A top Spanish official said Monday that Sunday's agreement on details of a Greek bailout package showed the euro zone won't allow the default of a member nation, Dow Jones reported. "It shows the unanimous decision of the European Union, and especially the euro zone, to support financial stability, and it leaves no room for the hypothesis that a euro-zone country could ever default," Diego Lopez Garrido, secretary of state for European affairs, said Monday.

Canwest Global Communications Corp.’s insolvent newspaper division won an extension of bankruptcy protection until June 30 to let it complete an auction for the publications, BusinessWeek reported on a Bloomberg story. Ontario Superior Court Judge Sarah Pepall granted the extension today following a hearing in Toronto. The bankruptcy protection, first granted Jan. 8, was due to expire April 14. Canwest Global agreed to sell Canwest Ltd.

Finally there is a deal. It came late, and only after the financial markets – and a rating agency – forced the European Union to put up or shut up. It will provide Greece with emergency loans at a rate of about 5 per cent, which is lower than present market rates. There is no agreement yet about the overall amount of money to be disbursed. But I hear that the total figure will be much larger than has been widely reported – somewhere between €50bn and €60bn, the Financial Times reported in a commentary. It is not the worst conceivable deal.

The Reykjavik City Theatre is to embark on a marathon performance on Monday in a radical break from its usual productions, which have recently included King Lear and Waiting for Godot. Shortly after Monday’s release of a report into the causes of Iceland’s 2008 banking crisis, actors will start reading the 2,000-page inquiry findings. They will continue around the clock until every word is told. It could take five days, the Financial Times reported.

Top Russian oil producer OAO Rosneft said a U.K. court lifted an order freezing GBP425 million ($648 million) of its assets, the latest twist in a legal battle with an affiliate of bankrupt Russian oil giant Yukos, Dow Jones Daily Bankruptcy Review reported. The freeze had been obtained last month by Netherlands-based Yukos Capital S.a.r.l., which is seeking to recover a $389 million debt Rosneft assumed when it acquired Yukos assets in 2004. Rosneft had refused to comply with an arbitration award by a Dutch court ordering it to repay the sum, plus interest and penalties.

The UK subsidiary of the Reader's Digest magazine has been bought out of administration by Better Capital, Jon Moulton's new turnround private equity group, the Financial Times reported. The £13m deal is Mr Moulton's second investment since he floated Better Capital in London last year. Reader's Digest UK filed for administration in February after failing to secure backing from the pensions regulator for a deal to fund its £125m pension deficit.

As interest rates on Greek debt spiral upward again, the question facing Europe is no longer whether Athens has the political will to cut spending and raise taxes to curb its gaping budget deficit, but whether Greece will run out of money before it gets the chance to do so, The New York Times DealBook blog reported. With the rate on 10-year Greek bonds reaching as high as 7.5 percent on Thursday, up from 6.5 just three days ago, the cost of insuring against a Greek default hit a record high.

Songbird Peggy Lee never offered herself as an economic forecaster, but her famous 1947 hit song, "Mañana," included such prophetic lines as "My pocket needs some money; once I had some money; my brother isn't working"—all to be attended to mañana. Which seems to be the theme song of Spain's socialist prime minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, The Wall Street Journal reported.

The euro has been under pressure this week after media reported Greece wanted to renegotiate a joint EU-International Monetary Fund aid deal reached last month, Reuters reported. Greece denied the reports, but that has had little impact. On Tuesday, the yield spread between 10-year Greek and German government bonds at one point exceeded 4 percentage points, the widest since the euro's launch. Greece needs to sell more bonds to meet its funding needs. It has raised about 23 billion euros of a projected 2010 requirement of 53.2 billion euros.

Irish house prices may continue to fall for another 18 months according to Brian Lucey, professor of finance at the Trinity College School of Business, Finfacts reported. Lucey says in a commentary in the latest Daft.ie report that on the basis of a straight line projection of average declines in value since the peak, another 18 months of declining prices would be expected."That would be 50 months of house price falls, or just over 4 years, towards the lower end of historical experience.