Town Hall News

BOGOTA (Reuters) – Colombia’s congress should approve health, labor and pension reforms, President Gustavo Petro said on Wednesday, as the lower house weighed whether to shelve the health bill, which would be a major legislative defeat for leftist who campaigned on improving the beleaguered system. “We ask, with all due respect…that they approve the reforms, that they guarantee to the Colombian people their rights,” Petro told thousands of union members […]

LONDON (Reuters) -Britain has committed to the removal of Chinese-made surveillance equipment from sensitive government sites as part of its latest plans to address national security concerns related to China. Under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who has cast China as the world’s greatest challenge to security and prosperity, the government told its departments last year to stop installing Chinese-linked surveillance cameras at sensitive buildings. In an announcement setting out a […]

By Shrivathsa Sridhar PARIS (Reuters) – Alexander Zverev returned to the semi-finals of the French Open on Wednesday a year after leaving the tournament in a wheelchair, while Iga Swiatek also maintained her quest for a third title in four years. Zverev suffered a season-ending ankle injury during his last-four match against eventual champion Rafa Nadal on Court Philippe Chatrier last year and underwent surgery, but subsequent complications meant he […]

KHARTOUM (Reuters) -A massive fire broke out on Wednesday near a military complex containing an arms factory in southern Khartoum that Sudan’s army has been battling to defend against an attack by a rival faction, eyewitnesses said. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in the eighth week of a power struggle with the army, attacked the Yarmouk complex on Tuesday, witnesses said. The group on Wednesday posted a video in […]

KHARTOUM (Reuters) -A massive fire broke out on Wednesday near a military complex containing an arms factory in southern Khartoum that Sudan’s army has been battling to defend against an attack by a rival faction, eyewitnesses said. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in the eighth week of a power struggle with the army, attacked the Yarmouk complex on Tuesday, witnesses said. The group on Wednesday posted a video in […]

By Michel Rose PARIS (Reuters) – France is not against a long-delayed trade deal with South America’s Mercosur bloc but doesn’t want to rush negotiations it says would risk seeing the deal rejected by European parliaments if it didn’t answer environmental and social concerns. The European Commission has said it is a priority to conclude a deal, more than 20 years in the making, with the Mercosur bloc of Brazil, […]

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The SAG-AFTRA actors union and the group representing major Hollywood studios agreed not to talk to the media during contract talks that started on Wednesday. The actors’ union is seeking pay increases and protections around the use of artificial intelligence in negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), which represents Walt Disney Co, Netflix Inc, Comcast Corp and other companies. “SAG-AFTRA and […]

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp is bringing the powerful language-producing models from OpenAI to U.S. federal agencies using its Azure cloud service, it said in a blog post on Wednesday. The Redmond, Washington-based company has added support for large language models (LLMs) powering GPT-4 and GPT-3 the latest and most-sophisticated of the LLMs from OpenAI, and GPT-3, to Azure Government cloud computing service. Use of LLMs have boomed since the launch […]

By Steve Scherer and David Ljunggren OTTAWA (Reuters) – The Bank of Canada on Wednesday hiked its overnight rate to a 22-year high of 4.75%, and markets and analysts immediately forecast yet another increase next month to ratchet down an overheating economy and stubbornly high inflation. The central bank had been on hold since January to assess the impact of previous hikes after raising borrowing costs eight times since March […]