The World Bank's Lebanon Economic Monitor presented in its spring issue findings from recent World Bank work on Lebanon.

It examined the continuous decline in the Lebanese economy amidst what it called "a normalization of the state of the crisis."

The United Nations is racing to extend a deal that has allowed shipments of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea to parts of the world struggling with hunger, helping ease a global food crisis exacerbated by the war Russia launched more than a year ago.

The breakthrough accord that the U.N. and Turkey brokered with the warring sides last summer came with a separate agreement to ease shipments of Russian food and fertilizer that Moscow insists hasn't been applied.

Chinese leaders face pressure to shore up a slowing economic recovery and generate jobs after consumer spending and other activity in April were weaker than expected and a survey found 1 in 5 young workers in cities was unemployed.

Retail sales accelerated following the end of anti-virus restrictions in December but were below forecasts, official data showed Tuesday. Factory output edged down compared with March.

Cyprus and Israel are working on a deal to build a pipeline that will convey natural gas from both countries to the east Mediterranean island nation, where it will be liquefied for export by ship to Europe and potentially elsewhere, the Cypriot energy minister said Monday.

Minister Giorgos Papanastasiou said Monday he would soon visit Israel to hammer out a formal agreement. Once the deal is signed, the pipeline could be completed in 18 months.

The European Union's executive body raised its economic growth forecast, saying Europe had dodged a winter recession that was feared amid an energy crisis but warning that stubbornly high inflation is likely to keep hurting the economy by sapping people's ability to spend.

The outlook for the 20 countries using the euro currency improved to growth of 1.1% this year from 0.9% in February's predictions, the European Commission said in its spring forecast Monday.

Building factories to boost job creation and make France more independent — that's President Emmanuel Macron's ambition for the French economy.

It's a big challenge, as France reels from protracted protests, rising food and energy prices and other fallout from the Ukraine war.

Less than two months into his $44 billion purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk declared that whoever took over as the company's CEO " must like pain a lot." Then he promised he'd step down as soon as he found a replacement "foolish enough" to want the job.

That person, Musk announced Friday, is Linda Yaccarino, a highly-regarded advertising executive from NBCUniversal. She'll start in six weeks. How long she'll last might depend on her pain tolerance.

Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh has decided not to attend the May 16 interrogation session in Paris and is instead planning to retire in Sharjah, UAE, media reports have said.

Salameh fears that he might be detained or banned from traveling if he goes to France, the reports said. Instead, the governor and his legal team will argue that he has not been officially notified of the French interrogation request.

After months wrestling over the fate of millions of unsold Yeezy shoes, Adidas said Thursday it will sell a portion of its remaining inventory and donate the proceeds to charitable organizations.

The German sportsware company cut ties with Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, in late October, following his antisemitic comments on social media and in interviews. Since then, the fate of 1.2 billion euros ($1.3 billion) worth of the unsold Yeezys, a lucrative sneaker line launched with Ye, has been up in the air.

The U.K. economy grew sluggishly during the first three months of the year as double-digit inflation curbed consumer spending and labor unrest curtailed output in industries ranging from transportation to healthcare and education.

Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of economic activity, increased 0.1% in the first quarter compared with the previous three months, the Office for National Statistics said Friday. The figure matched the growth rate during the fourth quarter of last year and was in line with economic forecasts.