Rebel News - Independent News and Analysis

A strike by British Airways' cabin crew looks inevitable as talks between a labor union and Europe's third-largest airline over pay cuts ended without agreement.

The Trades Union Congress (TUC) which is a federation of trade unions in the United Kingdom, representing the majority of trade unions, said on Wednesday that the airline rejected peace proposals aimed at averting a strike.

Spanish police have seized more than a tonne of cocaine in two separate raids. The hauls, which were being smuggled from South America, had a total street value of more than 50 million dollars. The country's demand for recreational drugs is now the highest in Europe - a statistic that the Spanish authorities are struggling to reverse. And as the drug culture expands, alarm bells are starting to ring, as Igor Ogorodnev reports.

Oil giant Total has announced the closure of its refinery in northern France but vowed to protect jobs by reassigning the workers to other plants.

As Total promised not to lay off 370 workers at the refinery, about 300 staff members stormed the company's offices in the La Défense business district near Paris on Monday.

The European Union and the block's biggest economy, Germany, plan to create a European monetary fund to help rescue debt-ridden countries such as Greece.

"The (European) Commission is ready to propose a European instrument like this that would have the support of eurozone members," the EU's Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn told the Financial Times Deutschland.

Britain says it is ready to be flexible in reaching a solution to Iceland's debts after Icelandic voters overwhelmingly rejected a referendum on the issue.

Iceland's vote on a USD 5 billion (GBP 3.4 billion) deal to repay debts to Britain and the Netherlands met with a surprising 60% turnout. Around 93% of voters said “no” to an agreement to compensate the government over the collapse of Icesave bank in 2008.

British Chamber of Commerce (BCC) has expressed concerns that recession was not a closed chapter, as the UK's economy faces a slow recovery and a high risk of relapse.

The BCC's latest fiscal forecast predicted a “highly uncertain” outlook for the UK economy, saying that it was likely to remain so “for a considerable time."

With Greece under more pressure to cut costs in dealing with its crippling debt crisis, Germany has called for the creation of a European equivalent to the International Monetary Fund.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper that an organization modeled on the IMF could help eurozone countries like Greece, as well as safeguarding and stabilizing the monetary union.

There have been some interesting movements in insurance in the last week or so, most notably the impending purchase of aig's Asian business by British giant Prudential. Counting the Cost looks at the impact this news has had on Prudential's share price. Plus, why the slogan "the car in front is a Toyota" really could not be truer in Middle East.

The French national statistics office says the jobless rate in mainland France has seen a sharp rise, hitting 9.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009.

This the highest unemployment level in the country in 10 years, rising from 9.1 percent in the third quarter, INSEE said Thursday.

After a controversial ruling by the European Commission, the first genetically modified potato has been approved to be grown in the EU.

German chemical maker BASF won approval for cultivation of the genetically modified organism (GMO) in the European Union to end a 13-year wait.