Moscow will start legal proceedings if it is declared in default by the West, finance minister Anton Siluanov said Monday, after Russia was declared in "selective" default over the weekend.

The World Bank says Ukraine's economy will shrink by 45.1% this year because of Russia's invasion, which has shut down half of the country's businesses, choked off imports and exports, and damaged a vast amount of critical infrastructure.

Unprecedented sanctions imposed by Western allies in response to the war, meanwhile, are plunging Russia into a deep recession, lopping off more than a tenth of its economic growth, the World Bank said in a report Sunday.

Twitter's largest investor, billionaire Elon Musk, is reversing course and will no longer join the company's board of directors less than a week after being awarded a seat.

Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal announced the news, which followed a weekend of Musk tweets suggesting changes to Twitter, including making the site ad-free. Nearly 90% of Twitter's 2021 revenue came from ads.

Italian Premier Mario Draghi travels to Algeria on Monday to sign a deal for additional natural gas, the latest push by a European Union country to acquire alternative energy sources to reduce dependence on Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

Russia is Italy's biggest supplier, representing 40% of total imports, followed by Algeria, which provides some 21 billion cubic meters of gas via the Trans-Mediterranean pipeline. The new deal would add an extra 9 billion cubic meters of gas from Algeria, just eclipsing Russia's 29 billion cubic meters a year.

Japan announced Friday it is expelling eight Russian diplomats and trade officials and will phase out imports of Russian coal and oil, with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida saying Moscow must be held accountable for "war crimes" in Ukraine.

Kishida said Japan will also ban imports of Russian lumber, vodka and other goods, and will prohibit new Japanese investment in Russia.

U.S. markets were poised to open higher Friday as investors cap a week of ups and downs while the Russian bombardment of Ukraine rolls on against a backdrop of global inflation and an ongoing virus pandemic.

On Wall Street, futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.4% while futures for the S&P 500 gained 0.3%.

The German government on Friday unveiled a package of loans and other financial assistance to help companies hit hard by the war in Ukraine and sanctions on Russia.

The package includes loans of as much as 100 billion ($109 billion) to cover the credit risks taken by Germany's energy industry as the country scrambles to replace imports of Russian oil, gas and coal.

Sri Lankan business leaders on Friday called for an end to political instability amid public demands for the president to resign over alleged economic mismanagement, warning that failure to do so would lead to economic catastrophe.

Leaders from 23 business associations representing export, import and logistics companies told reporters in the capital, Colombo, that they want lawmakers to "act responsibly and resolutely to implement remedial solutions to halt and then reverse the rapidly deteriorating situation."

Economic and financial experts have reiterated doubts over the willingness of Lebanon's political elite, widely blamed for endemic corruption, to implement the reforms requested by the International Monetary Fund to resuscitate the economy, shortly after Lebanon and the IMF reached a tentative deal.

A former vice governor of Lebanon's central bank, Nasser Saidi, said he had doubts that such reforms would ever materialize.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri on Friday referred a much-awaited capital control draft law to the joint parliamentary committees, which will now study it before referring it to parliament’s general assembly.

Berri’s move comes a day after Lebanon and the International Monetary Fund reached a tentative agreement for comprehensive economic policies that could eventually pave the way for financial aid for the crisis-hit country, after Lebanon implements wide-ranging reforms.