Town Hall News

By Aatrayee Chatterjee (Reuters) -Kraft Heinz Co raised its full-year profit forecast on Wednesday on the back of higher prices and sustained demand for its packaged food items as raw material costs, which have plagued the industry, also ease. Shares of the Philadelphia Cream Cheese maker were up 3.9% in early trading after it also reported better-than-expected quarterly results. The packaged food maker, like other U.S. peers such as Kellogg, […]

By Stephanie Kelly NEW YORK (Reuters) – Oil prices fell 4% on Wednesday, extending steep losses from the previous session, as investors fretted about the health of the U.S. economy ahead of an expected Federal Reserve interest rate hike later in the day. Brent futures fell $3.04, or 4%, to $72.28 a barrel by 10:54 a.m. EDT (1454 GMT). The global benchmark hit a session low of $72.21 a barrel, […]

(Reuters) -Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co is in talks with partners to invest as much as 10 billion euros ($11.04 billion) to build a chip fabrication plant in Germany, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The venture between TSMC, NXP Semiconductors NV, Robert Bosch GmbH and Infineon Technologies AG will have a budget of at least 7 billion euros, including state subsidies, but is likely to […]

By Karl Plume and Sourasis Bose (Reuters) -Agricultural commodities trader Bunge Ltd beat Wall Street estimates for first-quarter profit on Wednesday, helped by strong crush margins in North America and Brazil as well as high demand for food, feed and biofuels. But earnings were down from a record first quarter last year due to weaker oilseed processing results in Asia, Europe and drought-hit Argentina and disruptions to grain flows caused […]

By Philip Pullella VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis on Wednesday spoke to a top member of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) days after the pontiff made an intriguing though puzzling comment about the Vatican being involved in a mission to try to end the war in Ukraine. Metropolitan (bishop) Anthony, effectively the ROC’s number two, was given pride of place at Francis’s general audience in St. Peter’s Square and […]

By Ivana Sekularac and Aleksandar Vasovic BELGRADE (Reuters) -A boy gunned down fellow pupils in a Belgrade school on Wednesday morning in a pre-planned attack, shooting dead eight plus a security guard and wounding seven others, Serbian officials said. Using two handguns that belonged to his father, the 14-year-old fired first at the guard and three girls in the hallway and then entered a history class and shot the teacher […]

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s antitrust regulator was on Wednesday refused permission to appeal against a ruling that it had no power to open an investigation into Apple Inc’s mobile browser and cloud gaming services. Apple won an appeal in March against the decision by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to open a full investigation into the dominance of Apple and Alphabet Inc’s Google in mobile browsers. The Competition Appeal Tribunal […]

By Anne Kauranen and Max Hunder HELSINKI/KYIV (Reuters) -President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Wednesday Ukraine would launch a counteroffensive against Russian forces soon, and that he was sure the West would supply Kyiv with modern warplanes afterwards. Speaking at a news conference in Finland, NATO’s newest member, Zelenskiy said that one of the reasons he had travelled to Helsinki was that Kyiv wanted to become a fully fledged member of […]

(Reuters) -Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta has supplanted Sicily’s Cosa Nostra as the country’s most powerful mafia organisation, and has spread across Europe and the rest of the world. Here are a few facts about the fearsome group. ORIGIN, CELEBRITY KIDNAPPING AND COCAINE The ‘Ndrangheta originates from Calabria, the impoverished southern region at the tip of Italy’s boot. Its name is believed to come from the ancient Greek words “andros” and “agathos”, meaning […]