WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States imposed new sanctions on Russia's Gazprombank on Thursday, the Treasury Department said, as President Joe Biden steps up actions to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine before he leaves office in January. The move, which wields the department's most powerful sanctions tool, effectively kicks Gazprombank out of the U.S. banking system, bans its trade with Americans and freezes its U.S. assets. Gazprombank is one of Russia's largest banks and is partially owned by Kremlin-owned gas company Gazprom.
A major storm moving through Northern California on Thursday toppled trees and dropped record amounts of rain after knocking out power to hundreds of thousands of people in Washington and Oregon, and forecasters warned the risk of flash flooding and rockslides would continue. The National Weather Service extended a flood watch into Saturday for areas north of San Francisco as the region was inundated by the strongest atmospheric river — a long and wide plume of moisture that forms over an ocean and flows through the sky over land — so far this season. The storm system roared ashore Tuesday, unleashing winds that toppled trees and killed two people in Washington.
NEW YORK (Reuters) -An index of global stocks edged higher in choppy trading on Thursday as markets digested lackluster revenue forecasts from artificial-intelligence chipmaker Nvidia, while oil prices climbed amid rising tension from the Russia-Ukraine war. Shares of Nvidia, the world's most valuable company and a major contributor to the gains this year in the benchmark S&P 500, hit a record high early in the session before reversing direction and declining about 1%. On Wall Street, the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were lifted by energy, industrials and consumer staples stocks.