News in brief

Unison Scotland said today it will be recommending that its members reject a 1 per cent pay offer from councils.

Branch delegates meeting in Glasgow agreed to reject the "final" offer from the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.

Unison spokeswoman Stephanie Herd said: "An offer of 1 per cent simply isn't enough after suffering years of real terms pay cuts. We will now move on to the ballot."

The apostrophe isn't welcome in Devon

Councillors were today considering banning apostrophes from county street signs because of the "potential confusion" they could cause.

Mid Devon District Council said its new streets had not contained apostrophes for many years, but the policy could now be made official.

It follows an announcement from book retailer Waterstones last year that it would be removing the punctuation from its brand name.

Lawrence killer drops his appeal

One of the two men jailed for the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in Eltham, south-east London, in 1993 has dropped his appeal against conviction, the Judicial Office confirmed today.

Gary Dobson was given a life sentence at the Old Bailey in January last year.

The second man, David Norris, is continuing his battle against conviction.

Skeletons in Farringdon

Archaeologists doing excavation work for London's Crossrail project unearthed 13 skeletons under Charterhouse Square in Farringdon today.

They are thought to have died of the Black Death, which killed one in four Britons in 1348.

Experts believe up to 50,000 plague victims are buried in the area.