Tokyo stocks dropped again Wednesday to their lowest level since late 2014, as fears of a global recession hammered investor confidence ahead of testimony by the head of the U.S. central bank.

The plunge came the day after the benchmark Nikkei index posted a 5.4-percent drop, its steepest one-day decline in percentage terms since June 2013.

Coca-Cola announced a jump in fourth-quarter profits Tuesday on higher volumes and prices and said it would fully re-franchise bottling operations in North America and China in a cost-cutting move.

Net income for the 2015 fourth quarter was $1.2 billion, up 60.6 percent compared with the year-ago period.

Public debt of the oil-rich Gulf states is expected to double and assets decline by a third by 2020 as they seek to finance budget deficits due to sliding prices, a report said Tuesday.

After having posted massive deficits of $160 billion last year and faced with a $159 billion deficit in 2016, the six Arab states of the Gulf will have to borrow and tap into their huge fiscal reserves to finance the budget shortfall, said the report released by the head of research at Kuwait Financial Center (Markaz), M.R. Raghu.

An unexpected drop in German industrial production in December, as well as a decline in exports, cast a shadow over the outlook for Europe's biggest economy, analysts said on Tuesday.

According to regular data compiled by the economy ministry, industrial output fell by 1.2 percent in December, disappointing analysts' expectations for a modest increase.

French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi reported a healthy rise in profits on Tuesday thanks to the strong dollar, benefiting from a foreign exchange windfall.

Sanofis' net profit for 2015 came in at 7.4 billion euros ($8.3 billion), up 7.7 percent from the previous year.

Oil prices may have rebounded off 12-year lows struck last month, but any hope for a broader recovery in the market would be misplaced, the IEA said Tuesday, noting OPEC is responsible for the latest glut of supplies on the market.

The International Energy Agency said in its monthly report that "it is very hard to see how oil prices can rise significantly in the short term ... with the market already awash in oil..."

Tokyo stocks led a rout across Asian markets Tuesday, while Japanese government bond yields turned negative, the dollar dived against the yen and gold jumped as fears about the global economy sent investors scrambling to safety.

While most the region was closed for the Chinese New Year holiday, trading remained thin but dealers took their lead from New York and Europe where banking shares were battered.

Doctors and traffic police protested Monday in the cash-strapped Kurdish region of northern Iraq, as discontent mounted over unpaid salaries and wage cuts in the government sector.

In and around the city of Sulaimaniyah, members of the traffic police staged a sit-in and went on strike because their salaries have not been paid for months.

Russia's Central Bank has withdrawn the licenses from two of the country's banks as part of a larger effort to consolidate the banking sector.

The Central Bank announced on Monday that it has revoked Interkommerzbank's license. It said there was a significant imbalance between the assets and liabilities of the country's 67th largest bank.

Crude prices edged down in Asia on Monday as worries about the ongoing supply glut offset news that the oil ministers of Saudi Arabia and Venezuela had held talks on stabilizing the beleaguered market.

A pick-up in the dollar also weighed on the commodity, with a drop in U.S. unemployment and improving wage growth fueling talk that the Federal Reserve could lift interest rates again next month.