Tucked behind a tidy souvenir shop storefront on the ground floor of an office building one block from the White House, t-shirts, sweatshirts, buttons and a vast assortment of inauguration paraphernalia is staged for an onslaught of purchasing.

Over the course of the weekend, which culminates on Monday on the grassy, park-like National Mall when U.S. President Barack Obama will be sworn in for a second time, Washington businesses that cater to tourists are girding for a deluge of customers.

The mountain of bad loans held by Spain's banks grew to a new record in November, with more than one in nine at risk of not being repaid, central bank figures showed on Friday.

The level of doubtful loans -- mostly real estate credits -- reached 11.38 percent of total loans, up from 11.23 percent in October, the Bank of Spain said in a report.

Price pressures on the global oil market have suddenly tightened, and the deadly hostage drama at a gas field in Algeria puts a "dark cloud" over the country's entire energy sector, the International Energy Agency warned on Friday.

The IEA said that a dominant factor in the global energy market now "has a lot to do with political risk writ large, and not just in Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya or Venezuela", and including regulatory risks.

China's economy grew at its slowest pace in 13 years in 2012, the government said Friday, but an uptick in the final quarter pointed to better news ahead for a prime driver of the tepid global recovery.

Gross domestic product (GDP) in the world's second-largest economy expanded 7.8 percent last year in the face of weakness at home and in key overseas markets, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) announced.

U.S. and Japanese experts on Friday joined forces to investigate an ANA Dreamliner whose emergency landing has provoked the grounding of the world's entire 787 fleet and embroiled Boeing in crisis.

The risk of fire from overheating batteries has emerged as a major concern for Boeing's cutting-edge new planes since the incident on the domestic flight in Japan, prompting airlines to ground all 50 of the world's operational 787s.

New U.S. jobless claims dropped last week to the lowest level in five years as the ailing jobs market slowly improves, official data released Thursday showed.

Initial claims for unemployment insurance benefits totaled 335,000 in the week ending January 12, down a hefty 37,000, or almost 10 percent, from the prior week's revised level, the Labor Department reported.

Struggling Nokia Corp. is downsizing by more than 1,000 jobs, part of a wide-ranging plan to cut costs and streamline operations.

The Finnish firm says it will lay off 300 workers in its IT sector and transfer "some activities and up to 820 employees to strategic partners," India-based HCL Technologies and TATA Consultancy Services, which have operations in Finland.

Saudi Arabia will send the cash-strapped Palestinian Authority $100 million to help alleviate its financial crisis, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

In a report late Wednesday, the agency said that president Mahmud Abbas received a call from Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf who "informed him of a decision by King Abdullah... to transfer $100 million (75 million euros) to the budget of the state of Palestine."

The Swiss National Bank said on Thursday it expected to post a profit of about 6.0 billion Swiss francs ($6.4 billion, 4.8 billion euros) for 2012 -- less than half of what it made in 2011.

In 2011, Switzerland's central bank, SNB, posted a profit of 13.5 billion Swiss francs.

The U.S. economy has picked up pace since November, with Christmas sales modestly stronger and New York and New Jersey rebounding from Hurricane Sandy, the Federal Reserve's Beige Book showed Wednesday.

But the survey of regional economic activity, important to setting monetary policy, showed manufacturing still sluggish, hiring and inflation still subdued and the stifling effect of the fiscal cliff fight still lingering.