World News
Widespread power outage after Hurricane Ian in Cuba: There is currently no electricity service in the country
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Sylvie Claire / September 28, 2022
Cuba was plunged into darkness Tuesday night due to a widespread power outage caused by damage to its electricity network caused by Hurricane Ian, announced the state electricity company Union Eléctrica.
The country is “without electrical service,” the company tweeted, explaining this national blackout by the passage of the category 3 hurricane that ravaged the west of the island, without causing casualties, before heading to Florida.
“There is currently no electricity service anywhere in the country,” added Lázaro Guerra, technical director of Union Eléctrica, on Cuban television.
The Ministry of Energy and Mines said it was an “exceptional situation” that required “great precision” to resolve and that electricity service would be restored gradually.
Only the few people with gasoline-powered generators at home or in the office had access to power in this country of 11.2 million people.
While the effects of the hurricane were still being felt on the coast, at night, residents walked the streets using their cell phones as a guide, and some homes were lit by candles or flashlights.
Ian hit Pinar del Rio, the westernmost province of the island, hard in the early hours of the morning, causing great material damage there, as well as in the neighboring cities of Artemisa and Havana, where 2.1 million people live.
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World News
At least 25 dead in a bus accident in Peru

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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.
World News
Japan is the country with the most centenarians, with over 92,000.

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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.
World News
Morocco earthquake: death toll now stands at 2,946

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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.