Wall Street pointed toward gains early Wednesday as markets await the release of minutes from the Federal Reserve's last meeting, a day after the worst selloff of 2023.

Futures for the Dow Jones industrials rose 0.2% and the S&P 500 gained 0.3% before the opening bell.

One month into the invasion of Ukraine, President Joe Biden stood in the courtyard of a grand Polish castle and laid out the punishing economic costs that the U.S. and its allies were inflicting on Vladimir Putin's Russia, declaring that the ruble is almost immediately "reduced to rubble."

Russia is now the world's most heavily sanctioned country, according to U.S. officials. The ruble did in fact take a temporary dive and has been slipping again in recent months. But as the war nears its one-year mark, it's clear the sanctions didn't pack the instantaneous punch that many had hoped.

Top financial leaders from the Group of 20 leading economies are gathering in the south Indian technology hub of Bengaluru this week to tackle myriad challenges to global growth and stability, including stubbornly high inflation and surging debt.

India is hosting the G-20 financial conclave for the first time in 20 years. Later in the year it will convene its first summit of G-20 economies. The meetings offer the world's second most populous country a chance to showcase its ascent as an economic power and its status as a champion of developing nations.

Wall Street stocks fell early Tuesday following mixed results from Walmart and Home Depot as concerns about higher interest rates continued to weigh on markets.

The Mansourieh branch of Bank of Beirut was on Tuesday sealed with red wax at the orders of Mount Lebanon Prosecutor Judge Ghada Aoun, media reports said.

Two UK tea manufacturers on Monday faced accusations of sexual abuse on tea plantations in Kenya, according to an undercover investigation by the BBC.

Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh has announced that he has decided to leave his post following the end of his term.

Contacts were held over the past 48 hours between senior officials and political leaders, especially Speaker Nabih Berri and caretaker PM Najib Mikati, in a bid to defuse the tensions related to the latest Lebanese currency crash and the banking sector strike, a media report said.

Thousands of flights to and from German airports were canceled Friday as workers walked out to press their demands for inflation-busting pay increases.

The strikes at seven German airports, including Frankfurt, Munich and Hamburg, affected almost 300,000 passengers and forced airlines to cancel more than 2,300 flights.

The lower house of France's parliament debated a contested pension bill aimed at raising the country's retirement age from 62 to 64 during what was expected to be lawmakers' last discussion on the proposal before sending the legislation to the Senate.

President Emmanuel Macron's government has vowed to go ahead with the reform despite nationwide protests and strikes and opinion polls consistently showing a majority of French people oppose the change.