JOHANNESBURG – South Africa's powerful labour federation, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, threatens marches and possible strikes to protest against rising food prices. The federation is calling on government to set up a national food price regulator to determine prices and for heads of companies found guilty of price collusion to be dismissed.

CAPE TOWN – New salary scales for teachers are introduced by Education Minister Naledi Pandor, by the signing of an occupation-specific dispensation with education trade unions. Under the new system, newly-qualified teachers entering the profession will get R115 276 a year instead of R107 700 a year. The new salary scales will be backdated to January 1, 2008. The department says adjustments were worked out through nine months of negotiations with trade unions.

AFRICA

LUSAKA – Zambia calls an emergency meeting of the 14-member Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional bloc to discuss Zimbabwe's postelection impasse. Zambian President, Levy Mwanawasa, who chairs the SADC, says the crisis requires a concerted effort by all Southern African countries to find a solution, marking the first move by Zimbabwe's neighbours to intervene after the March 29 elections.

NAIROBI – Kenya's opposition suspends talks with President Mwai Kibaki's party and police fire teargas to scatter opposition supporters protesting at deepening deadlock over a power-sharing Cabinet. Kibaki and rival, Raila Odinga delayed the naming of the new Cabinet after disagreeing over how to share the government's Ministries. The Cabinet is central to a deal on ending Kenya's post-election crisis.

WORLD

NEW YORK – A new report by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund says that the world is on course to halve extreme poverty by 2015, but Africa will fall far short of the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals. The 2008 'Global Monitoring Report', says strong economic growth in much of the developing world has contributed to the decline in global poverty. It reports that the number of extremely poor - those living under $1 a day - declined by 278-million between 1990 and 2004, and by 150-million in the last five years of that period.

WASHINGTON – US Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's chief political strategist, Mark Penn, steps down following news that he is lobbying for a free-trade treaty with Colombia that Clinton opposes. A meeting between Penn and Colombia's US ambassador over the trade deal posed political problems for the campaign of the New York senator, who is vying with Illinois Senator Barack Obama to become the Democratic nominee in the November election.

BRUSSELS – Development aid from the European Union's (EU's) 27 countries declined last year, says the bloc's top aid official, urging governments to live up to their commitments to give more to poor nations. Aid relief from major donors has grown in previous years, thanks to debt relief packages for countries such as Iraq and Nigeria. One EU official claims that last year's reduction can largely be explained by the end of the rise in debt relief. The EU prides itself as being the world's largest aid donor.

NEW DELHI – India and Africa vow to strive together for food security and call on the western world to rethink diverting huge food stocks for biofuel, creating shortages and driving up prices in poorer countries. Rising food and oil prices threaten many African economies, and inflation at 7%in late March, a more than three-year high, is a headache for Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's government, which faces national elections next year. The Food and Agriculture Organisation has warned that high food prices and shortages would continue in the short term, making some poorer countries vulnerable to food riots.