Town Hall News

By Howard Schneider WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve is expected on Wednesday to raise interest rates and perhaps signal a pause in its 14-month tightening cycle, as policymakers balance the need to slow inflation against a pressing set of risks ranging from bank failures to the possibility of a U.S. debt default as soon as next month. Investors anticipate the U.S. central bank will follow through with a quarter-percentage-point […]

PARIS (Reuters) – BNP Paribas, the eurozone’s biggest bank, saw profit more than double in the first quarter from a year ago, bolstered by the sale of its U.S. retail division while revenue beat estimates. This allowed the French bank to beef up its capital and liquidity buffers, at a time when European lenders strive to restore confidence in a sector battered by turmoil. Revenue of just over 12 billion […]

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia’s central bank said on Wednesday that a rapid recovery in population growth was a big surprise for the bank’s economic forecasts, pushing up rents and leading to an earlier-than-expected stabilisation in housing prices after months of losses. Speaking at an event in Perth, Marion Kohler, the Reserve Bank of Australia’s (RBA) head of economic analysis, said the drag on consumption from the housing downturn would be […]

(Reuters) – Tesla Inc has resumed taking orders for its Model 3 long-range version in the United States, the company’s website showed late on Tuesday, after a temporary halt last year due to delivery backlogs. The long-range version of the entry-level Model 3 is priced at $47,240 currently, about 18.5% less than the $57,990 it was priced at last August when Tesla halted taking orders in the U.S. and Canada. […]

A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Ankur Banerjee For the second time this year, Fed Chair Jerome Powell will take the stage in the wake of a bank failure (that’s three in the US for those keeping count: SVB, Signature Bank and First Republic) and as worries over the financial system resurface. Amid so much uncertainty, markets are hopeful that the Fed’s current tightening […]

By Nidal al-Mughrabi and Henriette Chacar JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) -A Palestinian hunger striker died in Israeli custody on Tuesday, sparking an exchange of fire between Israel and armed groups in Gaza, before three Palestinian officials said the sides had agreed to a ceasefire. Earlier, Israeli jets struck in Gaza as armed groups there fired rocket barrages toward Israel in response to the death of Khader Adnan, a prominent political leader of […]

By Jack Queen (Reuters) – A friend of E. Jean Carroll on Tuesday backed up the writer’s account of being raped by Donald Trump, testifying during a civil trial that she received a phone call about the alleged attack minutes after it occurred. Author Lisa Birnbach told a jury in Manhattan federal court that she “vividly” remembered Carroll calling her one evening in the spring of 1996 and saying Trump […]

(Reuters) – Australia batsman Steve Smith has laughed off criticism in England about his county cricket warmup for the Ashes after some fans and media took exception to his Sussex signing. Australian cricketers have long warmed up for Ashes tours in England in the County Championship but some local pundits fear Smith’s stint at Sussex will only give the visitors a helping hand as they seek to retain the urn. […]

By Nandhini Srinivasan and Sriparna Roy (Reuters) – The rate of drug overdose deaths involving the synthetic opioid fentanyl more than tripled in the United States from 2016 through 2021, according to a report by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released on Wednesday. Fentanyl is up to 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine, and has increasingly been mixed with other illicit […]