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In Cuba, the resourcefulness, while waiting for the complete return of the current
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Steph Deschamps / September 30, 2022
Recharge his cell phone, find a place in the neighbor’s freezer: until the electricity is fully restored, Cubans tried Thursday to deal with the most urgent, two days after the passage of Hurricane Ian which plunged the country into darkness.
“I try to find a solution, I call to know who has electricity and could keep me some of the chicken that I have here (in the freezer) and which is about to expire,” tells AFP Maria Fernandez, a 68-year-old retiree in her house in the district of Santos Suarez, Havana.
The powerful hurricane of category 3 which struck the country Tuesday made three deaths and caused important damages in the west of the country. It also caused a blackout in the whole island of 11.2 million inhabitants.
Maria Fernandez uses her landline phone because the “cell phone is discharged and the signal is intermittent,” she said.
Lazaro Herrera, an official of the public electricity company, Union Electrica (UNE), said on state television that part of the capital already had power, but the “rest is still waiting for the certification of the lines, as well as the provinces of Artemisa and Pinar del Rio (west)”, the hardest hit by the hurricane.
A good part of the inhabitants of the eastern provinces of Holguin, Santiago de Cuba, Las Tunas and Camagüey, which were not affected, have also recovered electricity.
The Cuban electrical network is fed by eight large power plants, electrical generators and some solar and wind units.
Dozens of people took to the streets of Havana’s Cerro neighborhood Thursday night to protest the lack of lighting, AFP found.
“We’ve had enough,” said Laura Mujica, a 20-year-old student. “They said this problem would be solved on Monday,” she stressed, pointing to an electric pole that has been down since Tuesday.
In a context of recurrent food shortages, Cubans are used to storing meat and perishable food in their freezers. A prolonged power outage is then a catastrophe.
I came to a friend’s house to put food in her freezer,” said a relieved Adrian Noriega, a 30-year-old lawyer who lives in the La Vibora neighborhood.
After the devastating passage of Ian, Mexico, Venezuela and Bolivia expressed their solidarity with Cuba. The U.S. Embassy in Havana recalled that “U.S. law authorizes U.S. agencies and entities to provide disaster relief in Cuba”.
On the outskirts of the capital, employees of hospitals and other buildings with electric generators are charging up to 200 Cuban pesos ($1) to recharge their phones.
Public transport in the capital was expected to resume on Thursday, according to the Ministry of Transport, while “the country’s airports are operational again” for international flights.
The chimneys of the Turkish generator-boat, rented by the electricity company and anchored in the bay of Havana, smoke again, noted AFP.
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Sylvie Claire / September 23, 2023
At least 25 people, including two children, died when a bus crashed into a ravine in the Andean region of Huancavelica, in southern Peru, the authorities announced in a revised death toll on Monday evening.
An initial police report put the death toll at 20, with a further 35 injured. A statement from the Ministry of Health later that morning put the death toll at 24. Finally, at the end of the day on Monday, the death toll stood at “25 dead and 34 wounded”, according to the Ministry of Defense.
The accident occurred on Sunday night, when the bus carrying over 50 passengers from Huanta in Ayacucho to Huancayo in the Junin region ran off the road.
Images show the damaged bus lying on its side near a river below the ravine, debris and personal belongings strewn all around.
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte expressed her “condolences to the families” from New York, where she will be attending the 78th General Assembly of the United Nations. The Peruvian Episcopal Conference, for its part, urged the government to “carry out a serious investigation” to prevent such accidents from happening again.
On August 13, another accident in the same region left 13 people dead and 5 seriously injured.
Road accidents are frequent in Peru, mainly due to speeding and poor road maintenance, especially in mountainous areas.
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Sylvie Claire / September 17, 2023
In Japan, the number of people aged 100 has reached a record level: the world’s third-largest economy now has 92,139 people aged 100 or over. That’s 1,613 more than a year ago, reported the Ministry of Health in Tokyo on Friday.
For over half a century, the number of people aged 100 has been rising every year. Due to a low birth rate and almost non-existent immigration, no other industrial state is aging as fast as this East Asian country.
Japan’s population is also shrinking at a record pace. Last year, the number of Japanese fell by 801,000, the biggest drop since comparable data have been recorded. There are now 122.4 million.
When the Japanese Ministry of Health began compiling statistics in 1963, there were 153 centenarians. Twenty-five years later, there were over 10,000. According to the latest figures, around 88% of centenarians are women. Japan has the longest life expectancy in the world. Life expectancy for women is around 87 years, and 81 for men.
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Steph Deschamps / September 17, 2023
The death toll from the earthquake in Morocco has risen to 2,946, the Moroccan Ministry of the Interior announced on Wednesday evening. A further 5,674 people were injured.
The previous death toll was 2,901. The death toll is expected to rise further. Hopes of finding survivors are now very slim. Rescue workers have not yet been able to reach all the villages affected in the Atlas Mountains.
A magnitude 6.8 earthquake struck the country on Friday night. The epicenter was located some 80 kilometers southwest of Marrakech. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), over 300,000 people in and around Marrakech were affected by the disaster.
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