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    Chile Declares Curfew as Power Outage Sweeps Across Country

    President Gabriel Boric said electricity was being restored, but the situation remained unstable. Chile’s government imposed a curfew and declared a state of emergency in response to a sweeping blackout that cut electricity to most of the country including the capital, Santiago, on Tuesday.The massive outage, which began in the afternoon, affected eight million households across the country, from the northern port city of Arica to Los Lagos in the country’s south, officials said. In Santiago, it knocked out traffic lights, stranded people in elevators and shut down the subway network.Hours later, the government announced a curfew from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. in the regions affected by the outage. Schools in those regions will be closed on Wednesday, with about 300,000 students affected, officials said.“Today has been a difficult day for millions of countrymen,” Gabriel Boric, the president, said at a news conference on Tuesday night.By late Tuesday, power had been restored to about four million households, Mr. Boric said. But he warned that the recovery was slow and unstable, and the situation remained precarious.He blamed the country’s power companies for allowing the outage to occur and for not restoring power earlier, adding, “This is outrageous.” The outage was caused by failure of a transmission system, officials said.Soldiers and national police officers were sent to affected regions, officials said, and in Santiago, helicopters circled above the city.Emergency services, hospitals, prisons and airports across the country were operating on backup electricity systems and generators, the national disaster agency said.John Bartlett More

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    Bangladesh Back Under Curfew After Protests Leave Dozens Dead

    Expanded student protests this weekend, after more than 200 people were killed in a government crackdown in July, have plunged the country into a particularly dangerous phase.At least 40 people were killed in clashes between security forces and protesters on Sunday in Bangladesh, as the country’s leaders imposed a new curfew and internet restrictions to try to quell a growing antigovernment movement.Revived and expanded student protests, after a deadly government crackdown late last month, and a call by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s governing party for its own supporters to also take to the streets, have plunged the country of over 170 million into a particularly dangerous phase.At least 40 people were killed on Sunday across Bangladesh, according to a diplomatic official based in Dhaka, adding to the more than 200 people killed in the crackdown on protests in July. Tallies by local news media, as well as a statement from coordinators of the student protests, put Sunday’s death toll at over 50. At least 13 of the dead were police officers, the country’s Police Headquarters said in a statement.What began as a peaceful student protest last month over a preferential quota system for public-sector jobs has morphed into unprecedented anger at Ms. Hasina’s increasingly authoritarian turn and her management of the economy.While the crackdown, which included the arrests of more than 10,000 people and the lodging of police cases against tens of thousands more, temporarily dispersed the protesters, the demonstrations have been back in full force since Friday.The protesters’ anger over the more than 200 deaths has solidified their demands to a single point: On Saturday, at a rally of tens of thousands, they demanded the resignation of Ms. Hasina, who has been in power for 15 years.In response to the resignation call, her Awami League party called on its supporters to join counterprotests — setting up the tense situation that unfolded on Sunday.In a statement sent to the news media on Sunday, as internet restrictions went into effect, leaders of the student movement called for the protests to continue uninterrupted.“If there is an internet crackdown, if we are disappeared, arrested or killed, and if there is no one left to make announcements, everyone should continue to occupy the streets and maintain peaceful noncooperation until the government falls in response to our one demand,” Nahid Islam, one of the movement’s leaders, said in the statement.As the chaos escalates, with both the protesters and Ms. Hasina’s governing party digging in their heels, and as opposition parties take the opportunity to pile on, all eyes are on the country’s military.While the army and other security forces were deployed during the crackdown in July, the army’s chief, Gen. Waker-uz-Zaman, gathered his senior officers on Saturday for a meeting that was seen as an attempt to quell concerns over the army’s position in the crisis and reinforce its neutrality.In a statement issued after the meeting, the army said its chief had reiterated that “the Bangladesh Army will always stand by the people in the interest of the public and in any need of the state.” More