Latest news with #Antena3
Times
29-04-2025
- Climate
- Times
Spain-Portugal power outage live: race to find cause of disruption
Ruben Coiran, 24, was returning home to Barcelona and had spent 11 hours stuck in Atocha rail station after the blackout waiting for news. 'It's tough — putting up with the cold, bearing the hunger, hanging on … We're having a pretty rough time,' he told AFP. 'There were elderly people, children who haven't been able to eat for six, seven hours. They don't have toilets,' added Coiran, who works in IT. 'For the elderly (and) people with babies, it was more difficult for them.' Emergency services workers carried out 286 rescue operations on Monday to free people trapped inside elevators in the Madrid region during a nationwide blackout, the head of the regional government said. 'What we are now dealing with more frequently are cases of people trapped in lifts. We have received 286 requests' for help, the head of the regional government of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, told television station Antena 3. One man posted a video on social media saying the blackout trapped him in a lift without coverage for about 40 minutes. 'By hitting the door and shouting a neighbour heard me and informed the municipal police' who came half an hour later to free him, he said. A multi-purpose sports centre in the city of Guadalajara, in Castilla-La Mancha, became an improvised overnight shelter for those who had their journey cut short by the interruption of the railway service. A Red Cross spokesman said that 466 people from two trains had been given shelter and provided with blankets, food, water and a hygiene kit to make the hours of waiting 'as bearable as possible'. There were major problems at airports in Portugal yesterday. Overall 185 flights departing Portuguese airports were cancelled and 187 arrivals cancelled. At Lisbon 45 per cent of departures were cancelled. Some 25 flights between the UK and Portugal were cancelled — and many return flights. Passengers said they were unable to secure hotels near the airport as they were all fully booked. Operations are also expected to be disrupted today. In Spain, 205 flights departing the country's airports were cancelled and 208 arrivals cancelled. The worst affected airports were Seville and Almeria. Some experts suggested that the Portuguese grid operator company — which cited 'anomalous oscillations' in high voltage lines and 'induced atmospheric vibration' — may have been referring to rapid changes in temperature causing pressure waves to travel through the atmosphere. These could potentially cause high power lines to vibrate, causing damage. The experts added that 'induced atmospheric vibration' wasn't a standard term for this. The waves that travel through the air are more usually called gravity waves, thermal oscillations or acoustic-gravity waves. With the cause of the blackout uncertain, experts have been interpreting comments by Portugal's grid operator about the power cut. Professor Chenghong Gu of the University of Bath, said the reference by the operator to 'anomalous oscillations' in high voltage lines and 'induced atmospheric vibration' could refer to a phenomenon where high temperature, high humidity and other factors lead electric charges in the ambient atmosphere to interact with electric fields caused by the conductors used to transmit power. 'Under certain conditions, this can cause the vibrations of conductors. Then, the vibrations can cause the changes of the physical characteristics of conductors, reflecting in their key parameters, such as their impedance, reactance,' Gu said. 'The stability of power systems is very sensitive to these parameters, and if they keep changing, currents in transmission lines, voltages in different locations, and system frequency would change. In the worst case, system frequency could drop too low, and customers must be cut off to re-balance the supply and demand.' If your flight to or from the UK has been delayed for three hours or more, whether it's due to strike action, air traffic control issues or bad weather, you could be eligible for free meals, refreshments, accommodation and even compensation for delayed flights in certain cases. What determines how much you will get depends on how far you're travelling as well as how long the delay is. There are also similar laws that govern flight cancellations, which include your rights to a refund or an alternative flight. • Read in full: Compensation for cancelled and delayed flights: everything you need to know Passengers in Spain and Portugal spent a night sleeping on the floors of stations and airport terminals after the power cut severed services. Madrid's Atocha main station was badly hit with large numbers of people forced to camp out overnight — although services are slowly resuming. The Madrid metro has also reopened. Spain's transport minister said number of train lines remain closed, mainly commuter routes in places like Bilbao, Cadiz, Seville, Zaragoza, Vigo and San Sebastian. Commuter services in Madrid and Valencia are returning to normal but with 'reduced services'. Long-distance trains from Madrid to Barcelona, Valencia, Malaga, Santander, Granada and the Basque Country are 'progressively returning to normal'. Major airports in Spain, including Madrid, are operating, but there is a huge backlog after yesterday's flight cancellations. Unlike Heathrow airport — which was forced to close for almost a day last month after an electricity substation fire — the big Spanish airports have back-up generators. But many travellers were unable to make it to airports yesterday following the power outages as all transport networks were down. Some of those who made it were forced to sleep at the airport. It is not just Spain, Portugal and parts of southern France which were affected by the blackouts. The Greenland telecom company Tussass said overnight that it had lost connection to satellite equipment based in Spain that provides vital telephone, internet, TV and radio services for remote communities in the vast Arctic island. 'Right now there is no contact with our equipment in Maspalomas in Spain, which we are deeply dependent on to be able to supply customers in the satellite area,' Tussass said. It was not immediately clear how many people were affected. The comparison was as apt as it was obvious. Though two Iberian neighbours had been brought low and plunged back into the Stone Ages for an April afternoon, when it came to understanding the cause of the mass power cut, there was an information blackout. 'It was Putin,' said a mother rushing to collect her child early from school in Madrid. It almost certainly wasn't, but the lack of information fuelled the kind of speculation that Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish prime minister, said he could live without. He might also have done without the Portuguese, who were the first to identify what happened — or at least what they thought had happened. • What caused the power outage in Spain and Portugal? Spanish electricity grid operator Red Electrica said it was able to supply 99.16 per cent of the country's electricity demand early on Tuesday as the system gradually recovers from a nationwide blackout on Monday. All the country's substations were operating on Tuesday morning, Red Electrica said in a post on X. 'We keep working on restoring (power),' it added. A huge power outage hit most of the Iberian Peninsula on Monday morning, bringing both Spain and Portugal to a standstill — grounding planes, halting public transportation and forcing hospitals to restrict routine proceedings. Power has been restored to Spain and most of Portugal after Monday's widespread outages, but significant disruptions on the Iberian peninsula's transport networks remain. While commuter services in Madrid and Valencia have returned — albeit with reduced capacity — a number of lines in other cities, including Bilbao, Cadiz, Seville, Zaragoza, Vigo and San Sebastian, remain cancelled until further notice. Long-distance lines, including services from Madrid to Barcelona, are progressively returning to normal. But there remains a major backlog at airports with more than 500 flights cancelled across Spain and Portugal. Schools also remain closed across the two countries.
NDTV
28-04-2025
- General
- NDTV
286 Rescue Ops Carried Out From Madrid Elevators During Blackout In Spain
Madrid: Emergency services workers carried out 286 rescue operations on Monday to free people trapped inside elevators in Spain's Madrid region during a nationwide blackout, the head of the regional government said. Power went out across Spain and Portugal on Monday, halting train traffic, clogging roads, stopping metro trains and trapping people in elevators before electricity started to return to some areas after hours of disruption. "What we are now dealing with more frequently are cases of people trapped in lifts. We have received 286 requests" for help, the head of the regional government of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, said during an interview with private television station Antena 3. The Spanish capital's vast metro system which moves some two million people daily was evacuated "without incident", she added. One man posted a video on social media saying the blackout trapped him in a lift without coverage for around 40 minutes. "By hitting the door and shouting a neighbour heard me and informed the municipal police," who came half an hour later to free him, he said. Spain and Portugal have a highly integrated energy grid that operates as an energy island and is linked to the rest of Europe through a small number of cross-border interconnections with France.
Daily Mail
24-04-2025
- General
- Daily Mail
Tourist is trapped on 200ft-high zipline for 90 minutes after getting caught on Spanish highwire ride
This is the terrifying moment a tourist became stuck on a zip-line for over an hour and a half after the ride came to a grinding halt, leaving him dangling mid-air at 200 ft. The shocking incident occurred on Tuesday in Presa de los Caballeros Via Ferrata, an area that is popular for adventure sports, near Malaga. Footage shows the unnamed Spanish man hanging from a rope in a rocky canyon, as firefighters are seen standing on a suspension bridge above him while they ready themselves to rescue him. Emergency services rushed to the site, but the rescue operation proved difficult and lasted more than an hour and a half, according to Spanish news outlet Antena 3. Firefighters said they had to use a technical maneuver to reach the man from the bridge, and had to position themselves around 50 and 65 ft above the hanging man so that they could hoist him up to safety. 'The rescue was successful and without the need for medical assistance', the Provincial Fire Consortium of Malaga said after the rescue operation was complete. Presa de los Caballeros, which is frequented by hikers and adventure sport enthusiasts, runs over an old dam and includes a 230 ft-long suspension bridge and a zip-line, as well as an underground passage. It comes just a few weeks after firefighters were called to the same area to rescue a woman who became trapped on a zip-line, according to local press. It also comes several months after a little girl was left dangling at 330 ft above the cliffs after coming to a grinding halt on a zip-line in Bali. Shocking footage shows the girl trying to rock back and forth to move along the zipline cable, with her inching forward very slowly on the Flying Fox zipline on Nusa Penida, a small island located near the southeastern Indonesian island of Bali. Meanwhile the girl's terrified mother, alongside several British tourists, watched on in horror from below as the girl is hanging 330ft over the ocean in the video filmed in July last year. Nusa Penida's police chief told local media that the 'foreign child' was stuck on the zipline for about three minutes before she managed to rock herself to the other side. The girl was not injured.
The Independent
10-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Jean-Claude Van Damme denies ‘grotesque' claim he knowingly had sex with five trafficked women
Jean-Claude Van Damme has denied accusations he knowingly engaged in sexual relations with women trafficked by a criminal group. The action film star, whose credits include Street Fighter and Bloodsport, has spoken out after reportedly finding himself the subject of criminal charges in Romania over the claims. Last week, it was alleged that Van Damme received five Romanian women as a 'gift' from a group of traffickers while in Cannes, France – but the actor's agent has hit back at the 'unfounded' claims. 'We have become aware of articles alleging an alleged affair in Cannes involving Mr Jean-Claude Van Damme,' Patrick Goavec said in a statement. He told People: 'The reported facts are both grotesque and non-existent. Mr Van Damme does not wish to comment or fuel this rumour, which is as absurd as it is unfounded.' The news originally surfaced after a report by the local CNN affiliate Antena 3, who alleged that a criminal complaint had been filed with the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organised Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT). According to the outlet, DIICOT launched their investigation after a woman allegedly witnessed the incident at an event organised by Van Damme and shared what she claimed she had seen with prosecutors. Antena 3 quotesattorney Adrian Cuculis, who is representing one of the alleged victims, as saying that 'several Romanians who are currently being investigated for forming a criminal group and pimping, allegedly offered Jean-Claude Van Damme five Romanian women – photo models in Romania – for him to have sexual relations with'. Cuculis added that 'the person who received those benefits knew their condition,' and that the women 'were in a state of vulnerability, with the suspicion that they were exploited within the meaning of Article 182 of the Criminal Code'. Antena 3 was also told the alleged incident is part of a larger investigation by the Romanian Prosecutor's Office into human trafficking, and the trafficking of minors, that has been carried out since 2020. Former bodybuilder Van Damme made his big break into action films in the 1980s, and led cult martial arts film Bloodsport in 1988. His other credits include Kickboxer, Double Impact, Universal Soldier, Timecop Street Fighter, and Sudden Death. More recently, he has played a villainous role in The Expendables 2 and provided voice work for the 2022 family film Minions: The Rise of Gru. In 2021, a director for the sitcom Friends said Van Damme was 'unprepared and arrogant' during his guest appearance on the show. He starred as himself in the second season episode 'The One After the Super Bowl,' in which he was romantically pursued by both Monica (Courteney Cox) and Rachel (Jennifer Aniston). While he hasn't responded to director Michael Lembeck's comments, Van Damme told the New York Post in 2023 that he was 'ashamed' of his acting in the episode. 'My acting is so bad.... I'm ashamed of myself,' said Van Damme. 'So then I was on the set, and those girls, they go and they kiss me and they kiss me on the lips. I didn't know what to do, how to do … It was strange. They were very nice.' He added he knew little about the hit sitcom, saying: 'I didn't know much about the show. So when I go to the show, I see those two beautiful girls and they say this is the hottest show right now in the world. So I was very glad.' Van Damme has been married five times – twice to female bodybuilder Gladys Portugues in 1987 and, after divorcing in 1992, again in 1999. They are still together now. The actor has three children.
Yahoo
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Jean-Claude Van Damme Sex Trafficking Allegations Are 'Absurd' and 'Unfounded,' Says Actor's Agent
Jean-Claude Van Damme's agent is speaking out about criminal charges filed against the actor. "We have become aware of articles alleging an alleged affair in Cannes involving Mr. Jean-Claude Van Damme. The reported facts are both grotesque and non-existent," the actor's agent, Patrick Goavec, told PEOPLE in a statement translated from French on Wednesday, April 9. "Mr. Van Damme does not wish to comment or fuel this rumor, which is as absurd as it is unfounded," the statement added. A criminal complaint was filed with the Romanian Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) against the Streetfighter star, 64, alleging that he knowingly engaged in sexual relations with women trafficked by a criminal group led by Morel Bolea, according to CNN affiliate Antena 3. The incident allegedly took place during an event organized by Van Damme in Cannes, where the actor is accused of having received five Romanian women as a "gift" with prior knowledge that they came from a group of traffickers, according to the criminal complaint obtained by the outlet. Attorney Adrian Cuculis, who represents one of the victims, told the outlet that the women "were in a state of vulnerability, with the suspicion that they were exploited within the meaning of Article 182 of the Criminal Code." Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. One woman who claimed see witnessed the incident shared what she allegedly saw with prosecutors, according to Antenna 3 CNN. This prompted the DIICOT to open a criminal investigation into the incident. 'Several Romanians who are currently being investigated for forming a criminal group and pimping, allegedly offered Jean-Claude Van Damme five Romanian women — photo models in Romania — for him to have sexual relations with. The person who received those benefits knew their condition,' attorney Adrian Cuculis told the outlet in a translated post. Cuculis told Antena 3 that the incident is part of a larger investigation into human trafficking and the trafficking of minors that began in 2020 by the Prosecutor's Office in Romania. The next step in the case would be the High Court of Cassation in France authorizing criminal proceedings. Then, suspects identified in the case will be summoned to Romania to give statements, Antena 3 Damme, who was born in Belgium, made his breakout with 1988's Bloodsport and went on to star in several action films including Kickboxer, Double Impact and The Expendables 2. He most recently appeared as a voice actor in 2022's Minions: Rise of Gru and 2025's The Gardener. Read the original article on People
