Wall Street stocks opened the week at fresh highs on Monday as investors built on Friday's record closes following a weekend of geopolitical calm on the Korean peninsula.

The strong open came ahead of Tuesday's start of a meeting of the Federal Reserve, with investors waiting to learn central bank chief Janet Yellen's views on inflation and to glean hints about the timing of the next interest rate hike.

General Motors will recall more than 2.5 million vehicles in China over concerns about airbags made by troubled Japanese giant Takata, Chinese authorities said, dealing a blow to the U.S. automaker in the world's largest car market.

Inflation in the eurozone will slump in early 2018, the European Central Bank forecast Monday, but return to an upward path towards its target later in the year.

Asian markets posted healthy gains on Monday following another record finish on Wall Street, as the focus shifts to the Federal Reserve's next policy meeting later in the week.

Dozens of unemployed people troop into a church in the working-class Garath district of Duesseldorf, western Germany each Friday to load up on donated food, a small gesture towards those left by the wayside in a booming economy.

Catalonia's powerful business leaders are starting to lose their patience with an increasingly bitter tussle over an independence referendum deemed illegal by Madrid.

U.S. tech titans Apple and Dell have joined a bid to buy Toshiba's memory chip business, a deal seen as key to the survival of the cash-stripped Japanese industrial conglomerate, the U.S. investor leading the consortium has said.

Russia and Iraq restored scheduled commercial airline services on Sunday for the first time since 2004, in what officials hailed as a sign of stability returning to the war-torn country.

Venezuela on Friday began listing the price of its oil in the Chinese yuan, following President Nicolas Maduro's announcement last week that he would rid the economy of the "US imperialist system."

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire firmly defended France's pro-business reforms to eurozone ministers on Friday that he said would put France back on track in Europe.