Town Hall News

By Jibran Ahmad PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – A Chinese worker was charged with blasphemy in northern Pakistan after angry workers surrounded his office accusing him of insulting the Prophet Mohammad, then stormed a police station to try to find him, officials said. Police moved in as crowds gathered at the Dasu hydropower project in Kohistan district on Sunday afternoon and officers took the man to a safer location, police official […]

LONDON (Reuters) -The British parliament’s Commissioner for Standards opened an investigation into Prime Minister Rishi Sunak earlier this month, according to a list of open inquiries posted on its website on Monday. The list said the matter under investigation was a “declaration of interest”. The inquiry began on April 13. A spokesperson for Sunak said the investigation was linked to his wife’s shareholding in a childcare firm. The Liberal Democrats, […]

(Reuters) – Legislators from the European Parliament said on Monday that political attention needed to be focused on powerful artificial intelligence (AI), agreeing with an open letter signed by academics, experts and business leaders including Elon Musk on AI regulation. The EU Parliament called on European Commission President Ursula Von Der Leyen and U.S. President Joe Biden to convene a global summit on AI. (Reporting by Akanksha Khushi in Bengaluru; […]

By Victoria Waldersee BERLIN (Reuters) -The group behind a European battery passport project laid out on Monday how companies must prepare to meet increasingly stringent regulations on disclosing the origin of batteries as well as their social and environmental footprints. From 2024, manufacturers in Europe must disclose the carbon footprint of their batteries and from 2027 comply with a carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions limit, regulated by the European Union (EU) […]

By Nell Mackenzie and Dhara Ranasinghe LONDON (Reuters) – World stocks markets steadied near recent highs on Monday ahead of a slew of corporate earnings results this week due to reveal which economic sectors have been helped by higher rates to flourish and which have been hit. U.S. banks including JP Morgan, Citigroup and Wells Fargo reaped windfalls from higher interest payments their first quarter earnings reports said on Friday. […]

By Seun Sanni LAGOS (Reuters) – Nigerian aviation employees on Monday blocked roads to the domestic terminal of Lagos airport, slowing traffic and threatening to delay flights as they began a two-day strike in protest over working conditions and wages. The strike is likely to add to problems in a sector that regularly faces jet fuel shortages, which often ground local flights and where international carriers struggle to repatriate revenue […]

By Andrew Osborn MOSCOW (Reuters) -Outspoken Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was jailed for 25 years by a Moscow court on Monday, the harshest sentence of its kind since Russia invaded Ukraine, after being found guilty of treason and other offences he denied committing. Kara-Murza, 41, a father of three and an opposition politician who holds Russian and British passports, spent years speaking out against President Vladimir Putin and lobbied Western […]

By Joe Skipper and Joey Roulette BOCA CHICA, Texas (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s SpaceX made final preparations early on Monday to launch its powerful new Starship rocket system to space for the first time, on a brief but highly anticipated uncrewed test flight from the Gulf Coast of Texas.     The two-stage rocketship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m) high, was due for blastoff […]

By Hyonhee Shin SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea, the United States and Japan staged joint naval missile defence exercises on Monday to improve responses to North Korean threats, as Pyongyang accused Washington of ramping up “nuclear blackmail” with military drills. The three nations agreed at talks in Washington on Friday to hold regular missile defence and anti-submarine exercises in their efforts to boost diplomatic and military cooperation. North Korea tested a […]