Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it’s investigating the financials of Elon Musk’s pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, ‘The A Word’, which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.
Sri Lanka plunged into darkness on Sunday as a nationwide power outage caused massive losses to businesses and wiped millions from the economy.
The reason behind one of the worst power outages in the island nation’s history, authorities said, was a monkey.
The outage began at around 10.45am local time and continued for several hours before it was restored by the national electricity board, which prioritised medical facilities and water purification plants. The supply was eventually restored at around 6pm.
The Ceylon Electricity Board initially said the power cut was caused by an emergency at a substation south of the capital Colombo, without providing further details.
Later, energy minister Kumara Jayakody said a group of monkeys had jumped into the Panadura Power Station during a scuffle and one of them landed on the transmission line. “A monkey has come in contact with our grid transformer causing an imbalance in the system,” the minister was quoted as saying by AFP.
A security guard at the power station claimed that he heard a loud explosion and saw a ball of fire. He said it was unlikely a monkey could have caused such as a crisis.
“Monkeys jump into the power station very often. This does not seem to have been caused by a monkey,” the guard told the Daily Mirror paper.
The energy ministry apologised for the inconvenience caused to the South Asian nation’s 23 million people.
Authorities warned of frequent power cuts over the next few days due to a breakdown, caused by the outage, at the Norochcholai coal power plant.
Sri Lanka uses hydropower to generate most of its electricity and uses coal and oil to make up the rest of the demand.
The country witnessed a similar outage in December 2023 after a system failure in one of the main transmission lines.
Sri Lankans had to endure prolonged blackouts for months in the summer of 2022 when the island nation was reeling from an unprecedented economic crisis. The power crisis worsened as Colombo faced difficulty importing sufficient stocks of oil and coal after the country’s foreign reserves were depleted.