Lebanon Financial News

Also Read: Oil remains range-bound as rate cut hopes fade away: Here's how US Fed policy decision affects prices Back home, on the Multi Commodity Exchange (MCX), crude oil futures due for a March 19 expiry, last settled 0.03 per cent higher at ₹6,484 per bbl, having swung between ₹6,381 and ₹6,518 per bbl during the session, against a previous close of ₹6,482 per barrel. On Thursday, Hezbollah said it fired dozens of rockets at a northern Israeli town in a "preliminary response" to the killing of 10 civilians in southern Lebanon, the deadliest day for Lebanese civilians in four months of cross-border hostilities. The oil market's reaction to news from the Middle East was moderate, according to analysts.

As Israel-Hamas cease-fire talks flounder, Israel is vowing to press ahead with its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip despite warnings from the US to work harder to protect civilians. Violence spiked across the volatile Israel-Lebanon border. This is what happened in the Middle East this week.

Moody's downgraded Israel's credit rating Friday due to the impact of its ongoing conflict with Hamas in Gaza, lowering it by one notch from A1 to A2. In a statement, Moody's said it had done so after assessing that "the ongoing military conflict with Hamas, its aftermath and wider consequences materially raise the political risk for Israel as well as weaken its executive and legislative institutions and its fiscal strength, for the foreseeable future." The ratings agency also lowered its outlook for Israel's debt to "negative" due to "the risk of an escalation" with the far more powerful Lebanese militant group Hezbollah that operates along its northern border.

Iraqi airline Fly Baghdad is denying U.S. allegations that have resulted in it being hit with sanctions from the Treasury Department

Islamist group Hamas while admitting in a 16-page report that “some faults happened due to the rapid collapse of the Israeli security and its military system". The attack resulted in over 1,140 deaths, mostly civilians. Around 700 Israeli civilians and 76 foreigners were among the dead, with one Israeli still missing, according to a report published by AFP. During the attack, the gunmen seized around 250 hostages, as per the latest Israeli figures.

Israel-Hamas war are being felt in Syria, which has been targeted by air raids and other attacks launched from several countries. On Saturday, Israel launched its second high-profile targeted assassination in the country in less than a month, killing the Iranian Revolutionary Guards' spy chief for Syria and three other Guards members.

intensifying strikes targeting senior Iranian and allied figures in Syria and Lebanon -- both backers of the Palestinian militant group Hamas -- raising fears that the Gaza conflict could expand further throughout the region. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) confirmed it lost five members in the strike that it blamed on Israel, its regional arch-foe, updating an earlier toll from four. Hamas condemned what it called a "heinous crime".

Hezbollah on Friday warned Israel would «receive a real slap in the face» if it expanded the conflict along the Lebanon-Israel border. Since the surprise October 7 attack by Hamas on southern Israel, there have been near daily exchanges of cross-border fire between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, an ally of the Palestinian militants. Israel has repeatedly bombarded border villages, with the violence killing more than 195 people in Lebanon, including at least 142 Hezbollah fighters, according to an AFP tally. On the Israeli side, 15 people have been killed, of whom nine were soldiers and six civilians, according to the Israeli army. «If Israel decides to expand its aggression, it will receive a real slap in the face in response,» Hezbollah's number two, Naim Qassem, said in a statement. Any restoration of stability on the border is contingent on «the end of the aggression in Gaza», he added. «The enemy must know the party is ready, that we are preparing based on the principle that an endless aggression can happen, just like our will to push back the aggression is infinite.» His remarks came after Israeli air strikes «completely destroyed» at least three houses in southern Lebanon on Friday, the official Lebanese news agency NNA and the mayor of the affected border community said. The agency reported four houses were targeted «since this morning by the Israeli air force in Kfar Kila», a village near the Israel-Lebanon border, while three were «completely destroyed». A fifth home was also targeted by artillery fire, NNA said. The Israeli army said on Friday it had «conducted air strikes and carried out artillery and tank fire against Hezbollah observation posts and terrorist infrastructure» in the Kfar Kila

RAMALLAH, West Bank—The Israeli-occupied West Bank has become an increasingly deadly front in a Middle East conflict that has spread beyond the war in Gaza, with near-daily Israeli raids into Palestinian villages and cities which Israel says are aimed at uprooting growing militant activity and preventing new attacks. Early on Friday, Israeli security forces ended a two-day raid in Tulkarem, a West Bank city straddling the wall separating Palestinian communities and Israel that hasn’t been known as a hotbed of militancy in recent years, leaving at least eight Palestinians dead. The raids, which lasted for more than 35 hours, occurred in the city and its two refugee camps, Tulkarem and Nour Shams, where residents said Israeli forces destroyed homes and damaged infrastructure, including roads.

Medicine is en route to Gaza after Qatar and France worked out a deal between Israel and Hamas

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Israel on Sunday, killing two civilians and renewing concerns about the risk of a second front erupting in the Israel-Hamas war. The deadly strike near the border came on the 100th day of the conflict between Israel and Hamas that has killed nearly 24,000 Palestinians, devastated vast swaths of Gaza, driven around 85% of the territory's 2.3 million residents from their homes and pushed a quarter of the population into starvation. The war was triggered by Hamas' Oct. 7 surprise attack into southern Israel in which militants killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took around 250 hostages, about half of whom are still in captivity. Since then, tensions have soared across the region, with Israel trading fire almost daily with Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group and Iranian-backed militias attacking U.S.

More than 60 heads of state and government and hundreds of business leaders will discuss the biggest global challenges during the World Economic Forum’s annual gathering in Switzerland next week

In the last week alone, an Israeli airstrike has killed a Hezbollah commander in Lebanon, Hezbollah struck a sensitive Israeli base with rockets and Israel killed a senior Hamas militant with an airstrike in Beirut

By Wayne Cole

A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Wayne Cole.

By Nidal al-Mughrabi

By Ari Rabinovitch, Simon Lewis and Nidal al-Mughrabi

Israel and Lebanon-based Hezbollah traded fire Saturday in one of the heaviest days of cross-border fighting in recent weeks, a day after the militia's leader urged retaliation for the targeted killing, presumably by Israel, of a top Hamas leader in Lebanon's capital. Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said that if his group didn't strike back for the killing Tuesday of Saleh Arouri, Hamas' deputy political leader, all of Lebanon would be vulnerable to Israeli attacks.

Uber stated to the publication that they are currently experimenting with this feature in select Tier 2 and 3 markets in India. As per a report from India Today, Uber Flex introduces a range of nine pricing choices for riders when booking a ride, departing from the conventional dynamic pricing model. Within these options, one price is designated as the default or starting price.

Investments Authority of the Ministry of Economy and Industry and the Tax Authority are working to provide individual support to entrepreneurs among the evacuees from the war zones who own residential buildings. As such, it has already been approved for a company that owns a residential apartment building, which holds written approval from the administration in the «building for rent» route, to contract with a government company for the occupancy of the apartments in this building by the evacuee population.