The civil servants, represented by the ANEF union, also demand the establishment of a monthly minimum wage of 250,000 pesos ($460) and regularised status for temporary workers and contractors, who don’t receive health coverage or other benefits.

The 48-hour strike has caused problems for the people in state agencies.

It has also halted activity in hospitals and doctors’ offices, where according to the unions, 80 percent of the workers have joined the strike, though skeleton crews remained on duty to deal with emergencies.

ANEF leader Raul de la Puente accused the ministers of finance, Andres Velasco, and of labour, Claudia Serrano, of not keeping President Michelle Bachelet’s promise to improve working conditions for civil servants.

De la Puente also considered ‘unacceptable’ the government’s offer of a 2.5 percent wage increase for 2010.

‘The negotiation will be difficult if we’re starting from this basis,’ he said.

Interior Minister Edmundo Perez Yoma criticised the strike by pointing out that talks are already underway between the authorities and union leaders.

‘This is something that has no justification. The only ones who will be hurt here are those who use public services,’ Perez Yoma said, adding that the call to go on strike was an ‘extremely bad’ decision.

The premier discussed the measures taken by the government, noting that they served to ‘alleviate the crisis’ but had not yet yielded net employment gains.

In remarks to the Senate, Zapatero responded to criticism from the conservative main opposition Popular Party by highlighting some initiatives, such as 18.75 billion euros ($27.37 billion) in government lending to businesses, households and regional administrations.

The State Local Investment Fund has kept 14,000 businesses, mostly small and mid-sized firms, from closing and provided jobs to some 421,000 people, the prime minister said.

Popular Party spokesman Pio Garcia Escudero, for his part, criticised the ‘errors’ made by the government ‘with its policy of deficits and debt that mortgage the future’.

The prime minister’s comments came hours after the Labour and Immigration Ministry released figures showing that unemployment increased by 98,906 people in October, compared to September, bringing the total number of jobless in Spain to more than 3.8 million.

The number of unemployed people in Spain has risen 35.14 percent in the past year.

La Prensa Grafica newspaper based the figure on data from the National Police, the Attorney General’s Office and the medical examiner’s office.

The number of murders, which average 13.9 per day, is 40.2 percent higher than the 2,620 homicides that were tallied during the same period in 2008.

The National Police added that during last month alone there were 431 murders, 158 more than in October 2008.

Authorities warn that nearly two-thirds of the 3,184 men killed this year were between the ages of 18 and 30.

The San Salvador metropolitan area, which contains 14 municipalities, has had 419 more murders this year than during the same period last year.

Seventy-six percent of the killings were carried out with firearms.

In the face of the increase in violence, 94 percent of the residents of Greater San Salvador supported the possibility of increasing the use of army troops for security tasks, according to a survey by the firm JBS Opinion released Tuesday by the Diario de Hoy newspaper.

The poll was made public at a time when the government of President Mauricio Funes is evaluating the possibility of adding 6,500 soldiers to the effort to fight the lack of security.

The body of Vladimir Antuna, 39, who worked for El Tiempo de Durango newspaper, was found behind a diabetes clinic and a sports centre, sources at the Durango state Attorney General’s Office said Tuesday.

The reporter showed signs of having died ‘by strangulation’ and no bullet wounds were noticed on his body, the sources said.

Antuna was kidnapped Monday morning while driving to work, when his SUV was intercepted.

In mid-May, crime reporter Eliseo Barron Hernandez was kidnapped by seven masked men who burst into his home in the city of Torreon, Coahuila, when he was there with his wife and their two daughters.

His body was found the next day in an irrigation canal in Durango state.

Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based watchdog group, said that 55 journalists have been slain in Mexico since the year 2000.

Fifty-nine Mexican journalists have been attacked, and three of them were killed, during the third quarter of this year, according to a report by the organisation’s Article19 and the National Social Communication Centre.

Environmentalist Erik Quiroga told EFE Tuesday that until Oct 22 only 508.8 ml of rain had fallen in Caracas, the lowest amount since 1947.

Quiroga said that the figures were provided by the Cagigal Naval Observatory, the nation’s chief meteorological centre that began keeping records in 1891.

The severity of the drought became more obvious, according to Quiroga, during the months of October, which had the least rain in 118 years, and June, the driest in 115 years.

Venezuela has seasonal precipitation with a rainy season from May to October and a dry season from October to May, though the pattern can be modified by environmental factors such as El Nino, a climatic phenomenon that brings radical changes in the amount of rainfall.

Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit Khan said there exist evidences in South Waziristan Agency (SWA), which speak volumes of Indian involvement in prevailing uprising and insurgency in agency, Geo News reported.

He told Geo News that the evidences found against India in South Waziristan included Indian arms, bombs and Indian medicines.

Khan said that the evidences were being investigated.

‘We have yet to entrust proofs to Indian government,’ he added.

New Delhi Tuesday refuted Islamabad’s accusation that it was instigating trouble in the neighbouring country and rejected any connection with its internal developments.

‘We have absolutely nothing to do with whatever is happening in Balochistan or whatever is happening within Pakistan. I think it is their own making,’ External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna said.

Pakistan’s military spokesperson Athar Abbas Tuesday claimed that Islamabad has enough evidence to substantiate that India was funding terror in South Waziristan.

He alleged that Pakistani security forces had seized Indian-made arms and equipment from the Taliban bastion of South Waziristan and added that Islamabad would soon raise the issue through diplomatic channels.

An official committee for flood, storm prevention and control of Phu Yen province said that at least 21 people died, two went missing and 13 others were left injured by the typhoon, Xinhua reported.

Over 9,000 houses were damaged in the storm and thousands of people rendered homeless in the province of Phu Yen and Binh Dinh. A large area of Phu Yen province was under the flood water, the report added.

The National Center for Hydro-meteorological Forecasting said that the typhoon has now downgraded into a tropical low pressure hovering around the central Vietnamese provinces.

The disneyland is planned to come up in the Pudong new district of Shanghai, a Xinhua report said.

Disney President and CEO Robert Iger said that China is one of the most dynamic, exciting and important countries in the world, and this approval marks ‘a very significant milestone’ for the Walt Disney Company in China’s mainland.

The foreign investment department officials said that several big state-owned firms in Shanghai would be forming a joint venture with the Walt Disney Co. to fund the project.

The Shanghai municipal government and the Walt Disney Co. reached an agreement on building China’s first Disneyland, Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng had said in January.

The multi-billion dollar project is expected to benefit industries, including property development, hotels, transport and entertainment, said Hou Zhigang, an associate professor with the Fudan University, Shanghai.

Bob McDonnell was elected governor of Virginia in a landslide, winning 59 percent to 41 percent for Democrat Creigh Deeds and recapturing a state that voted for Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

In New Jersey, usually a reliably left-leaning state, Republican Chris Christie was winning 50 to 44 percent over Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine with more than 80 percent of the votes counted.

The elections in Virginia and New Jersey are the first major polls since Obama was elected in November 2008. The November 2010 congressional elections will be the bigger test, when the entire House of Representatives and one-third of the Senate is up for grabs.

The country’s struggling economy was a dominant issue in both states. Republicans tapped into anger over still-rising unemployment and what some voters perceive as reckless spending by centre-left Democrats to revive the economy.

Both elections garnered national attention as Republicans looked to reverse their fortunes of the last few years. Democrats hoped to maintain the momentum of the election a year ago but struggled to harness the excitement that was generated by Obama’s candidacy.

Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican National Committee, called the Virginia victory a ‘blow’ to Obama’s Democrats and ‘a clear signal that voters have had enough of the president’s liberal agenda’.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs had played down the day’s elections, warning against drawing too many inferences for the Democrats’ electoral future.

A majority of Virginia voted for Obama a year ago, marking the first time the state sided with a Democrat for president in more than four decades. Republicans had lost the state’s last two elections for governor before Tuesday.

McDonnell campaigned on a promise of reviving job growth and smaller government in Virginia, mirroring the national campaign themes of centre-right Republicans.

Christie, a former prosecutor, campaigned heavily on curbing corruption in New Jersey, a state that has been dogged by political scandals.

The elections attracted some major political star power. Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and former president Bill Clinton all returned to the campaign trail over the last month. Top Republicans including former presidential candidates John McCain, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee also campaigned.

Voters were also choosing mayors Tuesday in several major cities, including New York, Atlanta and Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

In New York, billionaire Michael Bloomberg was widely expected to win an unprecedented third four-year term as mayor. But early results showed him locked in a surprisingly close race against Democratic challenger William Thompson. Bloomberg led 49-48 percent with about half of the votes counted.

A special election for Congress in upstate New York was also being watched closely. Initial results gave Democrat Bill Owens the lead in a district that has been a Republican stronghold for more than a century.

Owens benefited from a split among Republicans. Republican Party candidate Dede Scozzafava, a moderate with left-leaning views on social issues, quit the race Saturday after many of her party’s national figures threw their support behind a conservative third-party candidate, Doug Hoffman.

Martin 64, has hosted the event twice before, but Baldwin, 51, has never before helmed the Academy Awards.

The co-hosts will take over their duties from Hugh Jackman, who pulled out of the running for the high profile gig last week.

The choice of the Hollywood veterans marks the first time since 1987 that the Oscars will have multiple hosts. It comes at a time when the awards show is struggling to maintain its relevance amid continuing viewer apathy and a lack of popular films deemed worthy of the prize.

Martin is best known as a standup comedian, comic actor and recently author, and Baldwin has a diverse Hollywood resume, most recently reviving his career as a venal TV executive on the sit-com ’30 Rock’.

The duo recently worked together on the film ‘It’s Complicated’, which hits screens late this year. In the movie, Martin and Baldwin play rivals competing for the affections of a character played by Meryl Streep.