Town Hall News

By Tom Westbrook and Stella Qiu SINGAPORE/SYDNEY (Reuters) – The end of China’s strict COVID-19 border controls is prompting pent-up cash to begin flowing abroad, real estate agents and property data from Australia to Singapore suggest. Chinese demand is helping boost Singapore property prices, Chinese students are snapping up apartments in Sydney and Melbourne, and agents say Chinese interest is ticking up in Thailand. Data on the early trickle of […]

BEIJING(Reuters) – China’s factory activity growth stalled in March, weighed by slowing production and weaker global demand and adding to uncertainty about a post-COVID recovery, a private sector survey showed on Monday. The Caixin/S&P Global manufacturing purchasing managers’ index (PMI) fell to 50.0 in March. That followed February’s reading of 51.6, which indicated the first monthly expansion in seven months. The reading far missed expectations of 51.7 in a Reuters […]

CAIRO (Reuters) – Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is travelling to Saudi Arabia on Sunday, according to three diplomatic sources, as Cairo continues to seek financial inflows to ease pressure on its currency and bolster a faltering economy. Oil-rich Saudi Arabia has long provided financial support to Egypt but recently signalled it would no longer provide such backing without strings attached, which observers think may have sparked a rare media […]

By Ira Dugal and Ankur Banerjee MUMBAI (Reuters) – Mumbai resident Shivam Vahia cannot remember the last time he left home to shop. He spends about 30,000 rupees ($364) a month buying necessities like groceries, clothes and gadgets, all by tapping a few buttons on his mobile phone. “My only offline spends are bars and restaurants, when I go to meet friends,” said the 24-year-old engineering graduate. Vahia is one […]

By Jonathan Allen and Karen Freifeld NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York City police have thrown up metal barriers around Trump Tower and blocked roads near Manhattan Criminal Courthouse as they brace for potential protests ahead of Donald Trump’s expected surrender to prosecutors on Tuesday. The former president is due to be arraigned at the courthouse Tuesday afternoon, after his indictment in a grand jury probe over hush money paid […]

By Ira Dugal and Ankur Banerjee MUMBAI (Reuters) – Mumbai resident Shivam Vahia cannot remember the last time he left home to shop. He spends about 30,000 rupees ($364) a month buying necessities like groceries, clothes and gadgets, all by tapping a few buttons on his mobile phone. “My only offline spends are bars and restaurants, when I go to meet friends,” said the 24-year-old engineering graduate. Vahia is one […]

SEOUL (Reuters) – The navies of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan will hold two days of anti-submarine exercises starting Monday to better counter North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile capabilities, South Korea’s defence ministry said. The drills will be staged in international waters off South Korea’s southern island of Jeju, involving a U.S. carrier strike group led by USS Nimitz, which had arrived in the southeastern city of Busan […]

(Reuters) – Russia will move its tactical nuclear weapons close to the western borders of Belarus, the Russian envoy to Minsk said on Sunday, placing them at NATO’s threshold in a move likely to further escalate Moscow’s standoff with the West. In one of the Russia’s most pronounced nuclear signals since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago, President Vladimir Putin said on March 26 that Russia […]

(Reuters) – Russia will move its tactical nuclear weapons close to the western borders of Belarus, the Russian envoy to Minsk said on Sunday, placing them at NATO’s threshold in a move likely to further escalate Moscow’s standoff with the West. In one of the Russia’s most pronounced nuclear signals since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine 13 months ago, President Vladimir Putin said on March 26 that Russia […]