Cash-strapped Sri Lanka on Tuesday asked the International Monetary Fund to arrange a creditor meeting for $6 billion in loans to help keep the country afloat during its unprecedented economic crisis.

The World Bank on Tuesday (June 7) slashed its global growth forecast by nearly a third to 2.9 per cent for 2022, warning that Russia's invasion of Ukraine has compounded the damage from the Covid-19 pandemic, and many countries now faced recession.

New car sales in Russia sank by 83.5 per cent year-on-year in May, industry data showed on Monday, as the effects of unprecedented Western sanctions hit the country’s economy and consumers.

Global stock markets and oil prices advanced Monday, helped by an easing of Covid lockdowns in the world’s second biggest economy China.

The Russian rouble weakened towards 62 against the dollar on Monday, steered by internal market flows and capital controls, while stock indexes extended losses after the latest Western sanctions.

The European Central Bank is set to draw a line under its massive bond-buying stimulus programme at a meeting in Amsterdam on Thursday, as inflation in the eurozone soars to all-time highs.

France is in talks with the United Arab Emirates to replace Russian oil purchases, which will stop after the imposition of a European Union ban on Russian crude, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Sunday.

Oman and Iran signed deals to develop two gas pipelines and an oil field along their maritime border, Oman’s energy minister said Saturday, less than two weeks after Iran’s president visited the sultanate.

More than two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, American businesses are still struggling to manage their inventories in a feast-or-famine cycle caused by fickle consumer demand.

Japan's government is considering resuming a national travel discount campaign as soon as late this month to help the tourism industry recover from a Covid-19 slump, the Nikkei newspaper said on Saturday.

The dominant services sector saw growth slow in May, while price gains pulled back from the blistering pace in the prior month but remained high, according to an industry survey released Friday.

At the gates of the Black Sea, trade is in full swing as freighters and oil tankers sail from the heart of Istanbul to Russian and Ukrainian ports.

India has no plans to curb food exports for now, Piyush Goyal, the Minister for Commerce and Industry, Consumer Affairs and Food and Public Distribution said on Friday, weeks after New Delhi banned private wheat exports.

US employers hired more workers than expected in May and maintained a fairly strong pace of wage increases, signs of labour market strength that will keep the Federal Reserve on an aggressive monetary policy tightening path to cool demand.

ICC Bangladesh strongly endorsed the finance ministry’s recent recommendation to avoid hard loans and discourage the import of luxury goods in order to reduce pressure on declining foreign exchange reserves.

Russia said Wednesday it was moving to limit the damage from an EU oil ban as its other key energy export, gas, has fallen after President Vladimir Putin sent troops to Ukraine.

Solid growth continued across the United States, even as firms faced an ongoing struggle with a worker shortage and rising prices, although there were some tentative signs the tide may be turning, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday.

Russia has failed to pay $1.9 million of accrued interest on a sovereign bond, a panel of investors said Wednesday, as Moscow faces the risk of its first default in decades.

Ukraine’s wheat harvest is expected to fall by 40 per cent, the Ukrainian Grain Association (UGA) said Wednesday, as the Russian invasion has sent prices soaring and sparked fears of a global food crisis.

Krishna Mandal, the Bangladeshi woman who swam through the Sundarbans and got married to an Indian before being arrested, was produced before a court in West Bengal’s south 24 Parganas district which sent her to a correctional home.