Bangladesh faces power blackout after national grid fails

DHAKA,Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladesh’s power officials say a failure in the country’s national power grid has caused a blackout affecting much of the country. Officials of the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board said Tuesday that the transmission line failed somewhere in the eastern region of the country. Power department spokesman Shameem Hasan said the capital, Dhaka, and other big cities were experiencing blackouts. Bangladesh’s impressive economic growth has been threatened by power shortages since the government suspended operations of all diesel-run power plants to reduce costs for imports as prices have soared. An industry leader recently noted that garment factories are without power now for around 4 to 10 hours a day.