The American economy ended 2024 on a solid note with consumer spending continuing to drive growth.

The Commerce Department reported Thursday that gross domestic product — the economy's output of goods and services — expanded at a 2.3% annual rate from October through December.

Europe's economy stagnated at the end of last year as its former growth engine, Germany, finished a second straight year of shrinking output, officials said Thursday.

Gross domestic product was flat with a zero increase in the final quarter of 2024 in the 20-nation eurozone, the EU statistics agency Eurostat said.

President Donald Trump may want lower interest rates, but the Federal Reserve will almost certainly keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged at its two-day policy meeting that ends Wednesday.

It is likely to be a quiet start to an eventful year for the central bank. Trump said last week in Davos, Switzerland that he would bring down energy prices, then "demand" that the Fed lower borrowing costs.

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.