By Lucia Mutikani WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of Americans filing new claims for unemployment benefits increased moderately last week, while private payrolls surged in June, suggesting that the labor market remained on solid ground despite growing risks of a recession. The reports on Thursday, which also suggested that laid-off workers were experiencing shorter spells…
By Guy Faulconbridge MINSK (Reuters) -Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday that the mutinous chief of Russia’s Wagner group was still in Russia with thousands of fighters, but dismissed speculation that President Vladimir Putin would have Yevgeny Prigozhin killed. Lukashenko helped broker a deal to end last month’s mutiny, the gravest challenge to Putin…
By Emma Farge GENEVA (Reuters) – Nadine, a social robot powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) with human-like gestures and expressions, could have an important future role to play in tending to the sick and elderly, according to a professor who helped invent it. Nadia Magnenat Thalmann, a robot expert from the University of Geneva, who…
BEIRUT/JERUSALEM (Reuters) -Two rockets were fired from southern Lebanon toward Israel on Thursday, prompting cross-border strikes by the Israeli military, sources on both sides said. The incident came amid heightened Israeli-Arab tensions after Israel this week conducted one of its largest military incursions in decades in the occupied West Bank, targeting the Jenin camp, a…
DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran and Sudan said on Thursday they were planning to restore ties after the Iranian foreign minister met his acting Sudanese counterpart for the first time since diplomatic relations between the two countries were severed seven years ago. Sudan’s foreign ministry said in a statement that the meeting, on the sidelines of a…
By Renee Maltezou and Lefteris Papadimas ATHENS (Reuters) -Greece’s re-elected Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis on Thursday pledged his conservative government would “fix the sins of the past” and over the next four years cut taxes, boost wages and pensions, and repay bailout debts earlier than expected. Mitsotakis, 55, won 158 sets in the 300-seat parliament…
By Guy Faulconbridge MINSK (Reuters) – Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday that he would have a veto over any use of the tactical nuclear weapons that Russia is stationing on his territory, and goaded the West’s spies for missing the transport of the warheads. President Vladimir Putin, who rules the world’s biggest nuclear…
By Andrew Gray and Niklas Pollard BRUSSELS (Reuters) -Sweden failed on Thursday to convince Turkey to lift its block on Stockholm’s path to NATO membership, and the issue will now go to a meeting of the Turkish and Swedish leaders next week. Speaking after talks with the Turkish and Swedish foreign ministers at the security…
LONDON (Reuters) – Meta, the company behind social media giants Facebook and Instagram, has launched its new microblogging platform Threads. WHAT IS THREADS? The new app bears a striking resemblance to Twitter, allowing users to post text, images, or videos, as well as like, share, or repost content. Threads accounts are synched to Instagram at…
JERUSALEM (Reuters) – An Israeli court on Thursday acquitted a policeman who shot dead an autistic Palestinian in 2020, ruling that the victim was mistaken for a militant under circumstances arising from the “unique intensity” of trying to secure Jerusalem. Iyad al-Halaq, 32, was on his way to volunteer at a special needs school when…
