Power restored in Spain and Portugal but reason for blackout remains a mystery
One of the most significant blackouts in Europe grounded flights, paralysed train services, disrupted mobile communications, and caused ATMs to shut down across the Iberian Peninsula on Monday.
By 11 am CET on Tuesday, the Spanish electrical system was reported to be operating normally, according to electricity operator Red Eléctrica. The Portuguese grid operator REN confirmed that power had been restored to all 6.4 million customers.
As normalcy began to resume, Spanish authorities had not yet offered further clarification on why the country, with a population of 49 million, experienced a loss of 15 gigawatts—equivalent to 60% of its national demand—in just five seconds.
On Tuesday, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez stated that the government's priorities were to restore Spain's electrical system and to investigate the causes of the blackout to prevent a recurrence of such an event.
Eduardo Prieto, the director of services for system operations at Spain's electricity operator, reported two significant consecutive 'disconnection events' prior to the blackout on Monday. He indicated to reporters that further investigation is required.
Spain's meteorological agency, AEMET, stated that it had not observed any 'unusual meteorological or atmospheric phenomena,' and no abrupt temperature changes were noted at its weather stations.
Portugal's National Cybersecurity Centre confirmed that there was no evidence suggesting the outage was caused by a cyberattack. Additionally, Teresa Ribera, an executive vice president of the European Commission, dismissed the possibility of sabotage.
The Spanish news agency EFE has reported that authorities are looking into five fatalities, including three individuals from the same family, which may be connected to the power outage.
According to EFE, the three family members lost their lives in Galicia due to suspected carbon monoxide poisoning from a generator, a woman in Valencia died due to issues with an oxygen supply device, and another individual perished in a fire ignited by a candle in Madrid.
The Madrid Open tennis tournament resumed following a blackout that led to the postponement of 22 matches. A busy schedule on Tuesday saw second-ranked Iga Swiatek progress to the quarterfinals.
At Spain's largest train stations, numerous travellers gathered on Tuesday to board trains or to reschedule their journeys. At Madrid's Atocha station, hundreds waited near screens for updates, with many having spent the night at the station, wrapped in blankets supplied by the Red Cross.
As of 11 am on Tuesday, the subway services in Madrid were completely restored. Meanwhile, in Barcelona, the system was functioning normally; however, certain commuter trains remained suspended in the afternoon due to 'electrical instability,' as reported by Rodalies Catalunya on X.
In various regions of Spain, commuter and mid-distance services continued to be either suspended or operating at reduced capacity.
Emergency responders in Spain indicated that approximately 35,000 passengers were rescued on Monday after being stranded along railways and in underground stations.
The blackout significantly disrupted transit systems, causing sports centres, train stations, and airports to serve as temporary shelters.
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Los Angeles Times
7 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Trump's federal law-enforcement crackdown ripples through D.C. neighborhoods
WASHINGTON — The main drag in Washington's Columbia Heights neighborhood is typically crammed with people peddling pupusas, fresh fruit, souvenirs and clothing. On Tuesday, though, things felt different: The white tents that bulge with food and merchandise were scarcer than usual. 'Everything has stopped over the last week,' said Yassin Yahyaoui, who sells jewelry and glass figurines. Most of his customers and fellow vendors, he said, have 'just disappeared' — particularly if they speak Spanish. The abnormally quiet street was further proof of how President Trump's decision to flood the nation's capital with federal law enforcement and immigration agents has rippled through the city. Although troop deployments and foot patrols in downtown areas and around the National Mall have garnered the most attention, life in historically diverse neighborhoods such as Columbia Heights is being reshaped as well. The White House has credited Trump's crackdown with hundreds of arrests, while local officials have criticized the aggressive intervention in the city's affairs. The confrontation escalated Tuesday as the top federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia opened an investigation into whether police officials have falsified crime data, according to a person familiar with the situation who wasn't authorized to comment publicly. The inquiry could be used to bolster Trump's claims that the city is suffering from a 'crime emergency' despite statistics showing improvements. The mayor's office and the Police Department declined to comment. Blocks away from where Yahyaoui had set up shop, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local police stopped a moped driver delivering pizza. The agents drove unmarked cars and wore tactical vests; one covered his face with a green balaclava. They questioned the driver and required him to present documentation relating to his employment and legal residency status. No arrest was made. The White House said there have been 465 arrests since Aug. 7, when the federal operation began, including 206 people who were in the country illegally. The Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement and the president signed an executive order on Aug. 11 to put the Police Department under federal control for 30 days; extending that would require congressional approval. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Trump was 'unapologetically standing up for the safety of law-abiding American citizens.' Glorida Gomez, who has been working a fruit stand in Columbia Heights for more than a decade, said business is worse now than during the COVID-19 pandemic. She said many vendors stopped coming because they were afraid of encountering federal agents. Customers seem less willing to spend money too. Reina Sosa, another vendor, said that 'they're saving it in case something happens,' like getting detained by immigration enforcement. Ana Lemus, who also sells fruit, said that 'we need more humanity on that part of the government.' 'Remember that these are people being affected,' she said. 'The government is supposed to protect members of the community, not attack or discriminate against them.' Bystanders have recorded some arrests on video. On Saturday morning, Christian Enrique Carias Torres was detained in another part of the city during a scuffle with ICE agents, and the video ricocheted around social media. An FBI agent's affidavit said Carias Torres kicked one of the agents in the leg and another was injured when he fell during the struggle and struck his head on the pavement. A stun gun was used to subdue Carias Torres, who was charged Tuesday with resisting arrest. An alphabet soup of federal agencies have been circulating in the city. In the Petworth neighborhood, roughly 20 officers from the FBI, Homeland Security, Park Police and U.S. Marshals descended on an apartment building on Tuesday morning. A man extended his hands out a window while officers cuffed him. Yanna Stelle, 19, who witnessed the incident, said she heard the chatter from walkie-talkies as officers moved through the hallways. 'That was too many police first thing in the morning — especially for them to just be doing a warrant,' she said. From his actions and remarks, Trump seems interested in ratcheting up the pressure. His administration has asked Republican-led states to send more National Guard troops. Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio have agreed to deploy a total of 1,100 troops to the city, on top of the 800 from the D.C.-based National Guard. Resistance to that notion is starting to surface, both on the streets and in Congress. On Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo (D-San José) introduced a bill that would require a report outlining the cost of any National Guard deployment unrelated to a natural disaster, as well as its legal basis. It would also require reporting on any Guard interactions with civilians and other aspects of the operation. Forty-four Democrats have signed on in support, including Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington's nonvoting delegate in the House of Representatives. Although the measure stands little chance of passing while Republicans control the chamber, it's a sign of a wider Democratic response to Trump's unprecedented moves in Washington. 'Are L.A. and D.C. a test run for a broader authoritarian takeover of local communities?' Liccardo asked. He added that the country's founders were suspicious of 'executive control of standing armies.' Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said that 'Democrats continue to side with criminals over law-abiding Americans.' It's unclear what kind of help the National Guard will be able to provide when it comes to crime. 'The fact of the matter is that the National Guard are not law-enforcement trained, and they're not going into places where they would be engaged in law enforcement activity,' said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and consultant at AH Datalytics. 'So I don't know that it's fair to expect much of it.' Trump declared in a social media post that his initiative has transformed Washington from 'the most unsafe 'city' in the United States' to 'perhaps the safest, and getting better every single hour!' The number of crimes reported in D.C. did drop by about 8% this week as compared with the week before, according to Metropolitan Police data. There was some variation within that data, with crimes such as robberies and car thefts declining while burglaries increased a bit and homicides remained steady. Still, a week is a small sample size — far from enough time for data to show meaningful shifts, Asher said. Referring to the monthlong period that D.C.'s home rule law allows the president to exert control over the Police Department, he said: 'I think 30 days is too short of a period to really say anything.' Brown, Whitehurst and Megerian write for the Associated Press. AP writers Michael Kunzelman, Alanna Durkin Richer, Jacquelyn Martin and Ashraf Khalil contributed to this report.
Chicago Tribune
9 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
President Trump's federal law-enforcement crackdown ripples through DC neighborhoods
WASHINGTON — The main drag in Washington's Columbia Heights neighborhood is typically crammed with people peddling pupusas, fresh fruit, souvenirs and clothing. On Tuesday, though, things felt different: The white tents that bulge with food and merchandise were scarcer than usual. 'Everything has stopped over the last week,' said Yassin Yahyaoui, who sells jewelry and glass figurines. Most of his customers and fellow vendors, he said, have 'just disappeared' — particularly if they speak Spanish. The abnormally quiet street was one of many pieces of evidence showing how President Donald Trump 's decision to flood the nation's capital with federal law enforcement and immigration agents has rippled through the city. While troop deployments and foot patrols in downtown areas and around the National Mall have gotten the most attention, life in historically diverse neighborhoods like Columbia Heights is being reshaped as well. The White House has credited Trump's crackdown with hundreds of arrests, while local officials have criticized the aggressive intervention in the city's affairs. The confrontation escalated on Tuesday as the top federal prosecutor in D.C. opened an investigation into whether police officials have falsified crime data, according to a person familiar with the situation who wasn't authorized to comment publicly. The probe could be used to bolster Trump's claims that the city is suffering from a 'crime emergency' despite statistics showing improvements. The mayor's office and the police department declined to comment. Blocks away from where Yahyaoui had set up shop, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and local police stopped a moped driver delivering pizza. The agents drove unmarked cars and wore tactical vests; one covered his face with a green balaclava. They questioned the driver and required him to present documentation relating to his employment and legal residency status. No arrest was made. The White House said there have been 450 arrests since Aug. 7, when the federal operation began. The Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement and the president signed an executive order on Aug. 11 to put the police department under federal control for 30 days; extending that would require congressional approval. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said Trump was 'unapologetically standing up for the safety of law-abiding American citizens.' Bystanders have captured some of the arrests on video. On Saturday morning, Christian Enrique Carias Torres was detained during a scuffle with ICE agents, and the footage ricocheted around social media. An FBI agent's affidavit said Carias Torres kicked one of the agents in the leg and another was injured when he fell during the struggle and struck his head on the pavement. A stun gun was used to subdue Carias Torres, who was charged Tuesday with resisting arrest. An alphabet soup of federal agencies have been circulating in the city. In the Petworth neighborhood, roughly 20 officers from the FBI, Homeland Security, Park Police and U.S. Marshals descended on an apartment building on Tuesday morning. A man extended his hands out a window while officers cuffed him. Yanna Stelle, 19, who witnessed the incident, said she heard the chatter from walkie talkies as officers moved through the hallways. 'That was too many police first thing in the morning — especially for them to just be doing a warrant,' she said. From his actions and remarks, Trump seems interested in ratcheting up the pressure. His administration has asked Republican-led states to send more National Guard troops. Mississippi, Tennessee, Louisiana, West Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio have agreed to deploy a total of 1,100 troops to the city, on top of the 800 from the D.C.-based National Guard. Resistance to that notion is starting to surface, both on the streets and in Congress. On Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo of California introduced a bill that would require a report outlining the cost of any National Guard deployment unrelated to a natural disaster, as well as its legal basis. It would also require reporting on any Guard interactions with civilians and other aspects of the operation. Forty four Democrats have signed on in support, including Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, Washington's non-voting delegate in the House of Representatives. While the measure stands little chance of passing while Republicans control the chamber, it's a sign of a wider Democratic response to Trump's unprecedented moves in Washington. 'Are L.A. and D.C. a test run for a broader authoritarian takeover of local communities?' Liccardo asked. He added that the country's founders were suspicious of 'executive control of standing armies.' Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said that 'Democrats continue to side with criminals over law abiding Americans.' It's unclear what kind of help the National Guard will be able to provide when it comes to crime. 'The fact of the matter is that the National Guard are not law-enforcement trained, and they're not going into places where they would be engaged in law enforcement activity,' said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst and consultant at AH Datalytics. 'So I don't know that it's fair to expect much of it.' Trump declared in a social media post that his initiative has transformed Washington from 'the most unsafe 'city' in the United States' to 'perhaps the safest, and getting better every single hour!' The number of crimes reported in D.C. did drop by about 8% this week as compared to the week before, according to Metropolitan Police data. There was some variation within that data, with crimes like robberies and car thefts declining while burglaries increased a bit and homicides remained steady. Still, a week is a small sample size — far from enough time for data to show meaningful shifts, Asher said. Referring to the month-long period that D.C.'s home rule law allows the president to exert control over the police department, he said: 'I think 30 days is too short of a period to really say anything.'
NBC News
10 hours ago
- NBC News
What's behind the TikTok accounts using AI-generated versions of real Latino journalists?
A network of nearly 90 TikTok accounts has been using artificial intelligence to create fake versions of high-profile Spanish-language journalists and spread falsehoods online for potential financial gain. Over a third of the accounts used AI-generated versions of Jorge Ramos, one of the best-known Latino journalists in the United States, to front fabricated news stories. One of them featured an AI avatar of Ramos falsely claiming that President Donald Trump's son Barron Trump stormed into the United Nations to denounce the deportation of his mother, first lady Melania Trump. "I never said that," Ramos himself said in Spanish last month when he debunked the false narrative in a TikTok video posted on the account of this new independent news program. Ramos launched the show, 'Así Veo las Cosas,' on social media this year following his exit from Univision in December after nearly 40 years at the network. "There are things that are impossible to stop, and we can't stop artificial intelligence right now," Ramos said in his video. "There are tons of videos of me where I'm supposedly saying things I have never said." The accounts point to the challenge of stopping or controlling the surge in fake images and misinformation as AI technology advances and is increasingly used by those who want to spread false information online. Alexios Mantzarlis, director of the Security, Trust, and Safety Initiative at Cornell Tech, Cornell University's graduate campus in New York City, found 88 TikTok accounts that routinely used AI-generated versions of Ramos and other Latino news anchors from the Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Televisa to spread misinformation online targeting Spanish-speaking audiences in the United States. NBC News reviewed the contents of the 88 accounts before TikTok shut them down after it learned of Mantzarlis' findings. Most of the 88 accounts were created this year and used AI avatars of Ramos, Noticias Telemundo and NBC News anchor José Díaz-Balart and Televisa anchor Enrique Acevedo. (Telemundo and NBC News are owned by NBCUniversal, a subsidiary of Comcast Corp.) Their AI avatars, some of which were more realistic than others, were used to front false stories about divisive topics such as immigration, as well as conspiracy theories about Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and Sean "Diddy" Combs. The most recent videos posted by the now-deleted accounts had the AI avatars talk about a fabricated story of an orca attack that went viral and a nonexistent curfew for children based on a false law authorizing the abduction of children in the United States. The comments on a video about the false storyline fronted by Acevedo's AI avatar showed that while some users seem to have identified the content as false, other expressed distress over it, suggesting they believed the misinformation being spread. "These deepfakes hijack my voice, my image, and — more importantly — the trust I've built with audiences over the years. I'm leaning on transparency, calling them out publicly, but the scale of this threat is bigger than any one journalist," Acevedo told Mantzarlis, who wrote about his findings on his . A TikTok spokesperson told NBC News in a statement that the company 'banned these accounts for violating our Community Guidelines and continue[s] to vigilantly protect our platform from harmful misinformation and deceptive AI-generated content." Mantzarlis said there are probably hundreds more such accounts on the platform. He first began researching the trend more than six months ago. In March, Mantzarlis discovered a network of nearly 40 TikTok accounts posing as Telemundo and Univision that used AI-generated content and the voices of well-known professional journalists to spread misinformation about topics that tend to go viral on social media. The accounts went undetected for about a month before TikTok shut them down. But the trends Mantzarlis found on TikTok have evolved as more social media platforms integrate AI tools into their apps, making it easier to generate credible AI avatars, he told NBC News. Based on his research, Mantzarlis said the creators behind such TikTok accounts are constantly trying different ways to generate content that creates large viewership numbers to accumulate at least 10,000 followers — which is the minimum required to monetize videos under TikTok's Creator Rewards Program. The creators have 'determined that sensationalist news in Spanish, targeting a U.S. audience, does numbers, so they'll try to feed that niche,' he said. That's why some of them have even used AI-generated versions of non-native Spanish speakers — including a Brazilian journalist and comedians from 'The Daily Show,' an American satirical TV program — to spread Spanish-language misinformation. Mantzarlis said he found "very strong evidence" suggesting that such TikTok accounts are being built up to garner enough followers to monetize their videos. The monetized TikTok accounts are then sold to other people "who can change the topic and theme and find another niche' they can profit from. Mantzarlis found an encrypted chat group managed by Brazilian TikTok creators who claimed to sell monetized social media accounts that came pre-loaded with AI-generated clickbait content. In it, he saw someone claim to be selling a monetized TikTok account named "Tv Telemundo" for 300 Brazilian reals, or about $55. The account had posted AI-generated news and religious content to gain 11,000 followers under the previous name. The account now shares AI-generated wellness content. Marta Planells, Telemundo's vice president of digital news and streaming, told NBC News that the network has been reporting TikTok accounts impersonating Telemundo and their anchors for over a year. Once the accounts are reported, Planells said, TikTok has been proactive in shutting them down. But when that happens, more accounts come up, she added. Even after Mantzarlis published his research last week based on the initial sample of 88 TikTok accounts, he found six other accounts publishing misinformation fronted by AI avatars of real Latino journalists. TikTok also shut down those accounts. TikTok did not tell NBC News whether any of the accounts Mantzarlis identified were part of the Creator Rewards Program. TikTok claimed in a company report published this year to have proactively removed more than 94% of the content that it identified as violating its policies about AI-generated content and misinformation. Despite the efforts to remove false content, Ramos still encouraged his followers on TikTok to remain "vigilant, because misinformation is everywhere." "There are tons and tons of fake videos that appear to be real," he said. "This, of course, creates a lot of confusion."
