¤ The California grid operator said conditions on the state's electric system were improving amid signs that a severe heat wave was easing slightly but it cautioned the situation could worsen quickly if a power plant broke down or transmission failed. "We are in marginally better condition," said Gregg Fishman, spokesman for the California Independent System Operator, or ISO, which manages 80 per cent of the grid.

¤ President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is campaigning as a champion of Brazil's poor as he tries to win back voters disillusioned with his conservative economic policies. The former union leader railed against Brazil's elite at a Monday night rally, defending his social welfare programmes and saying he was a victim of discrimination because of his poor background and limited education.

¤ A US soldier and seven insurgents have been killed in two separate clashes in Afghanistan, coalition forces said, in the latest spate of violence in the country. Afghanistan is going through its bloodiest phase of violence since the ouster of the Taliban government in 2001, with most attacks occurring in the south where Nato will assume security responsibilities next week.

¤ Mogadishu's Muslim rulers blamed Ethiopia's "invasion" of Somalia for stalled peace talks with the fragile interim government as a UN envoy struggled to kick-start negotiations. "As long as Ethiopia is in our country, talks with the government cannot go ahead... Ethiopia has invaded us," the newly powerful Islamists' hardline leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys told reporters in Mogadishu.