The South African parliament approved a 25.5 per cent pay increase for President Nelson Mandela -- his first pay raise since taking office in 1994.

Mandela, who has received a total annual renumeration package of $98,572 since December 1994, will now be entitled to an annual package of $124,747, the SAPA news agency reported. Mandela's total pay package amounted to nearly that at $123,214 when he took office in May 1994, but in December that year he voluntarily took a 20 per cent pay cut, to serve as an example in ``belt-tightening'' to the rest of the government. The President's pay increase is in line with recommendations in a special report on the remuneration of public offices bearers which was tabled in Parliament.

Extremist freed for good conduct

An Israeli extremist jailed in January for putting up posters depicting the Prophet Mohammed as a pig was released early for ``good behaviour'', prison officials said. Tatiana Susskin served 17 months in Ramla prisonnear Tel Aviv, representing two-thirds of her sentence of three years, one of which was suspended. Her good behaviour earned her an early release despite the Opposition of the Shin Beth internal security service which fears she will engage in new provocations against Muslims, public television said. Asked whether she regretted what she had done, a departing Susskin said: ``When you have spent more than a year and a half in prison, you have thoughts other than regrets.'' A prison official said: ``Until the end of her full sentence, she will be confined'' to her Ramat Gan residence or her mother's Tel Aviv home.

Susskin, 26, must also pay a bond of $4,600 and appear twice a day at a police station until the end of her sentence. Susskin, an immigrant from Russia and follower of the outlawed anti-Arab group Kach, had been arrested in June last year after taking posters she had drawn showing Mohammed as a pig stomping on the Koran to Hebron, a tense West Bank city where 400 zealous Jewish settlers live amid140,000 Palestinians.

Blair's view

British Prime Minister Tony Blair insisted that Falkland Islands sovereignty was not negotiable, and that he made that clear to visiting Argentine President Carlos Menem last week. In a written reply to a House of Commons question, he said Britain was not prepared to discuss sovereignty of the South Atlantic islands, over which Britain and Argentina fought a six-week war in 1982. ``As we have repeatedly said, there will be no change in the status of the islands, unless that is the wish of the islanders themselves,'' he said.

He was responding to a question over reported comments by Menem in a Buenos Aires newspaper that London might be prepared to negotiate within three years. Blair said that during his October 29 meeting with Menem, they discussed British concerns over proposed new Argentine laws on oil and fish.

``President Menem reiterated Argentina's view on the Falklands,'' he added. ``In turn I made clear that the United Kingdom does not regard thesovereignty of the Falklands as negotiable.''

The rise of Mueller

Christa mue-ller, 42, wife of Germany's new Finance Minister, Oskar Lafontaine, is making waves in Germany, a country where an economics professor is frowned upon for attacking the privileges of the highly respected Bundesbank. Christa Mueller is Lafontaine's companion of 10 years, his wife of five years and the mother of their young boy, Carl Maurice, born in February 1997. Armed with university degrees, and a long-time militant social democrat, Christa Mueller is believed to have taught Lafontaine economics and be the inspiration for his actions. Christa Mueller has ideas, that she discusses them with her husband the government minister and that she even wrote a book with him.

What does cause a stir, though, is that, although she may have been chosen by him, she has not been chosen by the people, but still dares to voice her opinions publicly. On Sunday, she was not content simply to stand beside her husband in front of thecameras. Her replies were almost as long as those of the minister himself, calling for increased control over the Bundesbank and for a cut in interest rates, stepping into the arena of monetary policy -- traditionally a male-dominated domain in Germany. Two days later, the mass circulation Bild newspaper, questioned the real power of Mueller and the whole of Germany is now asking whether she has the right to open her mouth or not.