Municipal pay talks began on Tuesday, described by the South African Municipal Workers’ Union as a ”showdown” between the government’s macro-economic policy and workers’ pockets. The union said the effects of fiscal austerity measures have been severely felt by municipal workers, with increases barely keeping up with inflation.
T-shirt company Laugh It Off argued on Tuesday in the Constitutional Court that its caricature of the Carling Black Label trademark caused no economic harm to Sabmark International, which holds the trademark and licenses it to South African Breweries. The Supreme Court of Appeal found last year that it was illegal to use a caricature of an SAB trademark.
As Prince Charles prepares for his second marriage, the glamour, tragedy and soap opera of his first are bursting back into life — in dance. <i>Diana the Princess</i>, a ballet by Danish choreographer Peter Schaufuss, opened on Tuesday at Manchester’s Palace Theatre, more than 300km from Buckingham Palace. But it has already created a buzz among royal-watchers.
The chief executive who vowed to repair the tarnished reputation of Boeing on Monday fell victim to his own scandal when he was fired for conducting an affair with one of the company’s female executives. Harry Stonecipher was hired to help steady the defence and aeroplane company after it was sent reeling by revelations of misconduct in securing Pentagon contracts.
A six-year-old boy was suspended from a Christian school near Chicago last week after his mother refused to hit him for misbehaving. In recent months Chandler Fallaw had returned home from Shaumburg Christian school with disciplinary notes for showing off, offering his teacher chewing gum, not finishing his work and bringing toys into class.
The British government is to back punitive measures against the Sudanese government after losing patience over the worsening humanitarian crisis in Darfur. Until now the British Foreign Office has argued that persuasion was more productive than sanctions and other measures.
Police in a sprawling working-class suburb on the edge of the Mexican capital are to fight crime with a new weapon: books. The left-wing mayor of Nezahualcoyotl, Luis Sanchez, has ordered all 1 100 members of the municipal police to read at least one book a month or forfeit their chance of promotion.
Three works by the Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, stolen from a hotel in southern Norway, were recovered on Monday less than 24 hours after they were taken. Two were lithographs (one of the Swedish playwright August Strindberg, the other of Munch himself), and the third a watercolour of a woman in a blue dress, estimated together to be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.
European hopes that the Bush administration would bring a more multilateral approach to its foreign policy were dealt a blow on Monday with the nomination of an outspoken hawk as the United States’ ambassador to the United Nations. John Bolton, the nominee and a former undersecretary of state for arms control, has built a reputation for public disdain for international treaties.
”Sharon, Lily is waiting for you.” The message being spray-painted around Israel contains menace: Lily, Ariel Sharon’s wife, died of lung cancer in 2000; now hardline Jewish opponents of the prime minister are willing him to join her. The alternative version of the graffito — ”Sharon, Rabin is waiting for you” — is a more direct threat.