Town Hall News

By Justin Dralaze BIDI BIDI, Uganda (Reuters) – Watering the neat lines of green salad leaves outside her thatched home, Susan Konga, a South Sudanese woman living in a refugee camp in northern Uganda, is preparing her kitchen garden for the next harvest. This year the success of her tireless cultivation will be put to the test – complete self-sufficiency. Global crises like the war in Ukraine, the earthquake in […]

By Silvia Aloisi PARIS (Reuters) – France braced for a new round of nationwide protests and strikes on Thursday after a meeting between the prime minister and labour unions failed to break a political stalemate over a deeply unpopular pension bill making people work for longer. Protests against the reform – which lifts the retirement age by two years to 64 – have drawn crowds of hundreds of thousands in […]

BEIJING/DUBAI (Reuters) – The foreign ministers of Iran and Saudi Arabia met in Beijing for the first formal meeting of their most senior diplomats in more than seven years, CCTV news reported on Thursday, after a China-brokered deal to restore ties between the regional rivals. After years of hostility that fuelled conflicts across the Middle East, Tehran and Riyadh agreed to end their diplomatic rift and re-open embassies in a […]

BEIJING (Reuters) – Among the French business executives travelling to Beijing with President Emmanuel Macron, the mood was cautiously sanguine on the thawing post-pandemic trade prospects with China, with some rejecting American-led calls for ‘decoupling’. Macron travelled to China with a 50-strong delegation of business leaders including the CEOs of Airbus, Alstom and EDF, raising eyebrows among some diplomats that this could blur the message of firmness the West wants […]

By Michel Rose and Laurie Chen BEIJING (Reuters) -French President Emmanuel Macron began a series of meetings with Chinese leaders in Beijing on Thursday on a visit with EU chief Ursula von der Leyen that could set a course for the bloc’s future relations with China after years of strained ties. Newly-appointed Premier Li Qiang greeted Macron at the Great Hall of the People, a cavernous building west of Tiananmen […]

(Reuters) – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said Poland would help form a coalition of Western powers to supply warplanes to Kyiv, as his fighters defended their eastern bastion of Bakhmut in the face of relentless Russian assaults. DIPLOMACY * Any Chinese supply of lethal aid to Russia for the war in Ukraine would be a “historic mistake with profound implications”, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said. * French President Macron […]

TOKYO (Reuters) – Seven & i Holdings Co Ltd’s eight independent directors said on Thursday the board will continue to review strategic alternatives, including a spin-off. The retail giant has been under pressure from ValueAct Capital to spin off its 7-Eleven convenience store chain. The investment firm, which owns a 4.4% stake and has been pushing for change since 2020, is seeking to replace four board members at the upcoming […]

(Reuters) -Shell expects higher liquefied natural gas (LNG) output in the first quarter after outages at its Australian plants last year as well as stable earnings from LNG trading, it said on Thursday. Shell, which recorded a record $40 billion profit last year, said In an update ahead of results due on May 4 that it expected first-quarter liquefaction volumes of 7 to 7.4 million tonnes, up from 6.8 million […]

YEFREMOV, Russia (Reuters) – A Russian girl who was sent to an orphanage after drawing an anti-war picture, for which her father was convicted for discrediting the armed forces, has been collected by her mother who has not lived with the family for at least seven years. Russia introduced severe punishments for discrediting the armed forces after President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, laws that […]