(12-17) 06:35 PST Santa Cruz, Calif. (AP) —

Top Santa Cruz city employees will receive a 10 to 22 percent pay increase in the new year.

The City Council approved the salary hikes at its meeting last Tuesday.

About 80 mid-management employees will receive pay hikes in January costing the city an additional $2.1 million each year.

City Manager Dick Wilson will earn $35,000 more, and Police Chief Howard Skerry also will see a substantial increase.

The raises come after a salary study completed in November shows Santa Cruz trails the median pay of other cities with similar populations and scope of services by 2 to 23 percent.

City officials say the raises are affordable now because of $12 million in salary savings due to 89 unfilled positions.

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Information from: Santa Cruz Sentinel, «www.santacruzsentinel.com»

The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, today said he is ready to be prime minister if Dmitry Medvedev, his choice as his presidential successor, is elected.

While Putin’s desire to be prime minister had been widely anticipated, he also more surprisingly announced that there would be no change in the powers of the two roles.

Many expected that, with his chosen successor in place, Putin would continue to be the most powerful man in the country in all but name.

“If the citizens of Russia show trust in Dmitry Medvedev and elect him the new president, I would be ready to continue our joint work as prime minister without changing the distribution of authority” between the positions,” he told the congress of the dominant United Russia party.

Putin had previously said that a victory for United Russia in parliamentary elections would give him the “moral authority” to ensure that his policies were continued.

However, the prime minister is a significantly less powerful figure than the president in Russia.

The 42-year-old Medvedev - who is seen as business-friendly and not hawkish - is expected to be elected on March 2.

When Medvedev received Putin’s endorsement last week, he quickly proposed that Putin become prime minister after the election, but the current president had not previously responded.

(12-17) 01:34 PST SHANGHAI, China (AP) —

The dispute between French food and beverage maker Groupe Danone SA and its Chinese joint venture partner Wahaha has deepened, with Wahaha’s labor union saying it is suing Danone.

Danone had no immediate comment Monday after the labor union of Hangzhou Wahaha Group said it filed a lawsuit against the French company in Weifang, a city in eastern China’s Shandong province, seeking $1.4 million in damages.

That announcement followed Danone’s announcement last week that it was suspending lawsuits against Wahaha. It urged the Chinese side to take “concrete” moves toward reconciliation.

The standoff, one of the most contentious public squabbles between a foreign company and its Chinese counterpart, centers over the rights to the popular Wahaha brand name Д one of the country’s best known labels for bottled water and other soft drinks.

The French company has accused Wahaha’s founder Zong Qinghou of privately producing and selling Wahaha joint venture products on the side, saying that violates their original joint venture agreement set in 1996.

The lawsuit filed by the Wahaha labor union accuses Danone of holding shares in companies that compete against the two big companies’ 39 joint ventures. It also charges Danone with hurting Wahaha’s reputation by “distorting facts” through the media, the union’s lawyer Qian Weiqing said in a statement.

The Wahaha union includes around 7,000 employees at the 39 Wahaha-Danone joint-venture companies, and nearly 10,000 at Wahaha’s non-joint venture businesses, according to Li Su, chief executive of H&J Vanguard, a consulting firm that has issued a report on the Wahaha-Danone dispute.

Danone has protested an arbitration ruling in Hangzhou, where Wahaha is based, giving the Chinese side the right to use the Wahaha brand name outside the 39 joint ventures operated by the two companies. Danone holds a 51 percent stake in those joint ventures.

The outlook for an amicable resolution appears dim, state media reports said Monday.

A report by the China Business Post noted that the local government in Hangzhou, where Wahaha is based, has taken actions to support Zong Д one of the wealthy city’s most prominent businessmen Д and has suspended its annual inspections of the joint venture, putting its legal status in jeopardy.

City government officials in Hangzhou were not immediately available to comment on the report.