Author: staff

With its blend of major museums, history-filled streets, renowned gastronomy and a vibrant cultural life, Madrid is becoming ever more attractive to travellers from around the world. The Spanish capital closed the first half of 2026 with record figures: international tourism generated €10.007 billion in spending, 11.4% more than in the same period a year earlier. For the City Council, these figures underline Madrid’s ability to attract visitors, talent and investment. The head of tourism, Almudena Maíllo, has pointed out that the sector’s growth has an impact that goes beyond the economic data, breathing new life into neighbourhoods, creating jobs…

AI chatbots risk spreading government restrictions on online speech, study says Ask Claude to make a pamphlet critical of US President Donald Trump or Britain’s King Charles III, and Anthropic’s chatbot will oblige. Prompt it to do the same for Thailand’s king or Iran’s supreme leader, and the AI model declines. That is a key finding from a Meta Oversight Board study released Thursday, showing that major AI systems — including those built in the US — are more likely to refuse to criticise restrictive leaders or governments. It raises concerns that the large language models powering chatbots and AI…

The groundwork for Tuesday’s meeting was set on Monday when EU ambassadors held talks that lasted around two and a half hours. The Spanish envoy gave Madrid’s account of the Ceuta crisis, during which more than 70 people died, and reprimanded some capitals for spreading disinformation, according to one of the diplomats. The ambassador was asked for verification of Madrid’s figures on returned migrants and for the situation to be closely monitored, two other diplomats said. Concerns were also raised that Spanish government policies may have been used by people-smugglers and gangs to encourage the events in Ceuta. “There’s a…

Five water-dropping planes and another five helicopters took off at first light on Monday to help hundreds of firefighters battling a major wildfire west of Athens, a day after a mid-air collision between two firefighting helicopters killed two crew members. The collision laid bare the danger at the most volatile front of Europe’s wildfire emergency. The two crew members, one Greek and one Danish national, died when their helicopter collided with another near the seaside area of Psatha while tackling the fire that started Friday morning. The blaze raged through pine forests and scrubland through the weekend, whipped by gale…

Published on 03/08/2026 – 9:38 GMT+2•Updated 12:46 Cuba’s power grid failed on Sunday, causing another nationwide blackout, a state energy company said in a social media post. As the lights suddenly turned off across the capital Havana, residents who were sat outside to get some respite from the summer heat audibly groaned en masse. Cuba has been suffering rolling power cuts due to ageing equipment and a US energy embargo that halted regular deliveries of fuel for power stations. State-run UNE said there was a “total disconnection” of the national electricity system, plunging the country, including the capital, into abrupt…

Conversations with artificial intelligence systems can become more than simple exchanges of messages. A study carried out by researchers at the INGENIO Institute, a joint centre of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the Polytechnic University of Valencia (UPV), together with the University of Cambridge, King’s College London and Aalto University, concludes that some people develop emotional relationships with these systems that evolve in ways similar to those between real-life human couples. The research is based on interviews with 17 people who were in romantic relationships with AI assistants such as ChatGPT, Replika and Character.AI. According to the authors,…

Authorities in Ceuta are struggling to cope with thousands of people that remain in the autonomous city following the mass arrival of migrants last week. Security forces estimate that around 73,500 people have already left the North African exclave and returned to Morocco, while local authorities say up to 5,000 remain in the Spanish territory, including 862 minors. The crisis has so far resulted in at least 88 confirmed deaths, according to Ceuta’s authorities, in addition to bodies recovered by Moroccan authorities in Moroccan waters. Juan Vivas, the president of Ceuta, estimates that between 3,000 and 5,000 migrants remain in…

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Published on 17/07/2026 – 16:43 GMT+2 Doomscrolling for hours, paying bills, watching full episodes — smartphones have become an all-day habit. But all that swiping and typing is taking a toll on our hands. “Texting thumb” is an umbrella term for a range of phone-related pains: stiffness, throbbing near the knuckle, a clicking sensation when bending the thumb. Left untreated, the repetitive strain can develop into carpal tunnel, arthritis or De Quervain’s tenosynovitis. “Our hands were not designed to use phones all day long,” said Eugene Tsai, a surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Orthopaedics and Sports Medicine. “In order for us to…

Poland on Monday appealed a Brussels court judgment ordering it to take delivery of roughly 64 million unwanted Covid-19 doses and pay Pfizer about €1.3 billion. Warsaw also asked judges to freeze the ruling’s provisional enforcement while the challenge is heard. “The decision of the court of first instance does not take into account all the relevant factual and legal circumstances of the case,” the Health Ministry said in a statement. It added that Poland would use “all legal means of defense,” but declined to disclose its arguments or evidence, citing the need to protect the state’s interests. The ruling…