Town Hall News

By Ayhan Uyanik and Friederike Heine MUNICH (Reuters) – Turkish citizens based in Germany began voting on Thursday in Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections, which represent the biggest electoral challenge for President Tayyip Erdogan, who lags in opinion polls, in two decades in power. Germany is home to the world’s largest Turkish diaspora and some 1.5 million Turkish citizens there, who in the past have shown strong support for Erdogan […]

By Lawrence White and Iain Withers LONDON (Reuters) -Barclays reported better than expected first-quarter profit of 2.6 billion pounds ($3.24 billion) on Thursday after strong performance at its credit card business offset pressure on other profit engines, including investment banking. The British bank’s 16% profit jump from a year earlier beat analyst forecasts of 2.2 billion pounds in a robust set of results that underlined its increasing ties to the […]

By Nerijus Adomaitis and Gwladys Fouche OSLO (Reuters) – A former commander of Russia’s Wagner group seeking asylum in Norway was convicted on Thursday of being involved in a bar fight and of carrying an air gun but was acquitted of committing violence against police. Andrei Medvedev, 26, was handed down a suspended sentence of 14 days, with a probation period of two years. “I want to thank the court […]

By Khaled Abdelaziz and Nafisa Eltahir KHARTOUM (Reuters) -The United States and African nations raced to secure an extension of a ceasefire in Sudan on Thursday, with the Sudanese army saying it had given an initial nod to an African proposal calling for talks even as heavy fighting continued. Hundreds of people have been killed in nearly two weeks of conflict between the army and a rival paramilitary force – the […]

By Deborah Mary Sophia (Reuters) -Hasbro Inc topped Wall Street estimates for quarterly revenue on Thursday as players snapped up its “Magic: The Gathering” game sets, helping counter weak demand for its toys and action figures. The company’s shares were up about 9% at $56.09. An overall slowdown in demand for toys and retailers cutting back on orders to manage their inventories are set to temper the U.S. toy industry […]

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Thursday it had rejected a request from the U.S. embassy to visit detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in response to Washington’s refusal to grant visas to a group of Russian journalists. The ministry said it had summoned a senior U.S. diplomat to hand over a formal note of protest against a decision by the United States to not grant visas to […]

(This story has been corrected to say that quarterly revenue fell 1.2%, not 2.9%, in paragraph 7) (Reuters) – Altria Group Inc missed sales expectations for the first quarter on Thursday, as price-sensitive consumers switched to cheaper brands of cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products. Hit by inflation, consumers have been trading down to affordable alternatives to the pricey traditional tobacco products that Altria sells, like the Marlboro brand family, which […]

By Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Cable television network CNN has fired longtime host Don Lemon, the news anchor said in a post on Twitter on Monday, adding he was “stunned” by the step and that he was not directly informed of the termination by the network. “I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated by CNN. I am stunned,” Lemon said. “After 17 years at […]

(Reuters) – The Kremlin said on Thursday it welcomed anything that could bring the end of the Ukraine conflict closer when asked what it thought of a phone call a day earlier between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy. But it said it still needed to achieve the aims of its “special military operation” in Ukraine. DIPLOMACY * Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said he had invited […]