Spain & Portugal power outage UPDATES: Chaos in Europe as blackouts close down internet & grind transport to a halt
Entire airports and metro systems have ground to a halt in major cities – sending the countries into chaos.
Officials are still trying to find out what caused the outage but have not ruled out a Russian cyberattack, with the Spanish National Cybersecurity Institute reportedly investigating.
Drivers in Spain have been told to stay off the roads while there have been reports of people trapped in lifts in Madrid.
The power is also down at the Madrid Open tennis tournament.
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Daily Record
20 hours ago
- Daily Record
Tourists killed on Ukraine beach as swimmers set off sea mines in water
The huge explosion happened as people flocked to the resort amid high temperatures. At least three beachgoers have been killed after sea mines drifted towards popular tourist beaches in Ukraine. So far three people have been confirmed dead after a horror double explosion near Zatoka beach near the city of Odesa in the south of the country. The Black Sea resort had been baking in temperatures of around 30C drawing many locals and tourists to the seaside to cooling off in the sea. But the idyllic scene turned to disaster when two of the explosive devices detonated, causing destruction amongst the sunseekers. It's not the first time beachgoers have been killed by mines on beaches around the historic city of Odesa, as Ukrainians try to keep some semblance of normality in their lives as the war rages on with Russia in the east of the country. Authorities have previously been closed in the area because of mines drifting towards the shore, but a recent closure was lifted, reports the Express. Sea mines have become the preferred method used by the Russians to target Ukrainian shipping targets in the Black Sea after the Kremlin's navy suffered heavy losses at the start of the invasion in 2022. Ukraine has deployed mines to defend against Russian amphibious assaults and NATO allies have also been producing the destructive ordnance. The Sun reports local news outlet Dumskaya said the victims, a woman and two men, were swimming when two explosive devices detonated around 50 metres away from the shoreline. Odesa regional chief Oleh Kiper confirmed: 'All of them have been killed by explosive devices while swimming in areas prohibited for recreation.' Since the war began in 2022 the Black Sea around the Russian and Ukrainian coast has become a dangerous place for shipping and bathers as sea mines have been heavily deployed, and a number of unexploded mortars and aerial bombs have been recovered by Ukrainian bomb disposal experts near beaches. Strong currents, heavy rainfall and shifting tides can force the mines to break free from their original positions leaving them to dangerous drift towards the shoreline. Sea mines have been used by the Russians to target cargo ships in the Black Sea(Image: Getty ) European nations have rallied behind Ukraine, saying peace in the war-torn nation can't be resolved without Kyiv, ahead of an upcoming meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russia's Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Trump said next Friday's meeting with his Russian counterpart on US soil, which was once owned by Russia, would focus on ending the war, now in its fourth year. In response, Ukrainian President Zelensky thanked European allies in a post on X, writing on Sunday: 'The end of the war must be fair, and I am grateful to everyone who stands with Ukraine and our people."
Spectator
a day ago
- Spectator
The Isle of Wight is an England that time forgot
'August for the people and their favourite islands,' wrote W.H. Auden. My own favourite island in Britain is the Isle of Wight, even though my introduction to it was less than ideal. I was seven years old and had been sent to the island for the ritual initiation for British middle-class males of my generation: immersion in a boarding school with around 50 other pre-pubertal boys. I was, in fact, the youngest boy in the school and this was the first time I had left home. I have already written in these pages about my five years at a boarding school on the island; bizarre and bewildering rather than the hell of paedophilia and punishment described by others writing about their prep school days. But I want to convey here the curious charm of the island itself. Famously, the Isle of Wight, though only a mile or so off bustling southern England, is marooned in a genteel time warp that keeps it at least half a century behind the rest of the country. You can still find Wimpy bars and National petrol stations with their head-of-Mercury logos on the island, decades after they have disappeared elsewhere in England. Before they discovered the Costa Brava, the English used to take their summer holidays on the island, with its chalk cliffs, yellow-sanded beaches, tea shops and ubiquitous yachts; a fact recorded by the Beatles on their Sergeant Pepper album when they hymned the joys of renting a cottage there when they were 64. The resort of Ventnor on the south-east coast of the island has a balmy microclimate, making it England's sunniest spot, which drew the Victorians there in droves. Elgar spent his honeymoon here, and the exiled Russian novelist Turgenev was a regular visitor, along with Karl Marx, who enjoyed bourgeois seaside holidays in Ventnor along with the rest of the class he so despised. Just up the coast from Ventnor is Shanklin, visited by the doomed genius John Keats, and across the island to the west is Farringford House, now a hotel, the retirement home of another poet, Alfred, Lord Tennyson. A less reputable Victorian bard, Algernon Charles Swinburne, also loved the island and is buried in Bonchurch churchyard despite his atheism. Swinburne appropriated the name of another island village, Whippingham, for his little-known erotic work The Whippingham Papers in which he wrote of the joys of sado-masochism, inculcated in him by the beatings inflicted during his education at Eton. Whippingham is close to Osborne, the coastal village where Queen Victoria and her husband Albert built their Italianate villa, Osborne House, where the monarch spent her happiest times and where she died in 1901. After her death, Osborne briefly became a naval college, and in 1910 was the scene of a famous Edwardian miscarriage of justice when a cadet, George Archer-Shee, was wrongly accused by the Admiralty of stealing a postal order. The cause célèbre was dramatised by Terence Rattigan in his play and film The Winslow Boy, which does not mention the eponymous boy's real-life fate. Never readmitted to the navy, George joined the army instead and was killed at Ypres in 1914. Another sovereign had a more trying time on the island than Victoria. King Charles I was imprisoned at Carisbrooke Castle after losing the civil war in the 1640s. He made a couple of unsuccessful escape attempts before being dragged off to the mainland to be executed. The pious monarch also had his only recorded adulterous affair here, with a Royalist named Jane Whorwood. These days the island's prisoners are housed near Carisbrooke in Parkhurst and Albany jails. Current inmates include Radovan Karadzic, the psychiatrist who led the Bosnian Serbs during the savage wars in former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and who was later jailed for life for war crimes by the International Court at The Hague. In the 1970s the island became the venue for Britain's first mass rock festivals. Bob Dylan was one of the first to feature, and both Jim Morrison and Jimi Hendrix gave their swan songs here before their deaths. Despite its old-fashioned ways, the island has always had a technological cutting edge: the hovercraft was developed here, and still wafts passengers across the Solent, while Shanklin was the place from where Pluto – the pipeline under the ocean – pumped vital fuel to the D-day beaches in Normandy in 1944. The matron at my prep school tearfully recalled how, as a wartime nurse, she had escorted and comforted a desperately wounded GI to an island hospital by ambulance on D-day – only to see him die on arrival. So much for the Isle of Wight. Today, sun-seeking Brits are more often found on the beaches of one of the many islands around Greece. I too joined the throng when I discovered the island of Skyros, set in the Aegean Sea, in 1993. I was researching my biography of the poet Rupert Brooke, who died of septicaemia on a troopship moored off the island en route to the bloody beaches of Gallipoli in 1915. Brooke is buried in a lonely olive grove on Skyros. I signed up for a writing seminar tutored by the novelist D.M. Thomas at the Skyros Centre, a holistic, hippyish home of New Age courses with such titles as 'Finding Your Child Within' or 'Accept Life at Any Risk' (is there an alternative?). It sounds pretentious and awful but is actually quite charming, and the island setting adds to a Prospero-style magic so potent that I have returned on four subsequent occasions. Not overrun by tourists like more fashionable islands such as Mykonos and Hydra, Skyros, as befitting the birthplace of Achilles, retains the ambience of classical Greece. The car-less, cobbled streets of its tiny capital, Choros, are lined with tavernas, and its safe, sandy beaches are refreshingly empty. By coincidence, the UK HQ of the Skyros Centre, with its slogan 'Holidays you can take home with you', is located in Shanklin – neatly bringing together my two favourite islands.
Metro
4 days ago
- Metro
Chairlift collapses plunging riders into a lake and the ground injuring 10
To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video This is the moment a chairlift collapsed in a Russian resort sending four people plunging into a lake and six others hitting the ground. Some 10 people were left injured in the accident in Nalchik, in the mountainous Kabardino-Balkaria region. Footage shows how the chairs suddenly fell with riders screaming as they landed in trees. Splashes were heard in the background as others hit the water of the 22ft-deep Lake Trek. Footage also shows one tourist's fall to the ground when the cable gave way. Thirteen people were left dangling on chairs and had to be evacuated by the emergency services. The injured, including one child, were taken to hospital, with one person in a serious condition. 'One patient is in serious condition in an intensive care unit,' said a regional health ministry spokesman. More Trending The chairlift – to a local scenic viewing point – was originally built in 1968. Wear and tear of cables is considered as 'the preliminary cause of the accident', reported TASS citing emergency services. A criminal investigation has been opened to confirm the cause of the accident. 'During the investigation, all other versions will be considered,' said the emergency services source. Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@ For more stories like this, check our news page. MORE: Trump-Putin meeting set for Alaska next week – what will happen? MORE: What could happen if Trump, Putin and Zelensky meet? MORE: Tourists 'drop dead' after drinking homemade alcohol at Putin's favourite holiday resort
