The official exchange rate for the Lebanese lira against the dollar and circulars 151 and 158 of the central bank will be hiked to LBP 15,000 as of February 1, 2023, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh has confirmed.

Qatar's state energy company announced a 27-year natural gas supply accord with China on Monday, saying it was the longest ever seen in the industry.

QatarEnergy will send four million tonnes of liquefied natural gas annually from its new North Field East project to China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), the company said.

The new CEO of the collapsed cryptocurrency trading firm FTX, who oversaw Enron's bankruptcy, said he has never seen such a "complete failure" of corporate control.

John Ray III, in a filing with the U.S. bankruptcy court for the district of Delaware, said there was a "complete absence of trustworthy financial information."

Wall Street pointed toward more losses before U.S. markets opened on Thursday as concerns that Federal Reserve might not ease up on its aggressive interest rate hikes overtook last week's optimism that the central bank was in a position to pull back.

Futures for the Dow Jones industrials fell 0.7% and futures for the S&P 500 slid 0.9%.

The British government increased a tax on the windfall profits of energy companies as part of a 55 billion pound ($65 billion) package of tax increases and spending cuts in an emergency budget designed to restore the nation's economic credibility and patch up its battered finances.

At the same time, Treasury chief Jeremy Hunt pledged to spend billions of pounds to help consumers pay soaring energy bills, increase welfare benefits and pensions in line with inflation, and maintain investment in energy and infrastructure projects.

An agreement allowing Ukraine to export grain through the Black Sea and aimed at relieving global food insecurity has been extended for 120 days, officials said on Thursday.

Ukraine is a top world exporter of grain, but Russia's invasion in late February stopped shipments. 

Tesla tycoon Elon Musk took the stand on Wednesday as part of a trial over his $50 billion pay package as CEO of the electric car giant.

Donald Trump's company is licensing its name for a golf resort in Oman in the first of what the company hopes will be several overseas deals, raising conflict-of-interest issues as the former president announced a third run for the White House.

The Trump Organization said the licensing deal — the first since Trump left office — is with Saudi developer Dar Al Arakan and will include a golf course, hotel and thousands of residential units in the Oman capital of Muscat.

Japan will lift a more than 2 1/2-year ban on international cruise ships that was imposed following a deadly coronavirus outbreak on the cruise ship Diamond Princess at the beginning of the pandemic, transport officials said Tuesday.

The Transport Ministry said cruise ship operators and port authorities' associations have adopted anti-virus guidelines and that Japan is now ready to resume its international cruise operations while receiving foreign ships at its ports.

Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he raised with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Tuesday his concerns about trade "blockages," but did not walk away from their first face-to-face talks with any promises that the $13 billion barriers to Australian exports would be lifted.

The Australian government described the talks on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Indonesia as the first formal bilateral meeting between the two nations' leaders since 2016, when Xi met then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull in the Chinese city of Hangzhou.