Indians Embarrassed By Power Grid Collapse
KRISTIE LU STOUT, HOST: I'm Kristie Lu Stout in Hond Kong. And welcome to News Stream where news and technology meet. And we begin in India. Now the lights are back on after two power outages in two days, but for how long? Team GB with its first gold medal at the 2012 Olympic games it is hosting. Meanwhile, this man, Michael Phelps, is described as the greatest Olympian of all time. While one London official doesn't necessarily agree. And reading the rumors. We look at the hype and speculation surrounding the anticipated release of the next Apple iPhone and Microsoft's new tablet. The lights are back on, the trains are running again, and stores, offices and restaurants have reopened for business, but for how long? Now many are worried that India could suffer a repeat of this week's massive blackouts. Half a billion people lost electricity when power grids serving India's northern, eastern, and northeastern regions collapsed on Tuesday. Half the country was affected. It was the second major blackout in two days. An investigation is underway. The blackouts are prompting calls for India to speed up improvements to its aging infrastructure to meet the demands of a growing population. So what happens when the power to half of the world's second most populous nation vanishes? Well, take a look. With no traffic lights working, cars crawled to a standstill at a busy intersection in the capital New Delhi. And hundreds of trains also ground to a halt at one of the busiest rail networks in the world. Now passengers can only sit and wait in the sweltering heat. One traveler says her normal journey of 40 minutes took three hours. But perhaps the most worrisome situation was at India's hospitals. But backup generators managed to keep them running. Now the blackout also stranded dozens of miners underground for hours until mine elevators started working again. Now let's go to Mallika Kapur in New Delhi for the latest on the situation there in India now. And Mallika, power has been restored across the country, so is there a sense of relief or apprehension that this could happen again?</s>MALLIKA KAPUR, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, Kristie, a bit of both. Definitely a sense of relief this morning to the fact that people were able to take their trains and get to work, people could move about. The traffic signals are working, so we aren't experiencing those crazy traffic jams that we have yesterday. So surely and steadily as life came back to normal today, as you mentioned earlier a collective sigh of relief across the country. But interestingly this morning there was also a huge sense of anger, anger at the government for having let the public down. You know, people said that they were almost embarrassed, embarrassed that their country, which is trying to become an economic superpower can't even provide its citizens with basic power. So there was a lot of anger and embarrassment also being felt there amongst the people in India today. But the power minister, the new power minister -- we have a new man on the job this morning -- he has reassured the public, saying that he will never allow such an outage to happen ever again.</s>VEERAPPA MOILY, INDIAN POWER MINISTER: ...stabilized. And you know the authorities now, you know, that such things will not come back again. And for that, you know, (inaudible) and I'm going to have a brainstorming with that committee, maybe (inaudible). And, you know, my first priority is to ensure that the grid should never collapse. And, you know, it has to be sustained both on the short-term and also the long-term basis. So that's the need of the hour, and the need of the country which we are going to ensure.</s>KAPUR: And frankly, Kristie, India can't really afford to have another power outage. You know, India's public relations image has taken such a beating. Infrastructure, crumbling infrastructure has always been India's weak point. And according to the planning commission of India, all the problems we've had in the power sector, well that shaves off 1.2 percent of annual growth when it comes to India's economy. And as we've talked about many times in India's economy has already slowed down. It's growing at its slowest pace in almost 10 years. India seriously cannot afford to have another embarrassment of this scale again.</s>LU STOUT: That's right, a big economic hit. And just to clarify, the fact that there is a new power minister in India has nothing to do with the power outages. His term was due to start today. I wanted to ask you the question before you go, Mallika, about the cause. What was the immediate cause of the outage? I know an investigation is underway, but what have you learned so far?</s>KAPUR: Well, it seems that the immediate cause of the outage was some states in India basically taking on too much power from the national grid. Each state is allocated a certain amount of power from the national grid, but because we are the height of the summer season, because the monsoon rains have been delayed, that perhaps some states took on more power from the national grid than they were allowed to, causing it to collapse. It is very hot over here. Many farmers are using electric pumps to take water out from the wells and to irrigate their fields. You know, as India's middle class is growing, people are buying more air conditioners, using more and more air conditioners and fans. So all these things combine probably led to some states borrowing too much power from the grid causing it to collapse.</s>LU STOUT: All right. Mallika Kapur reporting for us live from New Delhi, thank you. So what do you do when you've got no electricity, no computers and no charged smartphones? Well, India blackout spawned a popular hashtag on Twitter, the hashtag #benefitsofpowercuts. How about this benefit? Quote, "family get together time," that's what N gill tweeted. And for Vaibhav Shah, another big benefit of no power, it's a very good "reason for not doing homework. And Aadhar Mittal did something that you might not have done in a long time. He "used a pen on 2 consecutive days." Now turning now to the civil war in Syria. President Bashar al-Assad has warned that the conflict will determine the fate of the nation. Now according to state run media, he told the army, quote, "the enemy is among us and is using inside agents to destabilize the country." Now fighting is raging across Syria. And there are reports that rebels have clashed in recent hours with government troops in two Christian districts of Damascus, traditional al-Assad strongholds. And opposition groups claim at least 40 police officers were killed when rebels took control of some police stations in the center of Aleppo. And as the rebels take more territory, they are also taking prisoners. In the north, captured pro-government forces are being held at a school converted into a detention center. Now Ivan Watson has this exclusive report on the prison. And a warning, it has some graphic and disturbing content.</s>IVAN WATSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're in a rebel controlled makeshift prison in a school where they're keeping 112 prisoners. They're going to show us the prisoners' conditions right now. Instead of school children, this crowded classroom holds at least 40 prisoners. We won't show their faces, because most of them clearly don't want to be filmed, perhaps fearing retribution against their families. The prison warden accuses these men of being members of the Shabiha, Syria's much feared pro-government militia. He orders one prisoner to stand up for the camera and take off his shirt. He lives, unable to stand flat on his feet. This prisoner has the face of the Syrian regime tattooed on his chest. Portraits of the family that's ruled Syria for more than 40 years. Former President Hafez al-Assad, his long dead son Basel, and the current president Bashar al-Assad. On his back, a greeting in Arabic to Hezbollah, the Shiite movement in Lebanon. But someone has cut deep gashes into tattoos showing Bashar al-Assad's face. Allahhu akbar, god is great, is all the prisoner says. This prisoner is a Shabiha member who used to beat protesters at demonstrations, says the warden. A former employee in the agricultural ministry who asks only to be called Abuhatem (ph). It looked to me like someone had deliberately cut him on those tattoos of the Assad family. This man confessed to committing crimes, Abuhatem (ph) tells me, so he cut himself because he wanted to donate blood to the rebels. It seems an unlikely account. The warden shows us the food his men feed the prisoners. Jailers bring us another suspected Shabiha member. The man trembles, glancing terrified at his captors every time he speaks. He says he worked as a bureaucrat in the state finance office in Aleppo until rebels blew it up. Desperate for money to pay for his pregnant wife's cesarean section, the man took a job as a guard at a checkpoint for about $190 a month. He says he'd only been on the job for five days when rebels captured him. The top enforcer at this facility is a hulking man nicknamed Jumbo. He says he endured days of torture in government prisons. In another room, he seems to treat captured soldiers and army officers with more respect. Just days ago, these were men in uniform, fighting for the Syrian government. Now they are captives of an increasingly confident rebel movement that's determined to destroy the Syrian regime. Ivan Watson, CNN, reporting from northern Syria.</s>LU STOUT: A gripping look inside a Syrian rebel prison there. You're watching News Stream. And coming up, the U.S. Defense Secretary meets with Israel's leaders. And the Red Cross assesses the damages in flood stricken North Korea. We'll have an update. And did they play to lose? Eight badminton players face charges over their poor performance in Olympic matches. We have that story and all the latest from London after the break.