Town Hall News

MELBOURNE (Reuters) – BHP Group has teamed up with Microsoft Corp to improve copper recovery from its Escondida mine in Chile, the world’s biggest copper mine, by using machine learning and artificial intelligence, it said on Tuesday. BHP estimates the world needs to double the amount of copper produced over the next 30 years to keep pace with the development of decarbonisation technology such as electric vehicles, offshore wind and […]

By Lisandra Paraguassu and Anthony Boadle BRASILIA (Reuters) – South American presidents are gathering in Brasilia on Tuesday for their first summit in almost a decade at the invitation of Brazil’s leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who aims to regain his country’s active role in regional affairs.  Ideological divisions undermined a previous attempt at regional cooperation called Unasur created by leftist presidents in 2008 that floundered when several […]

By Uditha Jayasinghe COLOMBO (Reuters) – Sri Lanka’s central bank is expected to keep rates unchanged at its policy meeting this week as it continues to support the debt-laden economy amid persistently high inflation. The island nation defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time in April last year, as the worst financial crisis since its independence from Britain in 1948 crushed its economy. Sri Lanka secured a $2.9 […]

BEIJING (Reuters) – A private jet used by Tesla Inc CEO Elon Musk has arrived in Beijing, according to a Reuters witness.     Musk is expected to meet senior Chinese officials and visit Tesla’s Shanghai plant, sources have said, in what would be his first trip to China in three years. Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Musk had arrived in China.  It was […]

By Kirsty Needham SYDNEY (Reuters) -Papua New Guinea said a proposed security treaty with neighbour Australia would be delayed as it consults “domestic processes”, a week after signing a defence agreement with the United States that sparked student protests. Papua New Guinea (PNG), a few kilometres (miles) to Australia’s north, is being courted by China and the United States amid rising tensions between the two major powers. Washington and its […]

ZURICH (Reuters) -Switzerland’s Social Democratic Party has drawn up a proposal to shrink UBS assets after its takeover of Credit Suisse, the Aargauer Zeitung newspaper reported. The combined bank will have a balance sheet of around 1.5 trillion Swiss francs – roughly double the size of the Swiss economy, posing enormous risks to the country especially as it enjoys an implicit state guarantee, party member and lawmaker Samira Marti told […]

COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – Denmark’s government proposed on Tuesday to invest 143 billion Danish crowns ($21.14 billion) in defence over the next 10 years, in line with a pledge to meet NATO’s spending target. A founding member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Denmark scaled down its military capabilities to wage a land war in Europe after the end of the Cold War. But in response to the Ukraine crisis, it […]

By Guy Faulconbridge MOSCOW (Reuters) -Ukraine launched its biggest ever drone attack on Moscow on Tuesday but air defences destroyed all eight of the drones, bringing the 15-month war in Ukraine to the heart of the Russian capital. Drone attacks deep inside Russia have intensified in recent weeks, with strikes on oil pipeline installations and even the Kremlin earlier this month that Moscow has blamed on Ukraine. Moscow Mayor Sergei […]

By Pavel Polityuk and Max Hunder KYIV (Reuters) – Drones hit several buildings in Moscow on Tuesday causing minor damage and forcing some people to evacuate their homes, Russian officials said, while Russia launched another wave of flying bombs on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv killing one person. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the apparent attack on Moscow, which one pro-Kremlin television commentator said, without citing sources, involved […]