The European Union must be prepared to develop measures to protect trade and investment that China might exploit for its own security and military purposes, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warned on Thursday.

Speaking before a trip to China planned for next week, von der Leyen said that it's important to stop "sensitive technologies" that could be used in security crackdowns or to restrict human rights from falling into Beijing's hands.

Depositors have accelerated withdrawals amid recent bank failures and sharply rising interest rates, raising concerns about the industry's health and ability to withstand a crisis, experts says.

Bank deposits fell by nearly $720 billion between the second and fourth quarters of 2022, leaving banks' cash assets at their lowest levels in more than two years earlier this month. Banks have been slow to pass along better interest rates on traditional accounts to consumers, prompting a shift to money market funds, government bonds or other more lucrative investments.

Sri Lanka's government on Wednesday announced significant cuts in fuel prices, providing welcome relief for many after a year of shortages and skyrocketing prices amid the country's worst economic crisis.

Minister of Power and Energy Kanchana Wijesekara told reporters different categories of petrol and diesel will be sold at prices from 8% to 26% lower starting Wednesday midnight. He said the price reduction is in line with an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which includes adjusting fuel subsidies and prices based on production costs and global oil prices.

Vietnam's economy slowed sharply in the first quarter of this year, with growth coming in at a much weaker than expected 3.3%, as its exporters were hit by rising costs and weaker demand, the General Statistics Office reported Wednesday.

The slowdown in the January-March quarter from 5.9% year-on-year growth in the last quarter of 2022 was nearly as severe as that during the beginning of the pandemic and the second lowest for the first quarter in 12 years, it said.

Wall Street pointed higher early Wednesday as anxiety about the global financial system began to wane somewhat following three high-profile bank failures.

Futures for the benchmark S&P 500 index were up 0.9% before the bell and futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.7%.

U.S. lawmakers said Wednesday that Credit Suisse has kept allowing wealthy Americans to dodge tax payments, finding after a two-year investigation that the embattled Swiss bank violated a 2014 plea agreement over allowing tax evasion by its clients.

The U.S. Senate Finance Committee pointed to an ongoing, possibly criminal conspiracy tied to nearly $100 million in secret offshore accounts belonging to a family of American taxpayers that the bank failed to disclose. It also said Credit Suisse helped a U.S. businessman hide more than $220 million in offshore accounts from the IRS.

French authorities raided five banks on Tuesday as part of an investigation into suspected cases of massive tax fraud and money laundering, prosecutors said.

Some 150 investigators conducted searches in Paris and the financial district La Defense, the financial prosecutor's office (PNF) said in a statement.

First Citizens will acquire much of Silicon Valley Bank, the tech-focused financial institution that collapsed this month, setting off a chain reaction that caused a second bank to fail and tested faith in the global banking sector.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other regulators had already taken extraordinary steps to head off a wider banking crisis by guaranteeing that depositors in SVB and failed Signature Bank would be able to access all of their money.

The chairman of Saudi National Bank has resigned for "personal reasons," a regulatory filing said Monday, just after his comments on Credit Suisse sent that firm's stock cratering and ultimately saw rival UBS to acquire the firm.

The resignation of Ammar al-Khudairy at Saudi National Bank, the largest commercial bank in the oil-rich kingdom, comes just months after the lender invested an additional $1.5 billion in Credit Suisse to take its holding in the Swiss bank to nearly 10% of its value.

Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil giant Aramco will invest billions of dollars in China's downstream petrochemicals industry, including the construction of a new refinery, the company said in deals announced Sunday and Monday.

The announcements came as the company posted a record profit of more than $160 billion in 2022 and as Saudi Arabia, a longtime U.S. ally, has developed closer ties with Beijing in recent years.