Raja Salameh's lawyer has said that the LBP 500 billion bail that Investigative Judge Nicolas Mansour had ordered for the release of Salameh is an "unprecedented" order in the history of the Lebanese Justice Palace.

"The amount is unreasonable and illogical," lawyer Marwan al-Khoury said, after having filed an appeal demanding that the bail amount be slashed.

International Monetary Fund spokesman Gerry Rice has affirmed that the negotiations with Lebanon are making progress.

He said in a statement that the IMF delegation is working with the Lebanese authorities to prepare a reform plan that will help Lebanon and the Lebanese.

The world's fair in Dubai, a tech-saturated site teeming with talking robots and solar canopies, sought to be the future.

Now, it's history.

China's manufacturing activity fell to a five-month low in March after most of Shanghai and two other industrial centers were shut down to fight coronavirus outbreaks, a survey showed Thursday.

The monthly purchasing managers' index of the Chinese statistics agency and an industry group, the China Federation of Logistics and Purchasing, fell to 49.5 from February's 50.2 on a 100-point scale. Numbers below 50 show activity contracting.

Sri Lanka's Catholic bishops on Thursday called for unity among the country's politicians, warning that the South Asian island nation is fast becoming a failed state amid its most severe economic crisis in memory.

A foreign exchange crunch in Sri Lanka has led to a shortage of essential goods such as fuel and cooking gas, and power cuts now last up to 13 hours a day.

The worldwide seafood industry is steeling itself for price hikes, supply disruptions and potential job losses as new rounds of economic sanctions on Russia make key species such as cod and crab harder to come by.

The latest round of U.S. attempts to punish Russia for the invasion of Ukraine includes bans on imports of seafood, alcohol and diamonds. The U.S. is also stripping "most favored nation status" from Russia. Nations around the world are taking similar steps.

Investigative Judge Nicolas Mansour on Thursday ordered the release of Raja Salameh on a bail of LBP 500 billion, but Mount Lebanon Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun appealed against the decision and demanded that he be kept in custody.

Salameh for his part filed an appeal demanding that the bail amount be slashed.

OPEC and allied oil producers including Russia are deciding how much crude to pump to the world Thursday, with expectations for only a modest increase despite pleas for more. High oil prices are fueling inflation in the U.S. and other countries and cushioning the blow of Western sanctions over Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Analysts expect the group, known as OPEC+, to stay on its schedule of gradual increases to restore production cuts made during the depths of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

Judge Nicolas Mansour adjourned on Thursday the interrogation session of Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh's to June.

Salameh's lawyer filed in a session today, that was held in Salameh's absence, preliminary defenses before Mansour.

Iran on Thursday criticized a decision by the United States to impose new sanctions on the Islamic republic, saying it shows the Americans have bad intentions towards its people.

The U.S. Treasury announced on Wednesday the newly imposed sanctions targeting several entities it accused of involvement in procuring supplies for Iran's ballistic missile program.