The music is often hushed and the atmosphere studious -- for the patrons filling Beirut's cafes these days, the most important things are good lighting and stable wi-fi.

That's because they now serve as substitute workplaces for people grappling with drastic electricity shortages and internet cuts stemming from Lebanon's unrelenting economic crisis.

Wall Street pointed toward a lower open Monday on the heels of last week's furious rally that gave the major stock indexes their biggest gains of the year.

On Wall Street, futures for the benchmark S&P 500 index slipped 0.5% while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 0.7%.

The eurozone economy posted robust growth last year, official data showed Monday, but fallout from the Omicron variant and an energy crunch have raised doubts about the bloc's ability to sustain the pace.

Global stocks rose Monday following a big Wall Street gain at the start of a week when China, South Korea and Southeast Asian markets will close for the Lunar New Year holiday.

London and Frankfurt opened higher. Tokyo and Hong Kong advanced while Sydney declined. Markets in China, South Korea and Taiwan were closed. Hong Kong and Southeast Asia were due to close later in the week.

India's economy is projected to grow 8% to 8.5% in the financial year beginning April 1, signaling a strong recovery after it was slammed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The government's annual economic survey, released Monday, comes a day before Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is due to present the national budget for the 2022-23 fiscal year.

Portugal's center-left Socialist Party won a third straight general election, returning it to power as the country prepares to deploy billions of euros (dollars) of European Union aid for the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a ballot that took place amid a surge of coronavirus cases blamed on the omicron variant, and with around 1 million infected voters allowed to leave home to cast their ballots, the Socialists elected at least 112 lawmakers in the 230-seat parliament.

President Joe Biden is hosting the ruling leader of Qatar at the White House on Monday as he looks for the gas-rich nation to step up once again to help the West as it faces the prospect of a European energy crunch if Russia further invades Ukraine.

Qatar played a central role in aiding last summer's U.S. military evacuations of Afghan helpers and U.S. citizen in Afghanistan, hosts the biggest American air base in the Middle East, and served as a go-between with the Taliban for the last three U.S. administrations as they tried to wind down America's longest war.

The Trade and Investment Facilitation (TIF) activity, funded by The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has launched an export promotion initiative to assist 15 Lebanese wineries to conform with regulatory and market requirements to export wines to the state of Texas in the United States.

The launch event, entitled “Wine from Lebanon: Exporting Lebanese Wine to the United States”, was held in the presence of USAID Lebanon Mission Director Eileen Devitt, the Minister of Economy and Trade Amin Salam, representatives of the 15 wineries, and other stakeholders in the wine industry. 

Major global stock markets fell Friday ahead of data on U.S. employment costs that might influence Federal Reserve decisions on interest rate hikes to cool inflation.

London and Frankfurt opened lower. Tokyo and Seoul advanced while Shanghai and Hong Kong declined.

Filipe Orfao, a 37-year-old emergency room nurse in Lisbon, voices grievances that have long been heard in Portugal.

The familiar gripes include a tradition of low pay, a public service career structure that thwarts ambitions to get ahead in life, the nagging enticement of going to work abroad instead of staying at home, and politicians' broken promises of improvement, especially for health workers like Orfao who have weathered the coronavirus pandemic.