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Cuba says crews repaired a large power plant that caused a massive outage

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban officials said they expect to restart a large thermoelectric plant on Saturday after it shut down earlier in the week, sparking a massive blackout.

Felix Estrada Rodríguez, a top engineer at Cuba’s Electric Union, told state-owned Canal Caribe that the Antonio Guiteras plant should be operating by Saturday afternoon.

Crews have repaired a broken boiler at the plant that caused the outage on Wednesday, leaving millions without power in the island’s western region.

Estrada Rodríguez said it was a slow process that had to be done safely.

“It is a confined space with a high temperature,” he said.

Cuba’s Electric Union said in a statement Saturday that only 1,000 megawatts of power were available, less than half of the island’s current demand. It did not say how many customers remained without power.

The blackout, the second such outage to affect western Cuba in three months, was blamed on a crumbling electric grid and a lack of fuel.

Cuba, which imports most of its oil from Venezuela, recently implemented austere fuel-saving measures after the U.S. attacked the South American country and arrested its leader, leading to a halt in critical oil shipments.

Just weeks after the attack on Venezuela in early January, U.S. President Donald Trump warned that he would impose tariffs on any country that sells or supplies oil to Cuba.

Beijing bans 4 New Zealand lawmakers from entering China because they visited Taiwan

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Beijing banned four New Zealand lawmakers from traveling to China for a year and demanded they apologize because they visited Taiwan on a parliamentary trip, according to a message from the Chinese embassy conveyed via parliamentary officials and shown to The Associated Press on Thursday. China has hit lawmakers from other countries with sanctions related to contact with Taiwan before, but it's the first time for New Zealand parliamentarians, the government in Wellington said. Beijing has been increasing pressure in recent years on the democratically governed island that it claims as its own territory. Two lawmakers reached by the AP on Thursday rejected the demand for an apology, while the other two could not be immediately reached. New Zealand's government said it would express concern about the travel bans to Beijing. The elected officials visited Taipei in May, as New Zealand parliamentarians have done “for decades,” a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in a statement.
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