Town Hall News

By Chavi Mehta and Casey Hall (Reuters) – PDD Holdings Inc beat analysts’ estimates for first-quarter revenue on Friday as more price conscious customers turned to its discount e-commerce platforms including Pinduoduo. The company’s U.S.-listed shares rose 14% in trading before the bell. Chinese consumer spending has gained some momentum since the country abandoned strict zero-COVID policies late last year. Retail sales in the country rose 5.8% in the January-March […]

By Makiko Yamazaki and Daniel Leussink TOKYO (Reuters) – Proxy adviser Glass Lewis has recommended that shareholders of Toyota Motor Corp vote against the re-election of Chairman Akio Toyoda as a board director at an upcoming meeting, citing his responsibility for the lack of a sufficiently independent board. The recommendation against the chairman of Japan’s largest company by market capitalisation comes as board independence has been under greater scrutiny from […]

By Wendell Roelf CAPE TOWN (Reuters) -Former Rwandan police officer Fulgence Kayishema, accused of ordering the killing of some 2,000 Tutsis who were seeking refuge in a church during the 1994 genocide, appeared briefly in a South African court on Friday and was remanded in custody. According to a charge sheet seen by Reuters, Kayishema faces five charges in South Africa, including two of fraud. The fraud counts relate to […]

By Asif Shahzad ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Thirty-three supporters of former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan have been handed over to the army to face trial in military courts on charges of attacking armed forces’ installations, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said on Friday. The 33 accused are among the thousands detained since Khan’s May 9 arrest sparked violent protests across Pakistan. Those handed over to army authorities are accused of trespassing […]

By Olena Harmash and Max Hunder KYIV (Reuters) – A Russian missile hit a clinic in the eastern Ukrainian city of Dnipro on Friday, killing at least two people and wounding 23 in an attack that President Volodymyr Zelenskiy described as a crime against humanity. Video footage showed a devastated building with smoke pouring out of it and rescue workers looking on. Much of the upper floor of what appeared […]

BERLIN (Reuters) – Germany extended its military mission in Mali for one final year on Friday as Berlin aims to wind up by May 2024 a decade-old mission that has been hampered by disputes with the ruling military junta in Bamako and the arrival of Russian forces. Lawmakers voted 375 to 263 to leave the German troops in the country for another year. There was one abstention. Berlin has deployed […]

By Riham Alkousaa and Toby Sterling BERLIN/AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The data protection watchdog for the Netherlands said on Friday it was aware of possible Tesla data protection breaches, but it was too early for further comment. Germany’s Handelsblatt reported on Thursday that Elon Musk’s Tesla had allegedly failed to adequately protect data from customers, employees and business partners, citing 100 gigabytes of confidential data leaked by a whistleblower. “We are […]

ROME (Reuters) – An Italian court on Friday suspended for at least another month a culling order for a bear blamed for the killing of a 26-year-old runner in the Italian Alps. The death of Andrea Papi, on April 5, reopened a debate in Italy on the co-existence between humans and wildlife in an area that was re-populated with bears from 1999 thanks to an EU-funded programme. The bear in […]

ROME (Reuters) – An Italian court on Friday suspended for at least another month a culling order for a bear blamed for the killing of a 26-year-old runner in the Italian Alps. The death of Andrea Papi, on April 5, reopened a debate in Italy on the co-existence between humans and wildlife in an area that was re-populated with bears from 1999 thanks to an EU-funded programme. The bear in […]