The United States on Friday broadened its export curbs against Russia and Belarus, restricting access to imports of items such as fertilizer and pipe valves as it seeks to ratchet up pressure on Moscow and Minsk following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Semiconductor chip supply is unlikely to be enough to completely satisfy demand again until 2024, Volkswagen Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Arno Antlitz said in an interview with German daily Boersen-Zeitung on Saturday.

Sri Lanka will need about $3 billion in external assistance within the next six months to help restore supplies of essential items, including fuel and medicines, to manage a severe economic crisis, its finance minister told Reuters on Saturday.

Germany could end Russian oil imports this year, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said on Friday, signalling the urgency driving Europe’s biggest economy to wean itself off energy from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine.

The European Union on Friday formally adopted new sweeping sanctions against Russia, including bans on the import of coal, wood, chemicals and other products which were estimated to slash at least 10 per cent of total imports from Moscow.

Russia’s inflation rate reached 16.7 per cent year-on-year in March, the state statistics agency said Friday, a level not seen since 2015, while food prices have risen even more steeply.

Canada’s unemployment rate fell to the lowest on record in March as job gains continued throughout the economy, Statistics Canada announced on Friday.

Russia faces its first sovereign external default in over a century after it made arrangements to make an international bond repayment in roubles earlier this week, even though the payment was due in US dollars.

The dollar hovered near two-year highs against a basket of major currencies on Thursday after meeting minutes showed the Federal Reserve preparing to move aggressively to fight inflation, while commodity currencies fell further from recent peaks.

European Union envoys are set to approve on Thursday a ban on Russian coal that would take full effect from mid-August, a month later than initially proposed, an EU source told Reuters, following pressure from Germany to delay the measure.

Given the climate emergency, the UN chief says that investing now in fossil fuels is  “moral and economic madness”. But given the energy shock from the war in Ukraine, Britain is set to do just that.

The Russian rouble’s recent sharp rebound reflects economic weakness, not resilience. After shedding 45 per cent of its value against the dollar in the two weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, the currency has bounced back and is now trading just below its pre-war level.

Russian gas deliveries to Europe via the Yamal-Europe pipeline reversed direction to flow from Germany to Poland on Thursday morning and supplies via Ukraine also eased, all in line with requests from customers.

Oil prices rose on Thursday from a three-week low touched in the previous session after consuming nations announced a huge release of oil from emergency reserves, as worries over tight supplies still clouded the market outlook.

Sri Lanka’s beleaguered president has appointed an expert panel to organise a debt restructure to claw the country out of a crippling economic crisis that has sparked huge protests demanding his resignation.

The dominant US services sector saw growth accelerate in March as worker shortages and Covid-19 cases eased, but firms continue to face supply challenges, according to an industry survey released Tuesday.

SVAM, a US-based global information technology services provider, wants to set up a software delivery centre in Bangladesh.

EU leaders on Wednesday said the bloc will soon have to sanction all of Russia’s hydrocarbon exports as they blamed Moscow for  “war crimes” discovered in Ukraine, especially in the town of Bucha.

German industrial orders fell more than expected in February, official data showed Wednesday, as the economy ministry warned that  “high uncertainty” over the war in Ukraine was likely to dampen the outlook for manufacturers.

The Asian Development Bank trimmed its 2022 growth forecast for developing Asia Wednesday as  “increasing” price pressures after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine threaten a recovery from Omicron surges.