Town Hall News

By Can Sezer and Orhan Coskun ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Turks voted in a pivotal election on Sunday, poised either to unseat President Tayyip Erdogan and halt his government’s increasingly authoritarian path or usher in a third decade of his rule. The vote will decide not only who leads Turkey, a NATO-member country of 85 million, but also how it is governed, where its economy is headed amid a deep cost of […]

By Can Sezer and Orhan Coskun ISTANBUL (Reuters) -Turks voted in a pivotal election on Sunday, poised either to unseat President Tayyip Erdogan and halt his government’s increasingly authoritarian path or usher in a third decade of his rule. The vote will decide not only who leads Turkey, a NATO-member country of 85 million, but also how it is governed, where its economy is headed amid a deep cost of […]

By Ezgi Erkoyun and Oriana Boselli ISTANBUL/HATAY, Turkey (Reuters) – Mehmet Ali Fakioglu was made homeless by an earthquake that hit Turkey in February, but made a 15-hour journey back to the disaster zone to vote on Sunday, recalling the fear he felt when the catastrophe struck and his anger that help was slow to come. Fakioglu, who has been staying with his son in Istanbul since leaving his home […]

BAMAKO (Reuters) – Mali’s interim military government has rejected a United Nations human rights office report on the alleged execution of at least 500 people by Malian soldiers and unidentified foreign fighters during an operation last year. The ruling junta was responding to a report released on Friday after a months-long investigation into what rights groups described as the worst atrocity in a 10-year conflict between Islamist groups and the […]

By Pavel Polityuk and Sarah Marsh KYIV/BERLIN (Reuters) -Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday Kyiv and its Western supporters could make a Russian defeat in the war in Ukraine “irreversible” as early as this year and thanked Germany for being a “true friend” during a visit to Berlin. Zelenskiy secured a large military boost on his visit, with the German government announcing a 2.7 billion euro ($3 billion) of […]

(Reuters) – Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Sunday that Ukrainian forces made “mass attempts” to break through its defences in the eastern city of Bakhmut over the past 24 hours, as pressure on its troops continued to mount. It said in a briefing that Ukraine had waged attacks in the north and south of the city, but that they had not broken through Russian defences. “All attacks by units of […]

KYIV (Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Sunday that Kyiv and its Western supporters could make Russia’s defeat in the war in Ukraine “irreversible” this year, as he thanked Germany for its military support. The Ukrainian leader told a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Berlin that Kyiv would always be grateful to Germany for its support during Russia’s full-scale invasion. “Now is the time for […]

By Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam KARACHI (Reuters) – Pakistan’s external financing requirements have not been changed in talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) over bailout funds, the IMF Resident Representative in Pakistan said, denying local media reports that the Fund was seeking fresh financing. “There is no truth to reports that the IMF is asking Pakistan to raise $8 billion in fresh financing,” Esther Pérez Ruiz said in a text […]

By Chayut Setboonsarng and Kwang Jiraporn Kuhakan BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thais were forecast to have voted in record numbers on Sunday in an election expected to deliver big gains for opposition forces, an outcome that would test the resolve of a pro-military establishment central to two decades of intermittent turmoil. Voting closed at 5 p.m. local time (1000 GMT), with the Election Commission earlier projecting a turnout of 80% among […]