Prime Minister Najib Miqati met in the past days with a number of potential candidates for replacing embattled Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh, who is facing a host of lawsuits inside and outside Lebanon, a media report said on Friday.

The latest European measures against Salameh and some associates are what pushed Miqati to consider Salameh’s replacement, especially after Monaco “requested judicial cooperation from the Lebanese Justice Ministry in filed related to Miqati and members of his family” and after “the French threatened sanctions should the obstruction of investigation continue,” informed sources told al-Akhbar newspaper in remarks published Friday.

A spike in global energy prices benefits Saudi Arabia as the world's top oil exporter, but problems remain for the kingdom's impulsive crown prince.

Whether trying to find jobs for a growing number of unemployed youth or finding a way to end the long war he launched in Yemen, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his father King Salman now face a potential pivot point for the kingdom amid Russia's war on Ukraine.

Dozens of people were arrested in Sri Lanka following protests near the president's home demanding that he resign amid the country's worst economic crisis in memory, police said Friday.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa's office blamed "organized extremists" within the group of protesters for violence during Thursday night's demonstration, where police fired tear gas and a water cannon at thousands of protesters and arrested 54 people.

Tia Rutherford is worried about her 3-year-old son.

As energy prices soared last fall, she tacked fleece blankets over her doors and windows to keep the cold out and started serving Jacob breakfast in his room so she didn't have to heat the living room. But she's consumed by worry that she can't pay her utility bills and that her son isn't warm enough.

The head of the United Nations said Thursday that nearly all Afghans don't have enough to eat and some have resorted to "selling their children and their body parts" to get money for food.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' statement was part of a dramatic appeal from the world body and several rich countries that want to help beleaguered Afghans, whose fate has worsened since the Taliban returned to power last year.

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.