"This is not an electoral process, it's a process of waiting for compromise that is to the detriment of the country, the people, the economy and the constitution," said MP and Kataeb party chief Sami Gemayel.

Gemayel decried the results of a seventh parliamentary session that failed again Thursday to elect a successor to former president Michel Aoun, even though the vacancy is hampering efforts to rescue the stricken economy.

U.S. crude oil prices briefly sank more than five percent on Wednesday, weighed down by demand fears linked to disappointing U.S. data and surging Chinese Covid infections.

The head of the Finance Parliamentary Committee, MP Ibrahim Kanaan, announced Wednesday that “remarkable progress” has been made in the discussions related to the establishment of a sovereign fund to manage Lebanon’s offshore oil and gas resources.

The LBP 15,000 dollar exchange rate for fees and taxes on imported goods will enter into effect as of December 1, 2022, caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil said on Wednesday.

Three banks were stormed Wednesday by three depositors in various Lebanese regions.

In the southern city of Tyre, the depositor Reda Reda stormed Bank Audi, demanding money for the treatment of his cancer-stricken mother, the Lebanese Depositors Association said.

World growth is set to slide from 3.1 percent this year to 2.2 percent next year due to high inflation, before rebounding slightly to 2.7 percent in 2024, the OECD said Tuesday.

The official exchange rate for the Lebanese lira against the dollar and circulars 151 and 158 of the central bank will be hiked to LBP 15,000 as of February 1, 2023, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh has confirmed.

Qatar's state energy company announced a 27-year natural gas supply accord with China on Monday, saying it was the longest ever seen in the industry.

QatarEnergy will send four million tonnes of liquefied natural gas annually from its new North Field East project to China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), the company said.

The new CEO of the collapsed cryptocurrency trading firm FTX, who oversaw Enron's bankruptcy, said he has never seen such a "complete failure" of corporate control.

John Ray III, in a filing with the U.S. bankruptcy court for the district of Delaware, said there was a "complete absence of trustworthy financial information."

Wall Street pointed toward more losses before U.S. markets opened on Thursday as concerns that Federal Reserve might not ease up on its aggressive interest rate hikes overtook last week's optimism that the central bank was in a position to pull back.

Futures for the Dow Jones industrials fell 0.7% and futures for the S&P 500 slid 0.9%.