Town Hall News

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 […]

LONDON (Reuters) -Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has resumed withdrawals on its platform after technical issues affected spot trading, the company said in a tweet. Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals earlier on Friday due to a “bug on a trailing stop order,” Chief Executive Changpeng Zhao said in a tweet, adding that the pause in deposits and withdrawals was a standard operating procedure. Ilya Volkov, CEO of Youhodler, a crypto lending platform, […]

MILAN (Reuters) – UniCredit is leaning towards repaying a perpetual bond at the earliest opportunity in June, a source close to the matter told Reuters, in a move to show it has ample capital while keeping funding costs in check as markets reel from a crisis of confidence. UniCredit in recent weeks put in a request with European Central Bank supervisors to repay a 1.25 billion euro 6.625% perpetual bond […]

(Reuters) -The U.S. health regulator on Friday proposed cancer drug developers conduct more rigorous trials to seek accelerated approval for their candidates. The Food and Drug Administration’s move follows criticism for the accelerated approval pathway, as well as an independent federal review into it after the controversial nod for Biogen Inc’s Alzheimer’s treatment Aduhelm. Accelerated approvals allow quicker nod for therapies that target serious and life-threatening conditions. The FDA proposed […]