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☆ Slovak's caretaker PM quits after political wrangling
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-07 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

May 7 (Reuters) - Slovakia's Prime Minister Eduard Heger said on Sunday he had asked the president to relieve him of his duties, after ministers' resignations weakened his cabinet that is serving in a caretaker capacity before elections in September. Heger is due to meet President Zuzana Caputova, who has the power to appoint a new caretaker prime minister, later on Sunday. Heger has faced calls from the opposition to make way for a technocrat administration to lead the central European country until early elections to take place in September. In common with other European states, Slovakia has provided households and companies with payments to mitigate the impact of high energy costs and wider inflation. Reporting by Jason Hovet in Prague Editing by Peter GraffOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Italy calls for clearer apology from France over migration 'insult'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-07 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

ROME, May 7 (Reuters) - Italy remains dissatisfied with the apologies offered by Paris after a French minister accused Rome of mishandling the influx of migrants, Italy's foreign minister Antonio Tajani said on Sunday. "Clearer words are needed," Tajani, who is member of the conservative Forza Italia party, told Italian state-owned television RAI in an interview. "I hope that the French government changes its position and that an apology comes that represents a contrast to the positions adopted by the Interior Minister. French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said last week that Italy's right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni had been "unable to solve the migration problems on which she was elected". Tajani called off a visit to Paris at the last minute on Thursday in a sign of protest over what he considered an "insult" to Italy.

☆ Poland may extend zero VAT on food into 2024 if inflation persists
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

WARSAW, May 6 (Reuters) - Poland may extend zero VAT rate on food staples into 2024 if inflation persists, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said on Saturday. However, Brussels has allowed VAT on food staples to be kept at zero. "If inflation doesn't fall very significantly, it's not excluded that in the fourth quarter of this year we will make a decision to extend this relief for the next year," Morawiecki told a news conference. The decision will be made when inflation data for this year and forecasts for 2024 will be available, the prime minister said, adding that the measure costs around 10 billion zlotys ($2.41 billion) a year in lost budget income. ($1 = 4.1468 zlotys)Reporting by Marek Strzelecki Editing by Peter GraffOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Poland to call for EU sanctions on imports of Russian farm products
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

WARSAW, May 6 (Reuters) - Poland will demand European Union sanctions on imports of Russian farm products, its ambassador to the EU Andrzej Sados was quoted as saying on Saturday by PAP news agency. "Europe isn't threatened by disruptions in supply chain of farm products now, contrary, we have a problem of surpluses. We are resolving a problem of increased imports of farm products from Ukraine," Sados said, according to PAP. Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, the EU has adopted 10 sanctions packages against Russian individuals and companies. Poland in April proposed a new set of punitive measures against Moscow, including a ban on pipeline oil and diamond imports.

☆ Russian nationalist writer wounded in car bombing, one dead
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-06 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

May 6 (Reuters) - A prominent Russian nationalist writer, Zakhar Prilepin, was wounded in a car bombing on Saturday that Russia immediately blamed on Ukraine and the West. It separately quoted a source in the emergency services as saying the writer was wounded but conscious after the explosion. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram: "The fact has come true: Washington and NATO fed another international terrorist cell - the Kyiv regime." Zakhar is OK."Two leading pro-war Russian propagandists have been killed in bombings since Russia invaded Ukraine in February last year. Darya Dugina, the daughter of a nationalist ideologue, died in a car bombing near Moscow in August, while military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky was killed in a bomb attack in a St Petersburg cafe last month.

The novelist is an outspoken champion of Russia's war in Ukraine and has boasted of taking part in military combat there. He was the third prominent pro-war figure to be targeted by a bomb since Moscow's full-scale invasion of its neighbour in February 2022. [1/2] A view shows a destroyed vehicle, which transported Russian writer Zakhar Prilepin allegedly wounded in a car bombing in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Russia, May 6, 2023. On Wednesday, Russia accused Ukraine of trying to kill President Vladimir Putin with a night-time drone attack on the Kremlin. TASS quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as declining to comment on Saturday's car bomb in the absence of information from investigators.

☆ Google AI pioneer says he quit to speak freely about technology's 'dangers'
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

[1/2] Artificial intelligence pioneer Geoffrey Hinton speaks at the Thomson Reuters Financial and Risk Summit in Toronto, December 4, 2017. REUTERS/Mark BlinchMay 2 (Reuters) - A pioneer of artificial intelligence said he quit Google (GOOGL.O) to speak freely about the technology's dangers, after realising that computers could become smarter than people far sooner than he and other experts had expected. "I left so that I could talk about the dangers of AI without considering how this impacts Google," Geoffrey Hinton wrote on Twitter. “The idea that this stuff could actually get smarter than people — a few people believed that,” he told the New York Times. In his tweet, Hinton said Google itself had "acted very responsibly" and denied that he had quit so that he could criticise his former employer.

☆ "No one is left": Ukrainian mourns neighbours killed by Russian missile
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Sergiy Karazy | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

UMAN, Ukraine, April 28 (Reuters) - Serhii Lubivskyi looked up with tears in his eyes at the empty space where his neighbours' flats stood before a Russian missile strike reduced them to rubble. "No one is left," Lubivskyi, 58, said on Friday in the central Ukrainian city of Uman. "My neighbours are gone, no one is left ... only the kitchens were left standing," he said, crying as he took a deep drag from a cigarette. Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians in its "special military operation" in Ukraine, but this is no consolation for Lubivskyi. "They don't care, the more people they kill, the more they want to kill, just because we don't want to work for them."

☆ Palace email says queen knew Murdoch's UK group spied on her family
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Sam Tobin | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

Clive Goodman, the News of the World's then royal reporter, was jailed in 2007 for illegally intercepting royal household phone messages. Harry, estranged from his father King Charles, says he did not bring a lawsuit earlier because of a "secret agreement" between Buckingham Palace and Murdoch's executives to protect the royal family from embarrassment. News Group denies any such agreement, while the palace has not commented. Osman told Brooks in a separate 2018 email that there was an "institutional appetite" within the royal family to resolve Harry’s phone-hacking case. Harry, who now lives in California with his family, was not in court, but is following the proceedings by video link.

☆ South Africa, due to host Putin, rows back from pledge to quit war crimes court
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Ramaphosa had said on Tuesday that the ruling African National Congress would aim to repeal South Africa's membership of the Hague-based court, which hears cases of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Moscow denies committing war crimes including forced deportations of children, and says the ICC has no authority as Russia is not a member. Putin is due to visit South Africa in August for a summit of the BRICS group of emerging economies comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. As an ICC member, South Africa would be required to detain him. The presidency said on Wednesday that South Africa would work towards establishing an African continental criminal court that would complement the ICC as a court of last resort.

☆ Thirty years on, Zambia mourns national team killed in plane crash
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Mark Gleeson | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

The bulk of the team were experienced internationals, fancied to emerge top of their final round qualifying group and secure a first-ever World Cup final appearance at the 1994 tournament in the United States. Engine failure after takeoff from Libreville caused the plane to crash into the sea, killing all on board including the coaches, support staff and crew. A year after the crash, the team were surprise finalists at the 1994 Africa Cup of Nations in Tunisia, losing 2-1 to Nigeria. Twenty years after the disaster, Zambia finally won the African title - in Gabon, site of the crash. Just days before the final, players threw flowers into the sea at the beach where the bodies had washed up.

[1/4] Sudanese cartoonist Khalid Albaih works at his home as a TV news broadcast shows images from Sudan, in Oslo, Norway April 20, 2023. "Art is needed in times like this because it is important to show people art is about hope, art is about showing there is a different way to talk about things," Albaih told Reuters. "Art is continuous resistance. Art is our way to continue fighting." Reporting by Gwladys Fouche in Oslo Editing by Peter GraffOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Overwhelming majority of Gen Z workers would quit their jobs over company values, LinkedIn data says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Sophie Kiderlin | In | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Company values are increasingly important to employees, and can be deciding factors for those considering quitting, or choosing a new job, LinkedIn says. A survey from LinkedIn found the vast majority, 87%, of Gen Z professionals would be prepared to quit their jobs to work elsewhere if the values of the new company were more closely aligned. At a time when many are bearing the brunt of a cost-of-living crisis, Graff said the survey's findings underscore the importance of company values to an employee. Over the past two years, there has been a 154% increase in entry-level job postings that mention company values, the platform says. The change is paying off for companies — job ads that talk about values receive almost double the amount of applications compared to two years ago, LinkedIn says.

☆ Swedish Radio becomes first big European broadcaster to quit Twitter
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-18 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +2 min

Swedish Radio said its decision had been made because Twitter had lost relevance for a Swedish audience, not blaming a new policy by Twitter under owner Elon Musk to label more public broadcasters as government funded. And therefore Sveriges Radio now chooses to deactivate or delete the last remaining accounts," Christian Gillinger, head of Social Media at Swedish Radio, said in a blog post. Gillinger said Swedish Radio had no problem with its designation: "Based on the current definition, it's a correct description of how Swedish Radio is financed." By far Sweden's biggest radio company with 7.4 million weekly listeners in 2021, Swedish Radio has been on Twitter since 2009. Individual reporters working for Swedish Radio were still free to use Twitter as they please.

☆ Big investors dump China shares, add oil to portfolios -Goldman
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-17 | by ( Carolina Mandl | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

NEW YORK, April 17 (Reuters) - Big global money managers got rid of a high volume of Chinese equities in recent days, while adding U.S. energy shares to portfolios at a near-record pace, according to a Goldman Sachs report. Managers decided to sell Chinese equities amid heightened geopolitical tensions between the world's second largest economy and the United States. "As concerns heightened around geopolitics, Chinese equities were net sold for the first time in a month, driven by risk unwinds with long sales outpacing short covers," Goldman Sachs said, adding investors had sold both offshore and onshore shares. Goldman Sachs compiled data from its clients, which include hedge funds and other big money managers, for the period between April 7 and April 13. While selling China, hedge funds net bought U.S. energy shares at the fastest pace in three months, Goldman Sachs said.

[1/2] Ukrainian artillery fires towards the frontline during heavy fighting amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, near Bakhmut, Ukraine, April 13, 2023. Western countries have in the past pointed to acrimony between the Russian defence ministry (MoD) and the country's main mercenary force Wagner as a major Russian weakness. Ukrainian Deputy Defence Minister Hanna Maliar said Russian commanders had redirected troops to Bakhmut from other areas. The British update said the Ukrainians still held western districts of the town but had been subjected to particularly intense Russian artillery fire over the previous 48 hours. Moscow says it would open a route to capturing more territory in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region, a major war aim.

☆ Stocks and gold cheer U.S. inflation picture, while dollar slides
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-13 | by ( Amanda Cooper | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +5 min

[1/2] The German share price index DAX graph is pictured at the stock exchange in Frankfurt, Germany, March 10, 2023. The annual 5% headline rise for U.S. inflation was the smallest since May 2021 and down from 9.1% last June. The dollar index was down 0.2%, near its lowest in two months, while U.S. stock futures , rose 0.1-0.2%, suggesting a modest rally at the open. The Aussie dollar rose 0.6% on the back of surprise surges in both Chinese exports, which rose 14.8% compared with last March, and domestic Australian jobs. Alibaba shares (9988.HK) fell by as much as 5% at one stage, but later pared losses to close 2% lower.

Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman, said in a video clip on Twitter accompanied by disturbing background music. Navalny's supporters cast him as a Russian version of South Africa's Nelson Mandela who will one day be freed from jail to lead the country. Navalny accused the Russian state of trying to kill him, something it denied. Yarmysh said medicine sent to Navalny's prison by his mother was not collected by prison officials from the post office and was returned. Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge and Andrew Osborn Editing by Peter Graff and Nick MacfieOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

The Black Sea and its Ukrainian coast have been crucial theatres of war since Russia's invasion of Ukraine last year. "The Black Sea is instrumental for making the whole of Europe peaceful and future-oriented," Kuleba, speaking via video link, told a Black Sea security conference in the Romanian capital Bucharest. It's time to turn the Black Sea into what the Baltic Sea has become, a sea of NATO." The remarks were brushed aside in Moscow, where Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told a briefing: "The Black Sea can never be a NATO sea." Romanian Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu said a strong NATO foothold in the Black Sea going forward was a "must."

☆ Factbox: Governments' efforts to regulate AI tools
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

April 12 (Reuters) - Italy's data protection agency said on Wednesday it would lift its temporary ban on OpenAI's ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) technology if the U.S. company complied with data protection and privacy demands by end-April. Rapid advances in AI such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT are complicating governments' efforts to agree on laws governing the use of the technology. Lawmakers have proposed classifying different AI tools according to their perceived level of risk, from low to unacceptable. On Wednesday, its data protection agency set an end-April deadline for OpenAI to meet its demands on data protection and privacy before the service can be resumed in the country. SPAINSpain's data protection agency has asked the EU's privacy watchdog to evaluate privacy concerns surrounding ChatGPT, the agency told Reuters on April 11.

☆ India's retail inflation eases below RBI's upper tolerance level
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

NEW DELHI, April 12 (Reuters) - India's annual retail inflation for March eased below the central bank's upper tolerance level for the first time this year, as food prices softened. Annual retail inflation eased to 5.66% in March from 6.44% in the previous month, government data showed on Wednesday. A Reuters poll of 39 economists had forecast an annual inflation rate of 5.80% in March. Food inflation, which accounts for nearly half of the overall consumer price basket, moderated to 4.79% as vegetable prices eased, offsetting surging cereal prices. RBI's sudden pause came even as retail inflation has remained above the central bank's mandated target range for 10 out of the 13 readings.

Ambassador to the United Kingdom Jane Hartley greet U.S. President Joe Biden next to Joe Kennedy upon Biden's arrival at RAF Aldergrove airbase in County Antrim, Northern Ireland April 11, 2023. Ahern said he knew from experience that "knocking heads together" did not usually work in Northern Ireland and that Biden should point out the obvious case that, in any democracy, institutions of parliament were essential. Biden will travel later on Wednesday to County Louth - midway between Belfast and Dublin - where his great-grandfather was born. Biden will meet relatives from another side of his family in the western county of Mayo on Friday. Writing by Padraic Halpin; Additional reporting by Conor Humphries; Editing by Peter Graff and Alex RichardsonOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

☆ Kyiv compares Russia to Islamic State after beheading video
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-12 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

KYIV, April 12 (Reuters) - Ukraine compared Russia on Wednesday to Islamic State and called on the International Criminal Court to investigate after a video emerged online showing apparent Russian soldiers filming themselves beheading a Ukrainian captive with a knife. "There is something that no one in the world can ignore: how easily these beasts kill," Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video message. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitro Kuleba said on Twitter: "A horrific video of Russian troops decapitating a Ukrainian prisoner of war is circulating online. Ukraine's domestic security agency said it had started an investigation into a suspected war crime over the video. As well as the purported execution, another video shows mutilated bodies of apparent Ukrainian prisoners of war, it said.

☆ U.N. tally of confirmed civilian deaths in Ukraine approaches 8,500
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +1 min

[1/2] A destroyed car from recent shelling during heavy fighting at the frontline of Bakhmut and Chasiv Yar, is pictured in Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, April 10, 2023. REUTERS/Kai PfaffenbachGENEVA, April 11 (Reuters) - Nearly 8,500 civilians are confirmed to have been killed in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a U.N. body said on Tuesday, with many thousands more unverified deaths still feared. The body has long described its figures as "the tip of the iceberg" because of its limited access to battle zones. Russian forces have pressed their offensive in the eastern Donetsk region where several cities and towns have under heavy bombardment. A U.N.-mandated investigative body found last month that Russian forces had carried out "indiscriminate and disproportionate" attacks on Ukraine.

☆ Pope wants light shed on 40-year-old mystery of missing Vatican girl
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-11 | by ( Philip Pullella | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +3 min

The daughter of a Vatican usher whose family lived in the Vatican, Orlandi, then 15, failed to return home on June 22, 1983 following a music lesson in Rome. The case, which has been the subject of on-and-off investigations in Italy and the Vatican, has drawn fresh worldwide attention following the release late last year of the Netflix series "Vatican Girl". In January, Vatican chief prosecutor Alessandro Diddi reopened a previous inconclusive Vatican investigation after he inherited files from his retired predecessor. Emanuela's older brother Pietro and the family lawyer, Laura Sgro, were meeting with Diddi in the Vatican on Tuesday afternoon. In an interview in Corriere della Sera ahead of the meeting, Diddi said Pope Francis wants "the truth to emerge without any reservations".

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