Lebanon's government on Friday approved a draft law to distribute financial losses from the 2019 economic crisis that deprived many Lebanese of their deposits despite strong opposition from political and banking officials.

After Cabinet passed a long-awaited banking draft bill that would distribute losses from the 2019 economic crisis amid objections from nine ministers and modest protests, Prime Minister Nawaf Salam appeared a bit agitated as he answered journalists' questions.

The law stipulates that each of the state, the central bank, commercial banks and depositors will share the losses accrued as a result of the financial crisis.

Beijing imposed sanctions on Friday against 20 U.S. defense-related companies and 10 executives, a week after Washington announced large-scale arms sales to Taiwan.

The sanctions entail freezing the companies' assets in China and banning individuals and organizations from dealing with them, according to the Chinese foreign ministry.

It's been a rollercoaster of a year for U.S. trade policy.

President Donald Trump launched a barrage of new tariffs in 2025, plunging the U.S. into trade wars with nearly every country in the world. Volley after volley of threats and steeper import taxes often arrived erratically — with Trump claiming that such levies needed to be immediately imposed to close trade imbalances and take back wealth that was "stolen" from the U.S.

Cabinet approved Friday a long-awaited banking draft bill that would distribute losses from the 2019 economic crisis.

Thirteen ministers voted in favor of the financial gap law amid the objection of nine ministers: three Lebanese Forces ministers, two Hezbollah ministers, Kataeb minister Adel Nassar, and ministers Tamara al-Zein (Amal), Noura Bayrakdarian (Tashnag Party), and Charles al-Hajj.

After a half-century immersed in the world of trade, customs broker Amy Magnus thought she'd seen it all, navigating mountains of regulations and all sorts of logistical hurdles to import everything from lumber and bananas to circus animals and Egyptian mummies.

Then came 2025.

France's fractured parliament is debating an emergency bill Tuesday designed to prevent a U.S.-style government shutdown next week, after negotiations on a 2026 budget collapsed.

With just days left before the new year, President Emmanuel Macron and his Cabinet met Monday night to present the brief draft law. It aims "to ensure the continuity of national life and the functioning of public services," including collecting taxes and disbursing them to local authorities based on tax and spending levels in the 2025 budget, the Cabinet said.

A suspected cyberattack knocked France's national postal service and its banking arm offline Monday, blocking and delaying package deliveries and online payments at the height of the busy Christmas season.

The postal service, called La Poste, said in a statement that a distributed denial of service incident, or DDoS, "rendered its online services inaccessible." It said the incident had no impact on customer data, but disrupted package and mail delivery.

World shares were mixed on Monday after a rebound in AI-related stocks like Nvidia spurred a late-in-the-week rally on Wall Street.

Germany's DAX edged 0.1% higher to 24,315.90, while the CAC 40 in Paris slipped 0.2% to 8,135.23. Britain's FTSE 100 shed 0.3% to 9,864.71.

China will impose up to 42.7% of provisional tariffs on dairy products including milk and cheese imported from the European Union, its Commerce Ministry said Monday.

The elevated duties, which take effect Tuesday, were based on preliminary results from an investigation opened by China's Commerce Ministry in August 2024 as tensions between Beijing and Brussels flared. Beijing reviewed subsidies provided by EU countries for their dairy and other farm products.