The U.S. government will hold trade talks with Taiwan in a sign of support for the island democracy that China claims as its own territory, prompting Beijing to warn Thursday it will take action if necessary to "safeguard its sovereignty."

The announcement of trade talks comes after Beijing fired missiles into the sea to intimidate Taiwan after U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this month became the highest-ranking American official to visit the island in 25 years.

The Finance and Budget Committee, headed by MP Ibrahim Kanaan, convened Thursday to discuss the 2022 state budget law.

Kanaan asked the government to give realistic numbers for the so-called customs dollar that will determine the LBP to USD exchange rate to be used to calculate customs on imports.

Syria is not safe yet for millions of refugees to start going back home, a Canadian minister has cautioned during a visit to Lebanon. He spoke days after Lebanese officials announced a plan to start returning 15,000 Syrian refugees to their war-shattered country every month.

The remarks by Harjit Sajjan, Canada's minister of international development, followed his tour of the region that also took him to Jordan, where he visited Syrian refugees living in tent settlements.

Dubai International Airport saw a surge in passengers over the first half of 2022 as pandemic restrictions eased and the upcoming FIFA World Cup in Qatar will further boost traffic to the city-state's second airfield, its chief executive said Wednesday.

Paul Griffiths, who oversees the world's busiest airport for international travel, told The Associated Press that the airport handled 160% more traffic over the past six months compared to the same period last year, part of an air travel rebound around the world.

As part of the recently announced $2.76 billion in U.S. government funding to help address the global food security crisis, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will provide $29.5 million, consisting of $15 million in humanitarian assistance and $14.5 million in economic support funding, to help protect vulnerable populations from rising food insecurity in Lebanon, the U.S. embassy said.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Tuesday he hopes a gas pipeline linking the Iberian Peninsula to central Europe through France could soon become a reality. 

Europe is currently undergoing an energy crisis as it struggles to rapidly reduce its dependence on Russian gas following the invasion of Ukraine.

Germany's main industry lobby group warned Tuesday that factories may have to throttle production or halt it completely because plunging water levels on the Rhine River are making it harder to transport cargo.

Water levels on the Rhine at Emmerich, near the Dutch border, dropped by a further four centimeters (1.6 inches) in 24 hours, hitting zero on the depth gauge.

The first shipment of grain to leave Ukraine under a wartime deal appears to have ended up in Syria — even as Damascus remains a close ally of Moscow, satellite images analyzed Tuesday by The Associated Press show.

The arrival of the cargo ship Razoni in Syria comes after the government in Kyiv praised the ship's initial departure from the port of Odesa as a sign that Ukraine could safely ship out its barley, corn, sunflower oil and wheat to a hungry world where global food prices have spiked in part due to the war.

Gasoline was delivered to fuel distributors on Tuesday after contacts were made over the past hours, the representative of fuel distribution companies, Fadi Abu Shaqra, said, after queues returned to gas stations in some regions.

“A clarification will be issued about the modification of the mechanism that has been adopted by the Banque du Liban (central bank),” Abu Shaqra added.

With much fanfare, ship after ship loaded with grain has sailed from Ukraine after being stuck in the country's Black Sea ports for nearly six months. More quietly, a parallel wartime deal met Moscow's demands to clear the way for its wheat to get to the world, too, boosting an industry vital to Russia's economy that had been ensnared in wider sanctions.

While the U.S. and its European allies work to crush Russia's finances with a web of penalties for invading Ukraine, they have avoided sanctioning its grains and other goods that feed people worldwide.