Town Hall News

By Tatiana Bautzer and Chris Prentice NEW YORK (Reuters) – As beleaguered First Republic Bank considers its options, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Wednesday there is no discussion on insurance for all deposits, making a “bull case” scenario more difficult for the stock. First Republic, whose shares have lost much of their value since the banking crisis started in the U.S. on March 8, is among the banks speaking […]

By Jessica DiNapoli HERSHEY, Pennsylvania (Reuters) – Hershey Co is looking to reduce “trace” amounts of lead and cadmium in its chocolate, chief financial officer Steve Voskiul told Reuters on Wednesday, after Consumer Reports found that some dark chocolate bars had potentially harmful levels of the heavy metals. Consumer Reports, a nonprofit consumer group, tested chocolate bars including those made by Hershey late last year and found that some of […]

By Tatiana Bautzer and Chris Prentice NEW YORK (Reuters) – As beleaguered First Republic Bank considers its options, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Wednesday there is no discussion on insurance for all deposits, making a “bull case” scenario more difficult for the stock. First Republic, whose shares have lost much of their value since the banking crisis started in the U.S. on March 8, is among the banks speaking […]

By Isla Binnie NEW YORK (Reuters) – The United Nations wants to get people talking in New York this week about investing in safe water, sanitation and hygiene, which it describes as “the most basic human need for health and wellbeing”. Puzzles remains over how best to count the financial, social and environmental costs and benefits of water, but many investors now state an aim to generate returns while also […]

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The chair of the Senate Commerce Committee said on Wednesday she would push for quick passage of rail safety legislation after a Feb. 3 Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, that sparked a fire and released over a million gallons of hazardous materials and pollutants into the environment. Senate Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell said she wants the committee to debate and approve rail […]

By Chris Prentice and Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) -The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday charged Chinese cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun with fraud, and accused eight celebrities including actress Lindsay Lohan and rapper Soulja Boy with illegally promoting his crypto assets. Sun and his companies Tron Foundation, BitTorrent Foundation and Rainberry were accused of having since August 2017 schemed to distribute billions of crypto assets known as Tronix […]

By Keith Coffman DENVER (Reuters) – Police were searching on Wednesday for a Denver high school student who shot and wounded two faculty members as they were patting him down for weapons as part of a “safety plan” devised for the youth based on previous behavioral issues, officials said. The East High School student, identified by police as 17-year-old Austin Lyle, fled the shooting scene on foot immediately after Wednesday’s […]

By Ted Hesson and Jose Luis Gonzalez WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. authorities have been flying migrants caught illegally crossing the U.S.-Canada border to Texas as part of a deterrence effort to tackle a rise in crossings, according to authorities, flight records and a Reuters witness. U.S. Border Patrol has quietly transported about 100 migrants this month on two charter flights from Plattsburgh, New York, near the border with Canada, to […]

By Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A bill to ban caste discrimination was introduced in the California Senate on Wednesday by a Democratic lawmaker, which, if passed, could make California the first U.S. state to outlaw the practice, a problem for the state’s substantial South Asian diaspora. The bill was introduced and authored by state Senator Aisha Wahab, an Afghan American Democrat, and comes weeks after Seattle became the first […]