Thousands of nurses in Britain walked out Wednesday in a new protest over pay, with no end in sight to a wave of strikes that has piled pressure on the U.K.'s overburdened public health system.

Two 12-hour strikes on Wednesday and Thursday affect about a quarter of hospitals and clinics in England. Emergency care and cancer treatment will continue, but thousands of appointments and procedures are likely to be postponed.

U.K. inflation eased for a second month in December, boosting confidence that the cost-of-living crisis has peaked.

Consumer prices rose 10.5% in the year through December, down from 10.7% the previous month, the Office for National Statistics said Wednesday. Inflation peaked at a 41-year high of 11.1% in October.

World shares were mixed Wednesday, with Tokyo gaining more than 2% after Japan's central bank kept its lax monetary policy unchanged, dispelling speculation it would yield to pressure to tighten credit to counter rising inflation.

Germany's DAX lost 0.1% to 15,170.03 and the CAC 40 in Paris was down less than 2 points, at 7,075.91. Britain's FTSE 100 also was nearly unchanged, at 7,850.12.

Saudi Arabia is working to reduce its reliance on oil exports, Economy Minister Faisal Al-Ibrahim said Wednesday, as the Middle East powerhouse sent one of the largest delegations to the Davos summit to make its case.

Despite its goal of achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2060, the country remains hugely dependent on crude oil exports that have powered its growth for decades, raising doubts about its potential for an economic makeover any time soon.

European investigators have questioned two witnesses for eight hours in Beirut as part of a probe into Lebanon's central bank governor Riad Salemeh and his brother, a judicial official told AFP.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen sits down with her Chinese counterpart Wednesday in the highest-ranking contact between the two countries since their presidents agreed to look for ways to improve relations that have grown increasingly strained in recent years.

Yellen's first face-to-face meeting with Vice Premier Liu He comes as the U.S. and Chinese economies grapple with differing but intertwined challenges on trade, technology and more.

Weary parents in China say the difficulties of juggling work and childcare in a costly and ultra-competitive society with little help from the state are at the root of the country's dwindling birth rate.

Spain's income from tourism activity surged in 2022, surpassing levels last seen before the pandemic, the Exceltur tourism association said Tuesday. 

German investor confidence soared in January to its highest level since the start of the war in Ukraine, a key survey said Tuesday, as lower energy prices and cooling inflation boost the economic outlook.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen took China to task over clean-technology industries on Tuesday, threatening investigations over Beijing's subsidies in the sector.