Town Hall News

By Paul Sandle LONDON (Reuters) -Britain’s competition regulator said on Thursday it would start examining the impact of artificial intelligence on consumers, businesses and the economy and whether new controls were needed on technologies such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While research on AI has been going on for years, the sudden popularity of generative AI applications such as ChatGPT and Midjourney has highlighted a technology that could upend the way businesses […]

PARIS (Reuters) -France’s antitrust watchdog on Thursday gave Facebook-owner Meta two months to change its access rules for ad verification partners, saying the company was potentially taking unfair advantage of a dominant market position in online advertising. In a statement, the competition authority said Meta must publish new access criteria for partners seeking to use its analytical tools to assess whether online ad campaigns have been actually seen by people […]

BELGRADE (Reuters) – The Serbian government said it had introduced a set of measures on Thursday to prevent potential violence in schools a day after a 13-year-old boy shot and killed eight students and a guard in a Belgrade elementary school. The shooter took guns belonging to his father and went to school where he killed nine people and wounded six students and a teacher before turning himself in to […]

By Andy Sullivan and Moira Warburton WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Republican plan to cut federal spending in exchange for lifting the U.S. government’s debt ceiling would lower employment, slow economic growth and “meaningfully increase” the likelihood of a recession, Moody’s Analytics’ chief economist told a Senate committee on Thursday. Mark Zandi told the Senate Budget Committee that U.S. GDP growth would be 1.61% in 2024 if the Republican plan were […]

BELGRADE (Reuters) – The Serbian government said it had introduced a set of measures on Thursday to prevent potential violence in schools a day after a 13-year-old boy shot and killed eight students and a guard in a Belgrade elementary school. The shooter took guns belonging to his father and went to school where he killed nine people and wounded six students and a teacher before turning himself in to […]

By Medha Singh and Chibuike Oguh (Reuters) – Shares of PacWest Bancorp and Western Alliance Bancorp shares plunged on Thursday, dragging other regional lenders down, as reports of both banks exploring strategic options sparked investor worries of a widening financial crisis. PacWest’s stock slumped more than 40% in afternoon trading, dropping to a record low. The bank had confirmed an earlier Reuters report on Wednesday that it was exploring strategic […]

CHICAGO (Reuters) – JBS USA, one of biggest U.S. meatpackers, is creating an internal company to clean some of its processing plants after a private sanitation firm it employed was accused of hiring children for dangerous work. The launch shows the complexities involved in replacing Packers Sanitation Services Inc (PSSI), a firm that contracts to clean slaughterhouses. The U.S. government in February said PSSI paid $1.5 million in penalties for […]

By Raphael Satter and Christopher Bing (Reuters) – Hacker sabotage has disrupted several public services in Dallas, closing courts and knocking emergency services websites offline, officials said on Thursday. Courts were closed Wednesday and will remain closed Thursday, the City of Dallas said in a series of statements posted to the web. Although the statements said emergency services to residents were unaffected, the home pages of the police and fire […]

CHICAGO (Reuters) – JBS USA, one of biggest U.S. meatpackers, is creating an internal company to clean some of its processing plants after a private sanitation firm it employed was accused of hiring children for dangerous work. The launch shows the complexities involved in replacing Packers Sanitation Services Inc (PSSI), a firm that contracts to clean slaughterhouses. The U.S. government in February said PSSI paid $1.5 million in penalties for […]