The European Union slapped Meta with a record $1.3 billion privacy fine Monday and ordered it to stop transferring users personal information across the Atlantic by October, the latest salvo in a decadelong case sparked by U.S. cybersnooping fears.

The penalty of 1.2 billion euros is the biggest since the EU's strict data privacy regime took effect five years ago, surpassing Amazon's 746 million euro fine in 2021 for data protection violations.

Ford CEO Jim Farley says the company will stop competing in over-served market segments and instead will place big bets on connected vehicles and digital services.

The days of Ford being all things to all people are over, Farley said at the company's capital markets day event Monday.

President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy will meet face to face Monday after a weekend of on again, off again negotiations over raising the nation's debt ceiling and mere days before the government could reach a "hard deadline" and run out of cash to pay its bills.

The two sides are working to reach a budget compromise before June 1, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has said the country could default.

If the debt crisis roiling Washington were eventually to send the United States crashing into recession, America's economy would hardly sink alone.

The repercussions of a first-ever default on the federal debt would quickly reverberate around the world. Orders for Chinese factories that sell electronics to the United States could dry up. Swiss investors who own U.S. Treasurys would suffer losses. Sri Lankan companies could no longer deploy dollars as an alternative to their own dodgy currency.

Negotiators from the White House labored Thursday over the U.S. debt limit with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's emissaries at the Capitol, grinding through head-to-head talks trying to strike a budget deal to avert a looming economic crisis.

With hopes for a breakthrough as soon as this weekend, President Joe Biden and McCarthy tapped their top representatives to work out a deal after talks with a larger contingent stalled.

Britain's government unveiled its long-awaited semiconductor strategy Friday, catching up with similar efforts by Western allies seeking to reduce reliance on Asian production of the computer chips that are essential to modern life.

Under U.K. plan, the country's semiconductor industry will get up to 1 billion pounds ($1.2 billion) in government investment over the next decade. The amount is dwarfed by the U.S. Chips Act, which provides $52 billion in government incentives, and the European Union's $43 billion euro ($46 billion) chip program.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping promised to build more railway and other trade links with Central Asia and proposed jointly developing oil and gas sources at a meeting Friday with the region's leaders that highlighted Beijing's growing influence.

The two-day China-Central Asia Summit in the western city of Xi'an came as President Joe Biden and other leaders of the Group of Seven major economies met in Japan. It reflected Beijing's efforts to develop trade and security networks centered on China, which resents U.S. domination of global affairs.

Who says you cannot reach for the moon? A proposed $5 billion real estate project wants to take skyscraper-studded Dubai to new heights — by bringing a symbol of the heavens down to Earth.

Canadian entrepreneur Michael Henderson envisions building a 274-meter (900-foot) replica of the moon atop a 30-meter (100-foot) building in Dubai, already home to the world's tallest building and other architectural wonders.

Lebanon's caretaker deputy prime minister Saade Chami, who is heading talks with the International Monetary Fund to bail out Lebanon's tanking economy, has called for the country's embattled central bank chief to resign, amid allegations of corruption and an international arrest warrant issued against him.

Once seen as the guardian of Lebanon's financial stability, Central Bank Gov. Riad Salameh is now widely blamed for an economic meltdown that began in 2019. The Lebanese pound has since plummeted in value and wiped out much of the savings of ordinary Lebanese, plunging an estimated three-quarters of the population into poverty.

A dozen poor countries are facing economic instability and even collapse under the weight of hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign loans, much of them from the world's biggest and most unforgiving government lender, China.