Judge Ghada Aoun froze on Thursday the assets of the Creditbank and its director Tarek Khalifeh.

She also imposed a travel ban on Khalifeh, al-Jadeed TV said, after having imposed last week travel bans on the directors of five other banks as auditors look into transfers by the banks worth $5 billion.

The assets of Fransabank were seized and all monetary operations were suspended and safes and registers were sealed with red wax, after a depositor filed a lawsuit against the bank.

Earlier this week, Judge Ghada Aoun had also frozen the assets of five of Lebanon’s largest banks and those of their board of directors as she investigates possible transfers of billions of dollars aboard during the country’s economic meltdown.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Germany of putting its economy before his country’s security in the run-up to the Russian invasion.

In an address to Germany’s parliament Thursday, Zelenskyy criticized the German government’s support for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project meant to bring natural gas from Russia. Ukraine and others had opposed the project, warning that it endangered Ukrainian and European security.

A United Nations appeal for Yemen Wednesday is aiming at raising $4.27 billion to alleviate what it describes as the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with 161,000 people likely to experience famine there in 2022.

The virtual pledging conference is co-hosted by Sweden and Switzerland. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will address donors on the dire needs of the Arab world's poorest country.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson met Wednesday with the de facto rulers of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in efforts to ease skyrocketing gasoline prices, as the West grapples with economic headwinds from Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Johnson was seeking greater investments in the U.K.'s renewable energy transition and ways to secure more oil to lessen British dependence on Russian energy supplies.

Lebanese authorities on Wednesday seized the assets of Fransabank, one of the country’s biggest banks, based on an order issued by Judge Mariana Anani, the head of the Enforcement Department in Beirut.

The order followed a lawsuit filed by the depositor Ayyad Gherbawi Ibrahim who requested that he be paid his money in banknotes and not through a check.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is set to visit Saudi Arabia and meet with its crown prince for talks on oil supplies, as he stressed that the West must end its dependence on Russian energy.

Johnson will also use the trip to press Saudi Arabia to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, a Foreign Office official said Tuesday.

The negotiations with the International Monetary Fund have not stopped and "things are going well," Deputy Prime Minister Saadeh Shami's office said.

Shami's office negated, in a statement Tuesday, media reports that said the negotiations had stopped and that no results have been reached.

Stocks are ticking higher on Wall Street Tuesday as inflation worries ebb a bit and oil prices slide sharply for a second day.

The S&P 500 was 0.7% higher in early trading after a report showed inflation's rapid acceleration took a pause at the wholesale level last month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 166 points, or 0.5%, at 33,111, as of 10:10 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1% higher.

It can be hard to measure the ways that Russia's war in Ukraine has disrupted the global supply of parts and raw materials needed to complete a variety of products – from cars to computer chips.

But cutting off one of those supply links brought a "depressing feeling" to Andrey Bibik, head of the Interpipe steel plant in Dnipro, Ukraine. He spent the first hours of the war winding down his bustling 24-hour operation and sending almost everyone home.