By Richard Cowan and Gram Slattery WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate on Thursday passed bipartisan legislation backed by President Joe Biden that lifts the government’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling, averting what would have been a first-ever default. The Senate voted 63-36 to approve the bill that had been passed on Wednesday by the House…
PARIS (Reuters) -The United Nations food agency’s world price index fell in May to its lowest in two years, as a slump in prices of vegetable oils, cereals and dairy outweighed increases for sugar and meat. The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) price index, which tracks the most globally-traded food commodities, averaged 124.3 points in…
By Joanna Plucinska and Angelo Amante LONDON/ROME (Reuters) – Lufthansa’s purchase of a minority stake in Italy’s loss-making ITA Airways injects fresh momentum into a wave of consolidation in Europe’s fragmented aviation market that could see more mid-tier national carriers snapped up. The German group will be judged on whether it can make the successor…
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – A man visiting St. Peter’s Basilica on Thursday stripped off his clothes and stood naked on the church’s main altar in what appeared to be a protest against the war in Ukraine, a Vatican source said. The man had an inscription painted on his back calling for the children of Ukraine…
By Valentyn Ogirenko and Guy Faulconbridge KYIV/MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia said on Thursday it had repelled more cross-border attacks from Ukraine while its aerial assaults on Kyiv killed another three people including a nine-year-old girl and her mother locked out of an air raid shelter. Both sides are trying to sap morale and weaken military…
By Tim Kelly, Nobuhiro Kubo, Yukiko Toyoda and Kaori Kaneko TOKYO (Reuters) – The United States is seeking to secure supplies of TNT in Japan for 155mm artillery shells, as Washington rushes weapons and ammunition to Ukraine for a counteroffensive against Russian forces, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. For war-renouncing Japan, any…
By Jonathan Landay and Arshad Mohammed WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States said it will stop providing Russia some notifications required under the New START arms control treaty from Thursday, including updates on its missile and launcher locations, to retaliate for Moscow’s “ongoing violations” of the accord. In a fact sheet on its website, the State…
By Brendan O’Brien and Steve Gorman (Reuters) -Dev Shah, a 14-year-old boy from Largo, Florida, won the 2023 Scripps National Spelling Bee on Thursday, nailing the word “psammophile,” meaning an organism that thrives in sandy soils, in the 15th round of the contest’s finals. He edged out fellow eighth-grader Charlotte Walsh, 14, from Arlington, Virginia,…
(Reuters) – Former President Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis traded barbs on Thursday over who could most quickly fix the economy and reform government agencies as the battle between the top two Republican contenders grew increasingly acrimonious. Trump, who currently holds a large lead over DeSantis in a distant second in polls on…
By Federica Urso and Federico Maccioni ROME (Reuters) -Florence wants to ban residential properties in its historic centre from being used for short-term rentals by platforms such as Airbnb in order to free up more homes for local people in the Tuscan city. Dario Nardella, the mayor of one of Italy’s most popular tourist destinations,…
