Town Hall News

By Brendan Pierson and Tom Hals (Reuters) -A U.S. judge in Texas on Friday suspended the two-decade-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone while a legal challenge proceeds, dealing another setback to abortion rights in the United States. Adding to the volatile legal landscape around abortion, a federal judge in Washington state on Friday issued a seemingly conflicting injunction that prevented federal regulators from altering access to the same abortion […]

By Brendan Pierson (Reuters) – U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Amarillo, Texas on Friday suspended approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, which will essentially make sales of the pill illegal in the U.S., while a legal challenge proceeds. The legal battle over medication abortion is only beginning and could wend its way through multiple levels of appeals courts over a period of months or years before it is resolved. Here […]

By Laurie Chen BEIJING (Reuters) -A Chinese court sentenced two prominent human rights lawyers on Monday to jail terms of more than a decade each, a relative and rights groups told Reuters, the latest move in a years-long crackdown on civil society by President Xi Jinping. Xu Zhiyong, 50, and Ding Jiaxi, 55, went on trial behind closed doors in June last year on charges of state subversion at a […]

MILAN (Reuters) -A vessel with around 400 people on board is adrift between Greece and Malta and is taking on water, support service Alarm Phone said on Sunday, after a sharp rise of migrant boats crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa. Alarm Phone said on Twitter they had received a call from the boat, which departed from Tobruk, in Libya, overnight and that they had informed authorities. But authorities had […]

PARIS (Reuters) – French rescue workers have found two bodies in the rubble of buildings in the southern city of Marseille which collapsed following an explosion, the city’s mayor said on Monday. Authorities have previously said that nine people were believed missing after Sunday’s explosion, which destroyed two residential buildings and caused a third to partially collapse. The cause of the blast is still unknown. “This morning we are in […]

HONG KONG (Reuters) – China’s SenseTime on Monday unveiled an artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot called “SenseChat”, which it demonstrated performing tasks such as writing an email and a children’s story upon being prompted. SenseChat is based off the company’s big AI model SenseNova, said its CEO and co-founder Xu Li. (Reporting by Josh Ye; Writing by Brenda Goh; editing by John Stonestreet) Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

(Reuters) – President Volodymyr Zelenskiy denounced Russian air strikes coinciding with the observance of Orthodox Palm Sunday, including an attack that killed a father and daughter at home in the city of Zaporizhzhia. Ukraine’s military reported Russian attacks and shelling throughout the front, with the heaviest fighting still focused on two cities in eastern Donetsk region — Bakhmut and Avdiivka. Russian forces have been besieging Bakhmut for months in the […]

(Reuters) – Russia’s forces kept up a barrage of attacks along the front concentrated in two Ukrainian cities in the eastern Donetsk region, Ukraine’s military reported, as Kyiv said it repelled more than 40 enemy strikes over the past 24 hours. Fighting was heaviest along the western approaches to Bakhmut, the general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces said on Sunday, one of the two cities in the east, along with […]

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israel has signed a 1.44 billion shekel ($400 million) deal to sell Greece anti-tank Spike missiles produced by state-owned defence contractor Rafael, Israel’s Defence Ministry said on Monday. “This project joins a series of agreements between the State of Israel and the Hellenic Republic, and further emphasizes the strong partnership between our countries and our defense establishments, as well as our mutual commitment to ensuring regional stability,” […]