Town Hall News

By Lucy Craymer WELLINGTON (Reuters) -A fire at a hostel in New Zealand killed at least six people on Tuesday and officials said they believe the toll could rise with 11 people still missing. The blaze broke out on the top floor of Loafers Lodge in the Wellington neighbourhood of Newtown just after midnight, police said. The cause of the fire is not known. “This is a once-in-a-decade fire for […]

By Tom Bateman and Akiko Okamoto HIROSHIMA, Japan (Reuters) – Standing at the front of a dimly lit room in the basement of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Teruko Yahata’s voice broke as she recalled the morning her world changed, on August 6, 1945. “All of a sudden, the entire sky flashed and was illuminated in bluish-white, as if the heavens had become one huge, fluorescent light,” the 85-year-old, speaking […]

SYDNEY (Reuters) -A measure of Australian consumer sentiment fell in May after a surprise hike in interest rates by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and a “mildly disappointing” federal budget clouded the outlook for family finances and the economy. The Westpac-Melbourne Institute index of consumer sentiment out on Tuesday slid 7.9% in May from April, with the index falling to just above the levels seen in March, which recorded […]

TOKYO (Reuters) -Shares in Rakuten Group Inc fell 6% early on Tuesday, extending the previous day’s sharp slide after Reuters reported the company would issue new shares to shore up its finances after years of losses from its mobile business. The Japanese e-commerce and fintech company’s board could meet as early as this week to decide on the capital raising, which is expected to raise roughly 300 billion yen ($2.2 […]

By David Morgan, Jeff Mason and Andy Sullivan WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden and Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday prepared for critical debt-ceiling talks, with a little more than two weeks to go before the U.S. government could run short of money to pay its bills. Democratic and Republican staff were working to find common ground on spending levels and energy regulations before a 3 p.m. […]

By Sarah N. Lynch WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The FBI lacked “actual evidence” to investigate Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and relied too heavily on tips provided by Trump’s political opponents to fuel the probe, U.S. Special Counsel John Durham concluded in a report released on Monday. The report marks the end of a four-year probe launched in May 2019 when then-Attorney General William Barr appointed Durham, a veteran prosecutor, to probe […]

TOKYO (Reuters) – Shares in Rakuten Group Inc fell as much as 5.1% in early Tokyo trading on Tuesday, a day after Reuters reported the company is finalising plans to issue new shares to shore up its finances after years of losses from its mobile business. The Japanese e-commerce and fintech company’s board could meet as early as this week to decide on the capital raising, which is expected to […]

By Ana Mano, Carolina Pulice and Peter Frontini (Reuters) -Brazil, the world’s top chicken exporter, has for the first time confirmed Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) cases but only in wild birds, the Agriculture Ministry said on Monday. Two cases were detected in wild birds and should not trigger a ban on imports of Brazilian poultry products as per guidelines from the World Organization for Animal Health (WOAH), according to […]

By Andrew Hay (Reuters) -An 18-year-old gunman shot three people to death and wounded six others, including two police officers, in a northwest New Mexico town on Monday before police shot him dead outside a church a short time later, police said. The late-morning shooting spree unfolded in a residential area of Farmington, New Mexico, about 180 miles (290 km) northwest of Albuquerque. Police responded “to find a chaotic scene […]