Shops, bars and restaurants in a southern Dutch town opened Friday in a protest action that underscored growing anger at weeks of coronavirus lockdown measures, a day before some of the restrictions are expected to be eased.

A local broadcaster showed people eating and drinking at outdoor tables of restaurants in the main street of Valkenburg in open defiance of a lockdown in the Netherlands. Authorities in the tourist town, which was devastated by flooding last year, didn't take action to enforce coronavirus restrictions.

Shares slipped in Europe and Asia on Friday after a retreat on Wall Street that left the Nasdaq composite down 2.5%.

Germany's DAX lost 0.6% to 15,928.83 and the CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.7% to 7,145.19. Britain's FTSE 100 edged 0.1% lower to 7,556.29. On Wall Street, the future for the Dow industrials and the S&P 500 both were 0.1% higher.

Boris Johnson's office on Friday apologized to the royal family for holding staff parties in Downing Street on the eve of Prince Philip's funeral last year — the latest in a string of allegedly lockdown-breaching gatherings that are threatening to topple the British prime minister.

Farewell parties for Johnson's departing spin doctor and another staffer, complete with late-night drinking and dancing, took place on April 16, 2021, the night before Queen Elizabeth II sat alone at the funeral of her husband because of social distancing rules in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

The risk of recession is looming for Germany after Europe's biggest economy shrank at the end of 2021 and as it faces a bumpy start to this year, with the rapid spread of COVID-19's omicron variant deterring people from shopping and travel and supply bottlenecks holding back manufacturers.

Output in Germany fell by between 0.5% and 1% in the fourth quarter, the state statistics agency Destatis said Friday. Forecasts are also shaky for the first three months of 2022, and two straight quarters of falling output would leave Germany in recession, according to one commonly used definition.

China said Friday it gained support on issues including the treatment of Uyghur Muslims from a number of Gulf states following talks between their foreign ministers at which they agreed to upgrade relations.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the ministers and Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Nayef Falah Al-Hajraf expressed firm support for China's "legitimate positions on issues related to Taiwan, Xinjiang and human rights."

The European Union is mobilizing "all its resources" to aid Ukraine after a cyberattack on the country's government websites, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday.

Borrell said the EU's political and security committee would convene later on Friday for an urgent meeting on the attack, which he said "merits condemnation".

Russia on Friday strongly repeated its demand that NATO will not expand eastward, despite the rejection of that by the military alliance amid a Russian troop buildup near Ukraine.

It added that it wouldn't wait indefinitely for the Western response.

Israel has administered a 4th vaccine dose to more than 500,000 people, the Health Ministry said Friday.

Israel began administering second boosters to the most vulnerable late last month and later began offering them to everyone over 60.

A fire erupted in Kuwait during maintenance work at a major oil refinery on Friday, killing two workers and critically injuring five others, the Kuwait National Petroleum Company said.

This is the second fire to erupt at the Mina al-Ahmadi oil refinery in as little as three months. In October, the state-owned oil company reported a fire had erupted at the facility, with some workers suffering from smoke inhalation and others being treated for light burns.

Conservationists and veterinarians are warning that plastic waste in an open landfill in eastern Sri Lanka is killing elephants in the region, after two more were found dead over the weekend.

Around 20 elephants have died over the last eight years after consuming plastic trash in the dump in Pallakkadu village in Ampara district, about 210 kilometers (130 miles) east of the capital, Colombo.