Town Hall News

By Nidal al-Mughrabi GAZA (Reuters) – Israeli air strikes killed the head of Islamic Jihad’s rocket force in Gaza early on Thursday, part of an operation that has killed 25 people including women and children this week and that has been met with hundreds of rockets fired from the enclave. Egypt was set to host senior Islamic Jihad official Mohammad al-Hindi in Cairo later in the day, part of mediation […]

By David Shepardson WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. Senate panel on Wednesday approved rail safety legislation that tightens rules on trains carrying explosive substances like the Norfolk Southern-operated train that derailed on Feb. 3 in Ohio, catching fire and releasing over a million gallons of hazardous materials and pollutants. The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee voted 16-11 to advance the sweeping bipartisan legislation, which would mandate the use of technology that can […]

(Reuters) -A U.S. Army sergeant was sentenced to 25 years in a Texas prison on Wednesday for killing a man at a protest against police brutality in 2020, setting the stage for Governor Greg Abbott to make good on a pledge to grant a pardon. Daniel Perry was found guilty last month of shooting to death 28-year-old Garrett Foster, a U.S. Air Force veteran, at a Black Lives Matter rally […]

By Foo Yun Chee, Martin Coulter and Supantha Mukherjee (Reuters) – European lawmakers came a step closer to passing new rules regulating artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT, following a crunch vote on Thursday. The European Union’s highly anticipated AI Act is set to be the first comprehensive legislation governing the technology, with new rules around the use of facial recognition, biometric surveillance, and other AI applications. After two years […]

LONDON (Reuters) – The cost of insuring against a U.S. default rose to its highest since early 2009 on Thursday, in the latest sign of investor nerves over the debt ceiling standoff. U.S. 5-year sovereign credit default swaps rose to 74 basis points, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, up from 73 basis points at the previous close and the highest since March 2009. U.S. President Joe Biden […]

By Xie Yu HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s securities watchdog on Thursday said that it was willing to work with its counterparts in the United States to promote audit regulatory cooperation and safeguard the rights and interests of global investors. The comment from the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) came a day after a U.S. accounting watchdog said that it found unacceptable deficiencies in audits of U.S.-listed Chinese companies. The […]

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Russian court fined Alphabet’s Google 3 million roubles ($38,600) on Thursday for failing to delete YouTube videos it said promoted “LGBT propaganda” and “false information” about Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, Russian news agencies reported. Over the last year Moscow has levied dozens of fines against Western tech companies as part of a drive to ramp up control over what Russian internet users see online. As […]

UPINGTON, South Africa (Reuters) – When she was a girl in South Africa’s Northern Cape, Katrina Esau stopped speaking her mother tongue, N|uu, after being mocked by other people and told it was an “ugly language”. Now at age 90, she is the last known speaker of N|uu, one of a group of indigenous languages in South Africa that have been all but stamped out by the impacts of colonialism […]

(Reuters) -Ukraine is holding fire until more Western armoured vehicles arrive before it starts its long-awaited counteroffensive to recapture Russian-occupied territory, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in an interview released on Thursday. “We still need a bit more time,” Zelenskiy said in the interview with European broadcasters, according to Britain’s BBC. Ukrainian forces had already received enough equipment from Western allies for a campaign, but some of the promised armoured vehicles […]