Reuters

By Stephen Nellis

(Reuters) - Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic launched a version of its latest chatbot technology aimed at businesses on Wednesday, jumping into the race to capture corporate dollars.

The San Francisco-based firm, backed by Alphabet and Amazon.com, in March released a family of artificial intelligence models called Claude 3 that it says outperforms those from rivals such as Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Google.

WASHINGTON(Reuters) - U.S. construction spending unexpectedly fell in March likely as a resurgence in mortgage rates weighed on homebuilding, but activity remains supported by an acute housing shortage.

The Commerce Department's Census Bureau said on Wednesday that construction spending slipped 0.2% after being unchanged in February. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast construction spending gaining 0.3%. Construction spending increased 9.6%... (continue reading...)

(Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors are examining financial transactions at Block, NBC News reported on Wednesday, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

NBC reported that federal prosecutors were discussing with a former employee alleged widespread compliance lapses at Square and Cash App, the company's two main units.

Areas under investigation include whether the company failed to gather sufficient information on customers to... (continue reading...)

EREZ CROSSING, Israel (Reuters) - Israel reopened the sole crossing on the northern edge of the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, allowing aid trucks to pass through the Erez checkpoint following U.S. demands to do more to address the growing humanitarian crisis.

Reopening the Erez crossing has been one of the main pleas of international aid agencies for months, to alleviate hunger which is believed to be most severe among the hundreds of thousands of civilians... (continue reading...)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. job openings fell to a three-year low in March, while the number of people quitting their jobs declined, signs of easing labor market conditions that over time could aid the Federal Reserve's fight against inflation.

Job openings, a measure of labor demand, were down 325,000 to 8.488 million on the last day of March, the lowest level since February 2021, the Labor Department's Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its Job... (continue reading...)