Town Hall News

DUBAI (Reuters) – Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy landed on Friday in Jeddah to attend an Arab League summit, Saudi-owned al-Hadath TV reported. Zelenskiy arrived on a French government plane. He is also due to attend the G7 leaders’ summit in the Japanese city of Hiroshima this weekend. Gulf states have tried to remain neutral in the Ukraine conflict despite Western pressure on Gulf oil producers to help isolate Russia, a […]

SYDNEY (Reuters) -A 95-year-old grandmother who Australian police tasered at a retirement home is in critical condition as the homicide squad join a high-profile investigation into the incident, police said on Friday. Police were called to the Yallambee aged care home in Cooma, about 300 km (186 miles) southwest of Sydney, on Wednesday after staff found resident, Clare Nowland, outside her room holding a steak-knife, New South Wales police assistant […]

By Mark Gleeson JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – Africa will employ a single stage of World Cup qualification for the next finals in 2026, doing away with three rounds previously for a format that will take almost two years to complete. The continent will have nine places at the expanded 48-team tournament in North America and have decided on a format of nine groups, where the winner alone will qualify for the […]

SEOUL (Reuters) – Defectors who fled North Korea early this month decided to do so because of the country’s strict COVID-19 controls, South Korea’s spy agency said on Friday. The group of North Koreans, nearly 10 people, crossed the border by ship on the night of May 6, crossing the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea, news agency Yonhap reported. “The defectors testified that they used to watch South […]

By Katya Golubkova and John Irish HIROSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will attend the Group of Seven (G7) Hiroshima summit this weekend, Ukrainian and Western officials said, putting fresh pressure on Russia against the backdrop of a city synonymous with the horrors of nuclear war. Zelenskiy will attend on Sunday, two officials involved in the G7 summit said, declining to be identified because of the sensitivity of […]

By Leika Kihara TOKYO (Reuters) -Bank of Japan (BOJ) Governor Kazuo Ueda said the central bank is unwavering in its stance of patiently maintaining ultra-loose monetary policy, reassuring markets Japan will be a dovish outlier as its global peers combat stubbornly high inflation. The recent rise in Japanese inflation above the BOJ’s 2% target is driven mostly by cost-push factors rather than strong domestic demand, Ueda said, adding that responding […]

JAKARTA (Reuters) – Prominent Cambodian opposition figure Sam Rainsy on Friday denounced the upcoming general election as a “fake and sham” after the country’s the sole opposition party was disqualified from the race this week. The Candlelight Party was disqualified by the election commission on Monday over what the poll body said was failure to submit proper registration documents, a move critics have said threatens to undermine democracy and political […]

By Andrew Hay (Reuters) – The hammer of the gun actor Alec Baldwin was holding when it fired a live round killing “Rust” cinematographer Halyna Hutchins may have been intentionally modified, New Mexico special prosecutors said in a court filing this week. The comments came a month after prosecutors dropped a criminal charge against Baldwin over Hutchins’ death in 2021, citing new evidence. A source close to the case at […]

(Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy will attend the Group of Seven (G7) Hiroshima summit this weekend, Ukrainian and Western officials said, putting fresh pressure on Russia against the backdrop of a city synonymous with the horrors of nuclear war. SUPPORT FOR UKRAINE * G7 leaders said they had ensured that Ukraine had the budget support it needs for this year and early 2024. “Today we are taking new steps […]