The founder and former CEO of the failed cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network was freed on $40 million bail Thursday after pleading not guilty to federal fraud charges alleging that he schemed to defraud customers by misleading them about key aspects of the business.

Alexander Mashinsky, 57, of Manhattan, was charged with securities, commodities and wire fraud in an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court. He was also charged with illegally manipulating the price of Celsius's proprietary crypto token while secretly selling his own tokens at inflated prices.

Nigeria's new President Bola Tinubu has announced his government's plan to pay $10 a month to poor households to ease the growing hardship caused by the scrapping of subsidies on gasoline.

In a letter to the Nigerian Senate, which was read during Thursday's sitting, Tinubu said 12 million households will benefit from the handout for a period of six months. The government plans to fund it through an $800 million World Bank loan for which Tinubu is seeking legislators' approval.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Friday launched the construction of a 1,200-megawatt Chinese-designed nuclear energy project, which will be built at a cost of $3.5 billion as part of the government efforts to generate more clean energy in the Islamic nation.

The ceremony marking the start of the project comes less than a month after Pakistan signed an agreement with China's National Nuclear Corporation Overseas in the capital, Islamabad, to construct a Hualong One reactor — a third-generation nuclear reactor and is considered safer because of the latest security features.

China on Friday criticized a German government call for reducing dependency on Chinese products and decreasing other potentially unstable factors in bilateral relations, calling it a form of protectionism.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said that a long-awaited German government strategy for relations with China that pointed to a "systemic rivalry" went "against the trend of the times, and will only aggravate divisions in the world."

The British Embassy in Beirut said Friday that it has hosted a round-table for women economists and colleagues from the International Monetary Fund to discuss Lebanon’s 2023 Article IV Consultation report.

IMF’s Resident Representative in Lebanon, Frederico Lima, gave a summary of the last report which was issued few weeks ago. Open and honest discussions followed from the attendees highlighting the immense challenges facing Lebanon’s economy.

Iraqi officials have defended a deal inked this week to barter oil for gas with Iran, saying that the deal does not violate U.S. sanctions on Tehran and that it will help alleviate a worsening electricity crisis in Iraq.

The remarks come as the government in Baghdad struggles to maintain a balance between its two key allies, Washington and Tehran. A previous arrangement in which Iraq was buying gas from Iran and paying dollars for it was held up because Washington declined to approve sanctions waivers. That in turn led Iran to cut the gas supply, triggering severe power shortages in Iraq.

Tourists are waiting more than two hours to visit the Acropolis in Athens. Taxi lines at Rome's main train station are running just as long. And so many visitors are concentrating around St. Mark's Square in Venice that crowds get backed up crossing bridges — even on weekdays.

After three years of pandemic limitations, tourism is expected to exceed 2019 records in some of Europe's most popular destinations this summer, from Barcelona and Rome, Athens and Venice to the scenic islands of Santorini in Greece, Capri in Italy and Mallorca in Spain.

PepsiCo saw lower demand for its drinks and snacks in the second quarter, but higher prices continued to boost its bottom line.

The British government offered millions of public sector workers pay raises Thursday in a bid to end an array of strikes, including a five-day walkout from doctors in Britain's publicly funded health service.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed that the government was accepting the recommendations from pay review bodies, which will see a 7% rise for police, 6.5% for teachers and 6% for the striking junior doctors, who are at the early stages of their careers in the National Health Service.

A multibillion-dollar agreement signed with France's TotalEnergies could help resolve Iraq's longstanding electricity crisis, attract international investors and reduce its reliance on gas imports from neighboring Iran, a point of tension with Washington.

The $27 billion agreement signed in Baghdad on Monday after years of negotiation marks the largest foreign investment in Iraq's history. It could even help combat climate change by reducing oil flares, and relieve some of the stress on Iraq's dwindling waterways through a new desalination plant.