President Bashar al-Assad appointed a new central bank chief on Tuesday, a week after the former governor was sacked amid Syria's spiraling economic crisis.

For three decades Abu Ali planted potatoes to provide for his family, but Lebanon's economic crisis has driven up production costs and forced him to swap the crop for cannabis.

"It's not for the love of hashish," the 57-year-old told AFP in the eastern Baalbek region, the heart of Lebanon's illicit cannabis industry.

Asian markets rose on Monday after recovery hopes for the coronavirus-battered US economy fuelled another round of record highs on Wall Street to close last week's trade.

The Netherlands' third-largest bank ABN Amro is to pay a 480 million euro ($575 million) settlement to prosecutors following a money-laundering probe, the bank announced on Monday.

China's economy expanded at a record pace in the first quarter as the country continued its rapid recovery from last year's pandemic-fuelled slump, official data showed Friday.

Asian markets fluctuated on Friday as record Chinese economic growth figures struggled to add fuel to a Wall Street surge that came on the back of blockbuster reports on US consumer spending and jobless claims.

A drip-feed of revelations over the collapse of an opaque financial firm is raising serious questions about cosy ties between UK politicians, civil servants and big business as the government spends lavishly on fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

Caretaker Energy Minister Raymond Ghajar announced Thursday that smuggling to Syria is behind Lebanon’s gasoline shortage crisis.

“We demonstrated the reasons of the gasoline crisis, and it turned out to us that the main reason for the current scarcity is the smuggling to outside Lebanon due to the difference in prices between Lebanon and Syria,” Ghajar said after a meeting on the crisis that was chaired by Caretaker PM Hassan Diab.

European and U.S. stock markets rose on Thursday, supported by buoyant economic data and a strong start to the U.S. earnings season, while traders shrugged off news of weaker growth expectations in Europe's biggest economy Germany.

New applications for U.S. unemployment benefits fell sharply last week, reaching the lowest level since the Covid-19 pandemic caused mass unemployment, according to government data released Thursday.