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London / afp Londoners are getting desperate over rising rents, with residents and students taking to the streets and social media over the cramped conditions tenants are forced to accept. With house-building lagging well behind the population increase in western Europe’s biggest city, prices are soaring beyond anything affordable. “The situation is becoming untenable,” said retired teacher John Ford, 60, ...

LONDON / AFP Europe’s airline sector is on course for further consolidation, while the region offers “massive opportunities” for growth, according to Carolyn McCall, chief executive of British budget airline EasyJet. “I definitely think there will be consolidation in Europe,” McCall told AFP in a recent interview held in EasyJet’s headquarters at Luton airport, north of London. And she believes ...

Bloomberg Ikea avoided paying at least 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) in taxes owed to nations in the European Union over the past six years, the EU’s Green party said as it sought a government investigation of findings in a report it commissioned. The Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament said the world’s biggest furniture retailer is using loopholes to ...

Bloomberg China’s retail sales over the Spring Festival holiday rose 11.2 percent from the same vacation period a year earlier, with cinemas posting sharp increases in box- office sales, the country’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement Saturday. Retail sales and restaurant receipts in the world’s second- largest economy totaled about 754 billion yuan ($115 billion) in the week-long ...

SINGAPORE /Bloomberg Airlines in Southeast Asia may need to push back delivery of aircraft after a decade of economic growth and optimism about a surge in air travel prompted them to order hundreds of jets from Airbus Group SE and Boeing Co. Carriers in the region that includes Indonesia and Malaysia are now confronted with challenges such as overcapacity and ...

HAVANA / AP The United States and Cuba will sign an agreement next week to resume commercial air traffic for the first time in five decades, starting the clock on dozens of new flights operating daily by next fall, US officials said. US Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx is scheduled to fly to Havana on Tuesday to cement the deal. Barring ...

AMULREE / AFP Tam O’Braan has had several lives. Having been a soldier, an agronomist and an entrepreneur, he now grows tea in the foothills of the Scottish Highlands, and is the envy of those who once called him crazy. Four years since he began growing tea at Dalreoch, a former sheep farm close to the small Scottish village of ...

Seoul / AFP As the mercury outside plunges to minus 10 degrees on an ice-cold Monday afternoon, the dance floor inside the Kukilgwan Palace is packed with grey-haired Korean couples moving to the rhythms of high-volume disco. “I come here every day of the week, except for Saturday and Sunday,” said 81-year-old Jun Il-Taek as he danced beneath the giant ...

Bloomberg Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said his country is in a new cold war with the US and its allies, while NATO’s chief said Russia is using its nuclear arsenal to intimidate Europe. The clash, with echoes of superpower rhetoric during the 20th century, played out at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday even as Russia, Europe and the ...

Abu Dhabi / WAM The Abu Dhabi General Service Company (Musanada) has announced that the construction of AED2.1 billion new highway linking Abu Dhabi and Dubai is 70 percent complete. The road, spanning from Seih Shuaib to Sweihan Interchange, is expected to be completed by the end of this year, according to Musanada. Eng. Faisal Ahmed Al Suwaidi, Director-General of ...