Town Hall News

By Tim Hepher, Aditi Shah and Tanvi Mehta NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Tensions over plans to transform Air India into a global airline with hundreds of new jets rippled across the aviation sector on Tuesday as foreign carriers clamoured for more access to the world’s fastest-growing economy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government faces growing demands to ease a near-freeze on capacity that can be deployed on many routes to and from […]

By Kirsty Needham SYDNEY (Reuters) – The Solomon Islands has awarded a Chinese state company a multi-million dollar contract to upgrade an international port in Honiara in a project funded by the Asian Development Bank, an official from the island nation said on Wednesday. The China Civil Engineering Construction Company was the only company to submit a bid in the competitive tender, Mike Qaqara, from the Ministry of Infrastructure Development, […]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will tell lawmakers the Chinese-owned short video app with more than 150 million American users has never, and would never, share U.S. user data with the Chinese government amid growing U.S. national security concerns. “TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, U.S. user data with the Chinese government. Nor would TikTok honor such a request if one were ever […]

HONG KONG (Reuters) – China Evergrande Group is set to unveil on Wednesday a restructuring proposal for its $22.7 billion offshore debt that could set the template for distressed peers and shape investor sentiment towards the country’s embattled property sector. Two people with knowledge of the proposal said it would give creditors a basket of options to swap their debt into new bonds with extended maturity and equity in Evergrande’s […]

(Reuters) -First Republic Bank’s efforts to secure a capital infusion continued without success on Tuesday, as the troubled regional lender started to plan for the possibility it may need to downsize or get a government backstop. Major banks and private equity firms have so far balked at offering First Republic the capital infusion it craves for fear of releasing losses on the bank’s loan book and investment portfolio amid a […]

MANILA (Reuters) – Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said on Wednesday he will make a formal announcement soon on the locations of four additional military bases under the Enchanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) with the United States. Marcos last month granted the United States access to four sites, on top of five existing locations under the 2014 EDCA, which comes amid China’s increasing assertiveness towards the South China Sea and […]

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) – TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew will tell lawmakers the Chinese-owned short video app with more than 150 million American users has never, and would never, share U.S. user data with the Chinese government amid growing U.S. national security concerns. “TikTok has never shared, or received a request to share, U.S. user data with the Chinese government. Nor would TikTok honor such a request if […]

By Nell Mackenzie, Xie Yu and Scott Murdoch LONDON (Reuters) – Distressed debt investors and large hedge funds are buying up Credit Suisse additional tier-1 bonds at rock-bottom prices after they were written down to zero in the Swiss bank’s rescue by cross-town rival UBS. Under the UBS deal, the Swiss regulator determined that Credit Suisse’s AT1 bonds with a notional value of 16 billion Swiss francs ($17.35 billion) would […]

By Alan Devall LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Some 30,000 education workers backed by the teachers’ union walked off the job for a three-day strike in Los Angeles on Tuesday, canceling school for nearly half a million students in the second-largest school district in the United States. The Service Employees International Union Local 99 seeks to increase what it calls poverty wages averaging $25,000 per year for many of their members including […]