failure

Cuba’s electricity system has deteriorated amid shortages of fuel and replacement parts.

Cuba’s national electricity grid has collapsed, plunging the island into a widespread blackout.

The state-run Electric Union, known as UNE, announced the collapse on X late on Sunday but did not immediately identify its cause, the extent of the disruption or when electricity would be restored.

Before the nationwide failure, Havana’s electricity company had reported outages caused by damaged transformers, circuit failures, and planned cuts linked to insufficient generating capacity.

Early on Sunday, it recorded dozens of unresolved complaints across various municipalities, including Guanabacoa, Habana del Este, La Lisa, and Marianao, according to the Reuters news agency.

Authorities typically attempt to recover from a total collapse by creating small, isolated power networks to supply hospitals, water systems and food facilities before gradually reconnecting larger generating plants.

Series of nationwide blackouts

Sunday’s failure is the latest in a series of nationwide blackouts this year. The grid collapsed three times within nine days in July, including two island-wide failures in the same week. One of those outages left about 10 million people without electricity, while authorities struggled to restore power because the country could not generate enough electricity to meet demand even after the network was reconnected.

Cuba’s electricity system has deteriorated amid shortages of fuel and replacement parts, as well as repeated breakdowns at ageing thermoelectric plants. Some generating facilities are more than 30 years old and have received limited maintenance.

The Cuban government blames Washington, which has severely restricted oil supplies to the island and access to financing and equipment.

Cuba lost a key source of fuel after United States President Donald Trump imposed an oil blockade on the island following the US’s January 3 abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

Venezuela had long been Cuba’s primary oil supplier, and imports from Mexico have also been halted amid increased pressure from Washington.

Others, meanwhile, cite decades of underinvestment and mismanagement in the energy sector.

Extended outages have disrupted transport, water supplies, communications and medical services. They have also left households struggling to preserve food, cook meals or sleep during the summer heat.

June 23 (UPI) — The June 2021 partial collapse of a Miami Beach oceanfront condominium tower that killed nearly 100 people began three weeks before the building completely failed, federal investigators announced Monday.

The four-decade-old Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside, Fla., collapsed June 24, 2021, prompting the deployment of first responders to scour the rubble for survivors. In total, 98 people were killed and many others were injured, making it one of the deadliest structural disasters in U.S. history.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, which launched an investigation into the incident within days of the collapse, said Monday that it determined the collapse began in early June 2021, when two connections between garage columns and the building’s pool deck failed.

“These initial column failures caused cracks to grow and loads to redistribute in the pool deck over the next three weeks, resulting in the transfer of their loads to adjacent slab-column connections that were not strong enough to support them,” NIST said in a statement.

“This led to the larger catastrophic collapse on June 24.”

The 12-story Champlain Towers South building was constructed in 1981 under required codes and standards intended to ensure builders could support more load than they were expected to bear. But, Judith Mitrani-Reiser, who was a co-lead on the investigation, said the tower’s “margins against failure were not too narrow from the start.”

The investigators believe that the failure of the two connections then spread to other elements of the pool deck and street-level parking structure before unseating the southern edge of the pool deck slab from a supporting wall.

When the pool slab eventually broke away, it damaged two connections supporting that part of the tower, causing the failure to travel through the middle of the tower.

The investigators also found that loads added to the structure over the building’s lifetime, such as pool deck modifications, further narrowed the margins against failure on top of long-term degradation caused by corrosion.

The investigation team said it is now working on compiling a final report that will include recommendations for changes to standards, codes and practices, among other suggestions.

The announcement came after NIST in September released an update into its investigation stating that the condo had shown visible signs of structural strain weeks before the collapse, starting with the pool deck.

ASHLEY Cain’s axed BBC documentary is still available to watch on iPlayer.

The reality TV star, 35, came under fire this week after historic tweets were exposed, in which the reality star allegedly made degrading comments about women.

The second series of Ashley Cain: Into The Danger Zone, which was filmed earlier this year, will not air on the BBC – yet the first series remains on the channel’s catch-up service.

It’s after the BBC acknowledged that its vetting process had “clearly failed”.

The Twitter posts made in 2011 and 2013 are said to have referenced extreme sex acts and appeared to make light of consent.

He reportedly used offensive, sexualised and aggressive language about women.

VETTING FAILURE

Ashley Cain’s show axed by BBC after ‘unacceptable’ posts about women

STAR PROBE

BBC launching investigation into Ashley Cain ‘failings’ after his show is axed

Despite this, series one of Ashley Cain: Into the Danger Zone aired in April 2025.

It followed his journey to the world’s most dangerous places, interviewing young men who live on the fringes of society.

Filming for a second series took place earlier this year however, it will no longer air following The Guardian‘s report accusing Ashley of writing derogatory terms in 2014 and 2015 including “sl**s”, “b***hes” and “psychos”.

The newspaper also revealed Ashley was secretly sacked from a BBC job last year for being “drunk on set”.

After the success of his documentary, he was picked to host, Sin City: The Real Las Vegas.

Ashley was flown out to Nevada to film the show but concerns were raised about his conduct.

Appearing to be drunk during filming of the show, the production was suspended and Ashley was ultimately dropped from the project and replaced by another presenter.

Despite this, the incident went largely ignored as Ashley returned to filming with the BBC earlier this year for the second series of his Into The Danger Zone series.

A BBC spokesperson told The Sun:  “The posts by Ashley Cain, albeit from many years ago, are completely unacceptable.”

“The BBC has clear requirements around vetting and social media checks, which are undertaken by the production company.

“In this instance, the process clearly failed and we are investigating why.

“We are continuing to strengthen our processes to ensure everyone working for, and on behalf of, the BBC meets our values and standards.

“We have no plans to broadcast the new series of ‘Into the Danger Zone’, and no future projects with Ashley Cain.”

Last summer, James Tronstein of Harvard-Westlake was struggling at the plate. Then came shocking news before his senior year: He didn’t make the list of 40 finalists for the U18 national baseball team despite winning gold medals for the U15 team.

“He was pressing,” coach Jared Halpert said. “He had really good at-bats but wasn’t getting results. Credit goes to his maturity, ‘How do I get better?’”

His mental adjustment on how to react to failure, combined with a conditioning program that led him to lose 10 pounds and become faster and stronger, created a spring environment sending him into rarefied air.

The 6-foot, 170-pounder batted .531 with 52 hits and 10 home runs while making the transition from center fielder to shortstop. Everyone associated with the program now calls him the best hitter in school history.

For an individual performance that separated him from all others, Tronstein has been selected The Times’ player of the year for the 2026 season. The Vanderbilt commit and possible high draft pick has been a four-year varsity starter. He also was named the Gatorade state player of the year.

One of the lessons Tronstein said he learned is that “baseball is a game of failure. How am I going to handle that and set myself up for success?”

“He started evaluating situations,” Halpert said.

He also became a vocal leader, having been taken under the wings by former stars Bryce Rainer, Tommy Bridges and Miguel Villegas. His fire during games and his support of teammates came through loud and clear

He credited Halpert for teaching him about baseball and life.

“Coach Halpert has a huge impact on my life,” Tronstein said. “He’s made me into the man I am today.”

Tronstein helped Harvard-Westlake win the Mission League title and reach the Southern Section Division 1 semifinals before losing 3-1 to eventual champion St. John Bosco.

May 27 (UPI) — The Federal Aviation Administration on Wednesday ordered SpaceX to investigate why a booster for its Starship rocket system failed during a test flight Friday, grounding the megarocket for a time.

The FAA declared the incident a “mishap” that involved the Super Heavy first-stage booster as it separated from the main ship and returned to the Gulf of Mexico after launch. The booster was supposed to perform a sustained burn to a controlled landing in the gulf, but a possible engine failure meant it fell back to Earth instead in a “hard splashdown,” SpaceX said in its launch report. The FAA said there were no reports of public injury or damage to public property from the mishap.

“The FAA will oversee the SpaceX-led investigation, be involved in every step in the process, and approve SpaceX’s final report, including any corrective actions,” the agency statement said.

“A mishap investigation is designed to enhance public safety, determine the root cause of the event, and identify corrective actions to avoid it from happening again,” the statement continued. “A return to flight of the Starship-Super Heavy vehicle is based on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not effect public safety.”

This means that another launch is less likely before the company’s planned initial public offering in June, TechCrunch reported.

The Starship system has two parts: the Super Heavy booster and the spacecraft itself, also called Starship. This was the first launch of the third version of the system, which is the first capable of deep-space flight. Plans call for Starship to carry Artemis 4 astronauts to the surface of the moon in a mission set for late 2028.

The Starship portion of the overall system did make it to space during this test launch, although it also lost one of its Raptor 3 vacuum engines there. Overall, this and other portions of the launch, including deployment of satellites and simulators, were considered a success.

May 24 (UPI) — The United States on Sunday blamed the collapse of a U.N. nuclear nonproliferation conference on what it called some countries’ inability to take Iran’s threat to global nonproliferation seriously.

The nearly monthlong Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons ended Friday without consensus on an outcome document, which reviews implementation of the Cold War-era pact and sets recommendations and commitments for its 191 state parities.

Conference President Do Hung Viet of Vietnam said Friday, following weeks of work and four versions of an outcome document, that he would not put it forward for adoption as “the conference is not in a position to achieve agreement on its substantive work.”

The failure came amid mounting global insecurity, including the war in Iran, the modernization and expansion of nuclear arsenals and other geopolitical tensions, which complicated efforts to reach consensus.

The U.S. State Department on Sunday faulted on other NPT member states.

“The inability of some NPT States Parties to take Iran’s threat to global nonproliferation seriously will be addressed by the United States in our continuing engagements,” State Department spokesperson Thomas Pigott said in a statement.

He said the failure to adopt a document was made worse by what he described as Iran’s continued noncompliance with NPT-required safeguards and “its escalating nuclear activities.”

Pigott did not specify in the statement which activities he was referring to. The United States attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities in June, with President Donald Trump repeatedly claiming they were “obliterated.”

“For the NPT Review Conference to uphold its founding mandate, States Parties cannot turn a blind eye to Iran’s noncompliance, nor can violators be allowed to undermine the enforcement and accountability mechanisms at the core of the NPT,” he said.

Iran was quick to blame the United States, saying Washington’s “excessive demands” were at fault.

The United States was seeking to include language in the document concerning Iran, which accused the United States during the meeting of violating the treaty by attacking its nuclear facilities.

“The NPT Review Conference failed for the third consecutive time due to obstructionism by the United States and its allies,” Iran’s mission to the U.N. said in a social media statement.

Following the collapse of the conference, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed his “disappointment.”

“The current international environment, marked by deep tensions and an elevated risk posed by nuclear weapons, demands urgent action,” his spokesperson, Stephane Dujarric, said in a statement.

“The secretary-general appeals to all states to make full use of all available avenues of dialogue, diplomacy and negotiation to reduce tensions, lower nuclear risks and, ultimately, eliminate the nuclear threat.”

It is the 11th meeting of the treaty states parties and the third in consecutive review conference to end without an agreement.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the failure of the conference to call for “urgently needed” concrete actions to avert a new nuclear arms race was due to the five nuclear-armed states’ use of “aggressive diplomatic intimidation tactics against non-nuclear weapons states.”

He also said U.S. leadership as “sorely lacking.”

“The foundations of the NPT, the cornerstone of global efforts to reduce and eliminate the world’s greatest danger, are cracking due to inattention, intransigence and ineptitude,” Kimball said in a statement.