After multiple blackouts, Cuba restoring power once again
Cuba’s power-grid operator said it had restored electricity to parts of the capital Havana on Monday following a fourth major grid failure in 48 hours, while Tropical Storm Oscar lashed the island’s eastern end.
Strong winds and heavy rain uprooted trees and scattered downed power lines in places, complicating recovery efforts.
Energy and Mines Minister Vicente de la O Levy said technicians were working carefully to avoid another electrical collapse given “complex” circumstances.
“The last thing we want is that, as a consequence of a fallen power line, we suffer another collapse of the system,” de la O Levy said.
Cuban energy officials said they were providing to the grid around 700 megawatts, or one-fourth of a typical day’s demand, by mid-morning. Authorities said they had restored power to 56 per cent of Havana by midday.
Millions of Cubans are still without electricity, three days after the national power grid failed. Cuban officials blame the U.S. economic embargo for fuel shortages and a lack of spare parts that could ease the crisis.
Officials said they had also restored electricity to parts of some outlying provinces on the Caribbean’s largest island.
Cuba’s Communist-run government closed schools and non-essential industry through Wednesday as work continued.
Cuba’s national electrical grid first crashed on Friday, before Oscar’s arrival, after the island’s largest power plant shut down, leaving 10 million people without electricity.
The grid has fully or partially failed three times since, underscoring the precarious state of the country’s infrastructure and putting many Cubans on edge, as they already suffer from dire shortages of food, fuel and medicine.
Havana was largely quiet overnight with the entire city in blackout. But a Reuters witness saw several scattered protests in poor, outlying neighbourhoods, as well as residents banging pots in frustration over the blackouts and food and water shortages.
President Miguel Diaz-Canel spoke to the nation on national television late on Sunday, telling Cubans to air their grievances with discipline and civility.
“We are not going to accept nor allow anyone to act with vandalism and much less to alter the tranquility of our people,” Diaz-Canel said.
Cubans have endured prolonged blackouts of 10 to 20 hours a day across much of the country for months, spoiling precious food stocks and complicating access to fuel and water.
The government and independent experts say the grid, long near collapse, has reached a critical point as obsolete infrastructure deteriorates and fuel runs short.
Cuba blames the U.S. trade embargo, as well as sanctions instituted by former U.S. President Donald Trump for difficulties in acquiring fuel and spare parts to operate and maintain its oil-fired plants.
The U.S. has denied any role in the grid failures.
Cuban allies Russia, Mexico and Venezuela have all slashed exports to the island in recent months.
Published at Mon, 21 Oct 2024 19:49:38 +0000
Exonerated Central Park Five sue Donald Trump for ‘demonstrably false’ debate remarks
The men formerly known as the Central Park Five before they were exonerated filed a defamation lawsuit against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump on Monday.
With election day two weeks away, the group accused the former U.S. president of making “false and defamatory statements” about them during last month’s presidential debate with Vice-President Kamala Harris. The group is asking for a jury trial to determine compensatory and punitive damages.
“Defendant Trump falsely stated that plaintiffs killed an individual and pled guilty to the crime. These statements are demonstrably false,” the group wrote in a federal complaint.
The men are upset because Trump essentially “defamed them in front of 67 million people, which has caused them to seek to clear their names all over again,” co-lead counsel Shanin Specter told The Associated Press in an email.
Specter had no comment when asked if there were concerns some see the lawsuit as purely political because of the group’s support for Harris. “We are seeking redress in the courts,” Specter said.
Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung decried the suit as “just another frivolous, Election Interference lawsuit, filed by desperate left-wing activists, in an attempt to distract the American people from Kamala Harris’s dangerously liberal agenda and failing campaign.”
Who are the Central Park Five?
Yusef Salaam, Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana and Korey Wise were teenagers when they were accused of the 1989 rape and beating of a white female jogger in New York City’s Central Park.
The five, who are Black and Latino, said they confessed to the crimes under duress. They later recanted, pleading not guilty in court and were later convicted after jury trials.
Their convictions were vacated in 2002 after another person confessed to the crime.
They were known as the Central Park Five, convicted decades ago for a violent crime. But in fact, it was a crime they didn’t commit. This week, the city of New York compensated them for that ordeal.
After the crime, Trump purchased a full-page ad in the New York Times, calling for the teens to be executed. The jogger case was Trump’s first foray into tough-on-crime politics that preluded his full-throated populist political persona. Since then, dog whistles and overtly racist rhetoric have been fixtures of Trump’s public life.
In the Sept. 10 debate, Trump misstated key facts of the case when Harris brought up the matter.
“They admitted, they said they pled guilty and I said, ‘Well, if they pled guilty they badly hurt a person, killed a person ultimately … and they pled guilty, then they pled not guilty,” Trump said.
He appeared to be confusing guilty pleas with confessions. Further, no victim died.
The now-Exonerated Five, including Salaam who is now a New York City councilman, have been campaigning for Harris. Some of them spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, calling out Trump for never apologizing for the newspaper ad.
They have also joined civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton for a get-out-the-vote bus tour.
Published at Mon, 21 Oct 2024 17:39:47 +0000
