News Headlines - 08 April 2014

▽BBC News - New French PM Manuel Valls vows cuts in tax and spending

The new French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has vowed to cut both taxes and spending in a bid to make the French economy more competitive.

▽Need for food banks is caused by welfare cuts, research shows | The Guardian

The government's welfare reforms, including benefit sanctions and the bedroom tax, are a central factor in the explosion in the numbers of impoverished people turning to charity food banks, an academic study has said.

▽What if Angela Merkel was a heroin addict? - Telegraph

Spanish pop group Amaral have teamed up with illustrator Alberto González Vázquez to create a video for their latest single Ratonera, using cartoon illustrations to depict an alternate reality where politicians from around the world have fallen on hard times: Angela Merkel injects heroin, Barack Obama has enlisted in the Army, Silvio Berlusconi is a crack addict and Mariano Rajoy is a victim of domestic violence.

▽'World's oldest' message in a bottle arrives home - The Local

A fisherman pulled the beer bottle with the scribbled message out of the Baltic off the northern city of Kiel last month.
It contained a postcard dated May 17th, 1913 written by a man named Richard Platz.
The modest Danish postcard had two German stamps on it and a polite message asking the finder to send it on to his address in Berlin.

▽BBC News - Ebola outbreak 'most challenging' as Guinea deaths pass 100

The number of people believed to have been killed by the Ebola virus in Guinea has passed 100, the UN World Health Organization says.