Prime Minister Liz Truss looked to reassure the British public and rattled investors that her plan to cut taxes wouldn’t lead to prolonged financial instability, arguing in a series of interviews on Thursday that the country had been buffeted by global shocks rather than her government’s reforms and that her policies would result in faster growth, the Wall Street Journal reported. “We had to take decisive action,” Ms. Truss told the British Broadcasting Corp. in her first public comments since the tax plan was presented last Friday.

European Central Bank policymakers see no need to step in and buy more Italian government bonds via a new emergency scheme despite a rise in the country's borrowing costs since a right-wing coalition won a general election, sources told Reuters. Analysts have been speculating about whether the ECB would activate its Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI) to stem a rise in Italian bond yields and spreads driven by concerns about public finances under a new government promising lower taxes.

The Bank of England on Wednesday said it would buy U.K. government bonds with long maturities “on whatever scale is necessary” in an effort to restore order to the market after a large set of government tax cuts sent borrowing costs soaring, the Wall Street Journal reported. The furious selloff in U.K. government debt in recent days ripped through normally staid parts of the financial markets. Pension funds and insurers who hold financial derivatives tied to U.K. debt in particular faced the possibility of severe losses, according to analysts.

The European Commission signed off Tuesday on the next 21-billion-euro ($20.2 billion) tranche of Italy’s pandemic recovery funds, a welcome infusion that comes amid questions about whether Giorgia Meloni and her euroskeptic party, which won the national election, will be able to keep the funding coming, the Associated Press reported.

European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen proposed on Wednesday a new package of Russia sanctions, designed "to make the Kremlin pay" for escalating the conflict in Ukraine with what she called "sham" votes in occupied territory, Reuters reported. "We do not accept the sham referenda and any kind of annexation in Ukraine, and we are determined to make the Kremlin pay for this further escalation," she told reporters in Brussels.

Slovakia may cut electricity exports to Germany and other European Union states unless the bloc’s governments meet its demand to modify an emergency energy proposal, the country’s premier said, Bloomberg News reported. EU member states are set to clinch a deal on the unprecedented package to intervene in the energy market at a ministerial meeting on Friday in Brussels. It includes a cap on lower-cost power producers’ revenue from electricity that Slovakia argues isn’t fit for its national power industry.

The Bam Bam Beach Bitcoin bar, on an uncrowded beach in southwestern Portugal, is a bar and community of about 150 crypto supporters around the town of Lagos that are a bubble of optimism amid what has become known as the “crypto winter,” the New York Times reported. This summer, cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ether melted down, and crypto companies like the experimental bank Celsius Network declared bankruptcy as fears over the global economy yanked down values of the risky assets. Thousands of investors were hurt by the crash.

Turmoil in British financial markets forced mortgage lenders to temporarily withdraw and reprice products for new customers on Monday, a real-world consequence of the market volatility thrown up by finance minister Kwasi Kwarteng's mini-budget last week, Reuters reported. Brokers said that the moves were likely just the start of a big shift in Britain's mortgage market. The country's largest mortgage lender Halifax said it was withdrawing its fee-paying mortgage products - where borrowers could pay an arrangement fee in exchange for a lower interest rate - and moving to a full fee-free range.

The European Central Bank will remain “extremely vigilant” of expectations for consumer prices to ensure they don’t surpass its medium-term goal, Governing Council member Pablo Hernandez de Cos said, Bloomberg News reported. “We’ll also have to watch out for a possible de-anchoring of medium- and long-term inflation expectations above 2%,” de Cos said Monday.

Monte dei Paschi di Siena faces a tight schedule to secure cornerstone shareholders for a share sale of up to 2.5 billion euros ($2.4 billion) after an election pause during which investors were non-committal ended on Monday, Reuters reported. After leading the conservative alliance to victory in Sunday's vote, Giorgia Meloni looks set to become Italy's first woman prime minister at the head of its most right-wing government since World War Two. Maurizio Leo, a senior economic adviser to the Brothers of Italy leader Meloni, said MPS was in good hands.