Town Hall News

By David Shepardson, Rami Ayyub WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. lawmakers on Thursday battered TikTok’s chief executive about potential Chinese influence over the platform and said its short videos were damaging children’s mental health, reflecting bipartisan concerns over the app’s power over Americans. CEO Shou Zi Chew’s testimony before Congress did little to assuage U.S. worries over TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance and added fresh momentum to lawmakers’ calls to ban the […]

ROME (Reuters) – The Italian coast guard has rescued around 750 migrants in two separate operations off the country’s southern coastline, hours after at least five people died and 33 were missing in an attempted sea crossing from Tunisia. The coast guard said some 295 people were rescued from a fishing boat intercepted 167 km from the eastern coast of the Calabria region, while about 450 were rescued from another […]

(Reuters) -Credit Suisse AG and UBS group AG are under scrutiny in a U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) probe into whether financial professionals helped Russian oligarchs evade sanctions, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. The DOJ also sent subpoenas to employees of some major U.S. banks, the Bloomberg report said, adding the Swiss banks were included in a wave of subpoenas sent before Credit Suisse’s takeover by UBS. The DOJ inquiries […]

(Reuters) – Utah Governor Spencer Cox on Thursday signed two laws intended to restrict social media use by minors, becoming the first U.S. state to require parental permission for anyone under 18 to use such platforms as Instagram, TikTok and Facebook. The two bills, passed earlier this month by Utah’s Republican-controlled legislature, are also meant to make it easier to sue social media companies for damages. The impact of social […]

By David Lawder and Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said on Thursday the United States was looking at ways to strengthen its sanctions against Iran, but acknowledged the sanctions had not resulted in the behavioral or policy changes Washington desires from Tehran. “Our sanctions on Iran have created real economic crisis in the country, and Iran is greatly suffering economically because of the sanctions … Has […]

By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The quirky comet ‘Oumuamua, the first interstellar object found visiting our solar system, has been the subject of fascination since being spotted in 2017, including its curious acceleration as it hurtled away from the sun. Hypotheses were floated in light of its unexpected behavior, including fleeting speculation that it might actually have been an alien spacecraft. A new study has offered a more sober […]

(Reuters) – A recent ban of TikTok use on U.S. government-owned devices, coupled with new legislation in Congress seeking to block the app, have fueled expectations the popular Chinese-owned platform could soon be barred nationwide. Adding to the perception, last week the company said the Biden administration had demanded TikTok’s owners divest their stakes in the popular video app or face a possible ban. It is unclear how the Biden […]

By Jonathan Stempel NEW YORK (Reuters) – A key prosecution witness whose testimony helped convict Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes of fraud sued Walt Disney Co on Thursday over a recent Hulu miniseries that he says defamed him by portraying him as corrupt. Adam Rosendorff, a former Theranos lab director, objected in a New York state court filing to a fictional character who held the same job in “The Dropout,” which […]

By Sabine Siebold, Andrew Gray and Gabriela Baczynska BRUSSELS (Reuters) -European Union leaders held talks on Thursday with U.N. chief Antonio Guterres on global food security and sanctions imposed on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, and also endorsed a plan to supply more artillery shells to Kyiv. Guterres’ participation in the EU summit came days after the renewal of a deal brokered by the United Nations and Turkey on […]