The employees of Lebanon’s two state-owned mobile network operators, touch and Alfa, on Thursday began an open-ended strike to demand a wage hike, after their negotiations with the two firms’ administrations collapsed.

“All of Alfa and touch’s branches and selling points closed at the companies’ headquarters and in the various regions, as the sale of lines and recharge cards and customer services stopped and all maintenance works were suspended,” the National News Agency said.

A deepening cost-of-living crisis in Britain is about to get worse, with millions of people expected to pay about 80% more a year on their household energy bills starting in October.

The U.K. energy regulator on Friday is set to announce the latest price cap, which is the maximum amount that gas suppliers can charge customers per unit of energy. It could mean people pay up to 3,600 pounds ($4,240) a year for heating and electricity, according to analysts' forecasts.

From Mustafa Moeen's spot behind the counter, he sees the many faces of Dubai. They come — tired, hungry, stressed out — for a respite and a cup of karak.

Laborers stop on the way to work. Cab drivers linger after long shifts. Emiratis cruise by on midnight joyrides. A cup of milky sweet tea to ease the burden of the day, customers say, long priced at just 1 dirham, a bit less than 30 U.S. cents.

On a hot, humid East Coast day this summer, a massive container ship pulled into the Port of Baltimore loaded with sheets of plywood, aluminum rods and radioactive material – all sourced from the fields, forests and factories of Russia.

President Joe Biden promised to "inflict pain" and deal "a crushing blow" on Vladimir Putin through trade restrictions on commodities like vodka, diamonds and gasoline in the wake of Russia's invasion of Ukraine six months ago. But hundreds of other types of unsanctioned goods worth billions of dollars, including those found on the ship bound for Baltimore from St. Petersburg, Russia, continue to flow into U.S. ports.

They fan out along the tense frontier with Israel in the pre-dawn darkness, setting traps and training their eyes on the other side of the separation fence — where the parakeets are.

Dozens of Palestinian men and boys have taken up bird trapping in recent years. It's a rare if meager source of income in Gaza, which has been under a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade since the militant Hamas group seized power 15 years ago.

Caretaker Energy Minister Walid Fayyad has said that his Ministry has not received “any official or unofficial offer from Turkey for drilling in the border (offshore) blocks.”

“Block 9 is tendered to the TotalEnergies company and when I was in Turkey no one raised the issue with me,” Fayyad told al-Mayadeen television.

Lebanon, which is yet to reach a sea border demarcation deal with Israel, has received a Turkish proposal for investment and drilling in the southern oil and gas blocks near Israel’s border, a Lebanese official source said.

“The Turkish proposal involves drilling and investment works in Block 9, which lies on the maritime border,” the source told Russia’s Sputnik news agency.

The euro dived Tuesday to a new two-decade dollar low and equities wavered, as data highlighted the shrinking Eurozone economy and the worsening energy crunch.

The single currency, hit also by the U.S. Federal Reserve's rate-hiking plans before this week's hotly-awaited comments from Chair Jerome Powell, tumbled to $0.9901.

The euro pushed further below parity with the dollar on Monday, hitting its lowest level since 2002, the year it came into physical circulation, as recession fears mounted.

The euro was down 0.84 percent to $0.9951 at 1525 GMT .

The Central Bank and the Ministry of Energy have informed oil importing companies that gasoline subsidization will be lowered by another 15% as of the beginning of this week, LBCI TV reported on Monday.

According to the new scheme, the importing companies will now get 45% of their dollars through the Sayrafa platform and 55% from the black market. Under the previous scheme, they used to get 70% of their dollars via Sayrafa and 30% from the black market.