Town Hall News

By Karen Freifeld WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The head of the House Financial Services Committee on Thursday asked the Biden administration for details about its outbound investment proposal, including why investment restrictions would be more effective than export controls or sanctions. Republican U.S. Representative Patrick McHenry, whose panel has a wide remit over financial matters and is a key voice on potential investment restrictions on U.S. companies, called on Treasury Secretary […]

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Twitter is likely to pull out from a voluntary EU code of practice to tackle disinformation, but the move does not mean it will quit Europe, an EU official said on Thursday. The European Commission beefed up the code last year, requiring companies to submit regular progress reports with data on how much advertising revenue they had averted from disinformation actors. New obligations include […]

By Josh Ye HONG KONG (Reuters) -Social media platform TikTok said on Thursday it is in the early stages of exploring a chatbot called “Tako” that can converse with users about short videos and help them discover content, and is conducting tests with select users in the Philippines. OpenAI, backed by Microsoft Corp, last year launched chatbot ChatGPT, offering arguably the most natural interaction to date. That triggered a race […]

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Twitter is likely to pull out from a voluntary EU code of practice to tackle disinformation, but the move does not mean it will quit Europe, an EU official said on Thursday. The European Commission beefed up the code last year, requiring companies to submit regular progress reports with data on how much advertising revenue they had averted from disinformation actors. New obligations include […]

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Activist investor Carl Icahn secured enough votes at Illumina Inc’s annual meeting of shareholders on Thursday to install his nominee Andrew Teno to the company’s board of directors. The vote resulted in the ouster of Illumina board chairman John Thompson. Icahn’s two other board nominees, Vincent Intrieri and Jesse Lynn, did not secure enough votes to get elected. (Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss in New York; Editing […]

By Curtis Williams HOUSTON (Reuters) -This year’s Atlantic hurricane season will bring an average number of ocean storms and hurricanes, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said on Thursday. NOAA forecasters estimate 12 to 17 named storms of which five to nine of those will develop into hurricanes and one to four will become major hurricanes during the June 1 to Nov. 30 season. A tropical storm brings sustained […]

SILVES, Portugal (Reuters) -Police on Thursday wrapped up the latest search effort in the 16-year-old hunt for missing British girl Madeleine McCann after collecting unspecified samples by a reservoir in Portugal, as a German prosecutor played down hopes of an imminent breakthrough. Portuguese police said in a statement the three-day operation requested by Germany was now over and that the collected material would be handed over to German authorities after […]

By Guy Faulconbridge MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia moved ahead on Thursday with a plan to deploy tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, whose leader said the warheads were already on the move, in the Kremlin’s first deployment of such bombs outside Russia since the 1991 fall of the Soviet Union. President Vladimir Putin says the United States and its allies are fighting an escalating proxy war against Russia after the Kremlin chief […]

By Khalid Abdelaziz DUBAI (Reuters) – Sporadic clashes between Sudan’s army and a paramilitary force spilled over into Thursday, puncturing the relative calm in the capital Khartoum and raising the risk of a week-long truce deal crumbling as concerns grew over a humanitarian crisis. The ceasefire, monitored by Saudi Arabia and the United States, was reached after five weeks of warfare in Khartoum and outbursts of fighting in other parts […]