Turkey's gross domestic product (GDP) grew 4.0 percent in 2015 from a year earlier, the statistics office said Thursday, beating expectations and helped by an unexpectedly robust fourth quarter.

The economy grew 5.7 percent in the last three months from the same period a year earlier, the office said in a statement, well above the market consensus. 

Almost half of the $81 million that hackers stole from Bangladesh and funneled into Philippine casinos can still be recovered, a senior Filipino lawmaker investigating the audacious cyber heist said Thursday.

As much as $34 million remained in two casinos and a foreign exchange brokerage, senator Ralph Recto said, citing testimonies from a marathon hearing on Tuesday.

Oil prices fell on Thursday as a smaller-than-expected increase in US stockpiles was overshadowed by ongoing worries about a global supply glut while analysts said a rises fueled by hopes over key output talks had mostly been priced in.

The US Department of Energy (DoE) on Wednesday reported another rise in US commercial crude stockpiles last week, by 2.3 million barrels.

German retail sales, a closely watched measure of household confidence, declined in February, as consumer morale in Europe's top economy feels the heat from global economic risks, official data showed on Thursday.

Retailers' sales fell by 0.4 percent in February compared with January, the federal statistics office Destatis said in a statement.

Argentina's Senate approved an agreement to pay billions of dollars to holdout creditors early Thursday, ending a 15-year battle over a catastrophic debt default that locked the country out of capital markets.

The vote clears the final legislative hurdle for the deal and paves the way for the government to pay off creditors that rejected Argentina's efforts to restructure its mountain of defaulted debt.

Kuwait on Wednesday inked a $2.93 billion contract with three South Korean firms for the construction of the largest Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) import facility in the oil-rich country.

The concept of "helicopter money" where the European Central Bank would print and hand out cash directly to eurozone citizens "is not currently part of the discussion" on the ECB's governing council, a top official said on Wednesday. 

The emirate of Dubai, whose airport is the world's busiest for international passengers, announced Wednesday it was introducing a tax on travelers to help finance expansion, as Gulf governments grapple with plummeting revenues.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew warned Wednesday that the excessive use of economic sanctions could weaken the role of the United States and the dollar on global markets.

"Sanctions should not be used lightly," Lew said in a speech in Washington.

The brutal five-year conflict in Syria has cost the country over $200 billion (176 billion euros), President Bashar Assad said in an interview released Wednesday, insisting Damascus would look to Russia, China and Iran to rebuild the nation.