Town Hall News

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will ban vessels from an area near Taiwan on Sunday because of the possibility of falling rocket debris, its maritime safety agency said on Thursday, as Japan sought details from Beijing on a reported no-fly zone in the same location. China has not commented on the no-fly zone but South Korea, which was also briefed on the plans, said it was due to a falling object […]

KYIV (Reuters) -Ukraine’s state-owned gas company Naftogaz on Thursday said Moscow had been ordered by an arbitration court in The Hague to pay $5 billion in compensation for unlawfully expropriating its assets in Russian-annexed Crimea in 2014. Naftogaz CEO Oleksiy Chernyshov described Wednesday’s ruling by The Hague’s Arbitration Tribunal at the Permanent Court of Arbitration as a “key victory on the energy front” and said he expected more decisions in […]

(This April 12 story has been corrected to remove reference to satellite in paragraph 2) By Yimou Lee and Liz Lee TAIPEI/BEIJING (Reuters) – Taiwan said on Wednesday it had successfully urged China to drastically narrow its plan to close air space north of the island, averting wider travel disruption in a period of high tension in the region due to China’s military exercises. China has not commented on the […]

(Reuters) – The European Games in Poland must be revoked as qualifiers for the 2024 Paris Olympics because athletes from Russia and Belarus have been barred from competing, amateur boxing’s Russian-led world body said on Thursday. The Games in Krakow start on June 21 and run until July 2, with 19 sports held as Olympic qualifiers. The International Boxing Association (IBA) said the continental qualifier “totally contradicts” Olympic organisers’ recommendation […]

By Joe Cash and Ellen Zhang BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s exports unexpectedly surged in March, with officials flagging rising demand for electric vehicles, but analysts cautioned the improvement partly reflects suppliers catching up with unfulfilled orders after last year’s COVID-19 disruptions. Exports in March shot up 14.8% from a year ago, snapping five straight months of declines and stunning economists who predicted a 7.0% fall in a Reuters poll. But […]

By Ingrid Melander and Richard Lough PARIS (Reuters) -France braced for a further day of street protests over President Emmanuel Macron’s plans to make people work longer for their pension, as striking workers disrupted garbage collection in Paris and blocked river traffic on part of the Rhine river. Trade unions urged a show of force on the streets a day before the Constitutional Council’s ruling on the legality of the […]

KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine’s gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 29.1% in 2022 as Russia’s full-scale invasion battered the economy, the state statistics service said late on Wednesday. The final 2022 GDP figure was slightly better than the 30% drop previously forecast by the government. Moscow’s Feb. 2022 invasion has killed tens of thousands, uprooted millions, damaged heavy industry, the power grid and the agriculture sector, and resulted in the […]

LONDON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden did not discuss the leak of intelligence documents with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak when the two men met in Northern Ireland this week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Thursday. “It did not come up, the leaked documents, in that conversation,” she told reporters in Dublin where Biden is in the middle of a three-day Irish tour. (Reporting by Muvija […]

By Asif Shahzad ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan’s government on Thursday rejected a panel set up and headed by the chief justice that is due to rule on a draft law clipping his powers, claiming conflict of interest, the latest standoff amid months of economic and political turmoil. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government is involved in a row with the Supreme Court over the holding of snap polls in two provinces […]