Town Hall News

JERUSALEM/GAZA (Reuters) – Israel reinforced troops near its borders with Lebanon and Gaza on Friday following a flare-up in violence that threatened to spiral out of control after police raids this week on the Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem. But even as major salvoes of rockets were fired at northern and southern Israel over the past day and Israel’s military replied with strikes in Lebanon and Gaza, no serious injuries were […]

(Reuters) – A United Arab Emirates court has dismissed South Africa’s request to extradite Atul and Rajesh Gupta, brothers who face charges of political corruption, Justice Minister Ronald Lamola said on Friday. The Guptas are accused of using their connections with Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa from 2009 to 2018, to win contracts, influence cabinet appointments and siphon off state funds. Zuma and the Guptas have denied all wrongdoing. […]

(Reuters) – Ukrainian artistic swimmers Maryna and Vladyslava Aleksiiva have spent years training for Paris 2024 but their Olympic dreams hang in the balance after the government decided to block its athletes from competing in qualifiers if they include Russians. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has recommended Russians and Belarusians be allowed to return to international competition as neutrals since their ban after last year’s invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow […]

SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Tech giant Alibaba is seeking companies to test its Tongyi Qianwen AI chatbot, business publication STAR Market Daily reported on Friday, joining the rush to emulate the explosive success of ChatGPT. The free-to-use ChatGPT, a large language model (LLM) application created by Microsoft-backed OpenAI, was released to the public last November and can generate articles and essays on demand in response to user prompts. Alibaba has opened […]

By Asif Shahzad ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Pakistan’s finance minister has cancelled a visit to Washington for spring meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, government officials said on Friday, citing domestic political turmoil as the reason. Minister Ishaq Dar was scheduled to attend the meetings from April 10 and see top IMF officials and multilateral creditors in a bid to secure stalled funding that the South Asian country […]

By Soo-hyang Choi and Ju-min Park SEOUL (Reuters) -The United States, South Korea and Japan expressed deep concern over North Korea’s “malicious” cyber activities to support its weapons programmes, in comments released in a joint statement on Friday. Crypto currency funds stolen by North Korean hackers have been a key source for financing the sanctions-stricken country’s weapons programmes, officials and experts in the United States and its allies say. A […]

By Leika Kihara TOKYO (Reuters) -Haruhiko Kuroda took a slightly less dovish tack in his farewell as Japan’s central bank chief on Friday, ending a decade of unconventional policy that included a “bazooka” of stimulus aimed at boosting inflation and sustainable growth. Handing the reins of the Bank of Japan (BOJ) to academic Kazuo Ueda, Kuroda pointed to progress under his radical easy-money policy, which featured a push to change […]

MILAN (Reuters) – Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi spent a second night calmly in the intensive care unit of Milan’s San Raffaele hospital and is reacting positively to treatment, Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Friday. The 86-year-old billionaire media tycoon was rushed to the hospital on Wednesday, heightening concerns over his fragile health. He has suffered from chronic blood cancer for some time and is in intensive care […]

(Reuters) -A United Arab Emirates court has dismissed South Africa’s request to extradite Atul and Rajesh Gupta, brothers who face charges of political corruption, Justice Minister Ronald Lamola said on Friday. The brothers are accused of using their connections with Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa from 2009 to 2018, to win contracts, influence cabinet appointments and siphon off state funds. Zuma and the Guptas have denied all wrongdoing. South […]