Brazil: Broken cable blamed for power outage
A massive power blackout on Monday hit southern Brazil, home to a majority of the country's 170 million people, darkening offices and leaving thousands stranded in subways for about two hours.
The head of the National Grid Operator (ONS), Mario Santos, said that a broken transmission cable may have caused the crippling blackout the worst in three years as he ruled out any connection with an acute energy shortage that forced Latin America's largest country to impose power rationing last June.
According to industry officials, the transmission problem made the whole system unstable and caused preventive automatic shutdowns of some generators, such as the Itaipu dam on the border with Paraguay the world's largest hydroelectric plant and the beachside Angra nuclear power complex.
East Timor: Commission set up to investigate atrocities
East Timor launched a truth commission Monday to heal deep rifts in society after 25 years of political unrest that left thousands of people dead.
The Reception, Truth and Reconciliation Commission will focus on atrocities committed between 1974, when the Portuguese colonial rule collapsed, and 1999, when Indonesia which invaded a year after the Portuguese left finally pulled out following a U.N.-sponsored, nonbinding vote.
During that period, about 200,000 East Timorese are estimated to have perished first in fighting between supporters of rival Timorese political parties in the mid-1970s and then as a result of Indonesia's 24-year brutal military occupation.
The commission will operate for at least two years and work in conjunction with the regular judicial system.
No date has been set for the commission's first hearings.
Russia: Media minister shuts independent TV station
Russia's media minister took the country's largest independent television station off the air Monday, after its journalists reneged on an agreement to cut ties with its outspoken owner.
The monthslong legal battle over TV6 has revived concern about media freedom in Russia, and its disappearance from the airwaves as of midnight is likely to put new international pressure on President Vladimir Putin.
On Monday, TV6 director Yevgeny Kiselyov said the government had pressured him into the deal to rupture ties with TV6's owner Boris Berezovsky, a fierce critic of the Kremlin who is living abroad to avoid fraud charges he calls politically motivated.
Of Russia's four major networks, TV6 provides the most critical reporting about Putin and the war in Chechnya.
United Nations: German diplomat named Kosovo administrator
Veteran German diplomat Michael Steiner, who recently resigned a top foreign policy post after an incident dubbed the "caviar affair," was appointed Monday as the new U.N. administrator of Kosovo.
Secretary-General Kofi Annan's choice of the respected Balkans expert was announced at an open Security Council meeting on Kosovo by Mauritius' U.N. Ambassador Jagdish Koonjul, the current council president.
Steiner will replace Hans Haekkerup, a former Danish defense minister, who served as the top U.N. official in Kosovo since January 2001. Haekkerup asked to leave the post for personal reasons.
Steiner will be the third U.N. administrator in Kosovo since the United Nations took control of the Yugoslav province in June 1999 after a 78-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia by a NATO-led alliance. The campaign was waged to halt a crackdown on ethnic Albanians.
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