Spain and Portugal hit by major power outages, halting trains and flights and wiping out traffic lights
Portugal's grid operator Redes Energéticas Nacionais (REN) said electrical supply was lost across the entire Iberian peninsula, and in parts of France, late on Monday morning. Spanish power grid operator Red Electrica said it was working with energy companies to restore power. 'The causes are being analyzed and all resources are being dedicated to solving it,' it said.
The outage took out screens, lighting and power sockets throughout the region; Portugal's police force told people to avoid unnecessary journeys because traffic lights were at risk of failing. 'Reduce your speed and pay extra attention,' they said. 'Prioritise safe driving: your calmness saves lives.'
In Madrid, traffic piled up on the roads after the lights went out. 'I was driving and suddenly there was no traffic lights ... It was a bit of a jungle,' Luis Ibáñez Jiménez told CNN. 'I saw a massive bus coming, and I had to accelerate a lot to go past it.'
And a holidaymaker inside Lisbon's Humberto Delgado airport said hundreds of people were stood in the dark in queues, with no air conditioning or running water. Shops were only accepting cash, she told CNN.
Spanish train operator Renfe said there was a power outage at a national level, causing trains to stop and departures to be canceled. And E-Redes, which provides electiricty to mainland Portugal, said in a statement it was working to re-establish connection. 'This is a wider European problem,' the company said in a statement, according to Reuters. — CNN
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Saudi Gazette
4 days ago
- Saudi Gazette
US officials race to prepare for historic Trump-Putin summit
WASHINGTON — American officials scrambling this weekend to identify and lock down a venue for Friday's summit between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart quickly discovered a major snag: summertime is peak tourist season in Alaska, and options both available and equipped to host the two world leaders were severely limited. When word reached certain prominent Alaskans that Trump and Putin were coming, a few began reaching out to the president's allies with a proposition: could their home be an option? It's unclear if those offers ever reached White House officials, who were calling sites in Juneau, the state capital, along with Anchorage and Fairbanks. Organizers of the summit soon came to believe the only city in the massive state with viable options for the summit would be Anchorage. And only Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, on the northern edge of the city, would meet the security requirements for the historic meeting, though the White House had hoped to avoid the optics of hosting the Russian leader and his entourage on a US military installation. That is where the two men will meet Friday, two White House officials said. The struggle underscored the rush now underway to nail down the details of Friday's meeting, the first time the top US and Russian leaders have met in more than four years. The summit is still largely a work in progress as US and Russian officials make haste to prepare for the high-profile encounter. The two countries' top diplomats — Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov — spoke Tuesday to discuss 'certain aspects of preparation,' according to Russia's foreign ministry. Usually, a high-stakes summit with a US adversary would be preceded by extensive negotiations over the agenda and outcomes. But Trump himself has said he is approaching the meeting as a 'feel-out' session, with few advance expectations for how it will proceed. The White House on Tuesday termed it a 'listening session.' 'The president feels like, 'look, I've got to look at this guy across the table. I need to see him face to face. I need to hear him one-on-one. I need to make an assessment by looking at him,'' Rubio said in a morning radio interview Tuesday with Sid Rosenberg, offering one explanation for why Trump's five known phone calls with Putin this year wouldn't suffice in determining the Russian leader's intentions. Trump's administration and the Kremlin landed on Alaska as the site for the summit after a lengthy behind-the-scenes back-and-forth, according to people familiar with the matter. There were few places that would work for the sit-down, the people said, particularly given a war crimes warrant issued for Putin's arrest by the International Criminal Court in 2023. With that fact looming, Russia balked at a European destination — even in a city like Vienna or Geneva, where US and Russian leaders have met dating back to the Cold War. While Putin himself raised the United Arab Emirates as an 'entirely suitable' location, many inside the White House hoped to avoid another lengthy trek to the Middle East after Trump's visit in May. In the end, sources said, it came down to Hungary — whose Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is close to both Trump and Putin — and the United States as possible hosts, according to two US officials. American officials were pleased and somewhat surprised when the Russian president agreed to a meeting on US soil — on land that once was part of the Russian empire, no less. 'I thought it was very respectful that the president of Russia is coming to our country as opposed to us going to his country or even a third-party place,' Trump said this week, as his team was rushing to finalize details of the summit. Others were not so taken. 'The only better place for Putin than Alaska would be if the summit were being held in Moscow,' said Trump's former national security adviser John Bolton, who fell out with Trump during his first term. 'So, the initial setup, I think, is a great victory for Putin.' The last time an American president met with Putin — President Joe Biden's 2021 summit in Geneva — the date and venue were announced three weeks ahead of time. But the planning between Russian and American officials started months before that. Biden, on a week-long swing through Europe, spent the days leading up to the sit-down in intensive preparation with top advisers, blocking out time in the mornings to parse potential directions the conversation could take and anticipate some of Putin's moves. He consulted other leaders, including the German chancellor, for pointers on how to approach the notoriously wily Russian leader. By the time the summit arrived, aides had planned the day down to the most minute detail, including what order the leaders would arrive, how long each session would last and what type of flower would sit on the table (it was white roses). American officials even ensured there were bottles of orange Gatorade — labeled 'POTUS' — inside a refrigerator at the 18th-century villa where the meeting took place. During Trump's first term, he and Putin sat one-on-one in Helsinki, Finland, during a summit in 2018 that ended with a remarkable moment when Trump sided with Putin over US intelligence agencies on the question of Russian election interference. Trump also met Putin alone in 2017, during their first encounter at the G20 summit in Hamburg. Mystery over meeting's origins While American and Russian officials have been in extensive conversations to prepare for the sit-down since it was agreed to last week, the encounter that prompted the event remains something of a mystery. Trump's foreign envoy Steve Witkoff visited Moscow last Wednesday for a meeting with Putin that resulted in the decision to meet, though what exactly Putin said in the meeting is still largely unknown. European officials spent much of the last week trying to ascertain the parameters of a peace deal that Putin offered up, but some said they were frustrated by the lack of clarity offered by Witkoff, a real estate developer and longtime friend of Trump's. Trump plans to hear from European leaders and Ukraine in a virtual meeting on Wednesday, arranged by the Germans so the president can get their perspective ahead of the Friday meeting. And he has promised to get on the phone with them, along with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, immediately after the summit concludes. But Zelensky isn't expected to be in Alaska for the summit, so any potential trilateral meeting is off the table for now. Instead, Trump will spend at least part of the summit meeting with Putin one-on-one, the White House said Tuesday, allowing time for the two men to carry out a discussion unheard by anyone else aside from their translators. 'That's part of the plan,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said when asked whether the two presidents would meet as a pair. 'As for the other mechanics and logistics, I will let our team speak to that when they're ironed out.' It's not atypical for leaders to meet alone with their counterparts, but Trump and Putin's relationship has been the subject of intense scrutiny. And during Trump's first term, even senior officials said they sometimes were left in the dark about what was discussed when aides were left out. In Trump's previous two meetings with Putin, both encounters included translators, but not high-ranking aides. After the Germany meeting, Trump reportedly asked his translator for his notes. For his part, Putin has spent the days ahead of Friday's meeting placing phone calls to his remaining global allies — including some who have staged their own high-profile summits with Trump. That included North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, the Kremlin said Tuesday, who met three times with Trump during his first term, but still hasn't abandoned his nuclear weapons. — CNN
Saudi Gazette
5 days ago
- Saudi Gazette
More than 2,000 evacuated from Spanish resort of Tarifa over advancing wildfire
MADRID — Authorities on Monday began the preventive evacuation of several homes in the resort town of Tarifa in the Cádiz region of southern Spain after forest fires advanced towards the region, domestic media reported. According to local reports, some 2,000 people, including beachgoers, vacation resort visitors and locals living near Playa de Atlanterra and Playa de Bolonia, were among those impacted. Access to the southern Spanish resort town has been limited to emergency services, and around 25 kilometres northwest of Tarifa's city centre, the interior minister of the Andalusia region, Antonio Sanz, said on Monday. The evacuations come as Spain faces one of its worst summers in recent history, with massive wildfires that have engulfed tens of thousands of hectares and threatened UNESCO World Heritage sites. The region surrounding Tarifa in the province of Cádiz was already impacted by a forest fire less than a week ago. Around 1,500 visitors and locals were evacuated at that time, along with a number of hotels, towns, and a campsite in the La Peña area. On Monday, the Guardia Civil asked those evacuated by the fire to leave the area by the beach to avoid the collapse of the road. In addition, the Montaña de Los Alemanes and those located at the foot of the Sierra de la Plata have been evacuated as a precautionary measure. For the moment, due to the advance of the fire and the dense smoke covering the area, some of the residents of the region have been evacuated, as well as the workers and guests of two well-known hotels in the area: Cortijo and the Meliá Zahara. For days, emergency services have been trying to tackle other fires in the area, both by land and by air. More than 100 troops are currently deployed in the area, including four firefighting reinforcement brigades. The latest wildfire comes after the local authorities declared two days ago that the fire that started on 5 August had been extinguished. Spanish media reported the blaze affected an area of some 283 hectares and forced the preventive eviction of some 1,500 people. Around 39,155 hectares have been burned between 1 January and 3 August this year in Spain, 9% greater than the previous year's total for the same time, according to Spain's Ecological Transition Ministry. — Euronews
Al Arabiya
25-07-2025
- Al Arabiya
Maui panel passes bill to curb vacation rentals and boost housing supply after Lahaina wildfire
Lawmakers on Maui passed legislation Thursday aimed at eliminating a large percentage of the Hawaiian islands' vacation rentals to address a housing shortage exacerbated by the wildfire that destroyed most of Lahaina two years ago. It's the latest action by a top global tourist destination to push back against the infiltration of vacationers into residential neighborhoods and tourism overwhelming their communities. In May, Spain ordered Airbnb to block more than 65,000 holiday listings on its platform for having violated rules. Last month, thousands of protesters in European cities like Barcelona and Venice, Italy, marched against the ills of overtourism. The Maui County Council's housing committee voted 6-3 to pass the bill, which would close a loophole that has allowed owners of condos in apartment zones to rent their units for days or weeks at a time instead of a minimum of 180 days. The mandate would take effect in the West Maui district that includes Lahaina in 2028. The rest of the county would have until 2030 to comply. The council still needs to vote on the bill, but the committee's result is a strong indication of the final outcome because all nine council members sit on the housing panel. The mayor is expected to sign the bill, which he proposed. 'Bill 9 is a critical first step in restoring our commitment to prioritize housing for local residents – and securing a future where our keiki can live, grow, and thrive in the place they call home,' Maui Mayor Richard Bissen said in a statement, using the Hawaiian word for children. Vacation rentals take up one-fifth of Maui's housing. Vacation rentals currently account for 21 percent of all housing in the county, which has a population of about 165,000 people. An analysis by University of Hawaii economists predicted the measure would add 6,127 units to Maui's long-term housing stock, increasing supply by 13 percent. Opponents questioned whether local residents could afford the condos in question, noting that many of the buildings they are in are aging, and their units come with high mortgages, insurance payments, maintenance, and special assessment costs. Alicia Humiston said her condo is in a hotel zone, so it won't be affected, but she predicted the measure will hurt housekeepers, plumbers, electricians, and other small business owners who help maintain vacation rentals. 'It's not what's best for the community,' said Humiston, who is president of the Rentals by Owner Awareness Association. Bissen proposed the legislation last year after wildfire survivors and activists camped out on a beach popular with tourists to demand change. 'Mayor says tourism will continue but must not hollow out our neighborhoods.' The University of Hawaii study said because only about 600 new housing units are built in the county each year, converting the vacation rentals would be equivalent to a decade's worth of new housing development. Condo prices would drop 20-40 percent, the study estimated. The report also predicted one-quarter of Maui County's visitor accommodations would disappear, and visitor spending would sink 15 percent. It estimated gross domestic product would contract by 4 percent. The mayor said such economic analysis failed to tell a full story, noting families are torn apart when high housing costs drive out relatives, and that cultural knowledge disappears when generations leave Maui. The mayor told the council the bill was one part of a broader housing strategy that would include building new housing, investing in infrastructure, and stopping illegally operated vacation rentals. He said there were limits to how much new housing could be built because of constraints on water supplies and sewer infrastructure. 'Tourism would continue on Maui but must do so in a way that doesn't hollow out our neighborhoods,' the mayor said. The mayor's staff told council members that visitor spending would decline with the measure, but most of the drop would be on lodging. Because 94 percent of those who own vacation rentals in apartment zones don't live on Maui, they said much of this income already flows off-island. They predicted the county budget could withstand an estimated 61 million decline in annual tax revenue resulting from the measure.
