By David Lawder WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The World Bank on Tuesday said developing countries spent a record $1.4 trillion to service their foreign debts in 2023 as interest costs climbed to a 20-year high, squeezing budgets for necessities including healthcare, education and the environment. The bank’s latest International Debt Report showed that total foreign debt…

By Sheila Dang (Reuters) -Despite widespread concern that generative AI could interfere with major elections around the globe this year, the technology had limited impact across Meta Platforms’ apps, the tech company said on Tuesday.  Coordinated networks of accounts seeking to spread propaganda or false content largely failed to build a significant audience on Facebook…

By Jamie McGeever ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) -President-elect Donald Trump’s latest threat to slap huge tariffs on countries that try to move away from the “mighty U.S. dollar” inadvertently highlights the intractable contradiction at the heart of U.S. trade and economic policy.  Trump has repeatedly stated that he wants to boost U.S. competitiveness and reduce its…

LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Amazon announced a new slate of artificial intelligence platforms, known as foundation models, at its annual AWS conference, allowing for text, image and video generation among other things. The new offerings pit it against rivals like Adobe and Meta which are racing to serve customers who want to automate more of…

(Reuters) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Tuesday that the E. coli outbreak linked to McDonald’s Quarter Pounder hamburgers is over and the investigation has been closed. As of Dec. 3, the CDC said 104 people have fallen ill and 34 were hospitalized due to the outbreak caused by the…

By Lucia Mutikani WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. job openings increased solidly in October while layoffs dropped by the most in 1-1/2 years, suggesting the labor market continued to slow in an orderly fashion. But the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS report, from the Labor Department on Tuesday also showed employers hesitant to…

(Reuters) – AI chip leader Nvidia could put its growing cash pile to use through possible mergers and acquisitions, finance chief Colette Kress said during a technology conference in Arizona on Tuesday. “We can also think about that in terms of our work, of bringing on great teams in some M&A form,” she said at…

By Stephen Nellis and Greg Bensinger LAS VEGAS (Reuters) – Amazon.com’s cloud unit on Tuesday showed new data center servers packed with its own AI chips that will challenge Nvidia, with Apple coming aboard as a customer to use them. The new servers, based on 64 of Amazon Web Services’ Trainium2 chips, will be strung…

By Jeffrey Dastin (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc plans to pilot a new carbon-removal material for data centers, which are at risk of worsening emissions from artificial intelligence systems they power, a startup behind the deal said on Monday. In a twist, AI itself, from the startup Orbital Materials, is what designed the carbon-filtering substance, its…