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TORONTO, ON TheNewswire – June 19, 2025 Silver Crown Royalties Inc. (‘ Silver Crown ‘, ‘ SCRi ‘, or the ‘ Company ‘) (Cboe:SCRI; OTCQX:SLCRF; FRA:QS0) is pleased to announce the signing of a Letter of Intent (‘ LOI ‘) with Kuya Silver Corp. (CSE: KUYA; OTCQB: KUYAF; FSE: 6MR1) (‘ Kuya ‘ or ‘ Kuya Silver ‘) to acquire a 4.5% royalty on silver produced from Kuya’s Bethania Silver Mine in Huancavelica, Central Peru.

The Bethania Silver Mine, which resumed production in May 2024, includes the Bethania Mine and Carmelitas property and is accessible year-round via a 4-hour drive from Huancayo. The Bethania Silver Mine was previously operational until 2016.

Under the terms of the LOI, Silver Crown will acquire the royalty for US$3,000,000 in cash and US$2,000,000 in Silver Crown units at C$6.50 per unit (the ‘ Units ‘) or the 5-day volume-weighted average price (VWAP) of SCRi’s common shares (the ‘ Common Shares ‘) prior to closing. Each Unit will consist of one Common Share and one-half of a warrant, with each whole warrant exercisable at C$13.00 per Common Share for a period of three years.

SCRi will receive: (i) 4,500 ounces of silver per quarter for the first four (4) quarters, (ii) 9,000 ounces per quarter for quarters five (5) through eight (8), and (iii) 12,375 ounces per quarter for quarters nine (9) through 40. After delivering 475,000 ounces, the royalty will reduce to 1% for the mine’s remaining life.

Peter Bures, Silver Crown’s Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented, ‘We are excited to initiate a partnership with Kuya Silver that can potentially translate to a materially impactful increase to SCRi’s silver revenue profile paving a way from 78,000 to over 128,000 annual silver ounces.’

ABOUT Silver Crown Royalties INC.

Founded by industry veterans, Silver Crown Royalties ( Cboe: SCRI | OTCQX: SLCRF | BF: QS0 ) is a publicly traded, silver royalty company. Silver Crown (SCRi) currently has four silver royalties of which three are revenue-generating. Its business model presents investors with precious metals exposure that allows for a natural hedge against currency devaluation while minimizing the negative impact of cost inflation associated with production. SCRi endeavors to minimize the economic impact on mining projects while maximizing returns for shareholders. For further information, please contact:

Silver Crown Royalties Inc.

Peter Bures, Chairman and CEO

Telephone: (416) 481-1744

Email: pbures@silvercrownroyalties.com

FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This release contains certain ‘forward looking statements’ and certain ‘forward-looking information’ as defined under applicable Canadian and U.S. securities laws. Forward-looking statements and information can generally be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as ‘may’, ‘will’, ‘should’, ‘expect’, ‘intend’, ‘estimate’, ‘anticipate’, ‘believe’, ‘continue’, ‘plans’ or similar terminology. The forward-looking information contained herein is provided for the purpose of assisting readers in understanding management’s current expectations and plans relating to the future. Readers are cautioned that such information may not be appropriate for other purposes. Forward-looking statements and information include, but are not limited to: the anticipated execution of a definitive agreement with Kuya Silver; expected silver deliveries under the proposed royalty; the potential for exploration bonuses; projected increases in SCRi’s silver revenue profile; the successful completion of due diligence and regulatory approvals; the ability to finance the cash portion of the transaction; the future operational performance of the Bethania Silver Mine; and the realization of strategic and financial benefits from the proposed royalty acquisition.

Forward-looking statements and information are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions that, while believed by management to be reasonable, are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies. Forward-looking information is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual actions, events or results to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: the impact of general business and economic conditions; the absence of control over mining operations from which SCRi will purchase gold and other metals or from which it will receive royalty payments and risks related to those mining operations, including risks related to international operations, government and environmental regulation, delays in mine construction and operations, actual results of mining and current exploration activities, conclusions of economic evaluations and changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; accidents, equipment breakdowns, title matters, labor disputes or other unanticipated difficulties or interruptions in operations; SCRi’s ability to enter into definitive agreements and close proposed royalty transactions; the inherent uncertainties related to the valuations ascribed by SCRi to its royalty interests; problems inherent to the marketability of gold and other metals; the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; industry conditions, including fluctuations in the price of the primary commodities mined at such operations, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates and fluctuations in interest rates; government entities interpreting existing tax legislation or enacting new tax legislation in a way which adversely affects SCRi; stock market volatility; regulatory restrictions; liability, competition, the potential impact of epidemics, pandemics or other public health crises on SCRi’s business, operations and financial condition, loss of key employees. SCRi has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers are advised not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information. SCRi undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking information except as required by applicable law. Such forward-looking information represents management’s best judgment based on information currently available.

This document does not constitute an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy, securities of the Company in Canada, the United States or any other jurisdiction. Any such offer to sell or solicitation of an offer to buy the securities described herein will be made only pursuant to subscription documentation between the Company and prospective purchasers. Any such offering will be made in reliance upon exemptions from the prospectus and registration requirements under applicable securities laws, pursuant to a subscription agreement to be entered into by the Company and prospective investors. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, the reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements.

CBOE CANADA DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS NEWS RELEASE.

Copyright (c) 2025 TheNewswire – All rights reserved.

News Provided by TheNewsWire via QuoteMedia

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A new king reigns in TV land.

Streaming has officially surpassed broadcast and cable as a share of total television viewing, according to Nielsen data.

In May, streaming accounted for 44.8% of viewership, while broadcast (20.1%) and cable (24.1%) together represented 44.2% of overall people tuning in.

‘While many have expected this milestone to have occurred sooner, sporting events, news and new-season content have kept broadcast and cable TV surprisingly resilient,’ Brian Fuhrer, senior vice president at Nielsen, said in a video for Nielsen’s The Gauge monthly viewership report. ‘The trend, however, has been very consistent.’

While Netflix has boasted the most overall TV use for four years straight, YouTube has now seen four straight months of TV share increase, Nielsen said. The platform, owned by Google and its parent company, Alphabet, boasted the highest share of TV consumption among all streamers in May, with a 12.5% share. Rounding out the top five were Netflix, Disney-owned platforms including ESPN and Hulu, Amazon’s Prime Video, and the Roku Channel.

The three largest so-called free, ad-supported services, or FAST channels — Paramount’s Pluto TV, the Roku Channel and Fox’s Tubi — combined for 5.7% of total TV viewing in May, more than any individual broadcast network.

Streaming’s overall share is likely to remain neck and neck with traditional TV viewership for some time before it eventually surpasses it permanently in the near future, Nielsen said.

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Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Tuesday that the company expects artificial intelligence ‘will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains’ over time.

‘We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people do other types of jobs,’ Jassy added in a memo to Amazon’s workforce.

The CEO of the country’s second-largest retailer and employer said Amazon is using generative AI ‘in virtually every corner of the company.’

Amazon employs more than 1.5 million people worldwide, according its most recent annual report.

This year, Amazon plans to spend $100 billion to expand AI services and data centers that power them, up from $83 billion last year.

Jassy said he believes so-called ‘AI agents’ will ‘change how we all work and live.’ While ‘many of these agents have yet to be built,’ he said, ‘they’re coming, and fast.’

He continued by saying that they will ‘change the scope and speed at which we can innovate for customers.’

Amazon currently has more than a thousand AI services and applications running inside the company or in progress of being built.

Jassy’s comments Tuesday will likely invoke fears that many corporate workers have had as artificial intelligence captures the eye of efficiency-minded executives across corporate America. A recent study from Bloomberg Intelligence said that AI could replace up to 200,000 banking jobs.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in New York on Feb. 26.Michael Nagle / Bloomberg via Getty Images

Artificial intelligence has also been shown to be effective at coding for software programs.

Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike eliminted 5% of its workforce in May, saying that AI was driving ‘efficiencies across both the front and back office.’

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke said managers at the e-commerce company will be expected to prove why they ‘cannot get what they want done using AI’ before asking for more headcount.

‘Having AI alongside the journey and increasingly doing not just the consultation, but also doing the work for our merchants is a mind-blowing step function change here,’ Lutke added.

Language learning firm Duolingo also recently said that it would replace contract workers with artificial intelligence. ‘We’ll gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle,’ CEO Luis von Ahn wrote in a memo to Duolingo employees in May. ‘Headcount will only be given if a team cannot automate more of their work,’ von Ahn added.

The CEO of U.K. telecom giant BT said this week that plans to cut 40,000 jobs from the company’s workforce over the next 10 years ‘did not reflect the full potential of AI.’

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The Justice Department announced Wednesday the largest-ever U.S. seizure of cryptocurrency linked to so-called “pig butchering” scams that have cost victims billions globally.

Federal prosecutors filed a civil forfeiture action targeting more than $225 million in cryptocurrency traced to a sprawling web of fraudulent investment platforms. Victims were tricked into believing they were investing in legitimate crypto ventures, only to be scammed by criminal networks often operating overseas.

“This seizure of $225.3 million in funds linked to cryptocurrency investment scams marks the largest cryptocurrency seizure in U.S. Secret Service history,” said Shawn Bradstreet, special agent in charge of the U.S. Secret Service’s San Francisco Field Office, in a statement.

Authorities said the network was connected to at least 400 suspected victims worldwide, including dozens in the U.S. Crypto fraud was responsible for more than $5.8 billion in reported losses last year, according to FBI data.

The seized funds are now subject to forfeiture proceedings aimed at eventually returning money to victims.

The U.S. Secret Service and FBI used blockchain analysis and other tools to trace the cryptocurrency back to stolen assets. The DOJ credited Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, for assisting in the operation.

According to the complaint, the funds were linked to the theft and laundering of money from victims of cryptocurrency investment fraud schemes, commonly known as confidence scams that often involve romance.

The network relied on hundreds of thousands of transactions to obscure the origin of the funds, using sophisticated blockchain maneuvers to conceal the flow of stolen assets.

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At least 51 people were killed and more than 200 others injured by Israeli fire as they waited for aid trucks to arrive in Khan Younis in southern Gaza early Tuesday morning, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said.

The incident marks the highest reported number of people killed while seeking aid over the past few weeks in the enclave. In total, nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed near aid centers since Israel lifted an 11-week total blockade on Gaza and allowed a trickle of aid to enter, according to the health ministry.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a Tuesday statement that “a gathering was identified adjacent to an aid distribution truck that got stuck in the area of Khan Younis, and in proximity to IDF troops operating in the area.”

The IDF said it was “aware of reports regarding a number of injured individuals from IDF fire following the crowd’s approach,” that “details of the incident are under review,” and that it “regrets any harm to uninvolved individuals and operates to minimize harm as much as possible to them while maintaining the safety of our troops.”

“They went to bring bread for their children, just bread or flour. They killed us in cold blood,” Abu Abed said.

Video from the scene in Khan Younis on Tuesday shows dozens of bodies lying on the ground, covered in blood.

The latest scenes of death, violence and desperation underline a grim existence for over 2.1 million people living in Gaza – which the United Nations has warned is edging closer to famine.

Humanitarian organizations say that aid currently entering the enclave is only a tiny fraction of what is needed, with the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) – the main supplier of aid in Gaza – coming under global scrutiny since it opened its distribution points late last month.

Palestinians en route to GHF distribution sites have repeatedly been fired upon since its inception, according to the health ministry, with some 3,000 people injured in addition to the fatalities. On Tuesday, eight people were also killed after coming under Israeli fire near an aid distribution site west of Rafah, the ministry said.

The GHF, an Israeli-US backed private contractor, has been criticized by multiple international aid agencies for setting up its distribution centers amid active combat zones. The organization has repeatedly said there has been no violence at their sites. But the GHF acknowledged earlier this month that there have been Palestinian casualties in the surrounding areas, which the organization described as “well beyond our secure distribution site.” A spokesman referred further questions to the Israeli military.

On Tuesday, Volker Türk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said on X: “Israel has weaponized food and blocked lifesaving aid. I urge immediate, impartial investigations into deadly attacks on desperate civilians trying to reach food distribution centres.”

One of those killed in Khan Younis on Tuesday was a 20-year-old man, who had traveled there in hope of returning with food for his family.

Speaking through tears, his mother said: “He didn’t go for a picnic. He went to bring food for his siblings and father.”

Nearby, at Nasser Medical Complex, hospital staff said that the entire ward was crowded with casualties. Video from the hospital showed dozens of people arriving with wounds, with others inside the hospital waiting for treatment as they laid on the floor.

One intensive care doctor told Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), an aid organization based in the United Kingdom, that the hospital had received on Tuesday “a large number of injured and killed from the Israeli army’s targeting of aid distribution points in Khan Younis.”

“The situation here is catastrophic beyond imagination,” the doctor said, adding that the morgue was completely full and that additional bodies had been placed outside the building.

“We are trying our best, but the numbers are overwhelming,” he said.

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A tip from a member of the public to a popular Italian television show led to the arrest on a Greek island of an American man suspected of murdering a baby girl and hiding her mother’s body in a busy park in Rome.

“On June 13, in Skiathos, police officers of the island’s police department, in collaboration with (Italian) state police… identified and stopped an American citizen, credibly suspected of the murder of a newborn and the concealment of her mother’s cadaver, whose lifeless bodies were found in Rome on June 7 inside Rome’s Villa Doria Pamphili Park,” Rome police prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi said in a statement Friday.

The body of the baby girl, thought by Italian state police to be between six and 10 months old, was found under bushes in a corner of Rome’s largest park on June 7.

A few hours later, a child playing in the park noticed an arm sticking out from under a black garbage bag, leading to the discovery of the naked body of a young woman, thought to be in her late 20s or early 30s.

DNA tests showed that the woman was the baby’s mother, police said in a press conference on June 11.

Initial autopsy reports were inconclusive in the cause of death of the woman, they said, adding that she had no visible wounds. The baby, whose stomach was empty, showed signs of strangulation.

Unable to identify the bodies, police released photos of the mother’s extensive tattoos. These tattoos were shown on June 9 on the popular missing persons TV show “Chi l’ha visto?” (“Who has seen him/her?”), which invited the public to call in with any information about the identities of the mother and child.

Several people came forward, including some who had seen the young woman and her baby in various soup kitchens in the city, and another who had witnessed an altercation between the woman and a man in a central square in Rome, according to witnesses featured in “Chi l’ha Visto.”

Police had been called to that incident and took the man’s details. No arrest was made at the time, but the information led to the man’s identification. The woman’s details were not taken at the incident.

Photos reported to be of the man, covered in blood from a head wound, sitting next to the woman and the baby also surfaced as a result of the TV appeal, as well as a photo of the man without the woman – with the clearly crying baby girl in his arms – talking to police just two days before the infant was found dead. The woman, whose body was in a more advanced state of decomposition than the baby’s, according to police, was not seen in the photo.

The United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation also helped by tracing the man’s credit and SIM cards, police said during a press conference in Rome on Friday following the arrest.

The Italian prosecutor’s office said it will seek the man’s extradition from Greece, which could take up to three weeks.

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The outcome of the defining conflict between Iran and Israel may depend on one simple number, which is at very best a rough estimate.

Israeli military data and expert analysis say Iran has fired about 700 of its medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBM) at Israel over the past 14 months, leaving it with anything between 300 to 1,300 left in its stockpile.

This remaining arsenal is subject to Israel’s fierce air assault of the past five days, with the IDF saying it has targeted at least a third of the surface-to-surface launchers that fire MRBMs, possibly further reducing Iran’s ability to strike back at Israel.

The depletion of its arsenal may compound Iran’s desire to negotiate its way out of the conflict and also intensify the ferocity of the Israeli campaign in the coming days, analysts have said, as Israeli airpower finds itself almost unchallenged and Iran’s nightly assaults on Israeli cities seem recently to have ebbed.

Few reliable estimates for Iran’s stockpile exist, although US CENTCOM’s commander General Kenneth McKenzie said in 2023 that they had more than 3,000 missiles of different ranges. Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said likely 1,000 to 2,000 of these were medium-range, capable of spanning the 1,400 kilometers between Iran and Israel. He called the estimate “at best a back-of-the-envelope calculation.”

According to the IDF, Iran used 120 MRBMs in its April 13 attack last year on Israel, another 200 on October 1, and a total of 380 in the past five days. This tally would deplete its overall known arsenal by a total of 700. But whether it leaves Tehran with an existential crisis over its missile deterrence depends on both the size of its initial stockpile, and what damage Israel has done to Iran’s military infrastructure, since it began striking across the country on Friday.

Ben Taleblu suggested this might leave Iran with 1,300 MRBMs. Other estimates were more pessimistic. Dr. Eyal Pinko, a retired Israeli naval intelligence officer, now a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, said: “Taking into consideration that they fired around 400 to 500 in the last four days and Israel destroyed some of the arsenal of what they had, I believe they have now 800 to 700.”

The few glimpses of the damage done to Iran’s air defenses and missile production from Israeli strikes on October 26 have revealed a significant toll. Admiral Tony Radakin, the UK’s Chief of the Defence Staff, said in a December speech that 100 Israeli aircraft had fired as many missiles from as many miles away and “took down nearly the entirety of Iran’s air defense system. It has destroyed Iran’s ability to produce ballistic missiles for a year.”

But recently Israel has amplified the threat that Iran’s missile production poses. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Friday, as Israel launched its air campaign, that Iran had sped up its manufacture of ballistic missiles to 300 a month, which could leave them with 20,000 in six years. He did not provide evidence for the claim.

Pinko said the 2024 strikes had “destroyed the main facilities for manufacturing ballistic missiles motors” in Iran, creating severe limitations to the country’s supply chain. Still, he notes that potential assistance from China in the coming months could boost production again.

Iran would not want its arsenal of MRBMs to sink “below four digits,” said Ben Taleblu.

“For the Islamic Republic, quantity has a quality of its own,” he said, adding that Iran excels “in crisis management but is actually a poor conventional warfighter. And having to expend these ballistic missiles during a time of war, rather than a time of crisis precisely puts it in this bind.”

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Benjamin Netanyahu is once again firmly in control of Israeli politics.

The country’s longest-serving prime minister has pulled himself back from the abyss with what appears to be a wildly successful opening to a military campaign against Iran.

“Bibi had his Churchill moment,” said one Israeli official from within the coalition, using the prime minister’s nickname.

One day before launching what Israel dubbed Operation Rising Lion, Netanyahu’s government had faced a confidence vote from the opposition.

Two of the ultra-Orthodox parties threatened to vote against the government in what would have put major pressure on Netanyahu. But he survived the vote – with quite some margin.

Twenty-four hours later, Israel began attacking Iran. In one instant, Netanyahu’s political problems were swept away. No more ultra-Orthodox parties complaining about the military draft or far-right parties shouting about praying in the al-Aqsa compound.

“The cards are in his hands. If they weren’t a week ago, they are now,” said the official.

The weekly political protests – first over the judicial reform, then over the war in Gaza – that have dogged Netanyahu for much of his current term quickly vanished, with orders from Israel’s Homefront Command forbidding large gatherings of people. Netanyahu’s testimony in his trial on charges of corruption is on hold and out of the headlines. The stories of the hostages still held in Gaza for more than 600 days of war are no longer front-page news.

Netanyahu is well aware of the political consequences of such a successful military operation, according to an Israeli source in the prime minister’s orbit, though the source insists it’s not his focus right now

“If we are doing something good for Israel, it’s good to us,” the source said. “It’s good for you electorally, it’s good for you with the voters … He will harvest this in the future.”

The source also pointed out the complete reversal of the political opposition from attacking Netanyahu to supporting him.

“This time, we have unity almost all over the Knesset, except from the Arab parties, and we have unity in the people,” said the source.

Iran has been at the center of Netanyahu’s identity for nearly his entire political career. His time as Israel’s longest-serving leader is replete with warnings about Iran. Some have been borderline cartoonish, like when he held up a drawing of a bomb to warn of Tehran’s advancing nuclear program at the United Nations General Assembly in 2012. He has since returned to the same podium – and many others – to lecture the world repeatedly about the intent of the Ayatollahs.

Israel’s existential fear wasn’t a single one of its adversaries. It was all of them combined: an overwhelming attack from Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and the Shiite proxies in Syria and Iraq. This was Israel’s nightmare scenario that Hamas tried to instigate with its attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

It quickly became evident that each entity had its own interests.

Hezbollah began launching attacks against Israel on October 8, but it was far from the massive barrages which worried the military’s leadership. Iran launched two retaliatory attacks against Israel last year in April and October. The Houthis began firing drones and ballistic missiles at Israel from Yemen, but never more than one or two at a time.

Over 20 months of war, Israel was able to defang each of its adversaries. Hamas is a shell of its former self, Hezbollah has been shattered, and the Houthis don’t have the arsenal to pose a major threat.

That allowed Israel to turn its focus to Iran without fear of massive retaliation from another front. From Netanyahu’s political perspective, the risk was far lower, especially since Israel’s spy agency has treated Iran like its playground for years.

“At his age, he has much less of a political career left to lose,” Shapiro said. “So it’s easier to throw the caution that held him back in the past to the wind, especially to reach for a career-defining goal.”

But whether the military campaign against Iran buoys Netanyahu’s long-sinking polling numbers is not a foregone conclusion, according to Yohanan Plesner, president of the Israeli Democracy Institute.

Polling in recent months has repeatedly shown Netanyahu far behind political rival Naftali Bennett. Crucially, it has indicated he would fall far short of being able to build a coalition with his current political partners, ousting him from leadership.

The Iran operation may not ultimately deliver the political salvation Netanyahu wants, Plesner said, because it is an issue with broad agreement from the left and the right.

Israel is also mired in the ongoing war in Gaza with no clear exit and lacking a comprehensive day-after plan. A second war, even with far more tangible accomplishments, presents another risk to Netanyahu if it drags on.

“The ability of the government to translate the military successes into an advantageous diplomatic outcome is yet to be determined,” said Plesner.

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Spain’s government said Tuesday that the massive April power outage across Spain and Portugal that left tens of millions of people disconnected in seconds was caused by technical and planning errors that left the grid unable to handle a surge in voltage.

Ecological Transition Minister Sara Aagesen, who manages the nation’s energy policy, told reporters that a voltage surge led to small grid failures, mainly in the south of Spain, which then cascaded to larger ones and brought the system down in the two Iberian Peninsula nations.

She ruled out that the failure was due to a cyberattack.

The outage began shortly after noon on April 28 in Spain and lasted through nightfall, disrupting businesses, transit systems, cellular networks, internet connectivity and other critical infrastructure. Spain lost 15 gigawatts of electricity — or about 60% of its supply. Portugal, whose grid is connected to Spain’s, also went down. Only the countries’ island territories were spared.

“All of this happened in 12 seconds, with most of the power loss happening in just five seconds,” Aagesen said.

Several technical causes contributed to the event, including “poor planning” by Spain’s grid operator Red Eléctrica, which didn’t find a replacement for one power plant that was supposed to help balance power fluctuations, the minister said. She also said that some power plants that utilities shut off preventively when the disruptions started could have stayed online to help manage the system.

Power was fully restored by the early hours of the following day.

The government’s report will be released later on Tuesday – 49 days after the event – and included analysis from Spain’s national security agencies, which concluded, according to the minister, there were no indications of cyber-sabotage by foreign actors.

The government had previously narrowed down the source of the outage to three power plants that tripped in southern Spain.

In the weeks following the blackout, citizens and experts were left wondering what triggered the event in a region not known for power cuts. The outage ignited a fierce debate about whether Spain’s high levels of renewable power and not enough energy generated from nuclear or gas-fired power plants had something to do with the grid failing, which the government has repeatedly denied.

Spain is at the forefront of Europe’s transition to renewable energy, having generated nearly 57% of its electricity in 2024 from renewable energy sources like wind, hydropower and solar. The country is also phasing out its nuclear plants.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez pushed back against such speculation and defended the country’s rapid ramping up of renewables. He asked for patience and said that his government would not “deviate a single millimeter” from its energy transition plans, which include a goal of generating 81% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030.

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For the first time since the global outbreak of Covid-19, researchers claim to have pierced North Korea’s ironclad information blockade to reveal how some ordinary citizens endured the pandemic.

While Pyongyang insisted for more than two years that not a single case had breached its hermetically sealed borders, a new report paints a far darker picture, of a deadly wave of largely untreated illness that swept the country, but was barely talked about.

The 26-page report also details testimony of deaths by counterfeit or self-prescribed medicine, and official denial leading to a culture of dishonesty.

“Doctors were lying to the patients. Village leaders were lying to the party. And the government was lying to everybody,” said Dr. Victor Cha, one of the report’s lead authors.

Released by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in partnership with the George W. Bush Institute, the paper is based on 100 in-person interviews conducted discreetly inside North Korea between September and December 2023.

The testimony – gathered through informal, conversational methods known as “snowball sampling” – span all nine provinces and the capital Pyongyang. The result is what the authors describe as “arguably the first glimpse” inside the country’s most extreme period of isolation in modern history.

Snowball sampling is a recruitment method often used when studying hidden or hard-to-access populations. Researchers begin by identifying one or two trusted participants, who then refer them to others in their networks. Over time, the pool of participants “snowballs,” growing through word-of-mouth and personal trust.

While it lacks the scientific rigor of more conventional surveys, this method is often the only way of getting raw, subjective testimony from people living in repressive and totalitarian states, such as North Korea.

Cha, a former White House adviser and Korea Chair at CSIS, said the findings were evidence of “a total failure on the part of the government to do anything for the people during the pandemic.”

“Everybody was effectively lying to everybody during the pandemic,” he said. “Because of a government policy that said there was no COVID in the country. When they knew there was.”

Cha said Pyongyang’s policy of denial didn’t just attempt to deceive the outside world – it forced North Korea’s more than 26 million people into mutually enforced silence.

When North Korea closed its borders in early 2020 – as the virus made its way across the globe, on its way to infecting and killing millions – state media claimed it had kept the virus out entirely; no infections, no deaths. The world was skeptical. But the regime’s total control over borders and information made independent verification nearly impossible.

Two years later, North Korean television aired scenes of a military parade in Pyongyang. Crowds filled Kim Il Sung Square. Masks were scarce. Not long after, reports of a mysterious “fever outbreak” began appearing in state media. By early May, Pyongyang confirmed its first Covid-19 case. Three months later, it declared victory – claiming just 74 deaths out of nearly 5 million “fever” cases.

But according to the new survey, Covid-19 had by that point been circulating widely inside the country for at least two years.

Ninety-two percent of respondents said they or someone close to them had been infected. Most said 2020 and 2021 – not 2022 – were when outbreaks were at their worst.

“Fevers were happening everywhere, and many people were dying within a few days,” one participant reported. Another, a soldier, described a military communications battalion in which more than half the unit – about 400 soldiers – fell ill by late 2021. In prisons, schools, and food factories, respondents described people collapsing or missing days of work due to fever.

Even under normal conditions, the country’s isolated and underfunded healthcare system struggles to meet the needs of its people. But a pandemic-level event, coupled with official denial and an initial refusal to accept foreign vaccines, left people dangerously exposed, the report claims.

With virtually no access to testing, diagnoses came from Covid-19 symptoms that most of the world had grown familiar with: fever, cough, shortness of breath. Some respondents said even these symptoms were taboo. One woman recalled being told by a doctor that if she said she had those symptoms, “you will be taken away.” Another said bluntly: “They told me it’s a cold, but I knew it was COVID.”

In place of official care, citizens turned to folk medicine: saltwater rinses, garlic necklaces, even opium injections. One woman said her child died after being given the wrong dosage of adult medication. Another respondent described neighbors overdosing on counterfeit Chinese drugs. In total, one in five respondents reported seeing or hearing of deaths due to misuse of medication or fake pharmaceuticals.

Protective gear was nearly nonexistent. Just 8% of respondents said they received masks from the government. Many made their own, reused them, or bought them at black-market prices. One mother said her children had to sew their own because adult-issued masks were too big.

Cha says the failure was not just in what the government withheld, but in how it blocked the kind of grassroots survival that had helped North Korea’s “resourceful” citizens endure past disasters – including the 1990s famine, known inside the country as the “Arduous March.” That crisis gave rise to private marketplaces, which emerged as a lifeline when the state-run ration system collapsed. During the pandemic, however, those markets were shut down – officially to contain the virus, but also, Cha suggests, to limit the spread of information.

“They didn’t allow the people to find coping mechanisms,” he said. “Just shut them down, quarantine them, lock them down – and then provided them with nothing.”

The suffering extended beyond illness. With internal travel banned and markets shuttered, food shortages became acute. Eighty-one percent of those surveyed said they faced hunger. Respondents spoke of trying to survive quarantine periods with no rations, no access to medicine, and no way to seek help.

The rationing system, long unreliable, collapsed entirely under the weight of the lockdown. “If you didn’t have emergency food at home, it was really tough,” one soldier said.

Eighty-seven percent of respondents said they had no access to Covid tests at any point in the pandemic. Fewer than 20% received any vaccine — and most of those were administered only after Pyongyang acknowledged the outbreak in 2022 and accepted limited Chinese assistance. Soldiers reported receiving three shots as part of a campaign later that year. Civilian respondents described group vaccinations administered at schools or workplaces – months after the rest of the world had rolled out full vaccination programs.

Even the basic act of reporting illness became a risk. According to the report, local clinics and neighborhood watch units were required to report cases to central authorities. But only 41% of respondents ever received any information about those reports. Most said the results were either never shared or filtered through rumor. One respondent said: “I realized that serious illnesses and deaths were not reported because they were told not to call it COVID.”

This system of denial created what Cha calls a “double lie”: the government lied to its people, and the people lied to each other and to their government – each trying to avoid quarantine, censure, or worse.

The survey also documented a deep well of frustration with the regime’s response – and its propaganda. One participant said: “Our country can build nuclear weapons, but they can’t give us vaccines.” Others noted the contrast between their conditions and what they heard about other countries: free testing, access to medicine, the ability to travel.

In one of the report’s most striking findings, 83% of respondents said their experience did not align with what the government or its leader Kim Jong Un told them. More than half said they explicitly disbelieved the regime’s Covid-related announcements.

“When I saw the Supreme Leader touting his love for the people, while so many were dying without medicine,” one respondent said, “I thought of all the people who didn’t survive.”

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