Volkswagen's sweeping restructuring announced Thursday underlines the force of the China shock hitting Germany's economy as the world's biggest car market, short years ago a major profit center, rapidly becomes a major competitive challenge.

The stiff headwinds from China facing Germany's largest carmaker helped break a logjam on the board of directors and convince employee, union and local government officials that Volkswagen needed rapid change. That will include the loss of 50,000 jobs and probably four German auto plants where manufacturing costs can no longer compete.

Confronted by an intransigent Iranian government that has refused to back down in the face of a massive military campaign, President Donald Trump appears to have settled on a dual-prong approach that combines economic pressure with the potential of a devastating escalation in force.

Having launched "Operation Economic Outcast" just last week to try to isolate Iran from its remaining global trade partners, the Trump administration also resumed strikes in recent days, prompting Iranian retaliation that has renewed concerns of an all-out regional war.

Diesel hit a new record price in the U.S. on Friday, soaring to an average of $5.85 a gallon for the first time ever as the six-month war with Iran disrupts the world's flow of fuel.

Because diesel is used for many freight and delivery networks, higher diesel prices mean higher transportation costs for a long list of everyday goods.

Beijing urged France on Thursday to abandon its recently implemented law on ultra-fast fashion, lambasting the new measure targeting Chinese firms including Shein and Temu as "clearly discriminatory".

"China urges France to immediately halt the implementation of the anti-ultra-fast fashion law," commerce ministry spokeswoman Huang Ling said at a news conference.

Lebanon's central bank said Wednesday that an outside firm had begun a forensic audit into past transactions linked to its foreign assets, scrutinizing them for evidence of graft in the wake of the country's economic collapse.

The move is part of measures the institution has taken to improve oversight, steps that have also resulted in the arrest of the body's former governor, Riad Salameh.

Italian fishermen for two years incinerated most of the invasive Atlantic blue crabs caught in the Po River Delta south of Venice. Few Italians had an appetite for the alien predator blamed for decimating their prized Manila clams.

While experiments in containment continue, including the release of tens of thousands of octopus predators, the industry's response has been shifting to find new markets for the crustaceans. The strategy is already salvaging the livelihood of some fishermen and, some hope, may even rehabilitate the much-maligned crab's image in Italy.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Tuesday that 19 of the members of the G20 had agreed to address streams of "cheap exports" that cause global economic imbalances, but said China had dissented.

Bessent made his comments at the end of a two-day meeting with finance ministers and central bankers where he tried to focus on growth, telling reporters he had urged some of his G20 counterparts to take a page from the Trump administration's playbook of using tariffs and other measures to crack down on trade imbalances.

The heart of the German economy is making and exporting the big-ticket, complex goods that make global business run: everything from cars and locomotives to factory machinery, aircraft and construction equipment.

That model for growth is under serious pressure from a new competitor whose exports can often match or approach Germany's in quality and sell for far less: China.

EU economy chief Valdis Dombrovskis said Tuesday that it is not the time to "normalize" Moscow's presence at G20 meetings, as European leaders pushed back against the Russian finance minister's attendance at finance leaders' talks.

"I think the European position is known," Dombrovskis told reporters on the sidelines of the US-hosted gathering in Asheville, North Carolina. "We do not think now is the time to normalize Russia" or its presence at such talks.

Eurozone inflation jumped to 3.3 percent in August, the highest level in three years, as the war in the Middle East kept pushing up energy costs, official data showed Tuesday.

Well above the European Central Bank's two-percent target, the figure provided by the statistical office of the European Union was up sharply from 2.9 percent in July and in line with forecasts by analysts for Bloomberg.