Beirut in December was once a shopping extravaganza, where day-long traffic jams clogged streets decked out with flashing Christmas lights and building-sized billboards advertising champagne and jewelry.

Stocks are opening lower again on Wall Street Tuesday as traders took in the latest sign that inflation is still running high. The S&P 500 index gave up 0.5% in the early going. Technology companies had some of the biggest losses, which helped pull the Nasdaq down 0.8%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was little changed. Treasury yields rose after the latest report on inflation, which showed that wholesale prices jumped a record 9.6% in November from a year earlier, more than expected. Federal Reserve policymakers began a two-day meeting Tuesday at which they're expected to speed up the withdrawal of economic stimulus measures.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP's earlier story follows below.

Calling him a "clown, genius, edgelord, visionary, industrialist, showman," Time magazine has named Tesla CEO Elon Musk as its Person of the Year for 2021.

Musk, who is also the founder and CEO space exploration company SpaceX, recently passed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos as the world's wealthiest person as the rising price of Tesla pushed his net worth to around $300 billion. He owns about 17% of Tesla's stock, which sold for almost $1,000 each on Monday.

Geneva prosecutors have fined a Swiss bank for failing to alert money laundering authorities about a portion of more than $100 million from Saudi Arabia that went to former Spanish King Juan Carlos and his ex-lover, but dropped possible charges against his associates in the case.

The Geneva prosecutor's office, in a statement Monday, said it partially dropped an investigation opened three years ago of five people for alleged money laundering, while deciding that the Mirabaud bank had failed to properly communicate with the Swiss money laundering office.

The coronavirus pandemic is not the first crisis to force monetary policymakers into drastic action to avert economic disaster. 

A French court fined Swiss bank UBS 1.8 billion euros ($2.0 billion) on Monday on appeal for its role in helping French residents commit tax fraud.

Major European and Asian stock markets traded mixed Monday, the start of a week set to be dominated by central bank decisions on interest rates amid surging inflation.

The Turkish currency dipped to an all-time low Monday amid another anticipated interest rate cut later this week and after the S&P credit rating agency downgraded its outlook for Turkey.

The Turkish lira plummeted to 14.75 against the U.S. dollar, prompting Turkey's Central Bank to intervene by selling off foreign currency.

The Lebanese currency continued its decline on the black market Monday, with an unprecedented rate exceeding 26,000 against the dollar.

The pound had been pegged -- and officially still is -- to the dollar since 1997 at a rate of 1,500.

Energy Minister Walid Fayyad traveled Sunday to Paris on an official visit during which he will meet with top officials in the energy, electricity and water sectors, state-run National News Agency reported.

“He will also meet with a number of officials at French electricity company EDF, the French Development Agency (AFD), which is funding several water and sewage projects, and the Total (Energies) firm, which is working on (offshore oil and gas) blocks 4 and 9,” NNA added.