Town Hall News

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -It will likely be difficult to determine who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia and Germany in the Baltic Sea last year, Sweden’s prosecution authority, which is investigating the incident, said on Thursday. The Sept. 26 explosions at the pipelines connecting Russia and Germany occurred in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark. The blast in the Swedish zone happened at a depth of 80 meters […]

DUBLIN (Reuters) – Aircraft leasing company Avolon on Thursday said the reopening of China after it eased strict COVID-19 rules has boosted levels of leasing and trading activity. The company added three customers in the first quarter for a total of 147 airlines and executed 31 lease transactions, it said in a business update. “The year has started with positive momentum as airline passenger growth continues and the impact of […]

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -It will likely be difficult to determine who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines connecting Russia and Germany in the Baltic Sea last year, Sweden’s prosecution authority, which is investigating the incident, said on Thursday. The Sept. 26 explosions at the pipelines connecting Russia and Germany occurred in the economic zones of Sweden and Denmark. The blast in the Swedish zone happened at a depth of 80 meters […]

By Michel Rose and Laurie Chen BEIJING (Reuters) -French President Emmanuel Macron and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen began a series of meetings with Chinese leaders in Beijing on Thursday, talks that could set a new course for the bloc’s relations with China after years of strained ties. Newly appointed Premier Li Qiang greeted Macron at the Great Hall of the People, a cavernous building west of Tiananmen Square […]

RABAT (Reuters) – The Casablanca derby between Wydad and Raja is usually one of the best-attended matches in Morocco but there were swathes of empty terraces at Stade Mohammed V on Wednesday after fans of Wydad boycotted the match in protest at high ticket prices. Raja, who were officially the home team for the clash at the stadium the two teams share, doubled the price of the cheapest tickets and […]

By Justin Dralaze BIDI BIDI, Uganda (Reuters) – Watering the neat lines of green salad leaves outside her thatched home, Susan Konga, a South Sudanese woman living in a refugee camp in northern Uganda, is preparing her kitchen garden for the next harvest. This year the success of her tireless cultivation will be put to the test – complete self-sufficiency. Global crises like the war in Ukraine, the earthquake in […]

By Silvia Aloisi PARIS (Reuters) – France braced for a new round of nationwide protests and strikes on Thursday after a meeting between the prime minister and labour unions failed to break a political stalemate over a deeply unpopular pension bill making people work for longer. Protests against the reform – which lifts the retirement age by two years to 64 – have drawn crowds of hundreds of thousands in […]

BEIJING/DUBAI (Reuters) – The foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia met in Beijing for the first formal meeting of their most senior diplomats in more than seven years, CCTV news reported on Thursday, after a China-brokered deal to restore ties between the regional rivals. After years of hostility that fuelled conflicts across the Middle East, Tehran and Riyadh agreed to end their diplomatic rift and re-open embassies in a […]

BEIJING (Reuters) – Among the French business executives travelling to Beijing with President Emmanuel Macron, the mood was cautiously sanguine on the thawing post-pandemic trade prospects with China, with some rejecting American-led calls for ‘decoupling’. Macron travelled to China with a 50-strong delegation of business leaders including the CEOs of Airbus, Alstom and EDF, raising eyebrows among some diplomats that this could blur the message of firmness the West wants […]