The German government on Wednesday slashed its 2025 growth forecast for the country's economy, Europe's biggest, to just 0.3% after it shrank for two consecutive years.

The new projection is much lower than the government's previous forecast of 1.1% growth, issued in October.

U.S. chip-maker Nvidia led a rout in tech stocks after the emergence of a low-cost Chinese generative AI model that could threaten American dominance in the fast-growing industry.

While Europe's military heavyweights have already said that meeting President Donald Trump's potential challenge to spend up to 5% of their economic output on security won't be easy, it would be an especially tall order for Spain.

The eurozone's fourth-largest economy, Spain ranked last in the 32-nation military alliance last year for the share of its GDP that it contributed to the military, estimated to be 1.28%. That's after NATO members pledged in 2014 to spend at least 2% of GDP on defense — a target that 23 countries were belatedly expected to meet last year amid concerns about the war in Ukraine.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán on Friday said he wants the European Union to intervene in a gas dispute his country has with Ukraine, a potential sign of friction in the bloc's upcoming discussions over renewing sanctions against Russia.

Speaking on state radio, Orbán said that Ukraine's decision to cease transiting Russian gas into Central Europe through the Brotherhood pipeline had forced Hungary to turn to alternative routes, which raised energy prices.

The Kremlin insisted Friday that a settlement in Ukraine couldn't be facilitated by a drop in global oil prices as U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested.

Speaking by video from the White House to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Trump said on Thursday that the OPEC+ alliance of oil exporting countries shares responsibility for the nearly three-year conflict in Ukraine because it has kept oil prices too high.

Economic losses from hurricanes and other natural disasters soared in the U.S. last year and were above average globally, reflecting another year of costly severe storms, floods and droughts.

Damage caused by Hurricanes Helene and Milton helped push total economic losses from natural disasters in the U.S. to $217.8 billion last year, according to insurance broker Aon PLC. That figure represents an 85.3% increase from 2023, when losses totaled about $117.5 billion. It's also the largest annual tally of economic losses from natural disasters since 2017.

Samir al-Baghdad grabbed his pickax and walked up a wobbly set of stairs made of cinderblocks and rubble.

He is rebuilding his destroyed family house in the Qaboun neighborhood near Damascus, Syria 's capital.

Jobless claims applications ticked up modestly last week, but the total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits rose to their highest level in more than three years.

Applications for jobless benefits rose by 6,000 to 223,000 for the week ending January 18, the Labor Department said Thursday. Analysts were expecting 219,000 new applications.

Turkey's central bank lowered its key interest rate by 2.5 percentage points to 45% on Thursday, in its second rate cut in as many months as official figures showed inflation was easing.

The bank's Monetary Policy Committee said it was reducing its benchmark one-week repo rate to 45% from the current 47.5%. In its previous reduction in December, the bank also cut the rate by 2.5 percentage points.

Syria's new foreign minister said Wednesday at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos that his country hopes it can follow in the footsteps of economic powerhouses like Singapore and Saudi Arabia as it begins rebuilding after nearly 14 years of war.

“We need the help of the international community to help us in this new experiment,” Asaad al-Shibani said.