Town Hall News

By Selena Li and Lawrence White HONG KONG/London (Reuters) – Standard Chartered PLC (StanChart) on Wednesday said first-quarter profit jumped 21%, beating expectations, as rising interest rates buoyed income from its cash management and retail banking businesses. Chief Executive Bill Winters said he now expects income for the emerging markets-focused lender to grow around 10% this year, the top of a previously guided range.  The earnings update showed how rising […]

By Duncan Miriri MALINDI, Kenya (Reuters) – Dozens of people converged on a morgue in the Kenyan town of Malindi on Wednesday to seek news of relatives they fear were among at least 89 followers of a cult who are thought to have starved themselves to death in the hope of going to heaven. The morgue has rapidly filled up since authorities started digging up human remains on Friday from […]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The civil trial of a nearly 30-year-old rape claim against Donald Trump is expected to resume on Wednesday, including the start of testimony expected to feature the woman accusing the former U.S. president of raping her and then lying about it. E. Jean Carroll, a former Elle magazine advice columnist, has said Trump maneuvered her into a Bergdorf Goodman department store dressing room in late 1995 […]

MOSCOW/HELSINKI (Reuters) -Russia seized temporary control of assets of Finnish energy group Fortum and its former German subsidiary Uniper, sowing confusion over the fate of other Western companies in Russia as pressure grows to hit Moscow with more sanctions over Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin late on Tuesday signed a decree establishing temporary control of the Russian assets of the two European state-owned energy firms. Fortum said it was “investigating” and […]

By Fergal Smith TORONTO (Reuters) – Canadian inflation excluding food and energy costs is expected to remain above 3% until the fourth quarter of this year, the median forecast of seven economists recently surveyed by Reuters showed, which could dash hopes of an early Bank of Canada shift to cutting interest rates. While Canadian inflation has cooled in recent months, much of the relief has come from lower energy prices, […]

(Reuters) – Armenia has appealed to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) over Azerbaijan’s installation of a checkpoint on the only road linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian media reported on Wednesday. The checkpoint on the road, known as the Lachin corridor, was set up on Sunday. The two countries have fought two wars since the collapse of the Soviet Union over Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave that is internationally recognised as part […]

MOSCOW/HELSINKI (Reuters) -Russia seized temporary control of assets of Finnish energy group Fortum and its former German subsidiary Uniper, sowing confusion over the fate of other Western companies in Russia as pressure grows to hit Moscow with more sanctions over Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin late on Tuesday signed a decree establishing temporary control of the Russian assets of the two European state-owned energy firms. Fortum said it was “investigating” and […]

By Noel Randewich and Akash Sriram (Reuters) -Microsoft Corp and Google-parent Alphabet Inc talked up investments in artificial intelligence (AI) for the second quarter in a row but their results on Tuesday suggested that any substantial additions to sales will be slow. The tech behemoths have launched an array of products that they promise are packed with generative AI, which creates brand new content – text, image, code – from […]

MOSCOW (Reuters) – JPMorgan Chase & Co received permission from the United States to process payments for Russian Agricultural Bank but such an avenue cannot replace the reconnection of the bank the SWIFT payment system, a Russian source told Reuters. Reconnecting the bank to SWIFT is one of Russia’s key demands in a negotiation over the future of the Black Sea grain deal. Moscow has repeatedly warned the deal will […]