Samsung Electronics said Friday it expects second-quarter operating profits to fall more than 95 percent on-year to their lowest level in 14 years, as a global glut of semiconductors continues to hurt its core memory sector.

The firm is the flagship subsidiary of South Korean giant Samsung Group, by far the largest of the family-controlled conglomerates that dominate business in Asia's fourth-largest economy.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Friday rolled out a new set of initiatives to reduce health care costs: a crackdown on scam insurance plans, new guidance to prevent surprise medical bills and an effort to reduce medical debt tied to credit cards.

Biden's remarks will build on previous initiatives to limit health care costs, with the Department of Health and Human Services releasing new estimates showing 18.7 million older adults and other Medicare beneficiaries will save an estimated $400 per year in prescription drug costs in 2025 because of the president placing a cap on out-of-pocket spending as part of last year's Inflation Reduction Act.

Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta over its new text-based app called Threads, which has drawn tens of millions of users since launching this week as a rival to Elon Musk's social media platform.

In a letter Wednesday to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Alex Spiro, an attorney representing Twitter, accused Meta of unlawfully using Twitter's trade secrets and other intellectual property by hiring former Twitter employees to create a "copycat" app.

Maritime nations agreed Friday to slash emissions from the shipping industry to net zero by about 2050 in a deal that several experts and nations say falls short of what's needed to curb warming to agreed temperature limits.

Countries at the meeting of the United Nations' International Maritime Organization in London, seen as key to curb global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, signed a deal for shipping emissions to reach net zero "by or around" 2050. The less firm deadline was agreed to take account of "different national circumstances."

The term of embattled three-decade chief Riad Salameh ends this month with no successor in sight, setting the stage for a leadership crisis at the central bank nearly four years into Lebanon's severe economic meltdown.

Lebanon since last year has been governed by a caretaker cabinet with limited powers and without a president, and naming a high official could take months of political horse-trading.

Amal MP Ali Hassan Khalil has called on behalf of Amal and Speaker Nabih Berri for the publishing of an audit report submitted by the Alvarez & Marsal international auditing firm.

The Finance Ministry had denied last week accusations that it had “hidden” the forensic audit report.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Friday that a decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies would be "virtually impossible" and would destabilize global markets, in comments made while on a visit to Beijing packed with talks with officials and businesses.

Yellen's four-day trip is her first to China as Treasury chief, and she is the second high-ranking U.S. official to visit recently after Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month.

The head of global energy giant Shell says it would be "irresponsible" to cut oil and gas production at a time when the world economy is still dependent on fossil fuels.

In an interview with the BBC released Thursday, Shell CEO Wael Sawan also refused to rule out moving the company's headquarters and stock market listing from Britain to the United States.

The number of Americans applying for jobless benefits rose last week, but remains at healthy levels despite the Federal Reserve's attempt to cool the labor market by raising interest rates.

U.S. applications for jobless claims rose by 12,000 to 248,000 for the week ending July 1, from 236,000 previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday.

The Central Bank’s four vice governors – Wassim Mansouri, Bashir Yakzan, Salim Chahine and Alexander Mouradian – on Thursday stressed “the need to appoint a governor as soon as possible as per Article 18 of the Money and Credit Code,” warning that they would “take the appropriate measure” in the absence of that.