Blackout Chaos

Blackout Chaos

ELENA SALVONI

Spain, Portugal and France: Entire cities plunged into blackouts, transport networks shut down and internet is cut off in scenes of mayhem

Spain and Portugal have been hit by widespread blackouts, with millions plunged into darkness amid scenes of mayhem across major European cities.

The power cuts come just days after Spain's power grid ran entirely on renewable energy, including wind, solar and hyrdro power, for a whole day for the first time on April 16. 

Spanish officials are urgently investigating the cause of the outages and have said they are looking into the possibility of the blackouts being triggered by a devastating cyber attack. 

All of Valencia and Barcelona were left without power, Spain's entire rail network shut down, internet services stopped working and there was chaos on the streets as traffic built up in Madrid and Lisbon. 

Madrid's Mayor has urged people to stay where they are as they deal with the disaster, while the president of the city's regional government has called for Spain's prime minister to activate an emergency plan so soldiers can be deployed.

Videos online show railway networks in Spanish cities plunged into chaos, with people being evacuated through tunnels as blackouts hit underground stations and halted trains.

Parts of France also lost power after the outages in Spain and Portugal, the country's grid operator confirmed. Further outages have been reported as far as Belgium, according to the latest information.

The cause of the outages is not yet clear, with the Spanish government saying it is working to 'identify the origin'.

A fire on the Alaric mountain in the south-west of France which damaged a high-voltage power line has also been identified as a possible cause, Portugal's national electric company REN said.

A director at Spain's electricity grid operator said just before 3pm local time that the outage is 'exceptional and totally extraordinary' and will take between six and 10 hours to repair. 

Airports were also affected, with emergency generators turned on at Porto and Faro airport, but operations 'limited' at Lisbon, according to officials.

Parts of Madrid's sprawling metro system have been evacuated and traffic lights in the capital have stopped working, posing risk on major carriageways.

The outage is also said to have forced the closure of Barcelona's tram system and stopped some traffic lights in the city from working. 

Internet and telephone lines across the country are also down. 

Meanwhile play has been suspended at the Madrid Open tennis tournament.

'A crisis committee has been set up to manage the situation [in Spain]. At this stage there's no evidence yet regarding the cause of the massive blackout,' an official briefed on the situation in Spain told Politico.

'A cyberattack has not been ruled out and investigations are ongoing,' they added.

Spain's INCIBE cybersecurity agency is investigating the possibility of the blackout being triggered by a cyber attack.

A spokesman for the European Union Agency for Cyber Security, said in a statement: 'We are monitoring the whole thing very closely, right now the investigation is still ongoing and whether it is a cyber attack has not been confirmed yet.'

The Spanish government said it is working to 'identify the origin' of the blackouts, with officials saying they are still gathering evidence.

Backup generators have meant Spain's hospitals have been spared the worst of the power outages, with videos 

Some have suspended non-emergency surgeries, however emergency power supplies have kept essential equipment such as ventilators and cardiac monitors running.

A British expat living in Barcelona told MailOnline that 'nobody seems to know what's going on' in Spain 'because nobody has signal'.

The English teacher said he only found out about the European blackout from British reports.

'I can get signal on my rooftop, but I can't get signal down below. One floor down I have nothing,' they said.

'The traffic lights are still working... The underground is not working apparently. Lots of parts of the public transport are not working.'

Airports were also affected, with emergency generators turned on at Porto and Faro airport, but operations 'limited' at Lisbon, according to officials.

Parts of Madrid's sprawling metro system have been evacuated and traffic lights in the capital have stopped working, posing risk on major carriageways.

More, videos, pics

Rumors Of War: Pakistan Defense Chief Warns War With India ‘Imminent’

Pakistan Defense Chief Warns War With India ‘Imminent’ — Threatens Use of Country’s Nuclear Arsenal

Ben Kew

Pakistan’s defence minister said on Monday that a military incursion by neighbouring India is “imminent” following a deadly militant attack on tourists in Kashmir last week, as tensions rise between the two nuclear-armed nations.

The attack killed 26 people and triggered outrage in Hindu-majority India, along with calls for action against Muslim-majority Pakistan.

India accuses Pakistan of backing militancy in Kashmir, a disputed region both claim the countries have fought two wars over.

“We have reinforced our forces because it is something which is imminent now. So in that situation some strategic decisions have to be taken, so those decisions have been taken,” Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said in an interview with Reuters.

Asif said India’s rhetoric was ramping up and that Pakistan’s military had briefed the government on the possibility of an Indian attack.

He did not go into further details on his reasons for thinking an incursion was imminent.

India has said it has arrested two suspected militants were Pakistani, while Islamabad has denied any role and called for an external investigation.

Asif, who is a member Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party that has historically pursued peace talks with India, added that they would only use their nuclear weapons arsenal “there is a direct threat to our existence.”

The minister added that Islamabad had approached its allies in order ot brief them on the situation.

“Some of our friends in the Arabian Gulf have talked to both sides,” Asif said, without naming the countries.

China said on Monday it hoped for restraint and welcomed all measures to cool down the situation. Asif said the United States was thus far “staying away” from intervening in the matter.

Meanwhile, President Trump said last week India and Pakistan would figure out relations between themselves, but the State Department later said Washington was in touch with both sides, urging them to work towards a “responsible solution.”

India and Pakistan have been bitter rivals since their partition in 1947, fighting three wars and numerous skirmishes, mainly over Kashmir.

Both nations became nuclear powers in 1998 and today maintain sizable arsenals.

India is estimated to have around 160 nuclear warheads, while Pakistan holds roughly 170, with both sides developing increasingly advanced delivery systems, makeing any military escalation between them especially dangerous.

BLACKOUT CHAOS Spain declares national emergency as massive power blackout also strikes Portugal & panic buyers strip shelves bare

BLACKOUT CHAOS Spain declares national emergency as massive power blackout also strikes Portugal & panic buyers strip shelves bare

Patrick Harrington

Robin Perrie

SPAIN has declared a national emergency after today's widespread power outage. 

Airports and hospitals shut down and trains screeched to a halt across the peninsula - with officials blaming a "rare atmospheric phenomenon".

Panic-stricken shoppers across Spain and even Portugal are clearing supermarket shelves and leaving grocery stores empty amid chaos.

Alarming pictures posted on social media show bare supermarket shelves after panic-shopping swept across the affected regions.

Footage shows people forming huge queues outside grocery stores and ATMs to stockpile essential items amid fears the mayhem could last for days.

And there are fears that thugs will exploit the chaos and darkness to loot shops after nightfall.

One shopper Alfonso Romay wrote on X: “It’s incredible, the collective paranoia. The power goes out for five hours, and look at the supermarket.

“The water jugs in the image lasted less than one minute.”

Roads in Spain, Portugal and parts of France were left snarled up with traffic as lights and signals went blank - with emergency officers drafted in to tackle the bedlam.

Some hospitals cancelled all surgeries for Monday amid fears for patient safety in the region's most severe blackout for years.

Spain's train service came to a complete stop, leaving huge crowds stranded at stations, and Madrid's underground network was evacuated.

But Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez confirmed that power has been restored in some areas of the north and south of Spain.

Air traffic was slashed to "half capacity" as flights were cancelled from a number of airports - with Lisbon cancelling all arrivals for hours.

And a major tennis tournament, the Madrid Open, had to be suspended, with Brit Jacob Fearnley's match interrupted by a huge "bang".

Data from Spain's electricity grid shows an enormous drop-off in supply over a matter of seconds, just after midday.

Michael Dearson-Jones from Ibiza told The Sun: "The mobile networks are down in Ibiza since late afternoon. Power is on, but limited access to the internet. 

"No calls, texts or mobile internet. Landline internet is working, but intermittently."

Jessica Ratcliffe from the Canary Islands - a popular Brit tourist hotspot - told The Sun: "An alert has been issued to residents in the Canary Islands that basic food supply shipments from the mainland will be impacted, causing panic buying there too.

"There has also been a failure in the internet, mobile phones, data phones and ATMs. 

"Businesses and freelancers on the islands warn of restrictions on card payment and problems withdrawing cash." 

Portugal's national grid operator, REN, said it believes a "rare atmospheric event" could be behind the outage.

It said that extreme temperature variations in Spain possibly led to surges in current and then system failures, in a process called "induced atmospheric variation".

They added that it could take up to a week to fully solve the issue given its complexity.

Red Eléctrica, Spain's national grid operator, has not given an explanation for the blackout but vowed that "all resources are being dedicated" to solving the issue.

As of 3pm, it said power had been restored to several electricity stations in the north, south and east.

Spain's prime minister Pedro Sánchez’s rushed to the operator's HQ to monitor the response himself.

Many had raised fears that a "Russian cyberattack" is behind the chaos, following previous similar plots against Europe.

Juanma Moreno, president of the Andalusian regional government, had said a cyber attack is the most likely cause of the disruption - and claimed that everything pointed towards a deliberate plot.

He added that hospitals would only be able to rely on their generators for 24 hours.

An outage of this scale is extremely rare and has caused mayhem for millions, including Brits on their holidays.

Melanie Halsall is on the last day of a padel trip with six pals to Vale de Lobo, southern Portugal, and can't get back into the hotel room.

She told The Sun: "We were on a walk when suddenly everything went out.

"It's like being in the Netflix drama Zero Day. We believe it is a cyber attack."

Brit Lottie Feist, 23, studying translation at uni in Lisbon, Portugal, told The Sun: “There is no electricity, nothing is working. The roads are absolute carnage as no traffic lights are working.

"All the power is down. It's terrifying, people will be stuck in elevators, and everything has completely shut down.

In Spain, officials urged drivers to stay off the roads, and the Valenciametro announced it had suspended its entire service.

Thousands of traffic lights are down in Barcelona, with drivers negotiating complicated junctions without any help.

Healthcare workers in Madrid said they have been forced to prioritise the transfer of chronically ill patients on oxygen machines - some of whom cannot survive more than an hour without a supply.

Hospitals are having to rely on their emergency generators to keep people alive.

Huge queues grew at ATMs as debit card payments were down, so people rushed to get cash out.

Portuguese supermarkets closed for "safety reasons", and some gasstations were restricting their supply.

Civilians also got trapped in various spaces - including lifts at a Madridstation and the carriages of Lisbon Metro.

More, pics, videos

BREAKING: Chaos Sweeps Iberia: Mass Blackouts in Spain, Portugal, and France Spark Fears of Cyber Attack

BREAKING: Chaos Sweeps Iberia: Mass Blackouts in Spain, Portugal, and France Spark Fears of Cyber Attack

Robert Semonsen

Millions across Spain, Portugal, and parts of southern France were plunged into darkness today, as a sudden and sweeping blackout—already being called one of Europe’s largest—has sparked chaos, crippling cities, halting train networks, shuttering airports, and forcing critical infrastructure to limp along on emergency generators.

Amid mounting speculation and a lack of clear answers, some have voiced fears that the blackout could be the result of a coordinated cyber attack—an explanation that conveniently fits the narrative of a globalist-led Europe looking to ready the continent’s population for war with Russia.

The lights first flickered and died around midday, with Spain’s power grid showing a stunning collapse in a matter of seconds. Airports in Madrid, Barcelona, Seville, and Valencia scrambled as their systems crashed, while metro services ground to a halt in Madrid, Porto, Lisbon, and Valencia. Even the Madrid Open tennis tournament had to call an abrupt time-out, The Telegraph reported.

Residents across the Iberian Peninsula—already shaken by mounting economic and political instability following the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war—were left to fend for themselves as traffic lights failed, grocery stores closed, EV chargers went dark, and petrol pumps ran dry.

In the chaos, reports emerged that outages stretched even into parts of Belgium, suggesting the problem might be bigger than initially thought.

Spain’s cybersecurity agency, INCIBE, has announced it was investigating whether this catastrophic blackout was triggered by a cyber attack. Juanma Moreno, the President of Andalusia, didn’t mince words when he said that, based on regional cybersecurity data, a hostile cyber operation was “the most likely cause.”

The Spanish government, however, has remained tight-lipped, refusing to officially confirm—or deny—whether foreign interference is being treated as a serious possibility.

Nevertheless, Madrid’s regional leader, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has already demanded that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez activate Spain’s highest emergency protocol—Level 3—which would deploy the army to maintain order if things spiral further out of control.

Meanwhile, residents across Spain and Portugal voiced frustration over the lack of communication. “There’s no traffic lights, no trains, no subways. They still haven’t said anything about why it happened,” said Kathy Diaz Romero, speaking from a small town in Catalonia. Others, like Trevor Court near Barcelona, painted a grim picture: “Most places are electric. No hot drinks, no food, no petrol. If this keeps up, it’s going to get ugly fast.”

Though power has been slowly restored in some areas, the situation remains unstable. Generators are keeping hospitals afloat for now, but their diesel supplies are expected to last just 24 hours—a ticking clock that few are willing to ignore.

The European Commission, adding fuel to the fire, issued a vague statement saying it was “in contact” with Spanish and Portuguese authorities, but provided little reassurance.

On a continent already burdened by soaring energy prices, unchecked migration, and widespread public discontent, the blackout has only deepened a growing sense of unease.

If a cyber attack is ultimately confirmed, this would mark one of Europe’s most devastating acts of cyber sabotage to date, potentially dwarfing the 2003 blackout that left 56 million without power in Italy and Switzerland.

Bill Gates Funds ‘SLIM’ Microneedle Tech That Self-Assembles Inside the Body

Bill Gates Funds ‘SLIM’ Microneedle Tech That Self-Assembles Inside the Body

Jon Fleetwood

A new injectable contraceptive platform developed with Gates Foundation funding is being promoted as a “nonsurgical option for women,” but its self-assembling drug delivery mechanism and potential for future adaptation to neuropsychiatric and infectious disease drugs raise serious safety, ethical, and biosecurity concerns.

Bill Gates supports depopulation, during a 2010 TedTalk stating that “if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower [the world population] by, perhaps, 10 or 15 percent.”

The new technology, described in Nature Chemical Engineering and reported by Healio yesterday, was developed by researchers from MIT, Harvard Medical School, and the Broad Institute.

It delivers the long-acting contraceptive levonorgestrel through self-aggregating long-acting injectable microcrystals, or “SLIM,” that form an implant inside the recipient’s body after injection.

“Once injected, the drug microcrystals self-aggregate in the subcutaneous space to form a monolithic implant,” said Giovanni Traverso, MD, BChir, PhD, associate professor at MIT and physician at Harvard Medical School.

In a press release, the researchers described the mechanism as “like tiny puzzle pieces that, once injected inside the body, undergo solvent exchange to assemble into a single solid implant that slowly releases the drug as the surface erodes.”

This solvent-exchange crystallization process, enabling administration with an ultra-thin 30-gauge needle, allows for “prolonged drug release” without requiring surgery.

It bypasses traditional medical oversight and dramatically increases the possibility of self-administration, which researchers claim would improve accessibility and “medication use.”

But this radical convenience comes at a cost.

Traverso explained the driving motivation behind the project:

“The challenge is people do not like injections. Is there a way to engineer something to help overcome those types of challenges? That is our focus.”

Their solution was to use a solvent that solubilizes the drug during injection, then “go[es] away” in the body, leaving behind the crystallized drug structure.

“What we were able to figure out is by using a solvent or fluid that can help solubilize the drug, we could load that solution in a way that, when injected, that solvent would go away and leave behind that solid depot of drug,” Traverso told Healio. “Because it is fluid and we are loading it, it is much easier to inject. That was critical.”

“We also wanted that object to be solid enough that we could retrieve it if we needed to.”

The goal, he said, was a drug platform that could be injected easily yet form a physically solid implant that may be removable if required—though the method of removal post-aggregation is unclear.

According to Healio, “the solvent-exchange-mediated aggregation mechanism allows injections through needles as small as 30 G with no polymer and 25 G with a small amount of polymer while extending the drug release time frame.”

Histological studies allegedly confirmed the drug platform was “well tolerated,” and researchers claim its applications could extend beyond contraception.

“Specifically, in applications such as contraception, SLIM’s capability for prolonged drug release could significantly reduce the frequency of administration compared with current self-administrable options such as Depo-Provera and Sayana Press,” the researchers wrote.

But they don’t intend to stop at contraceptives.

“Traverso said the researchers are still actively working on the platform and applying it to several other infectious and neuropsychiatric conditions.”

“From a manufacturing standpoint, this [design] is simple and low cost,” Traverso said. “This work was funded by the Gates Foundation, an organization that considers those aspects from an early stage.”

He concluded:

“We hope to be in humans [with this technology] within the next 3 to 5 years, assuming further funding.”

What This Means

The Gates Foundation is now backing a self-assembling drug delivery platform designed for low-cost mass production, self-injection, and potential fertility suppression—and the developers plan to expand its use to psychiatric drugs and vaccines.

The key concerns:

• The “solid depot of drug” is formed inside the body via solvent-triggered crystallization.
• There is no clear long-term data on biocompatibility, systemic toxicity, or removal protocols.
• It circumvents surgical protocols and facilitates self-injection with minimal oversight.
• The same platform may be repurposed for behavior-modifying psychiatric agents or bioengineered therapeutics.

For now, it’s branded as an “accessible” form of birth control.

But the underlying platform is being actively refined for mass delivery of other potent drugs—with Gates Foundation support, MIT engineering, and Broad Institute backing.