Hacker knocks Kremlin's new TV channel off the air

A computer hacker drove the Kremlin's new English-language television channel off-air on Monday in a major embarrassment for the station just two days after it started broadcasting.

Russia Today presents news from a Russian perspective and is designed to counteract what the Kremlin sees as an unfairly critical approach to Russia in the foreign press.

Before going off air on Monday, it showed reports on the new parliament in Chechnya and the Russian constitution, but broadcasting was dogged by technical glitches. The screen froze several times, and at least one news package was played out of sequence.

"There was an attempted invasion of the computer system, which gave rise to viruses, which led to break-downs in transmission," Margarita Simonyan, the channel's editor-in-chief, told Interfax news agency. She could not say when programming would return - the channel showed a tuning signal after it fell off the air - but said technicians were working as hard as they could. Latest reports say the station has now resumed broadcasting.

The station's website has also been taken off line.
A single page with contact information says that "Site will be available after 20th of December."

More on this story:

Russia's English news channel, Russia Today, launches

Source: Media Network