EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Friday proposed a new round of sanctions on Moscow over the Ukraine war, including a ban on providing services for tankers carrying Russian crude oil.

The package, meant to be approved for the fourth anniversary of Moscow's invasion, on February 24, also targets Russian banks, cryptocurrency traders and metal exports.

China and South Africa signed a framework agreement for a new trade deal on Friday as Africa's leading economy looks to other options following the high import tariffs imposed on it by the U.S. and its diplomatic fallout with the Trump administration.

South Africa's Ministry of Trade and Industry said the agreement would start negotiations over a deal that would give some South African goods, such as fruit, duty-free access to the Chinese market. The ministry said it expected the trade deal to be finalized by the end of March.

Wall Street was poised to open with gains early Friday as the technology sector clawed back a small portion of this week's losses and bitcoin's slide appeared to stabilize.

Futures for the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average each rose 0.5% before markets opened. Nasdaq futures climbed 0.6%.

Looking back on the first year of his second term, President Donald Trump boasts that he has resurrected the American economy by imposing big import taxes on foreign products. He made his case in a recent opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal, chiding the paper and critics, including mainstream economists, who predicted that tariffs would backfire, raising prices and threatening growth. "Instead,'' he wrote, "they have created an American economic miracle."

But the proof he offers is often off-base or wrong altogether.

Tiny Lebanon sits on one of the largest gold reserves in the Middle East and its government is weighing whether it can use that stockpile to restore a crippled economy while its citizens are looking at gold as a way to protect their battered assets.

Lebanon's economy hobbled into 2026 with ongoing inflation and state decay and no reforms to combat corruption in sight. Its banks collapsed in late 2019 in a crippling fiscal crisis that evaporated depositors' savings and plunged about half its population of 6.5 million into poverty, after decades of rampant corruption, waste, and mismanagement. The country suffered some $70 billion in losses in its financial sector, further compounded by about $11 billion in the 2024 Israeli war.

The European Central Bank left interest rates unchanged Thursday as the economy in the 21 countries that use the euro chugs past the disruption from U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs with growth modest, yet resilient.

The bank left its benchmark deposit rate at 2%, where it has been since June. after a series of cuts from the peak of 4% starting in mid-2024.

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that it wants to create a critical minerals trading bloc with its allies and partners, using tariffs to maintain minimum prices and defend against China's stranglehold on the key elements needed for everything from fighter jets to smartphones.

Vice President JD Vance said the U.S.-China trade war over the past year exposed how dependent most countries are on the critical minerals that Beijing largely dominates, so collective action is needed now to give the West self-reliance.

World shares retreated Thursday in Asia on heavy selling of technology stocks, while the price of bitcoin fell as much as 8%.

The latest round of jitters over high prices for tech shares sent South Korea's Kospi down nearly 4%. Oil prices sank more than $1 a barrel.

The Bank of England kept its main interest rate unchanged at 3.75% on Thursday with U.K. inflation remaining above target and economic growth is showing signs of picking up.

The decision was widely anticipated in financial markets but the split on the nine-member rate-setting panel was much closer than expected. Five members of the Monetary Policy Committee opted to keep rates unchanged while four voted for a quarter-point cut.

U.S. President Donald Trump has extended a 26-year-old free-trade agreement with African countries that was left in doubt last year when his administration allowed it to expire while enforcing his policy of reciprocal tariffs.

Trump on Tuesday signed into law an extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, according to the Office of the United States Trade Representative.