The head of the International Monetary Fund warned Thursday that Russia’s war against Ukraine was weakening the economic prospects for most of the world’s countries and called high inflation “a clear and present danger” to the global economy, the Associated Press reported. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said the consequences of Russia’s invasion were contributing to economic downgrades for 143 countries, although most of them should continue to grow. The war has disrupted global trade in energy and grain and is threatening to cause food shortages in Africa and Middle East.

Annual inflation in Russia accelerated to 17.49% as of April 8, its highest since February 2002 and up from 16.70% a week earlier, the economy ministry said on Wednesday, as the volatile rouble sent prices soaring amid unprecedented Western sanctions, Reuters reported. Prices on nearly everything from vegetables and sugar to clothes and smartphones have risen sharply in recent weeks after Russia on Feb. 24 began what it calls "a special military operation" in Ukraine.

Oil is backing up through Russia’s energy supply chain and leading to a drop in crude-oil production, a blow to Moscow’s main economic engine as the war in Ukraine rages, the Wall Street Journal reported. Refiners are trimming output and in some cases closing down because of falling demand at home and abroad. Storage space is running low in pipelines and tanks. Wells, which pump from some of the world’s biggest crude reserves, are dialing down production. The losses so far are modest, and overall the industry continues to generate massive amounts of revenue for Moscow.

Ulster Bank said on Wednesday that it has formally begun writing to groups of current and deposit account customers in Ireland to give them six months’ notice to move their business to another provider and close their accounts, the Irish Times reported. The bank said it is sending out letters and emails on a phased basis to different groups of customers “to help to facilitate orderly account switching and new account opening across the industry and to avoid a single closure date for customers and the industry”.

The World Bank is preparing a $1.5 billion support package for war-torn Ukraine and plans to aid developing countries struggling to keep up with surging food and energy prices, World Bank President David Malpass said on Tuesday, Reuters reported. In remarks at the Warsaw School of Economics in Poland, Malpass said that the bank was helping Ukraine provide critical services, including paying wages for hospital workers, pensions and social programs.

European perfume- and cosmetics-makers face shortages of paper, glass, and some key oils and alcohols, as Russia's invasion of Ukraine adds further disruptions to the supply chains for beauty products, driving prices higher amid robust demand, Reuters reported. Like the food industry, the $500 billion global cosmetics sector is grappling with fallout from the war because producers use alcohol derived from grains and organic beets to make perfumes, and sunflower-seed oils to make cosmetics - all key crops from Ukraine.

The Netherlands’ data protection watchdog imposed a record 3.7 million euro ($4 million) fine Tuesday on the country’s tax office for unlawfully processing and storing personal information in a “black list” used to detect fraud, the Associated Press reported. Data Protection Authority’s Chairman Aleid Wolfsen said that the government’s Taxation Service “violated the rights of the 270,000 people on that list in an unprecedented way.” “For over 6 years, people were often wrongly labeled as fraudsters, with dire consequences,” said Wolfsen.

Swedish electric car start-up Uniti has filed for insolvency as the company announced on LinkedIn that it had not been able to raise enough capital, Electrive.com reported. Uniti had already warned of possible insolvency in December 2021. These financing problems for Uniti have been dragging on for some time. The warning in December was triggered by the fact that a bridging loan promised for the end of November did not materialise. At the time, it was said that if 500,000 euros could not be raised within a week, insolvency would have to be declared.

Russian Railways JSC has been ruled in default by a derivatives panel after missing a bond interest payment, the first such decision since Russia was slapped with extensive sanctions that complicated financial transactions, Bloomberg News reported. A failure-to-pay credit event occurred after a coupon due on March 14 failed to reach investors by the end of a 10-day grace period, according to the Credit Derivatives Determinations Committee. The decision could set a precedent for the Russian government and local companies which have found themselves in a similar position.

The credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s has downgraded its assessment of Russia’s ability to repay foreign debt, signaling rising prospects that Moscow will soon default on external loans for the first time in more than a century, the Associated Press reported. S&P Global Ratings issued the downgrade to “selective default” late Friday after Russia arranged to make foreign bond payments in rubles on Monday when they were due in dollars. It said it didn’t expect Russia to be able to convert the rubles into dollars within the 30-day grace period allowed.