Just what a vulnerable world economy didn't need — a conflict that accelerates inflation, rattles markets and portends trouble for everyone from European consumers to indebted Chinese developers and families in Africa that face soaring food prices.

Russia's attack on Ukraine and retaliatory sanctions from the West may not portend another global recession. The two countries together account for less than 2% of the world's gross domestic product. And many regional economies remain in solid shape, having rebounded swiftly from the pandemic recession.

Lebanon's transport minister has said that Spain will finance a plan to revive the railway network that has been out of service since the start of the 1975-1990 civil war.

A deal for a "comprehensive master plan for the 407 kilometer-long railway" is expected next month, Public Works and Transport Minister Ali Hamiyeh told AFP in an interview.  

President Michel Aoun on Thursday held a meeting with a delegation from New York-based audit firm Alvarez & Marsal.

The firm had launched an audit of the accounts of Lebanon’s central bank in September 2020, but was forced to pull out two months later because the central bank failed to hand over necessary data. Aoun said in October that the company had resumed its work.

Oil prices broke past $100 and safe havens surged while equities tumbled Thursday after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a "military operation" in Ukraine, accelerating fears of a major war.

Britain promised to hit Russia with "powerful" sanctions over its military confrontation with Ukraine. But the slim sheaf of measures announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson has disappointed allies and critics alike.

The U.K. has slapped asset freezes and travel bans on three wealthy Russians and sanctioned five Russian banks in response to President Vladimir Putin's decision to recognize two breakaway regions of eastern Ukraine and to authorize sending in what he called "peacekeeping" troops.

Global stock markets and Wall Street futures rebounded Wednesday from jitters over Western sanctions on Russia in response to President Vladimir Putin's authorization to send soldiers into eastern Ukraine.

In New York, futures for the benchmark S&P 500 index rose 0.8% and the same for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.7%.

One by one, embassies and international offices in Kyiv closed. Flight after flight was canceled when insurance companies balked at covering planes arriving in Ukraine. Hundreds of millions of dollars in investment dried up within weeks.

With Russian troops encircling much of the country, Ukrainian businesses large and small no longer plan for the future — they can barely foresee what will happen week to week.

Germany's Cabinet on Wednesday approved raising the country's minimum wage to 12 euros ($13.60) per hour in October, making good on a key pledge in Chancellor Olaf Scholz's election campaign last year.

Germany has had a national minimum wage since 2015. It was introduced at the insistence of Scholz's center-left Social Democrats, who at the time were junior partners in conservative Chancellor Angela Merkel's government.

The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Tuesday to end Iraq's requirement to compensate victims of its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, with Baghdad having paid out more than $50 billion to 1.5 million claimants.

Michael Gaffey, Ireland's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva and president of the governing board of the U.N. Compensation Commission, whose fund decided on the claims, told the council after the vote that the body's work was a "historic achievement for the United Nations and for effective multilateralism."

Britain on Tuesday slapped sanctions on five Russian banks and three billionaires, in what Prime Minister Boris Johnson called "the first barrage" of measures in response to the Kremlin's actions in Ukraine.