Town Hall News

By Michael Holden LONDON (Reuters) -The chair of a public inquiry examining “extremely serious” allegations that British armed forces carried out dozens of extra-judicial killings in Afghanistan said on Wednesday that any soldiers who had broken the law should face investigation. The independent inquiry was ordered by Britain’s defence ministry last December after a BBC TV documentary reported that soldiers from the elite Special Air Service (SAS) had killed 54 […]

BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany’s economic council on Wednesday warned that inflation could remain high for longer or even pick up again if financial market worries prevent central banks from raising interest rates. “The recent increase in financial market risks has made it more difficult for central banks to fight inflation,” the five “wise ones” who advise Berlin on economic policy said in their biannual report. “If the monetary policy response is […]

BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany’s economic council on Wednesday warned that inflation could remain high for longer or even pick up again if financial market worries prevent central banks from raising interest rates. “The recent increase in financial market risks has made it more difficult for central banks to fight inflation,” the five “wise ones” who advise Berlin on economic policy said in their biannual report. “If the monetary policy response is […]

BARCELONA (Reuters) -German carmaker Volkswagen plans to produce 3 million small electric vehicles at its two plants in Spain between 2025 and 2030, Wayne Griffiths, the chairman of VW’s Spanish unit SEAT, said on Wednesday. The German car maker is pushing the electrification of its production and plans to build a battery plant in Spain. Griffiths said SEAT aims to assemble 500,000 electric cars a year in the medium-term at […]

By Iain Withers and Nell Mackenzie LONDON (Reuters) -The banking turmoil sparked by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is not yet over, and a significant number of banks will fail within two years, the CEO of hedge fund Man Group told a Bloomberg conference in London on Wednesday. Asked whether the crisis in the sector was over, Man Group’s Luke Ellis told delegates he did not think so. Market […]

BERLIN (Reuters) -A German police officer was shot and wounded during raids on properties across the country linked to investigations into the far-right Reichsbuerger movement, the justice minister and prosecutors said on Wednesday. One person was detained on suspicion of attempted murder after shots were fired in the southern town of Reutlingen, near Stuttgart, German prosecutors said. The searches follow raids in December, when German police foiled a plot by […]

ATHENS (Reuters) – Greece reopened some train routes on Wednesday, three weeks after a deadly train crash forced authorities to suspend all rail service across the country over safety concerns. All passenger and freight services have been halted since a passenger and a cargo train carrying more than 350 people collided head-on on Feb. 28 on the same track near the city of Larissa, killing 57. The rail disaster on […]

PESHAWAR/KABUL (Reuters) -At least 13 people were killed and more than 90 injured in Pakistan and Afghanistan after a magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck late on Tuesday, government officials said. At least nine people were killed and 44 injured in northwest Pakistan, a Pakistani government official said, and hospitals in northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province were put into a state of emergency overnight. At least four people were killed and 50 injured […]

By Alexandra Alper and David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Biden administration is under pressure to ban popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, but any such move likely hinges on passage of a new law that bolsters the government’s authority to regulate speech, experts said. Pressure is mounting from lawmakers and national security hawks to ban TikTok, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, over fears the app could censure content, […]