Bachelet names her Cabinet

President-elect Michelle Bachelet unveiled a Cabinet on Monday that fulfilled her campaign promise to give half the jobs to women and kept a balance among the four parties in her center-left coalition.

The defense and economy ministries were among the key posts given to women by Chile’s first woman president. Bachelet also named a woman as her chief of staff.

“This Cabinet is in line with the major challenges we have ahead,” said the 54-year-old socialist pediatrician, who was elected earlier this month and takes office on March 11. “These are people with considerable intellectual, professional and political prestige,” she said of the 10 men and 10 women in her Cabinet.

Bachelet said as soon as she takes office she will ask the legislature to create two new ministries — public security and environment.

Female appointments include Vivianne Blanlot as defense minister, Paulina Veloso as Bachelet’s chief of staff, Ingrid Antonijevic as economy minister and Clarisa Hardy as planning minister.

VIENNA, Austria

Center to honor Wiesenthal

The University of Vienna announced Monday that it plans to build a new Holocaust research center in honor of the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

The $17.1 million center, to be called the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies, is expected to house some 8,000 documents, including files from the country’s World War II resistance movement, Austria’s Jewish community and hundreds of thousands of microfilmed documents from the Jerusalem-based Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People.

“This will put Austria on the map of international Holocaust research” and efforts to stamp out racism and anti-Semitism, project leader Anton Pelinka said.

It is to be completed by 2010, he said.

Pelinka said Wiesenthal, who died last September at age 96, wanted the records he amassed over decades of sleuthing around the world to be preserved in the Austrian capital.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa

Release unlikely to ease tension

Nigeria’s volatile Niger Delta is unlikely to see a reduction in violence, despite Monday’s release of four kidnapped foreign oil contractors, analysts say.

The swampy oil-rich region is notorious for its violence, political corruption, large-scale oil theft and kidnappings, with the international oil price sometimes soaring in response to the rhetoric of militant leaders.

Militants released the four after holding them nearly three weeks, but immediately threatened new attacks and warned foreign oil workers to leave.

Nigeria is the fifth-largest supplier of U.S. oil.