In Spain, 60 million lose power without explanation
An “unexplained” power outage swept Spain, Portugal and some parts of southern France on Monday, affecting nearly 60 million people for almost a day until the power was restored Tuesday morning.
During the outage, residents rushed to stores to secure food and essentials, while hospitals in Spain operated on generators and trains stopped working at all stations, including some subways in Madrid. Banks and schools in Portugal were also forced to close, and flights from major airports in the region were canceled and delayed.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said that 15 gigawatts of power — 60% of Spain’s energy demands — were cut. Half an hour before the blackout, a high-voltage connection between France and Spain was disrupted, but secretary general of Eurelectric Kristian Ruby said this is not enough to cause a “system collapse.”
“There’s a variety of things that usually happen at the same time, and it’s very difficult for any event to say ‘this was the root cause,’” Eamonn Lannoye, managing director at the Electric Power Research Institute, said.
Some experts proposed that the outage could have been related to Spain’s temperatures, which were 10-20 degrees higher than usual for the season. Others have attributed it to the country’s increased reliance on renewable energy, arguing that there should have been larger investments in electricity storage — a point officials have denied.
In France, suspect murderer surrenders to government
After a two-day manhunt, Italian police arrested the man suspected of killing a Muslim worshipper in a French mosque, the French interior minister’s office reported on Monday.
The perpetrator, who was in a mosque in La Grand Combe on Friday, stabbed the victim while recording the attack on his phone and shouting insults at “Allah.” Local prosecutor Abdelkrim Grini said that 70 investigators were deployed to arrest the suspect and that they are looking into “the possibility that this was an Islamophobic act.”
“Racism and hatred based on religion will never have a place in France,” French President Emmanuel Macron said. “Religious freedom is inviolable.”
The man turned himself in to Italian police, although the region’s public prosecutor said law enforcement had been tracking the suspect since he left France and that it was “only a matter of time” before he was turned in.
The French police said the suspected man was born in 2004 and a resident of the commune with no prior criminal records, but did not disclose further details.
In the UAE, authorities intercept aid to Sudanese military
Emirati authorities halted “illegal” ammunition sent to the Sudanese Armed Forces and arrested several suspects Wednesday, according to the United Arab Emirates state media WAM.
The WAM report claims that authorities found “approximately five million rounds of 7.54 x 62 mm Goryunov-type ammunition” on a private plane at an unnamed local airport. It said the reinforcement also included “Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition, machine guns and grenades,” and was made under the guise of a sugar trade deal.
WAM also reported that the group involved in the plan included Sudan’s former intelligence chief Salah Gosh, who the United Nations sanctioned in 2023 for violating international humanitarian law following the overthrow of authoritarian leader Omar al-Bashir. The SAF did not respond to this accusation.
“The defendants were arrested during an inspection of ammunition in a private aircraft at one of the country’s airports,” a statement by WAM said.
In September, the SAF accused the UAE of providing weapons to militant group Rapid Support Forces — a group that has been at war with the country since 2023, leaving tens of thousands dead and more than 13 million displaced. The allegations were taken as credible by the United Nations, which is now investigating how mortar rounds exported from Bulgaria to the UAE in November were found in an RSF convoy.
Contact Amanda Chen at [email protected].
