In a high-profile showdown, Rome, Busan and Riyadh are the top contenders to become the host city of the 2030 World Expo as the organizing body prepares to hold a vote in the French capital on Tuesday.

With the stakes high, each city has escalated its campaign efforts, showcasing unique visions and ambitious promises to secure the rights to the globally prestigious event.

With its economy struggling, Germany now is wrestling to find a way out of a budget crisis after a court struck down billions in funding for clean energy projects and help for companies and consumers facing high utility bills because of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz plans to lay out how he and his quarrelsome governing coalition aim to fix things in a speech to parliament Tuesday. The government must hastily find cuts in the almost-finished spending plan for next year, analysts say, which could further slow what is already the world's worst-performing major economy.

Major Asian and European stock markets mostly dropped Monday as investors awaited the release this week of key U.S. inflation data that could provide a guide for the Federal Reserve's plans for interest rates going into the new year.

Grain thunders into rail cars and trucks zip around a storage facility in central Ukraine, a place that growing numbers of companies turned to as they struggled to export their food to people facing hunger around the world.

Now, more of the grain is getting unloaded from overcrammed silos and heading to ports on the Black Sea, set to traverse a fledgling shipping corridor launched after Russia pulled out of a U.N.-brokered agreement this summer that allowed food to flow safely from Ukraine during the war.

The shelves at Moscow supermarkets are full of fruit and vegetables, cheese and meat. But many of the shoppers look at the selection with dismay as inflation makes their wallets feel empty.

Russia's Central Bank has raised its key lending rate four times this year to try to get inflation under control and stabilize the ruble's exchange rate as the economy weathers the effects of Russia's military operation in Ukraine and the Western sanctions imposed as a consequence.

Turkey's central bank delivered another huge interest rate hike on Thursday as it tries to curb double-digit inflation that has left households struggling to afford food and other basic goods.

The bank pushed its policy rate up by 5 percentage points, to 40%, marking its sixth big interest rate hike in a row focused on beating down inflation that hit an eye-watering 61.36% last month.

World shares were mixed on Monday after Wall Street closed its third straight winning week with a tiny gain.

In share trading, Germany's DAX fell 0.1% to 15,907.92 and the CAC 40 in Paris gained 0.3% to 7,256.93. Britain's FTSE 100 was down 0.3% at 7,481.86. The future for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were virtually changed.

President Joe Biden signed a temporary spending bill a day before a potential government shutdown, pushing a fight with congressional Republicans over the federal budget into the new year, as wartime aid for Ukraine and Israel remains stalled.

The measure passed the House and Senate by wide bipartisan margins this week, ensuring the government remains open until after the holiday season, and potentially giving lawmakers more time to sort out their considerable differences over government spending levels for the current budget year. Biden signed the bill Thursday in San Francisco, where he was hosting the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.

European shares opened higher Friday after a day of mixed trading in Asia, as most major markets looked set to end the week with solid gains.

Germany's DAX added 0.8% to 15,910.47 and the CAC 40 in Paris was 0.9% higher at 7,227.97. Britain's FTSE 100 surged 0.9% to 7,473.41. The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average both edged 0.2% higher.

Bartender Richard Alam has poured hardly any drinks at his pub in Lebanon's seaside city of Byblos, where once-busy streets have emptied of customers scared by border tensions during the Israel-Hamas war.

"I opened this whiskey bottle two weeks ago and it still isn't empty," said Alam, 19, standing behind his empty bar in the coastal city, home to a World Heritage site north of Beirut.