Town Hall News

By Blake Brittain (Reuters) – Voting technology company Smartmatic USA Corp on Tuesday fended off a patent infringement lawsuit brought by competitor Election Systems & Software LLC, persuading a federal judge that the last patent remaining in the case is invalid. U.S. District Judge Richard Andrews in Delaware said the voting-machine patent covered unpatentable abstract ideas related to “the individual steps of voting.” Representatives for the companies did not immediately […]

By Lisa Pauline Mattackal (Reuters) – What do you get when you cross cryptocurrencies with artificial intelligence? A seemingly sentient bitcoin that codes itself in the style of Japanese haikus? Alas not, though you do get billions of dollars of trading in a new class of crypto tokens. The machine mania sweeping the tech world amid the launches of bots like ChatGPT and Bard has reached the cryptoverse, with interest […]

(Reuters) – The Champions League final could be staged in the United States in the future as Europe’s soccer governing body looks to capitalise on the sport’s rising popularity in the country, UEFA president Aleksander Ceferin has said. The showpiece event in European club football has never been held outside the continent since the competition’s inception in 1955, but Ceferin said a break from tradition could be on the cards […]

By Leah Douglas (Reuters) – Nearly 850,000 Americans could find it harder to access federal food aid under a Republican proposal to expand the program’s work requirements, according to the Biden administration, which has promised to veto the plan if it passes Congress. The expanded work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) were included in a plan released last week by Republican House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy […]

By Rami Amichay and Emily Rose BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters) -Tensions ran high as ceremonies commemorating slain Israeli soldiers and victims of attacks turned into protests on Tuesday, far from the decades-old tradition of Memorial Day unity. Despite calls from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposition leaders to put disagreements aside over plans by the far-right government to strip Israel’s highest court of much of its powers, the friction was palpable […]

By Steve Holland, Jarrett Renshaw and Heather Timmons WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden launched his re-election bid on Tuesday with a promise to protect American liberties from “extremists” linked to former President Donald Trump, who he beat in 2020 and might face again in 2024. Biden made his announcement in a video released by his new campaign team that opens with imagery from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the […]

By Sinéad Carew, Sruthi Shankar and Ankika Biswas (Reuters) – U.S. stocks sank on Tuesday as a downbeat UPS forecast exacerbated investor concerns about a slowing U.S. economy, while a plunge in regional First Republic Bank’s deposits added to jitters about the health of the banking sector. United Parcel Service Inc shares fell 9.8%, on track for their biggest one-day drop in more than eight years after the courier company […]

By Lisa Pauline Mattackal (Reuters) – What do you get when you cross cryptocurrencies with artificial intelligence? A seemingly sentient bitcoin that codes itself in the style of Japanese haikus? Alas not, though you do get billions of dollars of trading in a new class of crypto tokens. The machine mania sweeping the tech world amid the launches of bots like ChatGPT and Bard has reached the cryptoverse, with interest […]

By Arathy Somasekhar HOUSTON (Reuters) -Oil dropped 2% on Tuesday after two sessions of gains as deepening concerns of an economic slowdown and a stronger dollar outweighed hopes of higher Chinese demand and lower U.S. crude stocks. Brent crude fell by $1.96, or 2.4%, to settle at $80.77 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped $1.69, or 2.2%, to settle at $77.07. On Monday, both contracts rose by more […]