Pakistan suffered nationwide power outages yesterday morning due to a “major breakdown” of the national grid, the Pakistani Ministry of Energy said, with factories, hospitals and schools affected in all its major cities.
The breakdown began at 7:34am, when a voltage fluctuation in the grid occurred between the cities of Jamshoro and Dadu in southern Sindh Province, Pakistani Minister of Energy Khurrum Dastagir said.
“There was a fluctuation in voltage and the systems were shut down one by one. This is not a major crisis,” Dastagir told Geo TV news channel.
Photo: Reuters
Outages were reported in the southern port city of Karachi, the capital, Islamabad, the eastern city of Lahore and Peshawar in the north.
Mohammad Asim, a spokesman for Peshawar’s Lady Reading Hospital, the largest hospital in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, said backup generators were used to provide uninterrupted electricity for the emergency ward, intensive-care units and laboratories.
The ministry issued a statement saying that work was ongoing to revive the system and the minister said that electricity had been restored in some parts of the country.
Pakistan has enough installed power capacity to meet the demand, especially in winter, when it mostly has a surplus.
However, the country lacks resources to run its oil and gas-powered plants, and the sector is heavily in debt, and inadequate investment in infrastructure and power lines has resulted in the national grid suffering frequent breakdowns.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of