Senior Saudi and Kuwaiti officials have expressed readiness to offer aid to Lebanon to assist it in the reconstruction process after the latest Israeli war, informed sources said.

Speaking on the sidelines of international financial meetings, the Gulf officials said such assistance should exclusively pass through the Lebanese state through a legal mechanism, the sources told al-Akhbar newspaper in remarks published Wednesday.

U.S. inflation picked up last month as prices rose for gas, eggs, and used cars, yet underlying price pressures also showed signs of easing a bit.

Wednesday's report from the Labor Department showed that the consumer price index rose 2.9% in December from a year ago, the highest since July, up from 2.7% in November. It was the third straight increase after inflation fell to a 3 1/2 year low of 2.4% in September.

The Group of Seven democracies has sought to crimp Russia's oil export earnings that help fund the war against Ukraine. But Western governments and sanctions experts say Moscow has resorted to using a so-called shadow fleet of hundreds of aging tankers of uncertain ownership and safety practices that are dodging sanctions and keeping the oil revenue coming.

Here are things to know about the shadow fleet — and why it worries Western governments and environmental groups:

U.S. wholesale inflation rose last month on higher energy prices.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that its producer price index — which tracks inflation before it hits consumers — rose 0.2% last month from November, down from a 0.4% gain the month before. Compared to a year earlier, producer prices rose 3.3%, biggest jump since February 2023 and up from a 3% gain in November.

U.S. President Donald Trump will take part virtually in the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos just days after his inauguration, the forum president said Tuesday.

Børge Brende, a former Norwegian foreign minister who heads the Geneva-based organization, noted that Trump had twice attended the elite gathering of business and government leaders in-person during his first term.

Spain is planning a raft of measures to address its brewing housing crisis, including an up to 100% tax on properties bought by non-European Union residents.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced the plan this week to tackle housing affordability and high rents in the Southern European nation. He said that the overall goal was to provide "more housing, better regulation and greater aid."

Canada's outgoing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has suggested that President-elect Donald Trump's remarks about Canada becoming America's "51st state" has distracted attention from the harm that steep tariffs would inflict on U.S. consumers.

Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on all Canadian imports.

The Biden administration is proposing a new framework for the exporting of the advanced computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence, an attempt to balance national security concerns about the technology with the economic interests of producers and other countries.

But the framework proposed Monday also raised concerns of chip industry executives who say the rules would limit access to existing chips used for video games and restrict in 120 countries the chips used for data centers and AI products. Mexico, Portugal, Israel and Switzerland are among the nations that could have limited access.

China's exports in December grew at a faster pace than expected, as factories rushed to fill orders to beat higher tariffs that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to impose once he takes office.

Exports rose 10.7% from a year earlier, according to official customs data released Monday. Economists had forecast they would grow about 7%. Imports rose 1% year-on-year. Analysts had expected them to shrink about 1.5%. With exports outpacing imports, China's trade surplus grew to $104.84 billion in December, and nearly $1 trillion for the year, at $992.2 billion.

European Union foreign ministers will meet in late January to discuss easing sanctions imposed on Syria, the bloc's foreign policy chief said Sunday. However, she said the move would depend on Syria's new rulers carrying out an inclusive political transition after last month's overthrow of President Bashar Assad.

Kaja Kallas' comments came at a gathering of top European and Middle Eastern diplomats in the Saudi capital of Riyadh to discuss Syria's future.