Town Hall News

By Julien Pretot and Shrivathsa Sridhar PARIS (Reuters) -The fickle Paris crowd made themselves heard on day one of the French Open as they booed and jeered when Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk refused to shake hands after her first-round match against Aryna Sabalenka of Belarus on Sunday. Kostyuk had warned she would not do so with Russian and Belarusian players due to Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour and she kept her […]

NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Several of India’s top wrestlers, including Olympic medallists Bajrang Punia and Sakshi Malik, were detained by police on Sunday as they intensified their protest demanding the arrest of their federation chief over sexual harassment allegations. The wrestlers originally hit the street in January demanding action again Wrestling Federation of India (WFI) President Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, who has denied allegations of sexually harassing several female athletes. […]

LONDON (Reuters) – Two Just Stop Oil protesters were charged with aggravated trespass after they briefly brought Saturday’s Rugby Premiership final at the Twickenham stadium in London to a halt by hurling orange powder on the pitch during the match. Samuel Johnson, 40, from Suffolk in southeast England and Patrick Hart, 37, from Bristol were charged after taking to the pitch to throw orange powder around, the capital’s Metropolitan Police […]

By Shrivathsa Sridhar PARIS (Reuters) – Belarus’ Aryna Sabalenka powered into the second round of the French Open with a 6-3 6-2 win over Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk in a feisty clash to start the year’s second Grand Slam on Sunday, but was left perplexed by jeering from some parts of the crowd. Some booing and jeering could be heard after the match as Kostyuk refused to shake hands with her […]

By David Lawder DETROIT (Reuters) -The United States is taking an analytical approach to its review of whether to keep tariffs on Chinese goods in place and will not base outcomes on any “breakthrough” in U.S.-China trade relations, Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Sarah Bianchi told Reuters. The Biden administration is not assuming any such breakthrough will happen, but will continue dialogue with China at various levels, Bianchi said in an […]

MOGADISHU (Reuters) – Somalia will start electing its president and other officials by direct vote next year, the government announced on Sunday, ending a system of indirect voting in the Horn of Africa country that has endured three decades of conflict and clan battles. Amid widespread insecurity caused by an Islamist insurgency and weak state structures, in recent years lawmakers voted for the president, while clan heads and elders elected […]

By Ece Toksabay and Can Sezer ANKARA (Reuters) – Turks voted on Sunday in a presidential runoff that could see Tayyip Erdogan extend his rule into a third decade and persist with Turkey’s increasingly authoritarian path, muscular foreign policy and unorthodox economic governance. Erdogan, 69, defied opinion polls and came out ahead with an almost five-point lead over his rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the first round on May 14. But […]

By Alan Baldwin MONACO (Reuters) – Formula One rivals hope to discover some of dominant Red Bull’s most closely guarded secrets from photographs of the underside of Sergio Perez’s car after it was craned off the Monaco Grand Prix circuit. The floor is the most aerodynamically sensitive area of the car, with ground-effect sculpting responsible for much of the performance. It is also the hardest part for rival teams to […]

By Shrivathsa Sridhar PARIS (Reuters) – Aryna Sabalenka took her time to get going but powered into the second round of the French Open with a comprehensive 6-3 6-2 win over Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk in a feisty clash to begin the year’s second Grand Slam on Sunday. Sabalenka appeared to be in a spot of bother on serve early on and fell behind 2-3, but the unseeded Kostyuk could not […]