Cuba’s Major Power Plants Fail

HAVANA (AP) — Cuba’s electrical grid has gone offline after one of the island’s major power plants failed and as a massive blackout swept across the Caribbean island. Cuba’s energy ministry said that the grid had gone down hours after it said the Antonio Guiteras plant had ceased operations, at about 11 a.m. local time. Authorities said at the time it was only offline temporarily. Hours earlier, Prime Minister Manuel Marrero had sought to assuage concerned citizens about the outage that began Thursday evening. Millions of Cubans were left without power, prompting the government Friday to implement emergency measures to slash demand, including suspending classes, shutting down some state-owned workplaces and canceling non-essential services.