TIRANA (AP) – The whole of Albania was left without power early yesterday morning for two hours due to a defect in a transmission line importing power from neighboring Kosovo, the head of the power corporation said. The state-owned Albanian Electro-Energy Corporation managed to make repairs “in record time,” said Andi Beli. He said Albania and Kosovo have different operating networks, which can cause such blackouts. Albania – population 3.2 million – has been in a serious electricity crisis for more than two months due to difficulties in importing and domestic production.

VIENNA (AP) – A regional media freedom watchdog said yesterday it was deeply concerned about the worsening situation for journalists in Southeast Europe following the recent murder of Hrant Dink, an ethnic Armenian journalist in Turkey. A 17-year-old Turkish nationalist has been charged with his death. Dink’s murder “shows once again that journalists may easily become victims in the fight for press freedom and freedom of speech,” the Vienna-based South East Europe Media Organization said in a statement. SEEMO, a network of editors, media executives and journalists in Southeast Europe, said Dink’s killing was a reminder that there are still a number of unsolved cases of journalists killed in the region for their reporting, including three in Serbia. In the statement, SEEMO called on Serbian officials to investigate those murders, one of which it said dates back to 1994.

Workers early yesterday rescued a 15-year-old boy who was found alive 36 hours after the collapse of an eight-story apartment building that left five people dead in southeastern Turkey, the governor’s office announced. The workers evacuated Abdullah Koseer, who was trapped on the ground floor of the building when it collapsed Sunday afternoon in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir. The local chief of the rescue workers in Diyarbakir said Koseer was hospitalized but in good condition. Rescue workers pulled out the bodies of three more people yesterday, raising the death toll to five, the governor’s office said. Authorities had evacuated the building in November against risk of collapse due to poor construction but some people apparently returned. (AP)

Romania’s lower house of parliament yesterday passed a bill which makes it easier to impeach the country’s president if he is found to have violated the constitution. The bill, which was sponsored by the left-wing opposition and passed by 215 votes to 56, makes it possible for voters to impeach the president with a simple majority in a referendum, instead of a nearly impossible threshold requiring approval from a majority of registered voters. (AP)