Terminated

Heavy machinery is used to remove the name of the Austrian-born California
governor from Graz's football stadium. Photograph: Martina Paier/EPA

The Terminator has been terminated: early yesterday the piqued Austrian city of Graz removed the words "Arnold Schwarzenegger" from the city's football stadium after tempers flared over the California governor's refusal to spare the life of a death-row prisoner. The impromptu midnight renaming ceremony means the stadium will revert to being known simply as Stadion Graz-Liebenau, after the district of the city where it is located.

The former film star, who was born in Graz, demanded that the city remove his name from the stadium after fierce criticism from the residents of Graz of the execution of Stanley "Tookie" Williams, a multiple murderer who died by lethal injection earlier this month.

Promotional articles about Schwarzenegger have now been removed from Graz's official website but tempers remain frayed. A brief news item on the site reporting the name change prompts the pithy comment from one reader, Helmut Horn: "Good. You don't name sports stadiums after murderers."

Europe / USA