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Many Cubans still waiting for power to return after days of blackout
Many Cubans were waiting in anguish on Sunday as electricity on much of the island has yet to be totally restored after days of blackout.
Some neighborhoods had electricity restored in Cuba’s capital, where 2 million people live, but most of Havana remained dark. The impact of the blackout goes beyond lighting, as services like water supply also depend on electricity to run pumps.
People resorted to cooking with improvised wood stoves on the streets before the food went bad in refrigerators.
In tears, Ylenis de la Caridad Napoles, mother of a 7-year-old girl, says she is reaching a point of “desperation.”
The failure of the Antonio Guiteras plant on Friday, which caused the collapse of the island’s whole system, was just the latest in a series of problems with energy distribution in a country where electricity has been restricted and rotated to different regions at different times of the day.
Ramon Espinosa / AP
People lined up for hours on Sunday morning to buy bread in the few bakeries that could reopen.
Some Cubans like Rosa Rodríguez have been without electricity for four days.
“We have millions of problems, and none of them are solved,” said Rodríguez. “We must come to get bread, because the local bakery is closed, and they bring it from somewhere else.”
About half of Cuba was plunged into darkness on Thursday evening, followed by the entire island on Friday morning after one of the plants failed.
Besides the Antonio Guiteras plant, whose failure on Friday affected the entire national system, Cuba has several others, and it wasn’t immediately clear whether they remained functional.
The blackout was considered to be Cuba’s worst in two years after Hurricane Ian made landfall as a Category 3 storm in 2022 and damaged power installations. It took days for the government to fix them. This year, some homes have spent up to eight hours a day without electricity.
Cuba’s government said on Saturday that some electricity had been restored after one of the country’s major power plants failed. But the 500 megawatts of energy in the island’s electricity grid, far short of the usual 3 gigawatts it needs, had quickly decreased to 370 megawatts.
There is no official estimate for when the blackout will end. Even in a country that is used to outages as part of a deepening economic crisis, Friday’s collapse was massive.
The Cuban government has announced emergency measures to slash electricity demand, including suspending school and university classes, shutting down some state-owned workplaces and canceling nonessential services.
Local authorities said the outage stemmed from increased demand from small- and medium-sized companies and residential air conditioners. Later, the blackout got worse because of breakdowns in old thermoelectric plants that haven’t been properly maintained, and the lack of fuel to operate some facilities.
Tommy Edman and Will Smith homered to send Shohei Ohtani into the World Series for the first time, and the Los Angeles Dodgers eliminated the New York Mets with a 10-5 victory in Game 6 of the NL Championship Series on Sunday night.
The Dodgers clinched their record 25th NL pennant and first at home since 1988, when they beat the Mets in seven games. They moved on to their 22nd World Series — 13th in Los Angeles — and first since 2020, when they beat Tampa Bay during the pandemic-delayed season.
Next up for Ohtani and Co. is Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees, who are back in the World Series for the 41st time and first in 15 years. Game 1 is Friday at Dodger Stadium, pitting Judge (58) and Ohtani (54) — MLB’s top home-run hitters this season.
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It’ll be the 12th time the storied franchises meet in the World Series and the first in 43 years. The Yankees have beaten the Dodgers eight times, while the Dodgers’ two championships against the Bronx Bombers came in 1981 and 1955.
Ohtani, playing his first season with the Dodgers after agreeing to a record-breaking contract in free agency, had two hits and scored two runs in Game 6. He hit .364 with two homers and six RBIs in the NLCS.
Not bad for his first postseason after spending six years with the Los Angeles Angels, who never had a winning record or reached the playoffs during his tenure.
Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen struck out Brandon Nimmo, Mark Vientos and Pete Alonso swinging in the eighth in his first two-inning outing since the 2021 NLCS.
The Dodgers briefly trailed 1-0 before cleanup hitter Edman came up big.
He drove in the Dodgers’ first four runs and his 11 RBIs in the NLCS tied a franchise record set by Corey Seager in 2020 against Atlanta. Edman joined the Dodgers at the July trade deadline from St. Louis.
The Dodgers eliminated the Mets on their second try in the series. They outscored New York 40-26 in the six games. None of the games were close, with the Dodgers earning two shutouts.
The Mets came within two wins of reaching the World Series after a 22-33 start.
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NEW YORK — The New York Liberty finally have a WNBA championship after beating the Minnesota Lynx 67-62 in overtime of a decisive Game 5 on Sunday night.
Jonquel Jones scored 17 points to lead New York, which was one of the original franchises in the league. The Liberty made the WNBA Finals five times before, losing each one, including last season. This time they wouldn’t be denied, although it took an extra five minutes.
The win gave the city of New York its first basketball title since 1973 when the Knicks won the NBA championship.
With stars Breanna Stewart and Sabrina Ionescu struggling on offense, other players stepped up. Leonie Fiebich started off OT with a 3-pointer, and then Nyara Sabally had a steal for a layup to make it 65-60 and bring the sellout crowd to a frenzied state.
Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images
Minnesota didn’t score in OT until Kayla McBride hit two free throws with 1:51 left. The Lynx missed all six of their field goal attempts in overtime. After Ionescu missed a shot with 21 seconds left, her 18th miss on 19 shot attempts, the Lynx had one last chance, but Bridget Carleton missed a 3-pointer with 16 seconds left.
Stewart, who missed a free throw with 0.8 seconds left in Game 1, hit two free throws with 10.1 seconds left to seal the victory.
As the final seconds ticked off the clock the players hugged and streamers fell from the rafters.
Napheesa Collier scored 22 points to lead Minnesota before fouling out with 13 seconds left in OT.
The Lynx were trying for a record fifth WNBA title, breaking a tie with the Seattle Storm and Houston Comets. Minnesota won four titles from 2011-17 behind the core group of Lindsay Whalen, Seimone Augustus, Rebekkah Brunson, Sylvia Fowles and Maya Moore. That was the team’s last appearance in the WNBA Finals until this year.
This is the first time since 2019 that the WNBA Finals have gone the distance. Since the league switched to a best-of-five format in 2005, seven other series have gone to a Game 5 and the home team has won five of those contests, including in 2019.
This series has been a fitting conclusion to a record-breaking season for the league. All five games came down to the last few possessions and have included two overtime games and a last-second shot, which have led to record ratings.
The first three games each had over a million viewers on average, with the audience growing for each contest. They also have had huge crowds in attendance.
Liberty fan Spike Lee was courtside over an hour before tipoff chatting with the media while wearing his Ionescu jersey. Once Ionescu finished warming up pregame, the pair had a brief exchange and hugged. Lee was part of a sellout crowd of 18,090 that helped this series set both the overall attendance record for a WNBA Finals as well as the average attendance mark.
