Egypt's Central Bank said it has raised interest rates as the embattled Middle Eastern country continues to battle surging inflation and a depreciating currency.

In an online statement, the bank's monetary policy committee said the most basic lending rate, the overnight deposit rate, has increased from 16.25% to 18.25%.

One startup lists as its address a small home in a working-class district in Venezuela's capital whose owner has never heard of the firm. Another is a Hong Kong-based shell company created in 2020. Yet another belongs to a Spanish commodities trader indicted in the U.S. for allegedly helping Russian oligarchs launder ill-gotten profits.

They are among the dozens of obscure middlemen and go-betweens at the center of a new crackdown in Venezuela on corruption in the state-run oil industry that has government insiders scurrying for cover. At the same time, regular Venezuelans are asking how more than $20 billion in proceeds from oil shipments seemingly vanished.

One of the world's highest inflation rates is making it more difficult to make ends meet in Argentina, where at the end of last year nearly four of every 10 people were poor, official figures revealed Thursday.

Poverty increased to 39.2% of the population in the second half of 2022, a three percentage point increase from the first six months of the year, said Argentina's national statistics agency, INDEC. Among children under age 15, the poverty rate increased more than three percentage points to 54.2%.

Alibaba plans to spin off some of its sprawling e-commerce and finance empire as independent businesses to make them more flexible and maximize their value, its top executives said Thursday, as the company emerges from regulatory crackdowns that rattled Chinese tech industries.

Alibaba CEO Daniel Zhang outlined details of a plan announced earlier this week to split Alibaba into six main groups as a prelude toward stock listings of some of its companies. The restructuring marks a new stage in Alibaba's growth after a series of setbacks as regulators tightened oversight of the industry.

Four former bankers with the Swiss affiliate of a key Russian bank were found guilty Thursday of failing to properly check accounts opened in the name of a Russian cellist with longtime ties to President Vladimir Putin.

The defendants were handed suspended sentences in Zurich district court that, if violated, could lead collectively to hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs in fines.

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%.