Town Hall News

By David Shepardson, Rami Ayyub WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. lawmakers on Thursday battered TikTok’s chief executive about potential Chinese influence over the platform and said its short videos were damaging children’s mental health, reflecting bipartisan concerns over the app’s power over Americans. CEO Shou Zi Chew’s testimony before Congress did little to assuage U.S. worries over TikTok’s China-based parent company ByteDance and added fresh momentum to lawmakers’ calls to ban the […]

By Lori Ewing MANCHESTER, England (Reuters) -World Athletics has banned transgender women from competing in elite female competitions and tightened testosterone restrictions for other athletes, the governing body said on Thursday. World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said that the decision to exclude transgender women who had gone through male puberty was based “on the overarching need to protect the female category”. The tighter measures around one of the most contentious […]

By David French and Saeed Azhar NEW YORK (Reuters) – Citizens Financial Group Inc is working on a bid to acquire the private banking business of failed Silicon Valley Bank, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Citizens, one of the largest U.S. regional banks, is preparing to submit an offer in the auction of the business, which is called SVB Private, the sources said. The auction is […]

By James Mackenzie JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu summoned his defence chief on Thursday after reports the minister wanted to halt the government’s judicial overhaul plans, as cracks opened in the ruling coalition over the bitterly disputed project. A planned statement by Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, whom Israeli media said wanted to call for a stop to the plans in the name of maintaining order in military ranks, […]

By Jonathan Stempel, Aleksandar Vasovic and Hyunsu Yim NEW YORK/PODGORICA/SEOUL (Reuters) -Do Kwon, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur behind two digital currencies that lost an estimated $40 billion or more last year, has been charged with fraud by U.S. prosecutors. An eight-count indictment against Kwon was made public in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan, several hours after news of his arrest earlier Thursday in Montenegro. Lawyers for Kwon in the United […]

By Stephen Culp NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street closed higher on Thursday as market participants were reassured by U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s reassurances that measures will be taken to keep Americans’ deposits safe. All three major U.S. stock indexes reversed an earlier rally, turning red before clawing their way back to positive territory in the final hour as Yellen resumed her congressional testimony. Dropping Treasury yields, particularly an […]

LISBON (Reuters) – New Portugal coach Roberto Martinez praised the positive influence of record-breaker Cristiano Ronaldo as they beat Liechtenstein 4-0 on Thursday at the start of their Euro 2024 qualifying campaign. Martinez said matches against smaller teams could become traps but that the Portuguese had made the perfect start in Group J against the tiny Alpine principality. It marked a record 197th cap for Ronaldo, who scored the last […]

(Reuters) – Intellectual property services provider IPH Ltd said on Friday it has established new network infrastructure and restored key system functionality, a week after reporting a data breach that affected a portion of its IT systems. The company detected unauthorised access to document management systems last week, which included administrative documents as well as some client documents and correspondence at its head office and two member firms. IPH said […]

By David French and Saeed Azhar NEW YORK (Reuters) – Citizens Financial Group Inc is working on a bid to acquire the private banking business of failed Silicon Valley Bank, two people familiar with the matter said on Thursday. Citizens, one of the largest U.S. regional banks, is preparing to submit an offer in the auction of the business, which is called SVB Private, the sources said. The auction is […]