Turkey's central bank is due to meet on Tuesday with the local currency in freefall, pressured by the political crisis rocking Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's government.

The lira was quoted at 2.2379 to the dollar in morning trade compared to a record low of 2.2412 on Monday, and at 3.0349 to the euro from 3.0392.

It may not be a free haircut, but prices in Greece are finally getting trimmed after salaries were hacked back.

At Ioannis Maikantis' central Athens barber shop, a trim costs just 4.5 euros ($6) and business is brisk, among signs that the recession gripping Greece for the last six years is finally showing up in high street prices.

A General Electric plane leasing unit has ordered 40 aircraft from airplane maker Boeing, a deal valued at $3.9 billion at list prices.

Boeing booked the order from GE Capital Aviation Services, the commercial aircraft leasing and financing arm of General Electric Co., in 2013. It had been listed as an unidentified buyer on Chicago-based Boeing's website.

International tourist numbers surged to nearly 1.1 billion in 2013 with growth in the Asia-Pacific region leading the industry to a strong year despite global economic troubles, the World Tourism Organization announced Monday.

The number of international tourist arrivals grew by five percent from the previous year to 1.09 billion in 2013, said the Madrid-based U.N. body.

Turkey's currency sank to new record lows on Monday, pummeled by continuing political problems for the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

But the country's economy minister dismissed any likelihood of the central bank raising interest rates to prop up the lira at its monthly policy meeting on Tuesday.

Shares of Deutsche Bank AG have fallen sharply after Germany's biggest lender announced a large fourth-quarter net loss, its results weighed down by one-time expenses and losses on investments it is disposing of.

Deutsche Bank shares were down 4.5 percent in early trading Monday at 37.6 euros ($50.91), making it the worst performer on Frankfurt's DAX index of blue chip stocks.

Energy giant Royal Dutch Shell announced on Monday the sale of stakes in Australian natural gas assets for more than one billion U.S. dollars to a Kuwaiti state company.

Shell said it had agreed to sell its 8.0-percent equity interest in the Wheatstone-Iago gas field and 6.4-percent interest in the Wheatstone liquefied natural gas project for $1.135 billion (837 million euros) to the Kuwait Foreign Petroleum Exploration Company.

China's economy last year registered flat growth of 7.7 percent, maintaining its slowest expansion in more than a decade as the government warned Monday of "deep-rooted problems" including a mountain of local authority debt.

Gross domestic product (GDP) expansion for the October-December quarter also came in at 7.7 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said, from 7.8 percent in the previous three months.

Nintendo shares plunged nearly 19 percent Monday before recouping most of those losses after the Japanese gaming giant warned it would slip back into the red on poor sales of its Wii U game console.

The warning, released after the Tokyo market closed Friday, highlighted a growing chasm between Nintendo and global rivals Sony and Microsoft, as well as the trio's battle against cheap -- or sometimes free -- downloadable games for smartphones and tablets.

China has started constructing the second of four planned aircraft carriers, a top government official said according to media reports on Saturday.

The ship is under construction in the northeastern port of Dalian and will take six years to build, the reports said quoting Wang Min, Communist Party chief for Dalian's Liaoning province.