Britain promised to hit Russia with "powerful" sanctions over its military confrontation with Ukraine. But the slim sheaf of measures announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson has disappointed allies and critics alike.

The U.K. has slapped asset freezes and travel bans on three wealthy Russians and sanctioned five Russian banks in response to President Vladimir Putin's decision to recognize two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine and to authorize sending in what he called "peacekeeping" troops.

Global stock markets and Wall Street futures rebounded Wednesday from jitters over Western sanctions on Russia in response to President Vladimir Putin's authorization to send soldiers into eastern Ukraine.

In New York, futures for the benchmark S&P 500 index rose 0.8% and the same for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.7%.

One by one, embassies and international offices in Kyiv closed. Flight after flight was canceled when insurance companies balked at covering planes arriving in Ukraine. Hundreds of millions of dollars in investment dried up within weeks.

With Russian troops encircling much of the country, Ukrainian businesses large and small no longer plan for the future — they can barely foresee what will happen week to week.

Germany's Cabinet on Wednesday approved raising the country's minimum wage to 12 euros ($13.60) per hour in October, making good on a key pledge in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's election campaign last year.

Germany has had a national minimum wage since 2015. It was introduced at the insistence of Scholz's center-left Social Democrats, who at the time were junior partners in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's government.

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday to end Iraq's requirement to compensate victims of its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, with Baghdad having paid out more than $50 billion to 1.5 million claimants.

Michael Gaffey, Ireland's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva and president of the governing board of the U.N. Compensation Commission, whose fund decided on the claims, told the council after the vote that the body's work was a "historic achievement for the United Nations and for effective multilateralism."

Britain on Tuesday slapped sanctions on five Russian banks and three billionaires, in what Prime Minister Boris Johnson called "the first barrage" of measures in response to the Kremlin's actions in Ukraine.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Tuesday that he was suspending the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project with Russia in response to Moscow's recognition of two breakaway regions in Ukraine.

Oil prices surged nearly 5% and stock prices dropped after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered forces into separatist regions of eastern Ukraine, bringing a long-feared invasion a step closer.

Russia is a major energy producer and the tensions over Ukraine have brought wide swings in volatile energy prices, on top of the inevitable risks of a broader conflict.

European markets slumped Monday as the Kremlin warned there were no firm plans for a summit between U.S. President Joe Biden and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to avert a possible Moscow invasion of Ukraine.

Once the economy's crown jewel, Lebanon's banks are shutting branches and laying off employees in droves, resizing to the bleak reality of a crisis they are widely blamed for.

Before the onset in 2019 of a financial collapse deemed one of the world's worst since the 1850s by the World Bank, the small country had an oversized but prosperous banking sector.