(Reuters) -President-elect Donald Trump met with the chief executives of U.S. drugmakers Pfizer and Eli Lilly as well as industry lobbying group PhRMA on Wednesday night, Axios reported on Thursday. Anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s pick to lead the United States’ top health agency, was also present at the meeting, according to the…
By Fadimata Kontao, Portia Crowe and David Lewis BAMAKO (Reuters) -Mali, one of Africa’s biggest gold producers, has issued an arrest warrant for Barrick Gold Chief Executive Mark Bristow, a warrant document seen on Thursday by Reuters showed, escalating a dispute with the Canadian mining company. The West African country’s junta-led government is seeking more…
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday questioned the need to hold state reserves in foreign currencies since they could easily be confiscated for political reasons, saying that domestic investment of such reserves was more attractive. Western countries froze about $300 billion of Russian reserves, accumulated from windfall energy revenues, at the start…
By Kyoko Gasha and Luc Cohen NEW YORK (Reuters) -Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealth’s insurance unit, was fatally shot on Wednesday morning outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel in what appeared to be a targeted attack by a gunman lying in wait, New York City police officials said. The shooting occurred around 6:45 a.m. ET…
(Reuters) – Apple and Baidu are working to add AI features to iPhones sold in China, but are facing hurdles that could hurt the tech giant’s phone sales in the country, The Information reported on Wednesday. The companies, which are adapting Baidu’s large language models for iPhone users, are grappling with issues such as the…
(Reuters) – The BlackRock Investment Institute (BII) said on Wednesday that it had gone further “overweight” on U.S. equities as greater adoption of AI unlocks buying opportunities across sectors, even with U.S. stocks trading at record highs. The BII, a research and analysis arm of the world’s largest asset manager, said in its outlook note…
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…
