HOUNDE, Burkina Faso, March 21 (Reuters) – A small group of activists have been walking from Mali’s capital Bamako to Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou to express their support for a federation between the two West African states.

March 23 (Reuters) – The United States and Canada have reached a deal that would allow for the closure of an unofficial border crossing between New York state and the province of Quebec, but the final details still need to be worked out, a Canadian government source familiar with the talks told Reuters.

TAIPEI, March 23 (Reuters) – Taiwan Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said on Thursday that President Tsai Ing-wen’s meeting with U.S.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the United States is still in the process of being arranged.

OTTAWA, March 24 (Reuters) – The United States and Canada must together build a North American market on everything from semiconductors to solar panel batteries, in the face of growing competition, including from an “increasingly assertive China,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday.

“It is for us today to push our governments, our institutions, our people to move towards a federation because we believe that only the federation can be the global and definitive solution for Africa,” said Souleymane Diouf Diallo, spokesperson for the group, calling itself “The walkers for African unity”.

Holding the flags of both countries and the African Union, the group of about a dozen men and women walked in single file last week on the side of a road near Hounde, in western Burkina Faso, as they neared the finish line of a trek of more than 860 km (535 miles).

WARSAW, March 27 (Reuters) – Russian and Belarusian athletes should be banned from the 2024 Olympics in Paris unless Moscow pulls its forces out of Ukraine, according to Poland, Britain and the Baltic states, despite the IOC saying it plans to let them compete as neutrals.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) sanctioned Russia and Belarus after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 but is now reluctant to exclude their athletes from the Olympics entirely for fear of a return to the boycotts of the Cold War era.

“We strongly believe that now is not the time to consider the opening up of a pathway for Russian and Belarusian athletes to return to the Olympic Games in any status,” the Polish foreign ministry said in a statement issued jointly with Britain, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia.

All our activities did very well,” CEO Torbjorn Tornqvist told Reuters on the sidelines of the Financial Times Commodities Global Summit, declining to give figures as the firm’s results are still being finalised. “It was a very, very good year.

“Europe was taking about 110 billion cubic meters per year from Russia. and the rest is demand destruction, close to 20%. That´s about 1,000 LNG cargoes. Some of it is weather related,” he said. We think Europe was able to cover about half…

“While the IOC has made no final decisions yet, we strongly urge it to reconsider its plans and return to the original well-proven stance supported by the international community,” the Polish statement said.

The DOJ and the financial market regulator the CFTC have continued investigating the firm and Gunvor expects to pay a fine.
“We are looking at whether to take a provision on our books for 2022,” Tornqvist said.

Swiss energy traders have posted record returns over the last few years as they thrived in extremely volatile markets brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic and then Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year.

LAUSANNE, Switzerland, March 21 (Reuters) – Energy trader Gunvor made strong profits last year and is looking to expand its oil trading and develop a significant power trading arm in the United States, its CEO told Reuters.