Town Hall News

(Reuters) – Explosions were heard in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and other cities in the early hours of Thursday morning, officials and media outlets said, with some local authorities reporting that anti-aircraft defences were at work. Russia has regularly bombarded Ukraine since October last year, striking at a variety of targets. The latest blasts were reported less than 24 hours after Kyiv said 21 people died in a Russian strike […]

By Mohamed Nureldin and Nafisa Eltahir KHARTOUM (Reuters) -The United Nations pressed Sudan’s warring factions on Wednesday to guarantee safe passage of humanitarian aid after six trucks were looted and air strikes in the capital undermined a supposed truce. U.N. aid chief Martin Griffiths said he hoped to have face-to-face meetings with Sudan’s warring parties within two to three days to secure guarantees from them for aid convoys to deliver […]

(Reuters) – Part of an oil refinery in southern Russia is on fire after it was hit by a drone attack, Tass news agency cited local emergency services as saying early on Thursday. Tass said the incident occurred at the Ilsky refinery near the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk. It cited a source as saying a fuel reservoir was on fire but gave no details. Ukraine rarely claims responsibility for […]

By Samuel Shen and Liz Lee SHANGHAI (Reuters) -China’s tourism rebounded to pre-COVID 19 levels in the May Day holiday as the number of domestic trips rose by more than two-thirds from a year earlier, government data showed on Wednesday, a welcome boost for the world’s second-biggest economy. If sustained, a recovery in the service sector could ease worries that China’s post-pandemic economic recovery could soon lose momentum with the […]

By Sarah Morland MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -Mexico’s president asked his U.S. counterpart Joe Biden to stop the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) from funding groups hostile to his government, according to a letter presented to journalists on Wednesday, echoing previous Mexican criticism of U.S. interventionism. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador did not specify which Mexican groups the U.S. should stop funding, but he has in the past accused […]

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) -Proxy advisory firm ISS on Wednesday recommended Tesla investors vote against re-election of board chair Robyn Denholm, citing concerns about a lack of the board’s oversight over the pledging of some company stocks by CEO Elon Musk and his brother Kimbal Musk. “Pledging does inherently pose risks to ordinary shareholders, and the likelihood of a forced sale of pledged shares increases at a time when the share […]

By Kiana Wilburg GEORGETOWN (Reuters) -An Exxon Mobil unit is in breach of insurance obligations for its first offshore oil project in Guyana in part due to errors by the environmental regulator, a Guyanese court ruled on Wednesday, a decision the government rejected. Exxon “engaged in a disingenuous attempt” to dilute its obligations under its environmental permit for Liza One, the project that inaugurated Guyana’s oil production in 2019, High […]

By Rich McKay ATLANTA (Reuters) -Police have arrested a man suspected of killing one woman and wounding four others on Wednesday in a shooting spree at a medical building in midtown Atlanta before carjacking a vehicle to flee the scene, authorities said. The accused gunman, identified as 24-year-old Deion Patterson, a former U.S. Coast Guardsman, was taken into custody north of the city in suburban Cobb County, several hours after […]

By Sam Jabri-Pickett TORONTO (Reuters) -Google and Meta would withdraw access to news articles in Canada if legislation compelling internet companies to pay news publishers is passed, company executives told Canadian lawmakers on Wednesday. Canada’s proposed legislation would force platforms like Google parent Alphabet Inc and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc to negotiate commercial deals and pay Canadian news publishers for their content, part of a broader global trend to […]