Interim Central Bank Governor Wassim Mansouri has held "promising talks" with Arab and Saudi central banks governors on the sidelines of the Arab Banking Conference in Riyadh, media reports said.

Al-Liwaa newspaper reported Tuesday that Mansouri has asked for Saudi support and for enhancing joint financial investments and that in the coming weeks, financial meetings will take place in Lebanon in order to support the central bank.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that a landmark deal allowing Ukraine to export grain safely through the Black Sea amid the war won't be restored until the West meets Moscow's demands on its own agricultural exports.

Ukraine and its Western allies have dismissed the Kremlin's demands as a ploy to advance its own interests.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Monday a 20.7 billion yen ($141 million) emergency fund to help exporters hit by a ban on Japanese seafood imposed by China in response to the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.

The discharge of the wastewater into the ocean began Aug. 24 and is expected to continue for decades. Japanese fishing associations and groups in neighboring countries have strongly opposed the release, and China immediately banned all imports of Japanese seafood. Hong Kong has banned Japanese seafood from Fukushima and nine other prefectures.

Interim Central Bank Governor Wassim Mansouri reassured Monday that the Central Bank will not finance the Lebanese state, neither in dollar nor in LBP.

"The decision is final," Mansouri said in an interview with al-Arabiyya, stressing that the state must find other ways to finance its budget deficit.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will meet with Vladimir Putin on Monday, hoping to persuade the Russian leader to rejoin the Black Sea grain deal that Moscow broke off from in July.

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Afghanistan's ruling Taliban government said it has signed seven mining contracts amounting to $6.5 billion in investment, in the biggest such round of deals since seizing power two years ago.

The seven contracts are with locally based companies, many of whom have foreign partners in countries including China, Iran, and Turkey. They include the extraction and processing of iron ore, lead, zinc and gold in four provinces: Herat, Ghor, Logar and Takhar.

Russian President Vladimir Putin will host Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan for talks in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi on Monday, the Kremlin announced Friday, just over six weeks after Moscow broke off a deal partly brokered by Ankara that allowed Ukrainian grain to reach world markets despite the 18-month war.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov announced the talks Friday, ending weeks of speculation about when and where the two leaders might meet next as international efforts continue to patch up the Black Sea Grain Initiative which got grain and other food to Africa, the Middle East and Asia where hunger is a growing threat.

Annual inflation held steady in Europe in August as food prices raced ahead of falling fuel costs, but there was no clarity about whether the European Central Bank will pause its record series of interest rate hikes.

The consumer price index for the 20 countries that use the euro currency was unchanged at 5.3% from the July reading, supported by food, alcohol and tobacco prices that increased a painful 9.8% since last August, according to official figures Thursday from EU statistics agency Eurostat.

Japan's Prime Minister Fumio Kishida sampled seafood and talked to workers at Tokyo's Toyosu fish market Thursday to assess the impact of China's ban on Japanese seafood in reaction to the release of treated radioactive wastewater from the wrecked Fukushima Daiichi plant to the sea.

The release of the treated wastewater began last week and is expected to continue for decades. Japanese fishing groups and neighboring countries opposed it, and China immediately banned all imports of Japanese seafood in response.

Former Central Bank governor Riad Salameh has filed lawsuits against the state, alleging that judges have committed errors in handling his file.

The lawsuits force the judges looking into his case to suspend their work pending a decision from the general commission of the Court of Cassation, which is currently inactive due to a dispute over the sectarian balance in the appointment of its members.