As part of the recently announced $2.76 billion in U.S. government funding to help address the global food security crisis, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) will provide $29.5 million, consisting of $15 million in humanitarian assistance and $14.5 million in economic support funding, to help protect vulnerable populations from rising food insecurity in Lebanon, the U.S. embassy said.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said Tuesday he hopes a gas pipeline linking the Iberian Peninsula to central Europe through France could soon become a reality. 

Europe is currently undergoing an energy crisis as it struggles to rapidly reduce its dependence on Russian gas following the invasion of Ukraine.

Germany's main industry lobby group warned Tuesday that factories may have to throttle production or halt it completely because plunging water levels on the Rhine River are making it harder to transport cargo.

Water levels on the Rhine at Emmerich, near the Dutch border, dropped by a further four centimeters (1.6 inches) in 24 hours, hitting zero on the depth gauge.

The first shipment of grain to leave Ukraine under a wartime deal appears to have ended up in Syria — even as Damascus remains a close ally of Moscow, satellite images analyzed Tuesday by The Associated Press show.

The arrival of the cargo ship Razoni in Syria comes after the government in Kyiv praised the ship's initial departure from the port of Odesa as a sign that Ukraine could safely ship out its barley, corn, sunflower oil and wheat to a hungry world where global food prices have spiked in part due to the war.

Gasoline was delivered to fuel distributors on Tuesday after contacts were made over the past hours, the representative of fuel distribution companies, Fadi Abu Shaqra, said, after queues returned to gas stations in some regions.

“A clarification will be issued about the modification of the mechanism that has been adopted by the Banque du Liban (central bank),” Abu Shaqra added.

With much fanfare, ship after ship loaded with grain has sailed from Ukraine after being stuck in the country's Black Sea ports for nearly six months. More quietly, a parallel wartime deal met Moscow's demands to clear the way for its wheat to get to the world, too, boosting an industry vital to Russia's economy that had been ensnared in wider sanctions.

While the U.S. and its European allies work to crush Russia's finances with a web of penalties for invading Ukraine, they have avoided sanctioning its grains and other goods that feed people worldwide.

Germans are facing a new tax on natural gas use that could cost the average household several hundred euros a year and is aimed at rescuing importers slammed by Russian cutbacks tied to the war in Ukraine.

An association of gas pipeline operators on Monday set the level at 2.4 euro cents per kilowatt hour under legislation passed by the German parliament, which had an expected range of 1 to 5 cents. The tax on gas that is used to heat homes in winter and generate electricity is set to take effect in October and run through the beginning of April. It will not show up in utility bills until November or December.

EDUCITY & Beirut Expo have announced that Middle East Clean Energy, the premiere renewable and sustainable energy trade fair and conference in Lebanon and the wider Levant, will be held in Beirut on September 7-9, 2022.

Middle East Clean Energy 2022 is organized in response to an unprecedented rise in demand for modern equipment and technologies that leverage renewable energy in Lebanon and the region. In 2021 alone in Lebanon, despite its crisis, customers spent $800 million on clean energy solutions. 

A judge ordered a gunman who took up to 10 hostages at a Beirut bank to force the release of his trapped savings to stay behind bars Friday, apparently a bid to prevent copycats as desperation deepens over Lebanon's economic meltdown.

A few dozen relatives of Bassam al-Sheikh Hussein briefly closed a major road in Ouzai, saying that keeping him in jail breaches an agreement reached Thursday. The 42-year-old food-delivery driver surrendered after a seven-hour standoff in return for getting $35,000 of his money and promises that he would only be questioned then set free. No one was injured.

Five major Chinese companies including two of the country's largest oil producers will delist from the New York Stock Exchange, the firms said in filings on Friday.