LONDON — A United Airlines pilot who failed a breathalyzer test shortly before he was due to take off was charged with having too much alcohol in his system, British police said.

Erwin Vermont Washington, 51, is the third U.S. pilot in 13 months to be arrested for being over the strict alcohol limits imposed on airline staff.

Washington was arrested after officers were called to United Airlines Flight 949, which was already full of passengers and due to leave London's Heathrow Airport just after noon Monday.

A spokeswoman for BAA Airports, Heathrow's operator, said late Tuesday the pilot had been reported to authorities by another member of United's staff. She spoke on condition of anonymity, saying it was company policy.

It was not immediately clear how much alcohol Washington was accused of having consumed. Under British law, pilots are forbidden from having a blood-alcohol content above .02 percent.

SAO PAULO — Brazil's case of the pink minidress that went viral on the Internet has left many scratching their heads: How could it be that an outfit, no matter how short, would cause such an uproar in a tropical nation where skimpy clothing and tiny bikinis barely raise an eyebrow?The answer, a Bandeirante University official said, is not in the pink dress, but in how Geisy Arruda, a 20-year-old tourism student, chose to wear it. In expelling her from the university — where she has since been reinstated — officials said she paraded provocatively and raised the dress."There are hundreds of girls wearing miniskirts on this campus every day, and nothing has ever happened," Vice Dean Ellis Brown said at a news conference Tuesday. "The size of the dress was never discussed — her behavior was."Arruda has vehemently denied acting provocatively, telling the private Agencia Estado news agency: "It's a big lie that I raised the dress."

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil emerged early today from a widespread power outage that plunged its major cities and at least nine states into darkness for hours, prompting security fears and concern from residents about another black eye for a country hosting the 2016 Olympic Games.Power went out for more than two hours in Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo and several other major cities, affecting millions of people, after transmission problems knocked one of the world's biggest hydroelectric dams offline. Airport operations were hindered and subways ground to a halt.All of neighboring Paraguay was plunged into the dark, but for less than a half-hour.Brazilian authorities blamed storms that took down power lines and towers, causing a domino effect that rippled across the region.