Town Hall News

By David Randall NEW YORK (Reuters) – Investors are awaiting earnings reports from consumer discretionary companies in coming weeks for a read on how the U.S. economy is faring amid persistently high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s most aggressive rate hiking cycle since the 1980s. Consumers have largely held strong over the last year even as interest rates raised costs for mortgage loans to credit card financing. Yet widespread layoffs […]

By Andrew Chung WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An evangelical Christian former mail carrier’s fight with the U.S. Postal Service over his refusal to work on Sundays gives the Supreme Court another chance to widen religious rights but also has led to a debate over whether religious people are more legally deserving than others to weekend days off from work. The justices are set to hear arguments on Tuesday in an appeal […]

(Reuters) – Ukrainian and Russian armed forces are fighting extraordinarily bloody battles in the smashed eastern city of Bakhmut, but pro-Kyiv forces are still holding on, Ukraine’s military said on Saturday. GRAIN IMPORTS * Unilateral action on trade by European Union member states is unacceptable, a European Commission spokesperson said on Sunday, after Poland and Hungary announced bans on grain and other food imports from Ukraine to protect the local […]

(Reuters) – Ukrainian and Russian armed forces are fighting extraordinarily bloody battles in the smashed eastern city of Bakhmut, but pro-Kyiv forces are still holding on, Ukraine’s military said on Saturday. GRAIN IMPORTS * Unilateral action on trade by European Union member states is unacceptable, a European Commission spokesperson said on Sunday, after Poland and Hungary announced bans on grain and other food imports from Ukraine to protect the local […]

WARSAW (Reuters) – Unilateral action on trade by European Union member states is unacceptable, a European Commission spokesperson said on Sunday, after Poland and Hungary announced bans on grain and other food imports from Ukraine to protect the local agricultural sector. After Russia’s invasion blocked some Black Sea ports, large quantities of Ukrainian grain, which is cheaper than that produced in the European Union, ended up staying in Central European […]

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – China’s electric vehicle (EV) maker Xpeng unveiled on Sunday a new platform it developed in-house for making vehicles, which it said will reduce the development and manufacturing costs for its company’s upcoming models. The Smart Electric Platform Architecture (SEPA) 2.0 will help Xpeng to reduce costs of powertrain systems including batteries by 25% and those of intelligent driving system by 50% by the end of 2024, Brian […]

LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigeria’s electoral commission on Sunday halted announcement of results in Adamawa’s state governor election and said the declaration of Aisha Dahiru as the country’s first elected female state governor was null and void. Nigerians voted for state governors on March 11 but the election in Adamawa, a largely conservative Muslim state, was inconclusive and supplementary voting was held on Saturday in 69 polling units where a little […]

TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan’s Panasonic Holdings, a battery supplier to electric vehicle maker Tesla Inc, said on Sunday that it is considering building a battery plant in Oklahoma, its third in the United States. “Panasonic has entered into an agreement with the State of Oklahoma that defines the eligibility and terms of the incentives under Oklahoma’s LEAD Act,” the company told Reuters in an email, referring to an incentive package the […]

(Reuters) -Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez apologised in an interview published on Sunday to victims of sexual abuse over a sexual violence law that included a loophole enabling at least 978 imprisoned offenders to get their sentences reduced or ended early. The “Only Yes Is Yes” law, which arose partly as a result of public outrage over the so-called Wolf Pack case, centred on consent and was meant to resolve […]