Town Hall News

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the country’s number two diplomat, said on Friday she will retire at the end of June after three decades in Washington’s foreign policy establishment. Sherman is the first woman to serve in her current role, in which she has headed up the Biden administration’s diplomacy with China and led unsuccessful talks with Russia to avert Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of […]

(Reuters) – Deposits at U.S. banks climbed in early May, ticking up from the lowest level in nearly two years while bank lending was little changed at a record level, Federal Reserve data released on Friday showed. Deposits climbed to $17.16 trillion in the week ended May 3, up about $67 billion to mark the first increase in four weeks, the Fed’s weekly snapshot of the banking system’s assets and […]

By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Washington standoff over raising the U.S. government’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit is adding to global economic worries, as a new non-partisan congressional report cited “significant risk” of a historic default within the first two weeks of June. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office report, issued Friday morning, confirms Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s earlier warnings that a default could come as early as June 1. […]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. military will work to bolster the defensive posture in the Gulf region following Iran’s seizure and harassment of commercial shipping vessels in recent months, U.S. officials said on Friday. In the past two years, Iran has harassed, attacked or interfered with the navigational rights of 15 internationally flagged commercial vessels, officials said. “The Department of Defense will be making a series of moves to bolster our […]

By Michael Erman and Bhanvi Satija NEW YORK (Reuters) -Pfizer Inc Chief Executive Albert Bourla called U.S. plans to negotiate drug prices for its Medicare health program “negotiation with a gun to your head” and said he expects drugmakers to sue in an attempt to halt the process. “It is not negotiation at all. It is price setting,” Bourla said at a Reuters newsmaker event on Thursday, referring to the […]

By Dawn Chmielewski and Sheila Dang (Reuters) – Elon Musk has named former NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino as Twitter’s new CEO, as the company tries to reverse a plunge in ad revenue. Yaccarino will take over a social media platform beset with challenges and a heavy debt load, after she spent several years modernizing the advertising business at NBCUniversal, which is owned by Comcast Corp. “I am excited to […]

By Luc Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters) -A former U.S. Marine sergeant who killed a homeless man by putting him in a chokehold on the New York City subway was charged with manslaughter on Friday in a Manhattan criminal court, hours after he surrendered to police. A viral video showed Daniel Penny putting 30-year-old Jordan Neely in a chokehold on May 1 while they rode on an F train in Manhattan. […]

By Martyn Herman WOBURN, England (Reuters) – Ireland’s Brendan Lawlor prevailed in a thrilling head-to-head battle with England’s Kipp Popert to claim the inaugural G4D Open title for golfers with disabilities at Woburn’s Duchess course on Friday. The overnight leader by a stroke, the 26-year-old Lawlor began with three bogeys and when Popert birdied the third, he trailed by two strokes on a cold and blustery day. But Lawlor, ranked […]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – XCast Labs, a company accused of helping make billions of illegal robocalls, was sued on Friday by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, which asked the court to order the company to stop the practice. XCast, a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) provider, is accused of helping other companies, at least one of which falsely claimed to be a government entity, reach out to people on the National […]