Global News

 By Associated Press | Posted by TOE An islandwide blackout struck  Cuba  on Friday for the  second time this week  as the nation of nearly 10 million people grapples with a crumbling power grid and fuel shortages stemming from a U.S. energy blockade. While total blackouts have become increasingly common in the Caribbean country, it’s unusual for back-to-back ones to hit just days apart. Cuba’s Electric Union confirmed the outage on X. Authorities in Cuba said the cause of the blackout was a “fluctuation in the parameters” following a failure in a line connecting the provinces of Santa Clara and Sancti Spíritus. The electrical grid in Cuba is particularly fragile, both due to the lack of maintenance of its aging infrastructure — some power plants are over 30 years old — and the scarcity of the fuels on which it depends. “It has been another very difficult week under the impact of the energy blockade: two disconnections of the National E...

By AFP | Posted by TOE The Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo is the “fastest growing” ever, African health authorities said Thursday, as the World Health Organization said it had killed 600 people. Updated numbers issued by the UN health agency showed there have been 1,759 confirmed cases in DR Congo since the outbreak was declared in mid-May, including 600 confirmed deaths. “This is the fastest growing Ebola outbreak ever, not only among the previous Bundibugyo outbreaks, but all the different viruses that are causing Ebola,” Wessam Mankoula, head of emergency preparedness and response for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) told reporters. The deadliest Ebola outbreak — in 2013-16 in West Africa — had 994 cases in the first six weeks, compared to 1,596 in the current one, he said.  “Unfortunately the virus is still ahead of our response. It’s moving faster than deployi...

By Humeyra Pamuk, Gram Slattery and Tala Ramadan Reuters | Posted by TOE Iran says it attacked “US bases and strategic centres” in Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar after the US bombed Iranian cities for a second consecutive night. The US attacks have killed 14 people and wounded 78 over two days with blasts reported in Iranian cities along the Strait of Hormuz, including Bushehr, Chabahar, Bandar Abbas, and Sirik. The U.S. military said on Wednesday it launched fresh strikes on Iran to keep the Strait of Hormuz open to shipping, triggering Iranian attacks on Kuwait and Bahrain in the latest escalation to derail efforts to end the war. The latest round of attacks, which the U.S. said was carried ‌out in response to Tuesday’s assault on three cargo ships transiting the strait, came hours after President Donald Trump said he believed an interim ceasefire with Iran to be “over.” “U.S. Central Command ‌forces have started conducting additional strike...

By Reuters | Posted by TOE Sudan’s RSF forces carried out mass killings, abductions of women and girls, mass gang rapes and forced starvation in a city they besieged and captured last year, as part of an intentional policy amounting to genocide, a UN probe said on Wednesday. The Rapid Support Forces, which are battling the Sudanese army in a civil war, committed the crimes in al-Fashir in north Darfur, which they captured last year after a long siege, the UN Fact-Finding Mission for Sudan found. Survivors described to the mission being raped in rooms where bodies of recently killed civilians, including their own family members, were still lying on the ground. The report found that the RSF and allies committed the war crime of starvation by imposing a prolonged siege on the city, impeding relief supplies, and shelling food production systems. The RSF has denied such abuses in over three years of civil war, saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies ​a...

By Dave Sherwood and Ayose Naranjo Reuters Scattered protests broke out across Havana on Tuesday evening, with residents banging pots, honking horns and shouting “turn on the lights” as millions ‌of Cubans remained without power amid a six-month-long U.S. fuel blockade. Cuba experienced a nationwide outage on ‌Monday — its third this year — but while authorities said most of the country had been reconnected to the island’s grid by late ​Tuesday, many remained in the dark and without electricity as the island doesn’t have enough fuel. The country’s grid operator UNE said it had reconnected the grid from Pinar del Rio, in far western Cuba, to Holguin in the east. Santiago de Cuba, the island’s second-largest city, remained disconnected and without power, authorities said. The U.S. in January ‌cut off Cuba’s fuel supply, then ⁠imposed fresh sanctions that have prompted an exodus of foreign businesses and a near-complete collapse o...

By ABDUL SATTAR AP | Posted by TOE Dozens of militants attacked a police post overnight in southwestern  Pakistan,  triggering an intense gunbattle that killed nine police officers and wounded some others, officials said Tuesday in the latest escalation of militant violence in the region where insurgents have stepped up attacks on security forces. The attack took place in a remote area of Ziarat district in Balochistan province, police said, without providing further details. The assailants also abducted eight police officers, but all were later recovered by security forces, said Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan government. He said a subsequent clearance operation by security forces ended with 15 militants killed. Rind said intelligence-based operations against militants would continue and vowed that authorities would respond decisively to any such attacks on security forces. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the latest attack, though...