ISLAMABAD (AP) – Pakistan’s prime minister yesterday apologised to the nation for a major, daylong power outage that disrupted normal life across the country and drew criticism from millions who were left without electricity amid the harsh winter weather.

Monday’s blackout engulfed schools, factories and shops, and many among Pakistan’s 220 million people were without drinking water as pumps powered by electricity also failed to work.

In key businesses and institutions, including main hospitals, military and government facilities, backup generators kicked in.

Power was mostly restored, though some parts of the country still experienced blackouts yesterday.

“On behalf of my government, I would like to express my sincere regrets for the inconvenience our citizens suffered due to power outage yesterday,” tweeted Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif.

“On my orders an inquiry is underway to determine reasons of the power failure,” he said adding that the probe will uncover who was responsible.

At a press conference earlier yesterday, Energy Minister Khurram Dastgir defended the government’s handling of the collapse of the grid and lauded engineers and technicians for their efforts to boot up the system.

He made no reference to the fact that an energy-saving measure by the government had backfired.

Authorities had turned off electricity during low-usage hours on Sunday night to conserve fuel, according to an energy-saving plan.

Efforts to turn power back on early on Monday morning led to the system-wide meltdown.

“Today, at 5.15 in the morning, power was fully restored,” Dastgir said yesterday. He blamed the outage on a technical glitch but also floated a “remote chance” that it was caused by hackers targetting the country’s grid systems.

The minister also expressed faith in Sharif’s three-member committee, which is expected to complete a preliminary investigation within days. “We will fully cooperate” with it, he said.

He cautioned that some regions may still face “routine power outages” this week as Pakistan’s two nuclear power plants and coal plants have yet to come fully online.

The outage was reminiscent of a massive blackout in January 2021, attributed at the time to a technical fault in Pakistan’s power generation and distribution system.

Pakistan gets at least 60 per cent of its electricity from fossil fuels, while nearly 27 per cent of the electricity is generated by hydropower.

The contribution of nuclear and solar power to the nation’s grid is about 10 per cent.

Senior leader at the opposition Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party Fawad Chaudhry on Monday criticised the government for mismanaging the country’s economy and said the outage was a reflection of the government’s incompetence.

HALF MOON BAY, UNITED STATES (AFP) – An Asian farm worker was in custody on Monday after seven of his colleagues were killed in front of children at sites in California, days after a mass shooter killed 11 people at a Lunar New Year celebration near Los Angeles (LA).

The latest bloodshed to hit Asian Americans in California occurred at two farms around Half Moon Bay, a coastal community near San Francisco. San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus said seven people were killed and one injured in the twin shootings, and that a Half Moon Bay resident named Chunli Zhao, 67, had been taken into custody.

As the new tragedy unfolded, detectives at the southern end of the state were still probing what drove an elderly Asian immigrant to shoot dead 11 people gathered in celebration at a suburban dance hall before taking his own life as police closed in.

Both suspects used semiautomatic handguns in their assault and both appeared to have connections to at least some of their victims.

Corpus said deputies had been dispatched to two nurseries around Half Moon Bay, a rural spot south of San Francisco, mid-afternoon on Monday. Four people were dead at one of them and one critically wounded. “Shortly thereafter three additional victims were also located deceased with gunshot wounds at a separate shooting scene,” she told reporters.

“There’s people that live at the location as well… it was in the afternoon when kids were out of school and for children to witnesses it is unspeakable,” she said.

Corpus said Zhou then drove to a sheriff’s substation in Half Moon Bay where ABC7 crews captured dramatic footage of his arrest as he was pulled to the ground by armed officers. “Zhao was taken into custody without incident and a semi-automatic handgun was located in his vehicle,” Corpus said.

Reports said the dead are Chinese farmworkers and that Zhao had worked at one of the farms.

News of the fresh carnage came as detectives just a few hundred kilometres away in Monterey Park were trying to piece together why Huu Can Tran gunned down revellers gathered at a dance studio for Lunar New Year on Saturday night.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said on Monday that Tran, who had been arrested in 1994 for unlawful possession of a firearm, fired 42 rounds in the attack. But, he said, much was still unknown. “What drove a madman to do this? We don’t know. But we intend to find out,” he told reporters.

Luna confirmed officers had been told Tran may have been known to some of his victims, but said there was currently no evidence he was related to any.

News of a second mass shooting in California in less than 48 hours spread ripples of shock through the state, which already has some of the strictest firearm laws in the United States. An exasperated Governor Gavin Newsom, who had earlier on Monday been in Monterey Park where he lashed out at federal inaction over guns, called it another “tragedy”.