Town Hall News

VILLANUEVA DE VIVER, Spain (Reuters) -Spain’s first major wildfire of the year raged in the eastern Valencia region on Friday, destroying more than 3,000 hectares (7,413 acres) of forest and forcing 1,500 residents to abandon their homes, authorities said. An unusually dry winter across parts of the south of the European continent has reduced moisture in the soil and raised fears of a repeat of 2022, when 785,000 hectares were […]

By Tarek Amara TUNIS (Reuters) -At least 34 African migrants were missing on Friday after their boat sank off Tunisia, the fifth shipwreck in two days, raising the total number of missing to 67 amid a sharp increase in boats heading towards Italy, Tunisian officials said. The Italian coast guard said on Thursday it had rescued about 750 migrants in two separate operations off the southern Italian coastline, hours after […]

(Reuters) – The Federal Reserve’s 12 regional banks have agreed to adopt a common policy for handling public requests for information and will have it in place by the end of this year, the New York Fed said in a statement on Friday. “The Federal Reserve Banks are committed to transparency and accountability and each Reserve Bank has existing procedures for providing information to the public,” the statement said. “In […]

By Fatos Bytyci and Ognen Teofilovski LOJANE, North Macedonia (Reuters) – The heavy odour gives a hint of the tonnes of toxic waste including arsenic oxide left at a landfill site near where 400 children learn and play at a school in North Macedonia. A chromium and antimony mine in the village of Lojane was closed in 1979 and the waste was abandoned, left in the open air, polluting land […]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Partisan sniping over raising U.S. borrowing authority ratcheted up on Friday when House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy accused President Joe Biden of ignoring the issue, even as Republicans have failed to detail budget cuts they want before allowing a debt limit increase. At a press conference in the U.S. Capitol, the Republican speaker attacked the Democratic president for not holding negotiating sessions with him since an initial […]

By Steve Scherer OTTAWA (Reuters) – Two Canadian men that China had detained for more than 1,000 days until 2021 and who were at the centre of a dispute between Washington and Beijing will attend President Joe Biden’s speech and gala dinner in Ottawa on Friday, a Canadian government source said. Chinese authorities took the two men, Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig, into custody in December 2018 shortly after Canadian […]

By Ted Hesson and Anna Mehler Paperny OTTAWA (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a deal aimed at stopping asylum seekers from traversing the shared U.S.-Canada land border via unofficial crossings, an official U.S. document showed on Friday. The two leaders are meeting this morning in Ottawa and are expected to discuss migration, how to address the worsening security and humanitarian situation in Haiti, […]

By Ted Hesson and Anna Mehler Paperny OTTAWA (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau struck a deal aimed at stopping asylum seekers from traversing the shared U.S.-Canada land border via unofficial crossings, an official U.S. document showed on Friday. The two leaders are meeting this morning in Ottawa and are expected to discuss migration, how to address the worsening security and humanitarian situation in Haiti, […]

By Laura Sanicola (Reuters) – Oil prices fell about 2.5% on Friday amid declining European banking shares and after U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said refilling the country’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) may take several years, dampening demand prospects. Brent crude fell $1.85, or 2.4%, to $74.06 a barrel by 11:13 a.m. EST (1513 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate U.S. crude futures fell $1.79, 2.5%, to $68.23 a barrel. Both […]