Town Hall News

(Reuters) – South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said on Friday it was necessary to ensure Russia’s invasion of Ukraine does not succeed and that Seoul was considering its options when it came to lethal aid to Kyiv. In a speech at Harvard University’s Kennedy School on the fifth day of a state visit to mark the 70th anniversary of the U.S.-South Korean alliance, Yoon said the Russian invasion was […]

By Brendan Pierson (Reuters) – A federal judge in Denver on Friday rejected a Catholic medical center’s bid to block Colorado from banning an unproven treatment meant to reverse the effects of a medication abortion drug. U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico said there was no need to block the first-of-its-kind ban because the state has said it will not enforce it for now, meaning that the center, Bella Health and […]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday reduced the prison sentences of 31 people convicted of drug-related crimes, using the powers of the presidency to ease punishment for non-violent offenses. All of the sentences are now set to end on June 30, with the remainder of their time to be served as in-home confinement. Biden this week launched his bid for a second term in the 2024 election. […]

(Reuters) – A panel of U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisers on Friday voted for the expanded use of British drugmaker AztraZeneca Plc’s experimental treatment, jointly developed with Merck & Co, for a type of prostate cancer. The FDA panel voted 11-1 with one abstention, in favor of using the drug, Lynparza, in combination with other medications – abiraterone and prednisone or prednisolone – to treat a type of treatment-resistant […]

By Greg Roumeliotis (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) is preparing to place First Republic Bank under receivership imminently, a person familiar with the matter said on Friday, sending shares of the lender down more than 40% in extended trading. The U.S. banking regulator decided the troubled regional lender’s position has deteriorated and there is no more time to pursue a rescue through the private sector, the […]

By Joseph Ax (Reuters) -North Carolina’s highest court on Friday ruled that state law does not bar lawmakers from drawing congressional and state legislative maps for partisan benefit, boosting Republicans’ odds next year of maintaining their narrow majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. The decision – divided along party lines – appears to clear the way for the Republican-controlled legislature to craft new, political advantageous maps for the 2024 […]

By Jennifer Rigby and Maggie Fick LONDON (Reuters) – Pfizer Inc has pledged to deliver critical new medicines more quickly in low-income nations, but its first such vaccine effort faces hurdles likely to delay distribution in poorer countries by several years, global health officials told Reuters. Pfizer made a commitment on more equitable access last year, following criticism that it prioritized wealthy nations for doses of its COVID-19 shot early […]

By Martin Coulter and Supantha Mukherjee LONDON/STOCKHOLM (Reuters) – As recently as February, generative AI did not feature prominently in EU lawmakers’ plans for regulating generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies such as ChatGPT. The bloc’s 108-page proposal for the AI Act, published two years earlier, included only one mention of the word “chatbot.” References to AI-generated content largely referred to deepfakes: images or audio designed to impersonate human beings. By […]

By Supantha Mukherjee and Giselda Vagnoni (Reuters) -The ChatGPT chatbot was reactivated in Italy after its maker OpenAI addressed issues raised by Italy’s data protection authority, the agency and the company confirmed on Friday. Microsoft Corp-backed OpenAI took ChatGPT offline in Italy last month after the country’s data protection authority, also known as Garante, temporarily banned the chatbot and launched a probe over the artificial intelligence application’s suspected breach of […]