U.K. telecom company BT Group said Thursday that it plans to shed up to 55,000 jobs by the end of the decade and replace some of them with artificial intelligence, as part of an overhaul aimed at slimming down its workforce to slash costs.

BT, which has 130,000 workers including both staff and contractors, said in its latest earnings report that its number of employees would be reduced to between 75,000 and 90,000 by 2030.

The top leaders of Pakistan and Iran on Thursday inaugurated the first border market as relations warm between the two countries, officials said.

Located in the remote village of Pashin in Pakistan's southwestern Baluchistan province, the marketplace is the first of six to be constructed along the Pakistan-Iran border under a 2012 agreement signed by the two sides.

Russia agreed to a two-month extension of a deal that has allowed Ukraine to ship grain through the Black Sea to parts of the world struggling with hunger, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced, a boost to global food security after the war drove up prices.

Turkey and the U.N. brokered the breakthrough accord with the warring sides last summer, which came with a separate agreement to facilitate shipments of Russian food and fertilizer that Moscow insists hasn't been applied.

Debt-limit talks shifted into an encouraging new phase Tuesday as President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy named top emissaries to negotiate a deal to avert an unprecedented national default. Biden cut short an upcoming overseas trip in hopes of closing an agreement before a June 1 deadline.

The fresh set of negotiators means discussions are now largely narrowed to what the White House and McCarthy will accept in order to allow lawmakers to raise the debt limit in the coming days. The speaker said after a meeting with Biden and congressional leaders that a deal was "possible" by week's end, even as — in McCarthy's view — the two sides remained far apart for the moment.

Russia has frozen the bank accounts of Finland's diplomatic representations in Moscow and St. Petersburg, disrupting money flow and forcing the country's missions to resort to cash payments, the Finnish foreign minister said Wednesday.

Pekka Haavisto said Moscow's move at the end of April breaches the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and Helsinki has delivered a diplomatic note on the matter to Russia.

Iran and Russia on Wednesday signed an agreement to construct the final part in the International North–South Transport Corridor (INSTC) that connects Russia to the Gulf and India.

The INSTC, a freight network of ship, rail and road routes, covers some 7,200 kilometres (4,475 miles) between Russia, Azerbaijan, Iran and India.

The World Bank's Lebanon Economic Monitor presented in its spring issue findings from recent World Bank work on Lebanon.

It examined the continuous decline in the Lebanese economy amidst what it called "a normalization of the state of the crisis."

The United Nations is racing to extend a deal that has allowed shipments of Ukrainian grain through the Black Sea to parts of the world struggling with hunger, helping ease a global food crisis exacerbated by the war Russia launched more than a year ago.

The breakthrough accord that the U.N. and Turkey brokered with the warring sides last summer came with a separate agreement to ease shipments of Russian food and fertilizer that Moscow insists hasn't been applied.

Chinese leaders face pressure to shore up a slowing economic recovery and generate jobs after consumer spending and other activity in April were weaker than expected and a survey found 1 in 5 young workers in cities was unemployed.

Retail sales accelerated following the end of anti-virus restrictions in December but were below forecasts, official data showed Tuesday. Factory output edged down compared with March.

Cyprus and Israel are working on a deal to build a pipeline that will convey natural gas from both countries to the east Mediterranean island nation, where it will be liquefied for export by ship to Europe and potentially elsewhere, the Cypriot energy minister said Monday.

Minister Giorgos Papanastasiou said Monday he would soon visit Israel to hammer out a formal agreement. Once the deal is signed, the pipeline could be completed in 18 months.