Town Hall News

By Lucy Papachristou (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to hand over the historic 15th-century Trinity icon from a museum to the Russian Orthodox Church because of its importance to believers, the Kremlin’s spokesman said on Tuesday.The Church, whose conservatism Putin has espoused as part of his vision for Russia’s national identity, is one of the most ardent institutional supporters of Russia’s war in Ukraine. Its head, Patriarch […]

MILAN (Reuters) – Intesa Sanpaolo has introduced an artificial intelligence tool it has designed to wade through thousands of publications on banking supervision, Italy’s biggest bank said on Tuesday. The machine learning tool, dubbed Lisa or Linguistic Intelligence for Supervisory Awareness, uses language processing algorithms to scan documents for correlations and patterns of meaning to help predict future trends. Lisa reads texts much faster than humans and can identify correlations […]

By Julia Harte (Reuters) – North Carolina’s Republican-controlled state legislature on Tuesday is expected to vote to override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of a bill banning most abortions after 12 weeks, unless one Republican lawmaker sides with the governor and upholds the veto. The legislature in early May passed the measure, which would cut the window for most abortions in the state back from 20 weeks. It would also […]

By Alun John and Kevin Buckland LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) – The dollar on Tuesday sat just below the previous day’s five-week high, while the pound dropped sharply then recovered after a rise in Britain’s jobless numbers suggested fewer Bank of England rate increases could be needed in coming months to bring down inflation. The dollar index, which tracks the greenback against six main peers, was down 0.14% at 102.29, having reached 102.75 […]

By Foo Yun Chee BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Microsoft Corp won EU antitrust approval for its $69 billion acquisition of Activision on Monday, in a significant boost that could prompt Chinese and South Korean regulators to follow suit despite a British veto of the deal. The U.S. software giant still faces a battle to clinch the world’s biggest gaming industry takeover, however. It has until May 24 to appeal a decision by […]

KYIV (Reuters) -The head of Ukraine’s Supreme Court has been detained over an alleged bribery scheme, a prosecutor from the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) said on Tuesday. The prosecutor did not name the official detained, but told a briefing that he was the head of the Supreme Court and had not yet been served with a formal “notice of suspicion”. The Supreme Court is headed by Chief Justice Vsevolod […]

(Reuters) – Commenting on a YouTube video encouraging Russians to make contact with the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA, the Kremlin said on Tuesday that its own special services were tracking Western intelligence activity. The short video in Russian, entitled “Why I made contact with the CIA: my decision”, appeared on the CIA’s official YouTube channel. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he had not paid attention to it, but […]

(Reuters) – Shares of Capital One Financial Corp rose in premarket trading on Tuesday after billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s holding company disclosed it had taken a stake in the credit cards-focused bank. The bank’s stock, which was trading up 7% at $95.37, would open at its highest in more than two weeks, if gains hold. In its quarterly disclosure after the bell on Monday, Berkshire Hathaway said it had a […]

By Devjyot Ghoshal and Panu Wongcha-um BANGKOK (Reuters) – Pita Limjaroenrat stood on the back of a truck, waving to hundreds of cheering supporters and signing autographs, a day after he led his Move Forward party to an extraordinary victory in Thailand’s general election. Behind him loomed a giant portrait of King Maha Vajiralongkorn, the head of a once seemingly untouchable institution that Move Forward has for the first time […]