Spain's top criminal court said Friday it had opened an investigation for alleged complicity in crimes against humanity or genocide into executives at the steelmaker Sidenor for trading with an Israeli arms company.

Spain, one of the fiercest critics of the Israeli offensive in Gaza, said it had stopped exchanging weapons with the country after the conflict started with the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel.

U.S. inflation remained elevated last month as gas prices jumped while the cost of rents and some services cooled, painting a mixed picture of the expenses consumers are facing in a murky economy where growth appears steady but hiring slow.

Consumer prices increased 3% in September from a year earlier, the Labor Department said Friday, the highest since January and up from 2.9% in August. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices also rose 3%, down from 3.1% in the previous month.

On the streets of Istanbul, porters hauling massive sacks wrapped in white plastic — on their backs or in handcarts — are a ubiquitous yet often overlooked part of the city's fabric.

President Donald Trump said late Thursday that he was ending "all trade negotiations" with Canada because of a television ad opposing U.S. tariffs that he said misstated the facts and called "egregious behavior" aimed at influencing U.S. court decisions.

The post on Trump's social media site came after Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he aims to double his country's exports to countries outside the U.S. because of the threat posed by Trump's tariffs. Trump's call for an abrupt end to negotiations could further inflame trade tensions that already have been building between the two neighboring countries for months.

Russia's central bank on Friday cut its key interest rate to 16.5 percent and said growth had slowed to almost zero as the economy sags under the cost of the Ukraine offensive and Western sanctions.

Russia's economy "continues to return to a balanced growth path," the bank said in a statement, reversing course from two years of rapid expansion fueled by military spending. It said inflation would remain high for longer than previously expected and GDP growth would be lower.

Prime Minister Mark Carney set a goal for Canada to double its non-U.S. exports in the next decade, saying American tariffs are causing a chill in investment.

Carney, who will release his government's budget on Nov. 4, said Wednesday many of Canada's former strengths — based on close ties to America — have become vulnerabilities.

China's ruling Communist Party said Thursday it will focus on speeding up self-reliance in science and technology, a long-running push that has become more pronounced as the U.S. has imposed increasingly tight controls on its access to semiconductors and other high-tech items.

The announcement by the state media came in a communique after a four-day meeting that approved a draft of the party's next five-year development plan.

The European Union on Thursday heaped more economic sanctions on Russia, adding to U.S. President Donald Trump's new punitive measures the previous day against the Russian oil industry.

It is a broadened effort to choke off the revenue that funds Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and to force President Vladimir Putin to negotiate an end to the war.

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever insisted on Thursday that his European partners must share the risk of using billions of dollars in frozen Russian assets that are held in his country to help keep Ukraine's economy and war effort afloat in coming years.

Ukraine's budget and military needs for 2026 and 2027 are estimated to total around $153 billion, and the European Union's executive branch has been developing a plan to use Russia's frozen assets as collateral to drum up funds.

Oil prices jumped close to three percent in Asian trade on Thursday after U.S. President Donald Trump slapped sanctions on Russia's two largest oil companies.

West Texas Intermediate was up 2.89 percent at $60.19 while Brent crude jumped 2.86 percent to $64.38.