Cuban authorities are working to restore power to the island after the second nationwide blackout in less than a week, as the grid struggles due to an aging infrastructure and a US oil blockade.<\/p>\n
Some parts of Havana began to have power again, but others were still dark, a day after the energy ministry reported a “total disconnection” of the national electric system in the country of nearly 10 million people.<\/p>\n
A gas power station near Havana and another in the beach resort of Varadero were generating power again, as well as a hydroelectric plant in central Cuba, energy and mining minister Vicente de la O Levy said on X.<\/p>\n
A unit of a thermoelectric plant was also back online.<\/p>\n
There have been seven nationwide blackouts since 2024, making life more difficult for Cubans who fear food will spoil in refrigerators, among other problems in a country in economic crisis.<\/p>\n
The breakdowns have intensified since Cuba’s main regional ally and oil supplier, Venezuela’s socialist leader Nicolas Maduro, was captured in a US military operation in January.<\/p>\n
US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on countries that sell oil to Cuba.<\/p>\n
No oil has been imported to the island since 9 January, hitting the power sector while also forcing airlines to curtail flights to the island, a blow to the all-important tourism sector.<\/p>\n
The latest blackout was due to an outage in a generating unit at one of the country’s eight thermoelectric plants, triggering a domino effect in the system, according to authorities.<\/p>\n
The outages, as well as regular shortages of food, medicine and other basics, are spurring frustrations.
In a rare moment of violence, demonstrators vandalized a provincial office of the Cuban Communist Party last weekend.<\/p>\n
The new blackout occurred as an international aid convoy began to arrive in Cuba this week, bringing sorely-needed medical supplies, food, water and solar panels to the Caribbean island.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cuban authorities are working to restore power to the island after the second nationwide blackout in less than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-359480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}