The newspaper Le Monde said that the employment minister Martine Aubry, who advocates legislation to shorten the working week from 39 to 35 hours, was at loggerheads with the finance minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who thinks that shortening the week without lowering wages would kill jobs and supports more flexible means to bring down the jobless rate of 12.5 per cent. - Reuters. Once the giant jigsaw is complete, or as complete as possible, it is then mounted on a base or series of bases, usually made of aluminium, with an intermediate layer of cork or soft mortar acting as a buffer in case changes need to be made later or the base replaced.Gaps in the artwork are filled in such a way as to make clear what is original work and what is not. So far, the Italian government has pledged more than pounds 200m, and there is talk of diverting resources from the joint Italy-Vatican millennial jubilee fund to try to have the Basilica back in shape by 2000.The standard technique is for restorers to take each piece of fresco, scrub away the masonry behind the plaster and attempt to assemble it in its place in a giant sandpit. The second priority will be to sort through the rubble, pick out any pieces that look like they belong to the damaged works of art and safeguard and catalogue them properly.According to art restorers, this process is the key to any future prospects of resurrecting the crumbled masterpieces. Ideally, debris should be sorted by experts only, and by hand - something that was not possible in this case because of the need to dig out human bodies following the collapse of two ceiling vaults in the quake.As things stand, much of the rubble has been piled by mechanical diggers on the lawn outside the Basilica.Pieces of fallen fresco have been assembled on a small scaffold and covered in thick plastic sheeting to protect them from the elements."From a technical point of view, it would obviously have been better if nobody had touched anything because inevitably things get damaged or thrown away by mistake," said Cristian Beltrami, an experienced art restorer who has worked extensively in Assisi.The restoration process is a tortuous one, but the time it takes depends largely on funding. There were aftershocks from the quakes all weekend, one of them causing a few more lumps of stonework to fall from the Basilica ceiling. The first priority therefore will be to prop up the precarious Upper Church with a full array of scaffolding, whose installation Mr Paolucci will begin overseeing today.

Antonio Paolucci, the man charged with restoring the great Basilica in Assisi, emerged grim-faced from his first detailed inspection of the earthquake damage. "One Cimabue lost, one Giotto probably lost, 60 square metres of painting destroyed," he reported. "I don't think it's idle doomsday talk to say this is a real catastrophe." Mr Paolucci is probably the country's most experienced art restorer and a former culture minister, so a bruised and shaken Assisi could not be in better hands. But before any repair work can begin, the town needs to protect itself against further damage. Maybe I should be pleased that I'm not reduced to such ignoble shit in order to make a living.". If Jennifer wants to be famous as a schoolgirl crush, that's up to her."Dr Greer's final word on Ms Wallace? "She clearly has a wretched propensity for trying to make money out of other people's work.

It also examines her life as a feminist icon since the publication in 1970 of her seminal work, The Female Eunuch.It appears to be the fact that the book has been written at all that is upsetting her, rather than its contents. Yesterday she shrugged off one of its more sensational allegations: that she had an affair with a fellow 12-year-old, Jennifer Dabbs, in Melbourne in the Fifties."It's not unusual for schoolgirls to fall in love with each other," she said "It's no big deal. "This is a woman who got into the bath 10 days ago and did not get out for four days," she said "My mother says whatever comes into her head. If Christine Wallace was crazy enough to believe what she said, then she really is a dimwit."Certainly she's no sort of a writer, judging by the letters she sent me .. But I'm not planning to sue her.

If this is the only way she can think of to pay the rent, I feel sorry for her."The biography traces Dr Greer's colourful evolution from Melbourne undergraduate to preacher of sexual liberation in Sixties London. Dr Greer is on the governing body of the all-female college.Dr Greer, 58, attacked Ms Wallace for interviewing her mother, who she said was suffering from senile dementia. For the purposes of my own sanity, I have no intention of doing so. It's probably got stuff about me dancing naked on tables in pubs. I can't think of anything more hideous."In fighting mood, Dr Greer also revealed that she planned to issue a libel writ on her return from Australia against The Guardian, over its allegations relating to the appointment by Newnham College, Cambridge, of Dr Rachel Padman, a transsexual. But the mere idea of it has left her frothing with indignation, heaping rich insults upon its author, Christine Wallace, a Canberra-based finance journalist.Yesterday, as she packed her suitcases at her rambling Essex farmhouse, she was still spitting bile across the equator.

The biography, she said, was "a piece of excrement", while Ms Wallace was "a flesh-eating bacterium" and a "brain-dead hack"."I am still alive, in case it has escaped anyone's notice, and I happen to think that living people own their own lives," she said "If anyone wants to read it, they should go right ahead. She will walk off the aircraft into the arms of waiting television crews, clutching their copies of Greer: Untamed Shrew hot off the press. For tomorrow is also publication day of the unauthorised biography of one of Australia's most famous exports. The country is already buzzing with gossip about the book, extracts of which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald last week. Dr Greer has not read it, nor does she plan to.