Town Hall News

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s antitrust regulator has fined Alphabet Inc’s Google 42.1 billion won ($31.88 million) for blocking the release of mobile video games on a competitor’s platform. The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said on Tuesday that Google bolstered its market dominance, and hurt local app market One Store’s revenue and value as a platform, by requiring video game makers to exclusively release their titles on Google Play […]

By Alasdair Pal SYDNEY (Reuters) -Australia has reached an agreement with China to resolve their dispute over barley imports, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said on Tuesday, the latest sign of improving ties between the countries. Australia will suspend its case at the World Trade Organization (WTO) while China conducts a review into duties imposed on the grain, Wong told a news conference. “China has agreed to undertake an expedited […]

TOKYO (Reuters) -Berkshire Hathaway Inc’s Warren Buffett is considering additional investment in Japanese stocks and said he holds a 7.4% stake in each of five Japanese trading houses, including Itochu Corp, the Nikkei reported on Tuesday. In an interview with the newspaper, Buffett also said he would visit Japanese trading houses and Tungaloy Corp offices during his stay in Japan this time. Berkshire Hathaway had more than a 6% stake […]

TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan announced on Tuesday it will hold trilateral defence talks with the United States and South Korea on Friday in Washington to discuss regional issues including North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats. The three countries last week expressed deep concern over North Korea’s “malicious” cyber activities to support its weapons programmes in a joint statement issued in Seoul. (Reporting by Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Christopher Cushing) Brought […]

(Reuters) – Thick sandstorms will hit Beijing and several provinces through Wednesday, and Chinese forecasters have advised citizens of respiratory dangers and very low visibility while travelling, state media reported. The capital Beijing has seen regular air pollution and an unseasonal number of sandstorms over the past few weeks. Forecasters issued a blue weather alert warning for sandstorms. China has a four-tier, color-coded weather-warning system, with red representing the most […]

By Josh Horwitz SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Alibaba Group Holding Ltd on Tuesday unveiled Tongyi Qianwen, an AI large language model similar to GPT that it plans to integrate into all of the company’s business applications in the near future. It will first be integrated into DingTalk, Alibaba’s workplace messaging app and can be used to summarise meeting notes, write emails and draft business proposals. It will also be added to […]

SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australia Chief of the Defence Force Angus Campbell on Tuesday described the possible intelligence leak by the United States a “serious” incident and said that the U.S. was engaging with its partners to understand the consequences. “The issue of maintaining security of information is critical to the development of national capability and to the trust and confidence across allies and partners,” Campbell said in response to questions […]

(Reuters) -Apple Inc’s music service was facing issues, the iPhone-maker said on its status page on late Monday, while users reported issues with various other services of the company. According to outage tracking website Downdetector.com, services including the support service and Apple store were down for thousands. More than 3,300 users reported issues with streaming Apple Music at the peak of outage, while nearly 2,200 reported problems with App Store […]

By Brendan O’Brien (Reuters) – A 23-year-old bank employee armed with a rifle shot dead five colleagues and wounded nine other people at his workplace in Louisville on Monday while livestreaming the attack on social media, police said. The gunman was fatally shot at the scene, Louisville police said. It was unclear whether he was slain by police or took his own life. The incident marked the latest in a […]