The authorities in the Philippines have blamed jellyfish for a massive power failure that plunged much of the main island of Luzon into darkness on Friday night.

The power cut brought traffic to a standstill around the capital, and prompted rumours of either a coup or an early outbreak of the millennium bug.

The authorities said that in fact, large numbers of jellyfish had been sucked into the seawater intake of a major power plant near Manila, clogging up the mechanism.

They said about fifty truckloads of jellyfish had been removed.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service