Caretaker Labor Minister Mustafa Bayram announced Friday that it has been decided to approve a hike of an LBP 1.9 million on the wages of the private sector and to increase the transportation allowance from LBP 95,000 to LBP 125,000.

The decision was taken in a meeting for the country’s Consumer Price Index Committee.

The United Arab Emirates has picked the head of its national oil company as president of this year's COP28 climate talks, prompting criticism from environmental activists.

Ericsson said Thursday it had earmarked $220 million to cover potential U.S. fines over suspected bribes to the Islamic State group in Iraq, a case that has weighed over the Swedish telecoms group for months.

Activist investor Nelson Peltz is fighting for a seat on the board of Walt Disney Co., claiming that the company is struggling with self-inflicted problems.

Peltz's attempt to join Disney's board comes just months after the company brought back longtime CEO Bob Iger to lead Disney again. Disney urged shareholders to vote against Peltz and named current board member Mark Parker as its chairman. Parker, who also serves as executive chairman at Nike Inc., succeeds Susan Arnold, who won't stand for re-election due to Disney's 15-year term limit requirements.

Rising consumer prices in the United States moderated again last month, bolstering hopes that inflation's grip on the economy will continue to ease this year and possibly require less drastic action by the Federal Reserve to control it.

Inflation eased to 6.5% in December compared with 12 months earlier, the government said Thursday. It was the sixth straight year-over-year slowdown. On a monthly basis, prices actually slipped 0.1% from November to December, the first such drop since May 2020.

Unions representing French oil workers on Thursday called for strikes against President Emmanuel Macron's pension reforms, threatening a repeat of the refinery and depot closures that caused chaos for motorists last year.

The walkouts planned for January 19 and 26 and February 6 would include "shutdowns of refinery installations if necessary," said Eric Sellini, national coordinator of the CGT union federation at energy giant TotalEnergies.

The Egyptian pound was trading Wednesday at half its value from March after the central bank intervened for a third time as part of an International Monetary Fund loan agreement.

The devaluation, representing a drop of around 50 percent against the dollar over the 10-month period, comes as the price of imported food and other goods is soaring in the country of 104 million.

Investments in Israel's tech sector dropped by nearly half in 2022, reflecting a global economic slowdown, a nonprofit group reported.

Startup Nation Central, which tracks the industry in Israel, said the total value of investments in the tech sector sank from an all-time high of $27 billion in 2021 to about $15.5 billion last year. The tech industry accounts for more than half the country's exports, according to official data.

A price cap and European Union embargo on most Russian oil have cut into Moscow's revenue from fossil fuels, but the Kremlin is still earning substantial cash to fund its war in Ukraine because the $60-per-barrel cap was "too lenient," researchers said Wednesday.

The combination of the cap by the Group of Seven major democracies and the EU ban are costing Russia an estimated 160 million euros ($171.9 million) per day, the Helsinki-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air said in a study of the first weeks of the sanctions, which took effect Dec. 5.

Britain's foreign minister is meeting politicians and businesspeople in Belfast on Wednesday, bearing good news: The U.K. and the European Union are inching closer to settling a post-Brexit trade dispute that has brought economic headaches and political turmoil to Northern Ireland.

James Cleverly is traveling to Belfast two days after Britain and the EU made a significant breakthrough, striking a data-sharing agreement that will give the EU access to real-time information about goods moving to Northern Ireland from the rest of the U.K.