Power outage hits Balkan states as heat overloads system, minister says

Update Power outage hits Balkan states as heat overloads system, minister says
People enjoy the sea during the heat wave in Durres, Albania, June 18, 2024. (Reuters)
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Updated 21 June 2024
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Power outage hits Balkan states as heat overloads system, minister says

Power outage hits Balkan states as heat overloads system, minister says
  • Montenegro’s energy minister said the shutdown was caused by a sudden increase in power consumption brought on by high temperatures, and by the heat itself overloading systems
  • Power distribution is linked across the Balkans for transfers and trading

PODGORICA: A major power outage hit Montenegro, Bosnia, Albania and most of Croatia’s coast on Friday, disrupting businesses, shutting down traffic lights and leaving people sweltering without air conditioning in the middle of a heatwave.
Montenegro’s energy minister said the shutdown was caused by a sudden increase in power consumption brought on by high temperatures, and by the heat itself overloading systems. Power distribution is linked across the Balkans for transfers and trading.
“This was just waiting to happen in this heat,” Gentiana, a 24-year-old student in Montenegro’s capital Podgorica, told Reuters. Temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) across the southeastern European region.
Electricity and wifi networks went down from around 1 p.m. (1100 GMT), officials and social media users said. Suppliers in the four countries said they started restoring supply by mid-afternoon and power was largely back by the evening.
At the start of the blackout, traffic light failures caused gridlock in Bosnia’s capital Sarajevo and the cities of Banja Luka and Mostar, Reuters reporters said.
Many lost water in Podgorica as pumps stopped working, locals reported. Air conditioners shut down and ice cream melted in tourist shops.
Cars also ground to a halt in the Croatian coastal city of Split, state TV HRT reported. Ambulance sirens rang out across the city, it added.
“The failure occurred as a result of a heavy load on the network, a sudden increase in power consumption due to high temperature and the high temperatures themselves,” Montenegro’s energy minister, Sasa Mujovic, said in a TV broadcast.
Experts were still trying to identify where the malfunction originated, he added.

RISK REMAINS
Montenegro’s Vijesti TV said a fire had been spotted in a 400KW transmission line in a rugged area along the border with Bosnia — though it was not immediately clear if this could have been the cause of outages or in some way related to them.
The report cited unnamed sources from the electric transmission company CGES which, it said, would need helicopters to access the site.
Albanian Energy Minister Belinda Balluku said there had been a breakdown in an interconnector between Albania and Greece and he had heard there had been similar circumstances in Montenegro and parts of Croatia and Bosnia.
A full investigation would take time, but early analysis suggested that “big volumes of power in the transmission system at the moment and very high temperatures in record levels have created this technical problem,” Balluku added in a video address.
Power in Albania was restored within half an hour, but the country remained at a high risk of further shutdowns as power usage and heat levels were still high, he said.
Shifts in the region’s energy supplies have put strains on its transmission systems, industry officials say.
Western Balkan nations have seen a boom in solar energy investment, meant to ease a power crisis that had threatened a shift away from coal.
But the infrastructure is not prepared for new energy feeds, the president of North Macedonia’s Energy Regulatory Commission and other industry figures told Reuters in April last year.


Musk regrets some of his Trump criticisms, says they ‘went too far’

Musk regrets some of his Trump criticisms, says they ‘went too far’
Updated 5 sec ago
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Musk regrets some of his Trump criticisms, says they ‘went too far’

Musk regrets some of his Trump criticisms, says they ‘went too far’
  • ‘I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far’
WASHINGTON: Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and Donald Trump’s former adviser, said Wednesday he regretted some of his recent criticisms of the US president, after the pair’s public falling-out last week.
“I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X.

South Korea halts loudspeaker broadcasts along border with rival North Korea

South Korea halts loudspeaker broadcasts along border with rival North Korea
Updated 5 min 51 sec ago
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South Korea halts loudspeaker broadcasts along border with rival North Korea

South Korea halts loudspeaker broadcasts along border with rival North Korea
  • The South resumed the loudspeaker broadcasts in June last year following a years-long pause

SEOUL, South Korea: South Korea’s military has shut down loudspeakers broadcasting anti-North Korean propaganda along the inter-Korean border, in a move aimed at easing tensions.

The South resumed the loudspeaker broadcasts in June last year following a years-long pause in retaliation for North Korea flying trash-laden balloons toward the South in a psychological warfare campaign.

South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday the move was part of efforts to “to restore trust in inter-Korean relations and promote peace on the Korean Peninsula.”


Chinese aircraft carriers in Pacific show country’s ‘expansionist’ aims, Taiwan says

Chinese aircraft carriers in Pacific show country’s ‘expansionist’ aims, Taiwan says
Updated 11 June 2025
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Chinese aircraft carriers in Pacific show country’s ‘expansionist’ aims, Taiwan says

Chinese aircraft carriers in Pacific show country’s ‘expansionist’ aims, Taiwan says
  • China has been flexing its muscles by sending an unusually large number of naval and coast guard vessels through a swathe of East Asian waters

TAIPEI: The two Chinese aircraft carriers spotted conducting simultaneous operations in the Pacific for the first time send a political message about the country’s “expansionist” aims, Taiwan Defense Minister Wellington Koo said on Wednesday.

Japan’s defense minister said the previous day that the appearance of the Chinese aircraft carriers signified Beijing’s intention to further widen its capabilities beyond its borders.

Koo said the armed forces had a “full grasp” of the carriers’ movements.

“Crossing from the first island chain into the second island chain sends a definite political message and their expansionist nature can be seen,” he told reporters in Taipei.

The first island chain refers to an area that runs from Japan down to Taiwan, the Philippines and Borneo, while the second island chain spreads further out into the Pacific to include places like the US territory of Guam.

China’s navy, which has been honing its abilities to operate farther and farther from the country’s coast, said on Tuesday the carrier operations were a “routine training” exercise that did not target specific countries or regions. China operates two carriers, with a third undergoing sea trials.

Taiwan, which China views as its own territory, keeps a close watch on Chinese military movements given the regular drills and war games Beijing stages around the island, and has been modernizing its weapons to better face the People’s Liberation Army.

Taiwan Air Force Chief of Staff Lee Ching-jan, speaking to lawmakers later on Wednesday, said a dozen or so of 66 Lockheed Martin F-16V fighter jets ordered from the United States should arrive this year, with the rest in 2026.

“The US side was optimistic about next year’s scheduled delivery at last month’s meeting on the project, and was very optimistic about the delivery of more than 10 aircraft this year,” he said.

Taiwan has complained about delivery delays for the jets, which have advanced avionics, weapons and radar systems to better face down the Chinese air force, including its J-20 stealth fighter.

Since May, China has been flexing its muscles by sending an unusually large number of naval and coast guard vessels through a swathe of East Asian waters, according to security documents and officials, in moves that have unnerved regional capitals.

Japan’s defense ministry confirmed the two carriers, Liaoning and Shandong, were operating in separate areas of the Pacific on Saturday, both near remote southern islands belonging to Japan.

Earlier, Japan said the Liaoning sailed within its exclusive economic zone near Minamitorishima, a remote island east of Iwo Jima.


Australian murder suspect denies drying deadly mushrooms

Australian murder suspect denies drying deadly mushrooms
Updated 11 June 2025
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Australian murder suspect denies drying deadly mushrooms

Australian murder suspect denies drying deadly mushrooms
  • Erin Patterson denies all charges in the trial, which has made headlines worldwide
  • She says the beef-and-pastry dish, which she cooked in individually sized portions, was poisoned by accident

SYDNEY: An Australian woman accused of murdering three people with death cap mushrooms denied Wednesday that she turned the fungi into dry powder for the fatal meal.

Erin Patterson, 50, is charged with murdering her estranged husband’s parents and aunt in July 2023 by spiking a beef Wellington lunch with the mushrooms.

She is also accused of attempting to murder a fourth lunch guest – her husband’s uncle – who survived the dish after a long stay in hospital.

Patterson denies all charges in the trial, which has made headlines worldwide.

She says the beef-and-pastry dish, which she cooked in individually sized portions, was poisoned by accident.

Three months before the lunch, phone records placed Patterson in the Victoria state township of Loch, where a sighting of death cap mushrooms had been posted online, the court heard.

Prosecutor Nanette Rogers alleged that within two hours of finding death cap mushrooms in Loch, Patterson bought a dehydrator to use on the fungi.

Patterson admitted to buying the dehydrator.

But she denied purchasing it to dry the death cap mushrooms or that she went to Loch to find the dangerous fungi.

A month later, phone records placed Patterson in a second town in the area, Outtrim, just days after a sighting of death cap mushrooms had been posted online, the court heard.

Patterson denied she went to the area to find the fungi, but said she may have driven by the area.

Rogers suggested Patterson “blitzed” the death cap mushrooms into a powder in order to hide them in the meal.

“Disagree,” Patterson said.

The court heard Patterson had told people that she served the beef Wellington leftovers to her children a day after the lunch, as her sickened guests lay in hospital.

The accused said she scraped off the mushroom and pastry from the dish because her children were fussy eaters.

The prosecutor asked Patterson why she would feed leftovers to her children, while knowing or suspecting that the same meal had put her guests in hospital.

“I didn’t know or suspect that,” Patterson replied.

The prosecutor accused her of telling a “lie about feeding the leftovers” because it gave her “some distance from a deliberate poisoning.”

Patterson replied: “I don’t see how it could, but I disagree.”

The home cook had also invited her estranged husband Simon to join the family lunch at her secluded home in the Victoria state farm village of Leongatha.

But Simon turned down the invitation saying he felt uncomfortable going, the court heard previously. The pair were long estranged but still legally married.

Simon’s parents Don and Gail, and his aunt Heather Wilkinson, attended the lunch. All three were dead within days.

Heather’s husband Ian fell gravely ill but recovered.

The trial in Morwell, southeast of Melbourne, is expected to last another two weeks.


Former student kills 10 in Austrian high school shooting

Former student kills 10 in Austrian high school shooting
Updated 11 June 2025
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Former student kills 10 in Austrian high school shooting

Former student kills 10 in Austrian high school shooting
  • Shooter acted alone and took his own life in the toilet at Dreierschuetzengasse high school in Graz
  • Europe has been shaken by attacks at schools and universities in recent years that were not connected to terrorism

GRAZ, Austria: Austria will observe a national day of mourning and a minute’s silence on Wednesday after a former student shot dead 10 people at a high school in an unprecedented case of gun violence that stunned the Alpine country.

The 21-year-old shooter acted alone and took his own life in the toilet at Dreierschuetzengasse high school in Graz, police said.

Investigators found a good-bye letter addressed to the suspect’s parents during a search of his residence, but it included no clues about his motive.

After arriving in Graz, Chancellor Christian Stocker described the shooting as “a national tragedy.”

“This is a dark day,” he told reporters Tuesday as he announced three days of national mourning. A minute’s silence will be observed across the country at 10:00 am (0800 GMT) on Wednesday.

Nine victims were immediately confirmed and a woman died later in hospital from her wounds, an official said. A 17-year-old French student was among the victims, his father said.

Twelve people suffered serious injuries and police said support was being provided to witnesses and those affected.

According to police, the alleged perpetrator was an Austrian from the Graz region who used two legally owned weapons.

He was a former student at the high school, but never finished his studies there, Interior Minister Gerhard Karner told reporters.

Bouquets of flowers and candles were placed in front of the school, which has around 400 students aged between 14 and 18, and nearby businesses closed.

One resident, originally from the United States, whose children attend a nearby elementary school and kindergarten, said she was “shocked” and it was “a lot to take in.”

“In my home country it happens more often as we know, but that it happens here is unheard of,” she said, declining to give her name.

“Graz is a safe city,” said Roman Klug, 55, who said he lived close to the school that he said was “known for its openness and diversity.”

Condolences poured in from across Europe.

French President Emmanuel Macron said that “France extends its deepest sympathy to the victims’ families, the Austrian people and Chancellor Stocker during this difficult time.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said “our thoughts are with our Austrian friends and neighbors” following the “horrific” shooting.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban offered his “deepest condolences.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said “the news from Graz touches my heart,” while Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed her sympathies to the families of the victims following the “tragic news.”

Attacks in public are rare in Austria, which is home to almost 9.2 million people and ranks among the 10 safest countries in the world, according to the Global Peace Index.

While still less common than in the United States, Europe has been shaken by attacks at schools and universities in recent years that were not connected to terrorism.

In France, a teaching assistant was killed in a knife attack at a school in the eastern town of Nogent on Tuesday.

In January, an 18-year-old man fatally stabbed a high school student and a teacher at a school in northeastern Slovakia.

And in December, a 19-year-old man stabbed a seven-year-old student to death and injured several others at a primary school in Zagreb, Croatia.

In December 2023, an attack by a student at a university in central Prague left 14 people dead and 25 injured.

A few months earlier, a 13-year-old gunned down nine fellow classmates and a security guard at an elementary school in Belgrade.