BALKANS: A major power cut hit much of the former Yugoslavia today, as the southern European region sweltered in an early heat wave that sent temperatures soaring to more than 40ºC.

Montenegrin authorities said that an outage that lasted for several hours in the country’s power distribution system left almost the entire country without electricity, while similar problems were reported in the coastal part of Croatia, Bosnia and Albania.

The exact cause for such a widespread outage wasn’t immediately clear.