Anxiety over the potential for a rush of withdrawals by customers of regional banks continues to roil the U.S. financial sector with PacWest Bancorp attempting to calm investors overnight as its shares plunging more than 39%.

The European Central Bank faces a close call Thursday between slowing its rapid pace of interest rate increases — much like the U.S. Federal Reserve — or pressing ahead with another jumbo hike to try to squelch inflation that has sent costs spiraling in grocery store aisles.

After six straight increases of either half- or three-quarters of a point, ECB President Christine Lagarde and the rest of the governing council could downshift to a more typical quarter-point increase, analysts say.

Global energy giant Shell said Thursday that it earned nearly $10 billion in the first quarter, becoming the latest fossil fuel company to post strong financial results despite sliding oil and natural gas prices.

London-based Shell Plc reported adjusted earnings of $9.6 billion in the first three months of 2023, up 5.7% from a year ago.

Airbnb is making a renewed push into renting single rooms in a nod to its beginnings and a realization that renting an entire house is too expensive for many travelers, especially younger ones.

The short-term rental company rolled out a new offering Wednesday that it calls Airbnb Rooms. Guests can rent a room in the same house or apartment as their host at prices that Airbnb says will average $67 a night.

Regulators have barely written the epitaph for First Republic Bank, but investors on Wall Street have already moved onto speculating which bank might be the next to fail.

Bank stocks fell sharply Tuesday, led downward by smaller banks with heavy exposure to uninsured deposits and commercial banks such as Western Alliance Bank, PacWest Bancorp, Comerica and Zions Bank. Shares of Western Alliance dropped 15% and PacWest fell 28%, with trading of both stocks halted briefly due to high volatility.

Opponents of a law that would raise the retirement age in France from 62 to 64 are making last-ditch plans to prevent the change that is set to take effect in September.

The country's main labor unions on Tuesday called for another round of nationwide demonstrations and strikes on June 6. May Day protests across France on Monday drew either 800,000 people — that's according to French authorities — or 2.3 million people, which was the estimate given by organizers.

Economies across the Middle East and Central Asia will likely slow this year as persistently high inflation and rising interest rates bite into their post-pandemic gains, the International Monetary Fund said Wednesday.

The IMF's Regional Economic Outlook blamed in part rising energy costs, as well as elevated food prices, for the estimated slower growth. The report said that while oil-dependent economies of the Gulf Arab states and others in the region have reaped the benefits of elevated crude prices, other countries — such as Pakistan — have seen growth collapse after an unprecedented flooding last summer or as economic woes worsened.

French firm TotalEnergies has signed a contract to begin drilling and exploring for gas this year in waters off crisis-hit Lebanon, the company said in a statement.

"TotalEnergies in agreement with its partners Eni and QatarEnergy has signed a firm contract with Transocean to hire the drilling rig that will drill an exploration well on Block 9 offshore Lebanon, as soon as possible in 2023," the group said.

Europe's painful inflation has inched higher, extending the squeeze on households and keeping pressure on the European Central Bank to unleash what could be another large interest rate increase.

Consumer prices in the 20 countries using the euro currency jumped 7% in April from a year earlier, just up from the annual rate of 6.9% in March, the European Union statistics agency Eurostat said Tuesday.

Pfizer topped Wall Street expectations Tuesday even as sales of its top-selling COVID-19 vaccine crumbled in the first quarter.

Revenue from Pfizer's Comirnaty vaccine fell 77% to $3 billion in the first three months of the year, compared with more than $13 billion in the same stretch last year.