Town Hall News

Dec 17 (Reuters) – General Mills beat estimates for second-quarter sales and profit on Wednesday, as more consumers ate at home than dined out, boosting demand for the Pillsbury dough maker’s pantry staples and breakfast cereals. Shares of the Cheerios maker, which reaffirmed its annual forecasts for a second time, were up 1% in premarket trading. While U.S. consumer sentiment improved in early December, budget-conscious shoppers still preferred home-made meals […]

NEW YORK (AP) — Warner Bros. is telling shareholders to reject a takeover bid from Paramount Skydance, saying that a rival bid from Netflix will be better for customers. “We strongly believe that Netflix and Warner Bros. joining forces will offer consumers more choice and value, allow the creative community to reach even more audiences with our combined distribution, and fuel our long-term growth,” Warner Bros. said Wednesday. “We made […]

NEW YORK (AP) — Welcome to exhausted America 2025: Most adults are more than a little fine with doling out cash as gifts, and many plan to be asleep before midnight on New Year’s Eve, according to a new AP-NORC poll. About 6 in 10 Americans say cash or gift cards are “very” acceptable as holiday presents, but they’re much less likely to say that about a gift that was […]

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders are about to attempt something they’ve never tried before. The chances of failure are significant. Their actions this week could set dangerous precedents and a wrong move could undermine trust among the bloc’s 27 member countries for years to come. At a summit starting on Thursday, many of the leaders will press for tens of billions of euros in frozen Russian assets held in […]

LONDON (AP) — Britain will rejoin the European Union’s flagship Erasmus student-exchange program, it was announced Wednesday, in a major step for efforts to reset the U.K.’s post-Brexit relations with the 27-nation bloc. British university and college students and apprentices will be able to study or train in EU countries under the program without paying extra foreign-student fees from January 2027. In turn, students from EU countries will be able […]

By Dawn Chmielewski and Milana Vinn LOS ANGELES, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Warner Bros Discovery’s board rejected Paramount Skydance’s $108.4 billion hostile bid on Wednesday, saying it failed to provide adequate financing assurances.   In a letter to shareholders, disclosed in a regulatory filing, the board wrote that Paramount had “consistently misled” Warner Bros shareholders that its $30-per-share cash offer was fully guaranteed, or “backstopped,” by the Ellison family, led by […]

PARIS, Dec 17 (Reuters) – A cyberattack that hit the French interior ministry’s email servers last week compromised at least a few dozen files, Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said on Wednesday, adding that the incident was more serious than initially thought. Nunez had said on December 12 that there was no evidence to suggest the servers had been seriously compromised. “It’s serious,” he told Franceinfo radio on Wednesday. “A few […]

By Emma Farge and Olivia Le Poidevin GENEVA, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Countries are making progress on reforming the World Trade Organization (WTO) but will fall short of clinching a deal at a major meeting early next year, the ambassador leading the talks said in a confidential document. Observers say reforms at the 30-year-old trade watchdog are urgently needed, with some believing the future of the organisation is at stake. […]

By Arasu Kannagi Basil and Pritam Biswas Dec 17 (Reuters) – Medline will debut on the Nasdaq later on Wednesday after the U.S. medical supply giant raised $6.26 billion in the biggest global initial public offering of 2025, capping a strong year for new listings and fueling optimism for 2026. The company, acquired in 2021 by Blackstone, Carlyle and Hellman & Friedman in one of the largest private-equity deals, sold […]