Ping! “First we need to sprinkle some cocoa,” advises a female voice. Beside her, the unrestrained laughter of a baby rings out. A brief, deafening applause erupts, and a second later the heavily saturated beat of a techno track explodes. “This dream destination is located just five minutes from Lake Como!” exhorts a man in a tie. Tiriri-tiriri! A ball hits a roulette wheel until it stops, and the applause returns. It is soon drowned out by the angelic choirs of the song “Halo.” “Baby, I can feel your halo,” bellows none other than Beyoncé.

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MADRID, April 30 — Julian Alvarez’s penalty secured Atletico Madrid a 1-1 draw against Arsenal in a nervy Champions League semi-final first leg clash on Wednesday.

Viktor Gyokeres sent the Premier League leaders ahead from the spot just before the interval after he was fouled, but Alvarez followed suit 10 minutes into the second half after Ben White’s handball.

Arsenal were upset at a late penalty decision being overturned following a VAR review when David Hancko made contact with Eberechi Eze in the area.

“I’m incredibly fuming,” said Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta. “It’s a clear and very obvious penalty.”

Atletico had the better for long periods but Arsenal’s solid defending helped them leave the Spanish capital in a good position to return to the Champions League final 20 years after their last appearance.

“Here, you have to suffer,” Arteta told Movistar. “Many teams have suffered here, including some of the best in the world.

“We had some good moments in the match and moments where we had to suffer. The margins are very slim.”

Atletico captain Koke said his side could be proud of how they played in the second half.

“We were the team we have to be – if we play at this level we can win,” Koke told Movistar.

“From my point of view they didn’t create much danger against us... the team defended well and they just had that penalty.”

What the game lacked in the dizzying goal rush of Paris Saint-Germain’s 5-4 win over Bayern Munich in the other semi-final the night before, it replaced with tension and a desperation not to fall behind.

Toilet paper rained down from the stands of the Metropolitano stadium minutes before kick-off, in a striking – if wasteful – display, which invited cynical jokes from some quarters about the calibre of the spectacle ahead.

In a tussle between arguably the continent’s two biggest teams never to lay a finger on the trophy neither wanted to blink first.

Atletico still have an old-style defensive reputation but pinned Mikel Arteta’s miserly Arsenal back in the early stages, with David Raya tipping Alvarez’s shot around the post.

The Gunners, a long way from Arteta’s eve-of-the-game demand they dominate proceedings, looked to smash and grab.

Noni Madueke, starting on Arsenal’s right flank with Bukayo Saka only fit for the bench, hammered just wide as last year’s beaten semi-finalists sporadically emerged from their half.

The next time they did, Gyokeres won a penalty. The Swedish striker, who might not have started if Kai Havertz had been fit, exchanged passes with Martin Zubimendi and Hancko clumsily shoved him in the back from behind.

Diego Simeone and Atletico veteran Antoine Griezmann begged for the decision to be reviewed but VAR saw no reason to intervene.

Gyokeres took the spot-kick himself, walloping it past Jan Oblak, who dived the right way but stood no chance of keeping it out.

Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Magalhaes walk with teammates after the match at Riyadh Air Metropolitano on April 29, 2026. — Reuters pic

Atletico battle back

Three-time runners-up Atletico, back in the semi-finals for the first time in nine years, came out guns blazing in the second half.

Raya saved Ademola Lookman’s drive with Gabriel blocking Griezmann’s follow-up.

The hosts pulled level from the penalty spot after White handled Marcos Llorente’s shot, the ball bouncing up and hitting his arm, which was away from his body.

Alvarez took it, and having missed in Atletico’s Copa del Rey final shoot-out defeat earlier in April, this time made no mistake with an unforgiving blast rivalling Gyokeres’s first-half effort.

MLS-bound Griezmann looped a shot off the crossbar and then sent the rebound off target as Atletico turned the screw in pursuit of an advantage to take into next Tuesday’s second leg.

“This is what we have to do in the away game,” said Griezmann. “(The second half) was much better in terms of intensity.”

Nigeria international Lookman twice came close and could end up ruing his missed chances, kept out by the alert Raya.

Arsenal thought they had won a second penalty when substitute Eze went down under a sluggish Hancko challenge but to their fury the referee changed his mind after a VAR review, deciding the Slovakian defender’s contact was minimal.

Arsenal next take on Fulham as they continue their battle with Manchester City for the Premier League title, while with little to play for in La Liga Simeone will rotate heavily, before this tie is decided in London. — AFP

LONDON, April 28 — Declan Rice has urged Arsenal to embrace the weight of history in their chase for a first Champions League crown ahead of Wednesday’s semi-final trip to Atletico Madrid.

The Gunners travel to the Spanish capital for the first leg looking to move a step closer to only their second Champions League final appearance.

Mikel Arteta’s side have been labelled English football’s nearly men after three successive runners-up finishes in the Premier League.

They have fallen short in Europe as well, losing 3-1 on aggregate to eventual winners Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League semi-finals last season and bowing out against Bayern Munich in the 2024 quarter-finals.

Arsenal have never won Europe’s elite club competition, with their lone final ending in defeat against Barcelona in 2006.

The Premier League has become the London club’s holy grail after their painful streak of near-misses in recent years.

But lifting the Champions League for the first time would be an equally fitting riposte to those doubting the mental strength of Arteta’s men.

Just seven games separate Arsenal from the club’s greatest ever season.

They sit three points clear of second-placed Manchester City in the Premier League title race, with four matches to play and five for Pep Guardiola’s men.

Three games remain in the Champions League if Arsenal reach the final against PSG or Bayern in Budapest on May 30.

Rice wants his team-mates to prove their past experiences have made them battle-hardened for their pursuit of history.

“We’ve played in tough games in the last three or four years at the highest level, so we know what to expect and what’s to come,” the midfielder said.

“That’s what it’s been all season, and that’s what we want it to be towards the end of the season.

“We’re Champions League semi-finalists, let’s embrace it, enjoy it and bring it on.”

Havertz, Eze doubts

After losing two high-stakes showdowns with City recently – a 2-0 League Cup final defeat and 2-1 loss in the Premier League – the jury remains out on Arsenal’s ability to get over the line when it matters most.

A fraught 1-0 win over Newcastle on Saturday was hardly a convincing response to the cynics.

But it did end a two-game losing run in the league and eased a little of the tension after four defeats in their previous six matches in all competitions.

Arsenal are sweating on the fitness of Eberechi Eze and Kai Havertz for the trip to Madrid after they limped off last weekend.

Eze had taken his goal tally for the season to 10 with a sublime strike against Newcastle.

The England midfielder has been a rare source of attacking inspiration in a side whose success has been build on a solid defensive foundations.

And Rice is desperate for his international team-mate to be fit to face Diego Simeone’s side.

“That’s what he’s been brought here to do. I said a few weeks ago, his ball striking is unbelievable,” he said.

“What a player, what a guy. He’s going to be massive for us these next few weeks. We really need him.” — AFP

They say that sinners who pray are even. Everything points to this being the plan for many in Madrid on the weekend of June 6 and 7. On the one hand, they’ll unleash their party side at one of the 10 concerts Bad Bunny will be performing in the capital; on the other, they’ll find time for prayer and contrition, taking advantage of Pope Leo XIV’s visit, scheduled for the same dates. The coincidences are striking: the pontiff’s first major public event, near Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu stadium, will happen on the same day and in the same city as one of the Puerto Rican artist’s concerts, which will be held at the Metropolitano stadium, home to Atlético Madrid. And hotels are already starting to rake in the cash, even though there are still two and a half months to go before the events.

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Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez responded to reports that the Pentagon had considered suspending Spain from NATO by stressing that Spain is a “loyal partner” that meets its “responsibilities” within the Alliance — always, he said, “within the framework of international law.” For that reason, he added, the government feels “completely at ease.”

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Rafael Bachiller seems far more interested in revealing all the treasures housed in the Royal Observatory of Madrid, which he directs, than in starting the interview. He enthusiastically shows off the replica of Herschel’s gigantic telescope destroyed by Napoleon’s troops, the library, and the precision clocks, acting as the best guide to this gem located in the Spanish capital’s Retiro Park. An astronomer born in Madrid in 1957, and recently awarded the Spanish Geographical Society Prize, he also heads the Eclipse Commission, which will study the eclipse that will be visible in Spain on August 12.

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Micah P. Hinson, 44, has become a good neighbor in the Madrid district of Carabanchel. And, perhaps for him — a U.S. musician born in Tennessee and raised in Texas, who has traveled the world and survived more than one existential battle — that’s quite an achievement.

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In Spain, private lawyers and organizations that work with migrants are concerned about the lack of specific information regarding the documents that foreigners residing illegally in the country will need in order to apply for the regularization program announced by the government. Migrant advocates are also warning about a lack of information regarding the government offices where these documents should be submitted, and the collaborating organizations available in each province.

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In Beijing, at the Great Hall of the People — the venue reserved for major political events in the Chinese capital — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Tuesday heard the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, praise Spain’s role in today’s turbulent international order and suggest that both countries should work together to help safeguard multilateralism.

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Some of the legacies of former Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador are weighing heavily on her successor, and Claudia Sheinbaum has begun to shed some of them. The strained relationship with Spain, with whom Mexico shares strong historical and present-day ties, was one of them. Sheinbaum has gradually shifted toward a conciliatory stance, at the same pace that the European country has abandoned its stubborn refusal to acknowledge any atrocities during the Conquest of the Americas, at the origin of the bilateral tension. The two countries are now experiencing their closest moment in seven years. Sheinbaum has acknowledged the steps taken by Spanish authorities and she has reciprocated: at least for now, the calls for the Spanish monarchy to assume any responsibility for that historical period have ceased. The strategy now is more educational. “It is important that we continue sending many exhibitions, that Mexican anthropologists go to Spain to explain what the great civilizations were like, and that people hear about the arrival of the Spanish,” she said on Monday. Culture restored broken ties, and culture will be the way to deepen understanding.

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A team of forensic geneticists who examined the graves of newborns allegedly stolen in Spain during the Franco regime has published its findings for the first time in a scientific journal. The five researchers, from the National Institute of Toxicology and Forensic Sciences (INTCF), underscored that their data challenges “the widespread narrative of systematic theft” in hospitals and rejects “the conjecture, by now a hoax, about 300,000 cases of stolen babies in Spain.”

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Manuel López is experiencing the aAIrtificial intelligence revolution firsthand. This 55-year-old from Spain’s Canary Islands co-founded an automation company in 2024 with his 18-year-old son, who is also named Manuel. After several years of setbacks, including being laid off and launching several failed ventures, López found only one way to re-enter the workforce: studying AI.

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