Town Hall News

By Andrew Osborn MOSCOW (Reuters) -Outspoken Kremlin critic Vladimir Kara-Murza was jailed for 25 years by a Moscow court on Monday, the harshest sentence of its kind since Russia invaded Ukraine, after being found guilty of treason and other offences he denied committing. Kara-Murza, 41, a father of three and an opposition politician who holds Russian and British passports, spent years speaking out against President Vladimir Putin and lobbied Western […]

By Joe Skipper and Joey Roulette BOCA CHICA, Texas (Reuters) – Elon Musk’s SpaceX made final preparations early on Monday to launch its powerful new Starship rocket system to space for the first time, on a brief but highly anticipated uncrewed test flight from the Gulf Coast of Texas.     The two-stage rocketship, standing taller than the Statue of Liberty at 394 feet (120 m) high, was due for blastoff […]

By Hyonhee Shin SEOUL (Reuters) -South Korea, the United States and Japan staged joint naval missile defence exercises on Monday to improve responses to North Korean threats, as Pyongyang accused Washington of ramping up “nuclear blackmail” with military drills. The three nations agreed at talks in Washington on Friday to hold regular missile defence and anti-submarine exercises in their efforts to boost diplomatic and military cooperation. North Korea tested a […]

By Pavel Polityuk and Pawel Florkiewicz KYIV (Reuters) -Kyiv aims to re-open food and grain transit via Poland as “a first step” to ending import bans at talks in Warsaw on Monday as countries halted grain from Ukraine to protect their local agriculture markets from an influx of supply. Poland and Hungary announced bans on some imports from Ukraine on Saturday. Slovakia said on Monday it would do the same […]

PARIS (Reuters) – A wildfire destroyed nearly 1,000 hectares on the French-Spanish border on Sunday and early Monday, authorities said, as parts of southern Europe remain gripped by a drought that is raising fears of a repeat of last summer’s exceptional conflagrations. The blaze, France’s first major wildfire this season, was brought under control early on Monday though not yet fully extinguished, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said, adding one firefighter […]

BERLIN (Reuters) – Luxembourg-based Freyr Battery sealed its partnership with Siemens at the Hannover Messe conference on Monday, making the German technology company its preferred supplier in automation and digitalization technology. Freyr plans to equip its planned gigafactories in Norway and the United States with Siemens technology, and the two companies will join forces along the entire battery design and manufacturing process, the firms said in a statement. “This relationship […]

(Reuters) – Sentenced on Monday to 25 years in prison on charges including treason, Vladimir Kara-Murza joined a growing list of Russians who have received long jail terms after speaking out against President Vladimir Putin or the invasion of Ukraine. Here are some of the most prominent cases. VLADIMIR KARA-MURZA Kara-Murza, 41, was convicted by a Moscow court over a series of interviews and speeches last year in which he […]

By Jeffrey Dastin (Reuters) – The artificial intelligence behind ChatGPT, the homework-drafting chatbot that some schools have banned, is coming to more students via the company Chegg Inc. The U.S. educational software maker has combined its corpus of quiz answers with the chatbot’s AI model known as GPT-4 to create CheggMate, a study aide tailored to students, CEO Dan Rosensweig told Reuters last week. “It’s a tutor in your pocket,” […]

By Noah Browning LONDON (Reuters) -Oil prices were steady on Monday as investors eyed Chinese economic data for signs of demand recovery in the world’s second-largest oil consumer. Brent crude futures were down 13 cents to $86.18 a barrel at 1018 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude was at $82.33 a barrel, down 19 cents. Both contracts notched their fourth weekly gain in a row last week – the […]