FRANKFURT: The European Central Bank is on Thursday expected to stress its commitment to keeping borrowing costs low, as inflation concerns and a slow vaccination drive weigh on the eurozone economy. 

BEIRUT: Demonstrators blocked key roads across Lebanon yesterday in protest at the country’spolitical paralysis after the  Lebanese pound hit record lows on the black market. 

SINGAPORE: Thousands of panels glinting in the sun stretch into the sea off Singapore, part of the land-scarce city-state’s push to build floating solar farms to cut greenhouse gas emissions. 

BEIJING: China’s export growth jumped to the highest in over two decades, official data showed yesterday, with imports also surging in a sharp bounceback from the coronavirus outbreak that had brought activity to a near halt. 

TUNIS: Tunisia’s state-owned firms are in dire straits, facing a perfect storm of debt, mismanagement, the coronavirus pandemic and a decade of political instability that could push some to bankruptcy, experts say. 

BEIRUT: To feed her family, Lebanese mother Sandra Al-Tawil sold her fridge and washing machine. Now she fears the cash-strapped state will scrap food subsidies, plunging them deeper into poverty. Lebanon is locked in its worst economic crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war, with no end in sight. The value of the Lebanese pound has plunged, driving up the price of crucial imports like food and fuel and triggering small but angry protests.

WASHINGTON: US Democrats were on track yesterday for a final vote on President Joe Biden’s massive COVID-19 relief package after agreeing to scale back unemployment benefits, with passage increasingly likely in the evenly divided Senate. 

WASHINGTON: The coronavirus pandemic has wiped out millions of jobs in the United States, but it’s had the unexpected effect of increasing savings rates among Americans, especially wealthy people stuck at home and forced to give up travel and entertainment. 

KUWAIT: Kuwait said 1,318 people were tested positive for coronavirus with seven related deaths reported on Saturday taking the total cases up to 199,428 as deaths rose to 1,120 respectively, according to the health ministry.