The latest funding round makes Multiverse the largest Spanish AI startup
FILE PHOTO: AI (Artificial Intelligence) letters are placed on computer motherboard in this illustration taken, June 23, 2023. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
International news via Reuters:
Spanish AI firm Multiverse Computing said on Thursday it has raised 189 million euros ($217 million) from investment firm Bullhound Capital, HP Inc, Forgepoint Capital and Toshiba, to compress AI language models.
The company said it has developed a compression technology capable of reducing the size of large language models (LLMs) by up to 95% without hurting performance and reducing costs by up to 80%.
It combines ideas from quantum physics and machine learning in ways that mimic quantum systems but doesn’t need a quantum computer.
The latest funding round makes Multiverse the largest Spanish AI startup, joining the list of top European AI startups such as Mistral, Aleph Alpha, Synthesia, Poolside and Owkin.
Multiverse has launched compressed versions of LLMs such as Meta’s Llama, China’s DeepSeek and France’s Mistral, with additional models coming soon, the company said.
“We are focused just on compressing the most used open-source LLMs, the ones that the companies are already using,” Chief Executive Officer Enrique Lizaso Olmos said.
“When you go to a corporation, most of them are using the Llama family of models.”
The tool is also available on Amazon Web Services AI marketplace.
($1 = 0.8709 euros)
Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Paris; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
Anti-migrant violence has been relatively rare in Northern Ireland post-The Troubles
Michael Asuro, 26, Michael Sancio, 27, Mariel Lei Odi, 27, and Jessa Sagarit 26, whose house was attacked last night and who were evacuated by Ballymena Baptist Church, now living in a caravan, sit on a couch in Cullybackey near Ballymena, following riots in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, June 11, 2025. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
International news via Reuters:
Michael Sancio, a resident of the Northern Irish town of Ballymena, said he was woken at midnight on Tuesday by masked men banging loudly on windows.
Sancio, his wife and daughter, and a couple who share their house – all originally from the Philippines – grabbed their passports and a few belongings and fled their home, sleeping at a friend’s house on Tuesday night. They said they plan to stay further outside the town on Wednesday because they feel unsafe at home.
Hundreds of masked rioters attacked police and set homes and cars on fire in the town of 30,000 people for a second successive night on Tuesday. Police are investigating the damaging of property as racially-motivated “hate crimes”.
“Last night I woke up at 12 midnight because I heard some people outside, and I saw in the window, I saw the other guys wearing a black jacket and black pants, and also they’re wearing a mask,” Sancio, 27, told Reuters on Wednesday.
“They started banging the window of our neighbours so I panicked because I have a daughter inside that house.”
The rioters smashed the windows of the couple’s car that was parked outside the house and set it and a bin on fire, said Sancio, who works at a local bus manufacturer.
The violence erupted after two 14-year-old boys were arrested and appeared in court, accused of a serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in Ballymena, a town with a relatively large migrant population located 28 miles (45 km) from Belfast.
Michael Asuro, 26, Michael Sancio, 27, Mariel Lei Odi, 27, Jessa Sagarit 26, whose house was attacked last night and they were evacuated by Ballymena Baptist church, and living now in a caravan, sit on a couch, in Cullybackey near Ballymena, following riots in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, June 11, 2025. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
The charges were read via a Romanian interpreter to the boys, the BBC reported, adding that the lawyer told the court that they denied the charges.
Anti-migrant violence is rare in Northern Ireland, which for decades has been more familiar with sectarian violence between resident Catholics and Protestants, including in Ballymena.
While a 1998 peace deal largely ended the three decades of bloodshed between Protestants who want to remain under British rule and Catholics favouring a united Ireland, there are still sporadic clashes.
‘EXTREME FEAR’
Sancio said the masked men told them that they were not targeting Filipino people.
Around Ballymena, Filipino residents put stickers of British and Filipino flags on their doors, with messages saying “Filipino lives here” to show they were not Romanian.
Union Jack flags regularly fly in the largely pro-British town. Democratic Unionist Party councillor Lawrie Philpott told Reuters that some people who usually don’t fly flags had hung Union Jacks outside their homes this week to show they are local.
Around 6% of people in Northern Ireland were born abroad, according to government statistics. The foreign-born population in Ballymena is higher, in line with the UK average of 16%, and includes a relatively large Filipino community.
Northern Ireland has been broadly welcoming to migrants but that has been tested recently. Violent disorder erupted in Belfast last August as part of anti-immigration protests that swept across several UK cities following the murder of three young girls in northwest England.
In the Republic of Ireland, rioting broke out in Dublin in late 2023 during anti-immigrant protests that were triggered by a stabbing attack that left a child seriously injured.
Sian Mulholland, a local lawmaker from the Alliance Party, said she was fielding calls from migrant families who in some cases had barricaded themselves into their homes until 0230 on Wednesday morning.
“I had been engaging with this community beforehand because the houses they are living in are not fit for purpose. They’re (living in) squalor,” she told Reuters.
Sancio’s wife, Mariel Lei Odi, was working a night shift on Tuesday. When she returned home, she was worried about the safety of their two-year-old daughter, she said.
“When I (came home to) my husband and chatted about what happened last night: (I said) ‘my daughter, my daughter, my daughter. What happened?’,” she said.
Michael Asuro, who lives in the house with his wife, Jessa Sagarit, said he came to Northern Ireland just under two years ago to seek a better life. Sagarit said she felt traumatised by the events.
Police have said they are braced for more violence on Wednesday.
As residents boarded up broken windows and doors in Ballymena, the Filipino families wondered about their future and whether they will stay.
“We feel extreme fear,” Asuro said.
Reporting by Amanda Ferguson and Clodagh Kilcoyne, Writing by Padraic Halpin, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien
Data centres account for 3% of EU electricity demand
FILE PHOTO: European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium March 18, 2025. REUTERS/Yves Herman/File Photo
International news via Reuters:
The European Union is preparing a package of measures to improve data centres’ energy savings, the bloc’s energy commissioner said on Thursday.
“I will propose a data centre energy efficiency package,” EU energy commissioner Dan Jorgensen told a conference in Brussels, without providing further details.
Data centres account for 3% of EU electricity demand, but their consumption is expected to increase rapidly this decade due to the expansion of artificial intelligence.
There were over 2 million more people displaced globally by the end of April 2025
FILE PHOTO: Rohingya refugees gather at roadside kitchen market, at the refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, March 15, 2025. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain/File Photo
International news via Reuters:
The number of people displaced by war and persecution around the world climbed above 122 million this year due to a failure to resolve multi-year conflicts such as those in Sudan and Ukraine, the U.N. refugee agency said on Thursday, noting that funding to help the refugees has fallen to 2015 levels.
There were over 2 million more people displaced globally by the end of April 2025 than there were the previous year despite the return of nearly the same number of Syrians after the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s rule, according to the report by United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi.
The report attributed the rise to major conflicts in Sudan, Myanmar and Ukraine and a “continued failure to stop the fighting”.
“We are living in a time of intense volatility in international relations, with modern warfare creating a fragile, harrowing landscape marked by acute human suffering,” Grandi said in a statement alongside the report.
The surge in displacement numbers comes as funding to help them has fallen to 2015 levels when the total number of refugees around the world stood at about half current levels, UNHCR said.
It described the cuts in aid as “brutal and ongoing” and said the situation was untenable, leaving refugees and others vulnerable.
Humanitarians complain that a lack of political leadership in brokering peace deals is prolonging conflicts and stretching aid groups tasked with addressing their impacts.
The agency, whose largest donor has historically been the U.S., has previously said that the cuts put millions of lives at risk and left women refugees at a greater risk of rape and children at risk of trafficking.
UNHCR has not given details on which donors have reduced their funding. U.S. President Donald Trump has cut most foreign aid while Britain and European neighbours are spending less on aid and more on defence.
Reporting by Emma Farge; Editing by David Gregorio
Violence first flared on Monday after two 14-year-old boys were arrested and appeared in court
Police aim a water cannon at demonstrators as riots continue in Ballymena, Northern Ireland, June 11, 2025. REUTERS/Clodagh Kilcoyne
International news via Reuters:
Masked youths in Northern Ireland on Wednesday set fire to a leisure centre that had been sheltering migrant families, but a third night of anti-immigrant violence was smaller in scale in the primary flashpoint of Ballymena.
Violence first flared on Monday after two 14-year-old boys were arrested and appeared in court, accused of a serious sexual assault on a teenage girl in the town. The charges were read via a Romanian interpreter to the boys, whose lawyer told the court that they denied the charge, the BBC reported.
In the most intense violence on Tuesday, hundreds of masked rioters attacked police and set homes and cars on fire in Ballymena, in what police condemned as “racist thuggery.”
On Wednesday, a smaller crowd in the town threw rocks, fireworks and petrol bombs at police, who responded with water cannon.
Nine officers were injured, none seriously, bringing to 41 the number hurt since the violence began, police said in a statement. They added that a hatchet was thrown at police lines during the disorder.
But 30 kilometers east in Larne, masked youths smashed windows and started fires in the lobby of a leisure centre where families whose homes were attacked in Ballymena had been briefly moved, officials said.
Women and children were taking part in swimming and exercise classes when the attack began and had to be evacuated through the fire exit, said a woman who was in the centre at the time.
The crowd was acting “like rabid animals,” said the woman, who declined to give her name. She said she felt “frightened and intimidated.”
Justice Minister Naomi Long said the attack was “completely unjustified and unjustifiable”. Finance Minister John O’Dowd described the attackers as “racist thugs.”
The immigrant families had been moved by the time of the attack but rumours were spreading in the town that the leisure centre was to be used to permanently house people, Northern Ireland’s Communities Minister Gordon Lyons told the BBC.
Lyons was widely criticised for posting on Facebook that a number of people had been temporarily moved to the leisure centre. Lyons condemned the attacks on the centre as “despicable” and said he was trying to quell the rumours.
Police are investigating the damaging of properties on Monday and Tuesday in Ballymena, a town of 30,000 that has a relatively large migrant population, as racially-motivated hate crimes.
Three teenagers have been charged with riot over Tuesday’s violence and six more people were arrested, police said.
Two Filipino families told Reuters they fled their home in Ballymena after fearing for their safety when their car was set on fire outside the house.
“This kind of behavior is … deeply damaging. It’s very frightening, and it needs to stop,” Britain’s minister for Northern Ireland Hilary Benn told the BBC.
Petrol bombs were thrown at officers in Coleraine, where police said they also received reports that a bus had been attacked, bins set alight on train tracks and were investigating a fire to nearby business premises.
Police said youths also set fires at a roundabout in the town of Newtownabbey, a flashpoint for sectarian violence that sporadically flares up in the British-run region 27 years after a peace deal largely ended three decades of bloodshed.
Debris was also set alight at a barricade in Coleraine, the Belfast Telegraph reported.
The British and Irish governments as well as local politicians have condemned the violence.
Reporting by Amanda Ferguson; Additional reporting by Conor Humphries in BALLYMENA; Writing by Padraic Halpin; Editing by Daniel Wallis and Toby Chopra
BoE policymakers are expected to keep interest rates unchanged next week
Cargo is loaded onto the container ship MH Perseus, following its arrival from New Orleans, U.S., at the Port of Southampton, Southampton, Britain, April 3, 2025. REUTERS/Toby Melville/File Photo
International news via Reuters:
Britain’s economy slowed sharply in April, reflecting shockwaves from U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement of wide-ranging tariffs and a one-off hit from the end of a tax break on property sales, official data showed on Thursday.
Gross domestic output shrank by a larger-than-expected 0.3% in April from March – the biggest monthly drop since October 2023 and more than the 0.1% fall forecast in a Reuters poll, following 0.2% growth in March.
Finance minister Rachel Reeves said the GDP numbers were “clearly disappointing”.
Thursday’s data comes a day after she set out a multi-year spending review which divided up more than 2 trillion pounds of public spending between government departments.
Britain’s economy has grown slowly since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the fall in monthly GDP was led by a 0.4% contraction in output from the dominant services sector.
A big factor in this was a slump in real estate and legal activity in April after the end of a temporary tax break on house purchases, which contributed 0.2 percentage points of the overall 0.3 percentage point fall in output in April. Car makers also reported lower output and exports to both the United States and the European Union.
Sterling fell by close to half a cent against the dollar on the back of the figures, and gilt yields hit a one-month low.
TARIFFS IMPACT
British goods exports to the U.S. fell by 2.0 billion pounds ($2.7 billion) in April, the largest drop since monthly records began in 1997.
So far, Britain is the only major economy to have agreed a trade deal with the U.S., which is intended to exempt it from Trump’s increased tariffs on aluminium and steel imports. A 10% goods levy remains in place.
The U.S. and China this week agreed on a plan, subject to approval from Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, to ease trade tensions after two days of talks in London.
Monthly GDP data tends to be volatile and some economists have noted a pattern since 2022 of British GDP being stronger in the first quarter of each year and weaker in the second half, raising questions about seasonal adjustment since the pandemic.
“Looking through the noise and data quality issues, we expect the underlying pace of growth to remain underwhelming over the next couple of years,” Matt Swannell, chief economic advisor to the EY ITEM Club, said.
“The drag from U.S. trade policy has added to a range of domestic headwinds, including the significant tightening of fiscal policy and the lagged pass-through of past interest rate rises.”
Britain’s economy had expanded by 0.7% in the first quarter of 2025, outstripping growth in other countries in the Group of Seven advanced economies and prompting the Bank of England to revise up its full-year growth forecast to 1% last month.
However, the BoE revised down its growth forecast for 2026 to 1.25% and said it expected the tariffs to knock 0.3% off British output in three years’ time.
BoE policymakers are expected to keep interest rates unchanged next week as they are faced with competing forces of stubborn inflation and a relatively sluggish economy, but most economists polled by Reuters expect two more rate cuts this year.
“Though the door is probably closed on an interest rate cut next week, these downbeat figures increase the likelihood of a policy loosening in August, despite lingering concerns over high inflation,” Suren Thiru, economics director at ICAEW, an accountancy body, said.
Recent business surveys have shown firms slowing their hiring and investment plans due to big increases in labour costs announced by Reeves last October.
Of Britain’s main economic sectors, construction showed the only growth in month-on-month terms in April, increasing by 0.9%, the ONS data showed. Industrial output fell 0.6%, driven by a 0.9% fall in manufacturing.
Separately, the ONS released trade data showing that Britain’s goods trade deficit widened to 23.2 billion pounds in April from 19.9 billion pounds in March, much bigger than the 20.4 billion expected in a Reuters poll.
($1 = 0.7376 pounds)
Reporting by Suban Abdulla and David Milliken; Editing by Muvija M and Toby Chopra
Kennedy said he would divest his financial interest in litigation against Merck
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testifies before a Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee hearing on the Department of Health and Human Services budget, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 14, 2025. REUTERS/Leah Millis/File Photo
International news via Reuters:
U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s surprise ouster of a national vaccine advisory board, claiming it was “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest,” puts new scrutiny on the group that recommends which shots should be administered to the American public.
Kennedy said most vaccine experts on the 17-member Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) have received “substantial funding” from drugmakers. He did not provide examples of conflicts of interest for any individual adviser or say how that may have influenced specific recommendations.
Committee members say their work with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention follows rigorous vetting of their financial ties. They must abstain from votes on any vaccine for which they have a conflict, as well as any rival to that vaccine or any product from the same manufacturer, according to CDC rules.
The agency’s website lists one of the departing panel members as recusing herself over such conflicts.
“To determine that the whole (advisory board), all 17 members, have conflicts of interest, that has not been shown by the evidence,” fired board member Dr. Oliver Brooks told Reuters. “However, the decisions that have been made (by Kennedy) undermine confidence in the process and in vaccines.”
Six of the vaccine advisers fired by Kennedy received a total of $80 or less from drugmakers from 2017 to 2023, according to a Reuters review of the Open Payments federal database of industry payments to healthcare providers.
Seven other panel members received between $4,000 and $55,000 from drugmakers for consulting, speaking fees, travel or meals over the period 2017 to 2023. Two of those experts had also worked with other scientists in industry-funded research projects worth several millions of dollars.
Brooks, retired chief medical officer at Watts Healthcare in Los Angeles and former president of the National Medical Association, received nearly $44,000 in general payments from Sanofi, according to the government records.
Most of the payments occurred in 2017 and 2018, with nothing after 2020. Brooks became a vaccine adviser in 2021, and did not disclose any conflicts that would preclude him from voting. He said the panel’s sole aim is “to prevent vaccine-preventable illness.” Sanofi declined to comment.
At least three vaccine advisers were not health professionals tracked by mandatory Open Payments reporting.
KENNEDY’S CONFLICT
Kennedy, who has spent years sowing doubts about vaccine safety and efficacy contrary to scientific evidence, faced questions from Congress about his own potential conflicts of interest during a confirmation hearing.
Kennedy said he would divest his financial interest in litigation against Merck over its Gardasil vaccine, which prevents cancers caused by the human papillomavirus, to his non-dependent, adult son.
In posts on X this week, Kennedy said he would share “examples of the historical corruption at ACIP” and announced eight new panel members. Four of them had received nominal reimbursement for meals, according to Open Payments, while the remainder recorded no payments or weren’t covered by the database.
A 2009 federal inspector general’s report criticized the CDC for lax enforcement of disclosures among its advisory panels. New research shared with Reuters suggests conflicts have since declined among vaccine board members.
“People are more aware of these issues on advisory committees, so they’re facing greater scrutiny there,” said Dr. Genevieve Kanter, an associate professor of public policy at the University of Southern California who has studied conflicts among government health advisers.
Kanter’s analysis of vaccine panel disclosures found that, on average, 43% of panel members facing decisions on specific vaccines declared conflicts in 2000 compared to 5%, on average, at meetings over the last 10 years.
Kanter said it will also be important to understand how the vaccine advisers assembled by Kennedy are vetted for conflicts. They are due to meet at the end of June.
“We don’t want to replace one conflict with another set of conflicts,” she said. “If someone has a financial interest in treatments that are believed to be alternatives to vaccines for certain conditions, we want to know that.”
DISCLOSURE RULES
ACIP members are required to divest all stock in vaccine makers and stop any active consulting work for those companies before joining the panel. They can’t accept travel or food from vaccine companies or collect product royalties. Similar restrictions apply to family members.
Committee members can keep working on vaccine clinical trials funded by industry and those research grants can help cover their salaries. They are required to file annual disclosures and recuse themselves from votes when specific conflicts arise.
“ACIP members … are carefully screened for major conflicts of interest and selected through a lengthy process,” said the California Department of Public Health, whose immunization chief, Dr. Robert Schechter, was fired from the panel by Kennedy.
One of the fired panel members, Dr. Bonnie Maldonado, is a pediatric infectious diseases specialist at Stanford University who has led vaccine studies worldwide.
She participated in research that received $4.65 million in funding from Pfizer, most of it spanning 2021 to 2023. The studies involved vaccines for COVID-19, RSV and other diseases. Maldonado also received general payments from drugmakers, including $26,465 from Pfizer and nearly $7,000 from Merck.
Maldonado abstained from a vote on COVID vaccine recommendations in June 2024, declaring a conflict of interest. In October, she did participate in a COVID-related vote. Maldonado didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Noel Brewer, a professor of public health at the University of North Carolina, is not a clinician and therefore not included in Open Payments.
In a 2017 research paper, he disclosed receiving research grants from Merck, Pfizer and GSK and serving on a paid advisory board for Merck. The disclosures did not give details on the payment amounts. Spokespeople for the three vaccine makers were not immediately available for comment.
Reporting by Chad Terhune in Los Angeles, additional reporting by Julie Steenhuysen in Chicago; Editing by Michele Gershberg, Michael Learmonth and Bill Berkrot
Bermudian harness racing driver Kiwon Waldron was in action for four races at Harrah’s Hoosier Park in Indiana, securing a podium finish amidst his busy schedule. Waldron’s evening began in RACE 4 (Pace Class), where he guided Silvershoe Chixy to a strong third-place finish, stopping the clock in an impressive 1 minute, 52 flat (1:52.0). This was the highlight of his night. In RACE 7 (Trot Class), Waldron and Rock Party finished in seventh place with a time of 1 minute, 55 and four-fifths of a second. Waldron then competed with Mclady Of Hearts in RACE 12 (Trot Class), securing a fourth-place finish in 1 minute, 56 flat. His final race of the night was RACE 13 (Pace Class), where Waldron was in the bike of Bull Market, finishing in sixth place. Waldron’s third-place finish with Silvershoe Chixy highlights his ability to compete at the top level in the competitive harness racing circuit at Hoosier Park.
Bermuda’s Vice Captain Tracy Burgess delivered a superb opening round, finishing tied at the top of the individual leaderboard
The Bermuda team was in second place after the first day’s play of the Kitty Michael Golf Invitational
The 45th annual Kitty Michael Golf Invitational teed off at the El Conquistador Golf Club in Puerto Rico, and Bermuda’s ladies’ team made a strong start in the international event. Over 100 amateur lady golfers are participating in this 54-hole competition, which aims to grow the women’s game and foster international friendships. Teams from across Central America, the Caribbean, and North America are competing. The Bermuda team, led by Captain Linda Down and Vice Captain Tracy Burgess, finds themselves in a strong second place overall at the close of Day One, sitting at +38. They are just three strokes behind the early leaders, Southwest Florida. Individually, Bermuda’s Vice Captain Tracy Burgess delivered a superb opening round, finishing tied at the top of the individual leaderboard with a 9-over par. Compatriot Carine Brule also impressed, placing tied for fifth at 12-over par. Bermuda’s strong start, particularly the individual performances of Burgess and Brule, sets them up well for the remaining two days of competition in this prestigious event..
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
