousands-of-investors-sparking-fears-for-sector.html', 'date': '12 May 2022', 'title': 'Luna crypto crash wipes out savings of thousands of investors, sparking fears for sector', 'author': 'Álvaro Sánchez', 'text_art': ['Fear and anxiety are descending upon the ', '. In 72 frantic hours, the ', 'and its associated stablecoin TerraUSD fell more than 99%, sparking fears about the volatility of the crypto sector.', 'Following the crash, Twitter and Reddit were inundated with messages from investors describing how they lost most of their savings in the blink of an eye. On Reddit, which is widely used by small investors to talk about their operations in the financial markets, many claimed to have lost tens of thousands and even hundreds of thousands of dollars in the crash. Some of the comments expressed such desperation that forum moderators have pinned the number of suicide helplines at the top of the thread.', 'TerraUSD, otherwise known as UST, was founded by the Singapore-based company Terraform Labs in 2018. It is an algorithmic stablecoin that aims to maintain parity with the US dollar, meaning that a TerraUSD owner should always be able to exchange the token for one US dollar. But the stablecoin lost its peg to the dollar and dropped to just 23 cents before bouncing back somewhat. This crash affected Luna, its sister token, which can be swapped with TerraUSD and vice versa. In this ', ', an investor makes gains when they exchange Luna for TerraUSD, when TerraUSD is below the US dollar, given the expectation that the cryptocurrency will bounce back to parity. This however is not happening. Instead, analysts say the cryptocurrency has entered a death spiral. As of Thursday, Luna was trading for less than 10 cents, compared to nearly $100 a few weeks ago.', 'Terra’s creator, Do Kwon, has tried to stabilize the situation by drawing on his huge bitcoin reserves. The South Korean businessman spent $750 million in bitcoin to maintain the stablecoin’s parity, but those efforts have so far been unsuccessful. As investors panicked, Kwon tried to allay concerns in a ', '. “I understand the last 72 hours have been extremely tough on all of you – know that I am resolved to work with every one of you to weather this crisis, and we will build our way out of this,” he wrote on Wednesday.', 'It is still not clear why TerraUSD lost its peg to the US dollar. Some experts say it was a coordinated attack to profit by betting on its fall. In this case, $300 million worth of TerraUSD would have had to be sold in a matter of seconds. This theory comes as the website CoinDesk reported that the European Commission is considering banning large stablecoin transactions.', 'The scale of the crash is so great that many have compared it to the bankruptcy of the Lehman Brothers investment bank in 2008, which forced the US authorities to bail out a number of financial institutions to stop the entire system from collapsing.', 'The panic has extended to bitcoin, which has lost 20% of its value in the last five days. Bitcoin is now trading at $27,700, compared to $68,000 in November – a fall of more than 50% in six months. Meanwhile, shares in Coinbase, one of the most popular cryptocurrency exchange platforms, fell 26% on Wednesday. In the past six months, it has shed more than 80% of its value. But while the losses are great, bitcoin supporters say that the cryptocurrency has been through worse crises and bounced back.', 'Although the wider consequences of the Luna crash are still unknown, it seems clear that it strengthens the argument of regulators who have been warning small investors that the ', ' can lead to total losses. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen used the crash to explain why the sector needs proper regulation. “I think that this simply illustrates that this is a rapidly growing product and there are rapidly growing risks,” she told the Senate.', 'Following Luna’s fall, Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, which is the largest cryptocurrency exchange platform in the world, said ', 'that “we need to respect the market, with a level of caution.” “We are in a new market, with many innovations,” he wrote. “Some innovations will become successful, many won’t.”', 'Meanwhile, on Reddit, investors continued to commiserate about losing their savings. One said they had lost around $450,000: “I cannot pay the bank. I will lose my home soon.”']}
2022-06-01 23:04:41 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-13/crypto-panic-grips-markets-after-luna-crash-why-are-investors-fleeing.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
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{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-13/crypto-panic-grips-markets-after-luna-crash-why-are-investors-fleeing.html', 'date': '13 May 2022', 'title': '‘Crypto-panic’ grips markets after Luna crash: Why are investors fleeing?', 'author': 'Álvaro Sánchez', 'text_art': ['The future may be too distant a place for some cryptocurrency investors. The ', ' in recent days is sowing doubts among many of those who predicted a bright future in which cryptocurrencies would replace traditional money and break the monopoly of central banks. The virtual disappearance of Luna, the star of one of the biggest fiascos in the industry – its value plummeted from $20 billion to nearly zero in just a few days – has left a trail of victims among investors. It has also spread to the main cryptocurrencies: bitcoin shed 17% in five days, and ethereum, the second most-important cryptocurrency, lost 23%.', 'The trigger for the crisis was the fact that Luna’s sister currency, the stablecoin TerraUST, lost its peg to the US dollar. This stable currency was associated with the greenback by means of an algorithm that has been shown to be ineffective, and which immediately caused a domino effect that has wiped out Luna and infected other cryptocurrencies due to a loss of confidence. Enrique Moris, a professional investor in the stock market and cryptocurrencies expert, sees the effect as normal. “Panic has spread and logically the entire market has been infected. If I may make a bad comparison, if tomorrow Facebook or Apple fell 99%, the same thing would happen and people would rethink their investments in other technology firms.” Moris believes that over time the market will make distinctions. “That this has happened to Luna does not mean that it will happen to the rest of the cryptocurrencies. People are selling ', ' even though it has nothing to do with it,” he says.', 'All together, cryptocurrencies are worth $1.2 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap, so despite the setback, they still have a capitalization equivalent to that of ', '. Bitcoin is being traded for around $28,000, its lowest levels since the end of 2020. The recent crash, therefore, is a dint on its credibility but does not signal the end. In fact, bitcoin fell by 80% in 2018, a higher percentage than now. Later, the cryptocurrency was able to fully recover and went on to set new highs. Its defenders are clinging to those precedents in the midst of the current selling panic, although history does not have to repeat itself. But even if it manages to bounce back and return to new highs in the future, many investors will have lost their money along the way, because as the economist John Maynard Keynes once pointed out, “the markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent,” that is, there may be people who need the money to cover expenses or who sell because they consider the drop excessive.', 'In times of difficulty, one of the most repeated war cries among small investors who bet on cryptocurrencies is to hold, that is, to weather the storm without selling. Moris maintains that the Luna case is a lesson in this regard: “Holding for', 'the next 10 years on the premise that tomorrow you will earn more money if you are patient does not work in the world of crypto, because there are projects that can fall by 99%, as is the case with Luna.” A lack of financial education is in certain cases behind the large losses of small savers, he believes. “There are people who are new to the world of investment, and just because a project is among the 10 largest, they take it for granted that tomorrow it will be worth more,” says Moris.', 'The ups and downs of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not new. Since their birth more than a decade ago, the difficulty in determining their real value has caused strong oscillations. In the beginning, the strong revaluations helped support the legend that it was a relatively simple way to multiply your savings. But past benefits do not guarantee future ones. There are unconfirmed expectations about their future use, and certain doses of FOMO (fear of missing out)', 'among small investors. There is a huge division of opinion among the experts. There are those who believe that the only reason why the value of cryptocurrencies keep rising is that someone else keeps buying them, and others who see in them ', '. When bitcoin hit highs near $68,000 in November 2021, the latter view seemed reinforced, but now the opposite is true.', 'The thousands of small investors who entrusted their money to Luna or TerraUST have no means of recovering what they lost. Cryptocurrencies are now high-risk assets moving in something akin to a financial Wild West. And the messages of those who have seen their accumulated savings of months or years evaporate in a few days are flooding online forums like Twitter or Reddit. The case might indeed encourage greater interest by the authorities to regulate its operation. The US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen, has recently made such a request. And the European Union is finalizing regulation that should be ready by the end of the year.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:42 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-05-13/white-house-calls-for-crackdown-on-price-gouging-as-baby-formula-crisis-deepens.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:04:42 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-05-13/white-house-calls-for-crackdown-on-price-gouging-as-baby-formula-crisis-deepens.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-05-13/white-house-calls-for-crackdown-on-price-gouging-as-baby-formula-crisis-deepens.html', 'date': '13 May 2022', 'title': 'White House calls for crackdown on price gouging as baby formula crisis deepens', 'author': 'María Antonia Sánchez-Vallejo', 'text_art': ['On February 17, the largest US infant formula manufacturer, Abbott Nutrition, recalled several lines of infant formula from circulation. It also stopped production at its factory in Sturgis, Michigan. The precautionary action was due to concerns about bacterial contamination at the facility after four infants became ill and two died in late 2021 and early 2022. This situation has sparked a major shortage of baby formula supply in the United States, and forced the ', ' to take action.', 'The shortages are not new – the country has been struggling with this issue since the beginning of 2021 – but it has ', ' levels due to the voluntary closure of the Abbott Nutrition facility and the disruption of supply chains, which has also been an ongoing problem since 2021.', 'The national out-of-stock rate hit 40% in April and now stands at 43%, according to ', '. Thousands of parents have been forced to travel for miles in search of baby formula, particularly in the hardest-hit states – Missouri, Tennessee and Iowa –, while online prices have soared.', 'Amid the deepening crisis, the White House announced on Thursday additional steps aimed at addressing the shortages. According to a ', ', President Joe Biden has been meeting with retailers and manufacturers, including the CEOs of Walmart and Target, to urge them to “do all they can to help families purchase and access infant formula.” The president also discussed with retailers how they are addressing shortages in regional areas, which is one of the government’s priorities.', 'Other steps announced on Thursday include simplifying product offerings to increase the speed and scale of production, calling on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorney generals to crack down on price gouging – including the resale of products online “at a markup several times the retail price” – and increasing imports. The United States typically produces 98% of the infant formula it consumes, with the rest coming from Mexico, Chile, Ireland and the Netherlands.', '“As a result of our ongoing work, more infant formula has been produced in the last four weeks than in the four weeks that preceded the recall [of Abbott Nutrition],” a senior administration official said in a ', '. “But we also know that families across the country remain concerned about the availability of infant formula, especially families that rely on specialty products that are harder to substitute and some of which are only produced at the Michigan facility.”', 'Abbott Nutrition said on Wednesday that it could resume production at the Michigan facility within two weeks, while two manufacturers in the industry have increased their activity by up to 50%, working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:43 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-16/the-new-battle-in-kyivs-suburbs-rebuilding-a-life-shattered-by-russia.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:04:43 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-16/the-new-battle-in-kyivs-suburbs-rebuilding-a-life-shattered-by-russia.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/international/2022-05-16/the-new-battle-in-kyivs-suburbs-rebuilding-a-life-shattered-by-russia.html', 'date': '16 May 2022', 'title': 'The new battle in Kyiv’s suburbs: Rebuilding a life shattered by Russia', 'author': 'Luis de Vega', 'text_art': ['“Mom, where are you? You’re beautiful…! How will I survive without you?” Between sobs, Natalia Mirko, 52, hugs her mother’s coffin. Professor Anna Starostenko, 73, was one of the few residents who stayed in her house in Irpin during the month of occupation of this Ukrainian city by the Russians. The woman survived the fighting and the lack of water, electricity and gas. But on May 9, just over a month after the invaders had withdrawn and when the city was beginning to come back to life, her heart gave out. Life in Irpin continues its course. So does death. The grave of this doctor in economics is surrounded by dozens of others, all covered in flowers. They are some of the approximately ', ' under the yoke of the Russian occupation in this town on the outskirts of Kyiv.', 'The specter of a possible return of Kremlin troops, which haunted residents in the first days after Ukrainian authorities regained control, seems to have vanished. Russian President Vladimir Putin is now more concerned with gaining ground ', '. But getting back to normal in the suburbs of Kyiv is not going to be easy or fast. Of the approximately 100,000 people who lived in Irpin when the invasion began on February 24, only about 5,000 stayed behind. So far, some 20,000 have returned, according to data offered in her office by Julia Ustych, deputy to the mayor and in charge of humanitarian affairs at the municipal level. In other words, 75% of the inhabitants still have not returned home. Ustych, whose 17-year-old son is being fostered by a family in Spain, carries in her hand a list of the neighbors for whom they are trying to find temporary accommodation, either in Irpin itself or in a nearby town.', 'Another of the main battlefronts is to restore essential services. On the stairs that give access to the Town Hall, several people are taking turns next to a power strip with several plugs. “Gas has recently arrived at my house, but many things depend on electricity, such as the radio, the washing machine, the telephone…” laments Svetlana, 46, as she unwinds her mobile phone charger. Next to her is Aleksander, 59, waiting for his laptop’s battery to charge. “In my house there is still no water, no heating, no electricity,” he says.', 'Equipped with orange vests, a group of young people is busy clearing up a half-ruined building. They are volunteers of the District One Foundation, born in 2018 in Kyiv to fight against gentrification. With the outbreak of the conflict, they began to help looking for funds to support the army and get people food and medicine. Now their focus is on reconstruction. In coordination with the authorities – and once the explosives teams have cleaned up a site – they get to work. Paul, 36, is one of the more than 400 who make up the WhatsApp group where they are organized. Covered in dust, he is outraged at what he saw while cleaning up a school in Borodyanka that ', '. “Inside the library, they were crapping on the floor and wiping their asses with our flag.”', 'In recent days some businesses have been reopening in Irpin, especially grocery stores, where there are even fresh products such as meat or fruit. But the streets remain almost deserted and there are very few children on the street with their parents. School Number Two remains closed and with significant damage caused by the projectiles.', 'The columns of smoke had barely disappeared when Cristina, 25, and Andrei, 26, a couple from Irpin, resumed their cafeteria project ', '. They had been given the keys to their new business on February 23. But on the morning of the 24th, the Russian invasion brought everything to a halt. Now they are waiting for the last windows to be installed so they can open the doors of Ristretto. The café is located on Station Street, now renamed Tank Avenue after a Russian armored column was shelled at this point on its way to take Kyiv.', 'The silence is only broken by some passing vehicles, and desolation continues to impose its law on Irpin. The open wounds in houses and buildings are still visible to all. Many are unrecoverable. The damage is especially serious in the area that separates this town from Bucha. On the main avenue, Maxim, 44, and other workers from the Best Internet company are working to replace the damaged wiring with a new one. “Today the internet is used for everything,” he says while a yellow public bus adds a note of color against the black of the fire that has charred the facades of the buildings.', 'One of these charred buildings contains the home of Natalia, 45, who returned last Tuesday from western Ukraine, where she took refuge. She escaped when the clashes had just started, leaving only broken windows in her third-floor apartment. Upon her return, she saw how the flames had devoured everything. In the midst of the desolation, a red saucepan still sat on one of the stoves. The sound of crunching glass under her feet was the only thing to be heard in a deserted and uninhabitable building.', 'Natalia, who now spends hours on the street killing time, was one of the thousands of inhabitants who fled across the bridge that connects Irpin with the capital. The bridge was blown up by the local army to stop the Russian advance and it ended up becoming a symbol of the war. The Kremlin’s troops never made it beyond that strategic location, just five kilometers from the entrance to Kyiv. But blowing up the bridge made it difficult to evacuate Irpin and other besieged towns. Up to 40,000 residents fled the fighting, according to estimates by the municipal authorities, going over planks placed there as a precarious footbridge over the river. Those images made global news. The bridge has not yet been rebuilt, but there is already a brand new parallel road that has reestablished communication between Irpin, Bucha and other cities with Kyiv.', '“The attackers finally managed to enter our city and 70% of the infrastructure was destroyed or affected. Schools, kindergartens, residences, buildings, cultural centers”, lists Julia Ustych. But at the same time, the municipal employee proudly recalls that Irpin was the last bastion protecting Kyiv. “Irpin became a fortress to protect the capital from the Russian occupiers,” she says. Now, the shiny blacktop that runs alongside the ruins of the bridge symbolizes the desire to win the battle of reconstruction.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:44 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/p/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:04:44 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/p/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:04:47 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/t/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:04:47 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/t/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:04:47 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (404) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/h/> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:04:47 [scrapy.spidermiddlewares.httperror] INFO: Ignoring response <404 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/h/>: HTTP status code is not handled or not allowed
2022-06-01 23:04:49 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-16/saudi-oil-company-aramco-earns-395-billion-in-the-first-quarter-of-the-year.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:04:49 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-16/saudi-oil-company-aramco-earns-395-billion-in-the-first-quarter-of-the-year.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-16/saudi-oil-company-aramco-earns-395-billion-in-the-first-quarter-of-the-year.html', 'date': '16 May 2022', 'title': 'Saudi oil company Aramco earns $39.5 billion in the first quarter of the year', 'author': 'EFE', 'text_art': ['Soaring oil prices have led the Saudi oil giant Aramco to earn $39.5 billion (almost €38 billion) in the first quarter of the year, an 82% increase over the same period in 2021 and its best results since the company went public in 2019. The quarterly report came on the same week that Aramco ', ' as the world’s most valuable company.', 'The oil company said in a statement that its net income almost doubled from the $21.7 billion (€20.8 billion) it earned in the first three months of 2021, mainly driven by higher crude oil prices, a greater volume of sales and better margins in downstream (refining and marketing). Aramco said it will distribute a dividend of $18.8 billion (€18,1 billion).', 'High oil prices had also caused the profits of the oil company to skyrocket in 2021, up to 124% from the previous year, a period of global crisis caused by ', '.', 'Around 98% of shares in Aramco, which is valued at $2.5 billion (four times more than the value of Spain’s entire blue-chip index Ibex 35) are state-owned. Saudi Arabia is indirectly benefiting from Russia’s international isolation. Moscow, Saudi Arabia’s biggest competitor, is being forced to apply a discount of around 30% on its sale price as it ', ' for its oil.', 'Saudi Arabia is making the most of this situation. While most of its exports normally ', ', in today’s rapidly changing market Riyadh now has a golden opportunity to tap into its vast reserves (among the largest on the planet) and low extraction costs (among the lowest in the world).', 'Unlike other major producers, Saudi Arabia still has some leeway to increase its oil extraction. It has so far refused to open up the tap completely, like the main buyers have been asking it to do, but Aramco has ramped up production by 20% to reach 10.2 million barrels a day between January and March. The company’s goal is to raise extraction by 30% between now and 2027 and to double gas extraction by 2030. ', ' – oil is nearly 50% more expensive than a year ago and the price of gas has quintupled – that is a lot of money.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:49 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2022-05-16/the-demise-of-divine-coincidence.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:04:49 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2022-05-16/the-demise-of-divine-coincidence.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/opinion/2022-05-16/the-demise-of-divine-coincidence.html', 'date': '16 May 2022', 'title': 'The demise of divine coincidence', 'author': 'Ángel Ubide', 'text_art': ['Originally coined by Olivier Blanchard and Jordi Gali in 2005, the divine coincidence is a property of New Keynesian economic models and implies, simplifying a bit and under a series of assumptions, that stabilizing inflation at the target also implies reaching the optimal level of economic activity. This is the key to most central banks’ price stability mandates: hitting the inflation target is enough to maximize ', '. It is a property that allows the separation of macroeconomic tasks, with monetary policy focused on inflation and fiscal policy on stabilizing public debt.', 'The problem, of course, is that the necessary conditions for the divine coincidence to hold are not always present. For example, in a situation of chronic insufficiency of demand, such as we have experienced until recently, monetary policy may not be able to bring inflation up to target, and needs the ', '. It is also possible that the economy will face a large temporary negative supply shock, as is currently the case. In these cases, it is important to recognize the presence of real wage rigidities: wages adjust less, or at least more slowly, than prices. In such a situation, strict adherence to an inflation stabilization regime that does not allow for some wage adjustment is suboptimal, and generates an excessive reduction in activity: the divine coincidence no longer holds. The solution is to be patient, and create the conditions for a gradual adjustment of wages conditional, of course, on inflation expectations remaining consistent with the target. The current situation is even more difficult, since the volatility of the supply shock – the price increases of all commodities – is much greater than the volatility of demand: for example, the price of a barrel of Brent oil has gone from $80 in January to $128 in March to $109 at the end of April. The reality is that policymakers now have little control over economic variables, and the uncertainty surrounding economic projections is enormous.', 'The divine coincidence was defined in the field of economics, but its logic can also be applied to geopolitics. For decades it has been argued that economic interdependence was the best way to ensure global political stability. For example, Thomas Friedman ventured, in 1996, the “golden arches conflict prevention theory”: two countries where McDonalds was established would not enter into armed conflict. Over time, the concept of ensuring world peace through economic interdependence took hold, and one of the best examples has been the German strategy of intense economic relations with Russia: Germany secured a very cheap supply of energy that allowed it to increase the competitiveness of its industry. It was the divine coincidence applied to geoeconomics: globalization made it possible to increase economic efficiency and, at the same time, ensure world peace.', 'But the reality is that the economic relationships were struck first, and the political implications were rationalized ex-post to justify the economic strategy. After World War II, the US had a surplus of grain, and Russia had a surplus of commodities, and it was in the economic interest of both countries to enter into trade relations. In the same way, China’s opening to international trade generated mutually beneficial economic exchanges for many countries. Pioneering companies lobbied governments, which eventually liberalized trade. The divine geoeconomic coincidence made life easier for governments: the economic relationship interests us, let us praise the political relationship.', 'Until the divine geopolitical coincidence ceased to hold. The Chinese (or Russian) economic opening did not lead to its democratization, as had been expected. Subtly, frictions between the US, Europe and China increased, and the idea of decoupling the Western economies from the Chinese economy took hold. Hence arose the concept of “producing in China for China, outside of China for the rest of the world.” And the process has been accelerated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions. The McDonalds theory no longer holds. Suddenly, energy independence is just as valuable as fiscal discipline. Suddenly, globalization has limits – and that is why Germany, so economically dependent on the divine geopolitical coincidence, is so resistant to this new reality that breaks its mercantilist economic model and deteriorates its competitiveness.', 'The US treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, recently proposed that supply chains be reoriented towards allies – “friend-shoring.” The idea of international trade determined by geostrategic relations and political values is very distant from globalization as a strategy to increase economic efficiency. And, what does “friend-shoring” mean in practice? The countries that abstained in the recent United Nations vote condemning Russia represent more than half of the world’s population. Neither the IMF’s Monetary and Financial Committee nor the G20 were able to agree on a communiqué at their recent meeting, revealing the huge geopolitical gap between the coalition of developed economies and the rest of the world – especially now that tariffs and sanctions are geostrategic tools and dollar reserves can no longer be considered risk-free assets.', 'The end of divine coincidence, both economic and geopolitical, reduces economic efficiency, introduces extremely high uncertainty, and makes the design of economic policy enormously difficult. The dilemmas faced by policy makers – growth vs. inflation, efficiency vs. resilience – are not going to be resolved in the short term, and they feed into each other. Fortunately, these shocks have come at a time of ', ', underpinned by very robust labor markets: the average unemployment rate of the G7 economies is the lowest in decades.', 'The divine coincidence will return, once the impact of these supply shocks wears off and a new geopolitical model is built. But the room for error in policy making during the transition period is enormous.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:50 [scrapy.core.engine] DEBUG: Crawled (200) <GET https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-17/twitter-stocks-plummet-as-elon-musk-intensifies-dispute-over-spam-accounts.html> (referer: https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/)
2022-06-01 23:04:51 [scrapy.core.scraper] DEBUG: Scraped from <200 https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-17/twitter-stocks-plummet-as-elon-musk-intensifies-dispute-over-spam-accounts.html>
{'url': 'https://english.elpais.com/economy-and-business/2022-05-17/twitter-stocks-plummet-as-elon-musk-intensifies-dispute-over-spam-accounts.html', 'date': '17 May 2022', 'title': 'Twitter stocks plummet as Elon Musk intensifies dispute over spam accounts', 'author': 'Miguel Jiménez', 'text_art': ['Twitter stocks fell on Monday as doubts built over whether', 'will proceed with his plans to purchase the social media company. After an initial purchase of 9% of shares, the Tesla founder reached an agreement in April to buy Twitter for $54.2 a share, or $44 billion in total. But on Friday, he announced that the deal was on hold until Twitter could prove that less than 5% of users were fake accounts. The announcement caused Twitter stocks to plummet 10%, but the uncertainty has not ended there.', 'On Tuesday, Musk renewed his dispute over spam accounts, this time accusing ', 'of refusing to provide information. “My offer [to buy Twitter] was based on Twitter’s SEC filings being accurate. Yesterday, Twitter’s CEO publicly refused to show proof of <5%. This deal cannot move forward until he does,” he warned in a message on Twitter.', 'Investors believe Musk is looking for an excuse to break the agreement, or at the very least, to negotiate a lower price for the social media company. The fact that the terms of the merger ', 'while the process is completed appears not to matter to the businessman. On Monday, Musk told a technology conference in Miami that he believes 20% of Twitter accounts are false, without explaining how he reached this number.', 'Twitter meanwhile has said it is committed to the deal. In a long Twitter thread, Agrawal explained the difficulties involved with detecting fake accounts and how the company is working on the problem. In response to his detailed and technical explanation of the verification process, Musk replied: “Have you tried just calling them?”', 'The Tesla founder said on Saturday that he was going to do his own calculations based on a random sample of 100 users. But in his thread, Agrawal pointed out that Twitter is already studying thousands of users to estimate the number of spam accounts. He added: “Unfortunately, we don’t believe that this specific estimation can be performed externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we can’t share).”', 'Twitter stocks dropped 8% on Monday to $37.39, falling below the $39.31 closing price on April 1, the last trading session before Musk revealed that he had bought a 9% stake in the company.']}
2022-06-01 23:04:51 [scrapy.core.engine] INFO: Closing spider (finished)
2022-06-01 23:04:51 [scrapy.extensions.feedexport] INFO: Stored csv feed (97 items) in: data.csv
2022-06-01 23:04:51 [scrapy.statscollectors] INFO: Dumping Scrapy stats:
{'downloader/request_bytes': 97674,
 'downloader/request_count': 179,
 'downloader/request_method_count/GET': 179,
 'downloader/response_bytes': 6370719,
 'downloader/response_count': 179,
 'downloader/response_status_count/200': 101,
 'downloader/response_status_count/301': 40,
 'downloader/response_status_count/404': 38,
 'dupefilter/filtered': 149,
 'elapsed_time_seconds': 219.894244,
 'feedexport/success_count/FileFeedStorage': 1,
 'finish_reason': 'finished',
 'finish_time': datetime.datetime(2022, 6, 1, 21, 4, 51, 80747),
 'httpcompression/response_bytes': 31600240,
 'httpcompression/response_count': 139,
 'httperror/response_ignored_count': 38,
 'httperror/response_ignored_status_count/404': 38,
 'item_scraped_count': 97,
 'log_count/DEBUG': 282,
 'log_count/ERROR': 1,
 'log_count/INFO': 52,
 'memusage/max': 207761408,
 'memusage/startup': 165486592,
 'request_depth_max': 2,
 'response_received_count': 139,
 'scheduler/dequeued': 179,
 'scheduler/dequeued/memory': 179,
 'scheduler/enqueued': 179,
 'scheduler/enqueued/memory': 179,
 'spider_exceptions/TypeError': 1,
 'start_time': datetime.datetime(2022, 6, 1, 21, 1, 11, 186503)}
2022-06-01 23:04:51 [scrapy.core.engine] INFO: Spider closed (finished)


df=pd.read_csv('data.csv')
df.shape

(195, 5)


df.sort_values(by="date").head()


print(df["tittle"][140])
print("-"*10)
print(df["text_art"][140])

Illegal and dangerous: Mexico bans vaping
----------
The President of Mexico, ,(popularly known by his initials AMLO), signed a decree on Tuesday that prohibits the “circulation and marketing” of electronic cigarettes or vaping devices as well as tobacco heaters. Combined with the passing of a General Import and Export Tax Law earlier this month, these products are now banned from being imported and sold within the country.,The decision also follows a maximum health alert issued by the country’s federal health risks commission, which declared that all alternative tobacco smoking products can cause major illness. Federal and local authorities have launched several campaigns to locate and seize these devices in at least a dozen states.,The health alerts and legal measures have prompted a debate about vaping devices that are being smuggled into the country. During the Senate debate about the tax law, Senator Luis Ortiz proposed regulating the market, saying that distribution is being , in the absence of companies being able to import the products and pay taxes and salaries.,Although the legal market for vaping products has grown in the country, it still represents a tiny fraction compared to that of conventional cigarettes. Philip Morris International, one of the marketers of these alternatives, went from having 35,000 to nearly 42,000 users of tobacco heaters. According to official government estimates, in the last five years the tobacco industry increased its sales from about 846 to 1.2 billion pesos (about $64 million) a year.,At the same time, according to a study carried out by the Mexican federation of business chambers, illegal tobacco represents 19% of the total market. Between 2019 and 2020, although there was an increase in tobacco taxes due to the Special Tax on Products and Services (IEPS), payment of the taxes contracted due to the trade in counterfeit tobacco products.,One of the arguments used to ban all types of vaporizer devices, whether with or without nicotine, is that various flavorings are used to “hook children and adolescents who will later be consumers of other drugs,” Senator Lilia Valdez said before the bill’s approval.,In debating the ban, lawmakers such as Senator Lilia Valdez expressed concern that the various flavorings used in vaping devices “are used to hook children and adolescents” who will then become ,.,Andrea Constantini, head of Regional Scientific Engagement for Latin America and Canada at Philip Morris International, says that the ban creates more channels for minors to access unregulated products. Prohibitions, she says, simply lead to a further “lack of control” over the market, with minors acquiring products of varying quality through illicit channels.,According to data from various marketers of alternative products with and without nicotine, these products contain substances that can be up to 95% less harmful to the health of the user. Conventional cigarettes, by comparison, have a high risk of causing the lung disease Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and various types of cancer.,The main argument of the companies that market alternative products to tobacco is that, unlike cigarettes, they do not use combustion to deliver the substance to the user’s system. This argument has been taken up by various national health regulators such as the United Kingdom Public Health Agency, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the New Zealand Ministry of Health.,“The decision must be made based on scientific evidence, not on dogma or ignorance about the alternatives,” says Constantini.,Regulation has not always been able to protect adolescents from consuming prohibited substances. In the United States, where the FDA has regulated electronic cigarettes since 2016, it is estimated that just over two million young people between the ages of 14 and 17 vape.,For Constantini, “it is essential to regulate” alternative tobacco products, so that “quality products are available to adults who already smoke, while protecting minors and people who do not smoke.”

	Name	Last	% Dif.	High	Low	Volume	Turnover (€ Thousands)	Date	Time
0	ACCIONA	179.5000	-0.22	183.0000	177.6000	2,242,807	402,671.18	31/05/2022	Close
1	ACERINOX	12.0650	1.00	12.1400	11.8000	3,096,932	37,216.85	31/05/2022	Close
2	ACS	26.4000	-1.09	26.9000	26.4000	1,886,765	49,913.23	31/05/2022	Close
3	AENA	142.1500	0.18	143.1500	140.8500	279,252	39,701.34	31/05/2022	Close
4	ALMIRALL	10.3600	-1.80	10.6400	10.3600	443,032	4,628.94	31/05/2022	Close
5	AMADEUS	57.8400	-4.62	59.9600	57.7400	1,870,915	108,552.83	31/05/2022	Close
6	ARCELORMIT.	29.9800	-1.70	30.4550	29.9050	347,526	10,473.61	31/05/2022	Close
7	B.SANTANDER	3.0145	-2.06	3.0730	3.0060	62,290,966	188,247.94	31/05/2022	Close
8	BA.SABADELL	0.8330	-1.02	0.8500	0.8260	18,776,104	15,675.54	31/05/2022	Close
9	BANKINTER	5.9180	-0.84	5.9880	5.8860	1,982,936	11,754.47	31/05/2022	Close
10	BBVA	5.0790	-1.32	5.1600	5.0460	24,684,618	125,461.27	31/05/2022	Close
11	CAIXABANK	3.3680	-1.03	3.4060	3.3420	48,090,076	162,013.48	31/05/2022	Close
12	CELLNEX	42.0300	-0.59	42.7400	41.7100	5,735,320	241,274.44	31/05/2022	Close
13	CIE AUTOMOT.	23.8000	0.93	23.8600	23.1800	185,418	4,389.70	31/05/2022	Close
14	ENAGAS	21.3100	-0.79	21.6700	21.3100	2,982,173	63,636.28	31/05/2022	Close
15	ENDESA	20.6300	-0.72	20.9000	20.5900	1,692,113	34,938.59	31/05/2022	Close
16	FERROVIAL	24.0100	-1.36	24.2700	24.0000	1,988,200	47,761.94	31/05/2022	Close
17	FLUIDRA	24.6400	-2.07	25.1200	24.6400	565,427	13,983.25	31/05/2022	Close
18	GRIFOLS CL.A	19.5900	-0.05	19.9200	19.4300	1,406,781	27,593.85	31/05/2022	Close
19	IAG	1.5105	-4.91	1.5635	1.5090	31,170,682	47,510.82	31/05/2022	Close
20	IBERDROLA	11.0350	-0.68	11.1300	10.9500	19,012,836	209,694.77	31/05/2022	Close
21	INDITEX	22.3900	-0.44	22.7600	22.2800	5,495,463	123,276.96	31/05/2022	Close
22	INDRA A	10.1400	-1.07	10.2300	10.1200	604,061	6,133.01	31/05/2022	Close
23	INM.COLONIAL	7.6450	-1.80	7.7050	7.6000	921,157	7,051.77	31/05/2022	Close
24	MAPFRE	1.7280	-1.43	1.7570	1.7280	23,125,576	40,307.22	31/05/2022	Close
25	MELIA HOTELS	7.4350	-0.20	7.5650	7.3750	642,391	4,792.21	31/05/2022	Close
26	MERLIN	10.5300	-1.03	10.6400	10.4800	1,297,679	13,670.05	31/05/2022	Close
27	NATURGY	28.1400	-0.92	28.5700	27.8600	4,629,489	130,303.11	31/05/2022	Close
28	PHARMA MAR	72.3000	-0.08	73.8000	72.0000	62,290	4,530.86	31/05/2022	Close
29	R.E.C.	19.2900	0.52	19.2900	19.0500	4,791,507	92,344.47	31/05/2022	Close
30	REPSOL	14.9950	1.01	15.3100	14.9400	20,877,928	314,289.94	31/05/2022	Close
31	ROVI	62.4000	0.56	62.8500	61.4000	86,190	5,377.68	31/05/2022	Close
32	SIEMENS GAME	17.9600	0.34	17.9750	17.8800	3,692,468	66,269.24	31/05/2022	Close
33	SOLARIA	21.6800	-1.28	22.2700	20.7200	1,181,887	25,308.25	31/05/2022	Close
34	TELEFONICA	5.0600	2.16	5.0640	4.9500	37,171,702	187,729.53	31/05/2022	Close

	Name	Last	% Dif.	High	Low	Volume	Turnover (€ Thousands)	Date	Time
0	ACCIONA	179.5000	-0.22	183.0000	177.6000	2,242,807	402,671.18	31/05/2022	Close
1	ACERINOX	12.0650	1.00	12.1400	11.8000	3,096,932	37,216.85	31/05/2022	Close
2	ACS	26.4000	-1.09	26.9000	26.4000	1,886,765	49,913.23	31/05/2022	Close
3	AENA	142.1500	0.18	143.1500	140.8500	279,252	39,701.34	31/05/2022	Close
4	ALMIRALL	10.3600	-1.80	10.6400	10.3600	443,032	4,628.94	31/05/2022	Close
5	AMADEUS	57.8400	-4.62	59.9600	57.7400	1,870,915	108,552.83	31/05/2022	Close
6	ARCELORMIT.	29.9800	-1.70	30.4550	29.9050	347,526	10,473.61	31/05/2022	Close
7	B.SANTANDER	3.0145	-2.06	3.0730	3.0060	62,290,966	188,247.94	31/05/2022	Close
8	BA.SABADELL	0.8330	-1.02	0.8500	0.8260	18,776,104	15,675.54	31/05/2022	Close
9	BANKINTER	5.9180	-0.84	5.9880	5.8860	1,982,936	11,754.47	31/05/2022	Close
10	BBVA	5.0790	-1.32	5.1600	5.0460	24,684,618	125,461.27	31/05/2022	Close
11	CAIXABANK	3.3680	-1.03	3.4060	3.3420	48,090,076	162,013.48	31/05/2022	Close
12	CELLNEX	42.0300	-0.59	42.7400	41.7100	5,735,320	241,274.44	31/05/2022	Close
13	CIE AUTOMOT.	23.8000	0.93	23.8600	23.1800	185,418	4,389.70	31/05/2022	Close
14	ENAGAS	21.3100	-0.79	21.6700	21.3100	2,982,173	63,636.28	31/05/2022	Close
15	ENDESA	20.6300	-0.72	20.9000	20.5900	1,692,113	34,938.59	31/05/2022	Close
16	FERROVIAL	24.0100	-1.36	24.2700	24.0000	1,988,200	47,761.94	31/05/2022	Close
17	FLUIDRA	24.6400	-2.07	25.1200	24.6400	565,427	13,983.25	31/05/2022	Close
18	GRIFOLS CL.A	19.5900	-0.05	19.9200	19.4300	1,406,781	27,593.85	31/05/2022	Close
19	IAG	1.5105	-4.91	1.5635	1.5090	31,170,682	47,510.82	31/05/2022	Close
20	IBERDROLA	11.0350	-0.68	11.1300	10.9500	19,012,836	209,694.77	31/05/2022	Close
21	INDITEX	22.3900	-0.44	22.7600	22.2800	5,495,463	123,276.96	31/05/2022	Close
22	INDRA A	10.1400	-1.07	10.2300	10.1200	604,061	6,133.01	31/05/2022	Close
23	INM.COLONIAL	7.6450	-1.80	7.7050	7.6000	921,157	7,051.77	31/05/2022	Close
24	MAPFRE	1.7280	-1.43	1.7570	1.7280	23,125,576	40,307.22	31/05/2022	Close
25	MELIA HOTELS	7.4350	-0.20	7.5650	7.3750	642,391	4,792.21	31/05/2022	Close
26	MERLIN	10.5300	-1.03	10.6400	10.4800	1,297,679	13,670.05	31/05/2022	Close
27	NATURGY	28.1400	-0.92	28.5700	27.8600	4,629,489	130,303.11	31/05/2022	Close
28	PHARMA MAR	72.3000	-0.08	73.8000	72.0000	62,290	4,530.86	31/05/2022	Close
29	R.E.C.	19.2900	0.52	19.2900	19.0500	4,791,507	92,344.47	31/05/2022	Close
30	REPSOL	14.9950	1.01	15.3100	14.9400	20,877,928	314,289.94	31/05/2022	Close
31	ROVI	62.4000	0.56	62.8500	61.4000	86,190	5,377.68	31/05/2022	Close
32	SIEMENS GAME	17.9600	0.34	17.9750	17.8800	3,692,468	66,269.24	31/05/2022	Close
33	SOLARIA	21.6800	-1.28	22.2700	20.7200	1,181,887	25,308.25	31/05/2022	Close
34	TELEFONICA	5.0600	2.16	5.0640	4.9500	37,171,702	187,729.53	31/05/2022	Close

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174	https://english.elpais.com/spain/2022-06-01/sp...	01 Jun 2022	Spain’s Supreme Court confirms conviction of Y...	EFE	Spain’s Supreme Court has confirmed a Barcelon...
173	https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-06-01/...	01 Jun 2022	Monkeypox: Four scenarios, according to scient...	Pablo Linde	As cases of , continue to trickle into various...

IT Academy - Data Science Itinerary¶

S12 T12: Web Scraping¶

Exercise 1¶

Exercise 2¶

Exercise 3¶

Conclusions¶

References:¶