Most schools in Scotland were closed Thursday as thousands of teachers walked off the job, joining scores of postal workers and university lecturers in industrial action to demand better pay and working conditions to cope with the country's cost-of-living crisis.

The teachers' strike in Scotland, which shuttered every school on the Scottish mainland, was the first such one in the region in 40 years. Union members want a 10% pay rise, but Scottish authorities say they couldn't afford that.

On winter's doorstep, European Union nations have not been able to surmount bitter disagreements as they struggle to effectively shield 450 million citizens from massive increases in their natural gas bills as cold weather sets in.

An emergency meeting of energy ministers Thursday only shows how the energy crisis tied to Russia's war in Ukraine has divided the 27-nation bloc in almost irreconcilable blocs.

Turkey's central bank delivered another outsized interest rate cut Thursday despite inflation running at more than 85% and other countries moving the opposite way to ease the pain of soaring prices.

The central bank said its Monetary Policy Committee decided to lower the benchmark policy rate by 1.5 percentage points to 9%, following a series of similar jumbo cuts.

"This is not an electoral process, it's a process of waiting for compromise that is to the detriment of the country, the people, the economy and the constitution," said MP and Kataeb party chief Sami Gemayel.

Gemayel decried the results of a seventh parliamentary session that failed again Thursday to elect a successor to former president Michel Aoun, even though the vacancy is hampering efforts to rescue the stricken economy.

U.S. crude oil prices briefly sank more than five percent on Wednesday, weighed down by demand fears linked to disappointing U.S. data and surging Chinese Covid infections.

The head of the Finance Parliamentary Committee, MP Ibrahim Kanaan, announced Wednesday that “remarkable progress” has been made in the discussions related to the establishment of a sovereign fund to manage Lebanon’s offshore oil and gas resources.

The LBP 15,000 dollar exchange rate for fees and taxes on imported goods will enter into effect as of December 1, 2022, caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil said on Wednesday.

Three banks were stormed Wednesday by three depositors in various Lebanese regions.

In the southern city of Tyre, the depositor Reda Reda stormed Bank Audi, demanding money for the treatment of his cancer-stricken mother, the Lebanese Depositors Association said.

World growth is set to slide from 3.1 percent this year to 2.2 percent next year due to high inflation, before rebounding slightly to 2.7 percent in 2024, the OECD said Tuesday.

The official exchange rate for the Lebanese lira against the dollar and circulars 151 and 158 of the central bank will be hiked to LBP 15,000 as of February 1, 2023, Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh has confirmed.