Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro begins a trip to China and OPEC member countries late Sunday in search of financial support as his country reels from falling oil prices and a tattered economy.

The South American oil giant confirmed Tuesday that it has entered recession, while annual inflation topped 63 percent, exacerbating the outlook for an economy already hit by global crashing oil prices and import shortages.

Iraq's oil exports reached their highest level in decades in December, the oil ministry's spokesman said on Saturday, but vital revenues were being hit by the plummeting prices of crude.

Iraq exported 91.141 million barrels of oil in December for an average of 2.94 million barrels per day, the highest daily average since 1980, Assem Jihad told Agence France Presse, citing initial figures.

Billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has lashed out at the Saudi fiscal policy after projecting the largest ever budget deficit for 2015 following the slump in oil prices.

"We have reached the danger point... after starting to withdraw from the reserves," to meet the budget shortfall, Alwaleed said in a letter addressed to the finance minister.

Oil prices extended their slide this week, kicking off the new year with 5.5-year low points, as tepid eurozone demand offset a pick-up in the U.S. economy.

The dollar strengthened, hitting demand for commodities like crude and metals priced in the U.S. unit.

Car-sharing startup Uber on Friday bragged it rang in the New Year with two million rides, many of them apparently to revelers heading home in early morning hours.

And while demand for rides spiked from one to two in the morning in most cities where Uber operates, partiers in Paris didn't put pressure on the service until after 4 am local time (0300 GMT).

The euro sank to $1.20 Friday, its lowest level against the greenback since May 2010, as European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi reiterated the possibility of more stimulus coming.

Draghi said in an interview published in the German business daily Handelsblatt that deflation remains a threat and that the ECB needs to be prepared to counter it.

Casino operator Melco Crown Entertainment, a joint venture involving Australian billionaire James Packer, plans to delist its shares in Hong Kong after gambling hub Macau reported its first ever fall in casino revenues.

Official figures published by the former Portuguese colony on Friday showed gaming revenues fell 2.6 percent year-on-year to 351.52 billion patacas ($44 billion) in 2014 -- the only drop since annual figures were first released in 2002.

The European Central Bank cannot entirely rule out the risk of the deflation in the eurozone, but that danger is limited, its chief Mario Draghi said in a newspaper interview Friday.

"The risk cannot be ruled out completely, but it's limited," Draghi told the business daily Handelsblatt.

Borrowing rates in France, Spain and Italy fell to fresh historic lows on Friday in thin holiday trading, as investors eyed possible new anti-deflation measures from the European Central Bank.

The yield on France's 10-year debt hit 0.812 percent, while the Spanish 10-year bond traded at 1.541 percent and the Italian at 1.819 percent -- beating previous records set on Tuesday.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff kicked off a second term Thursday, vowing to tackle corruption and revamp the economy as her government reels from a series of setbacks.

Brazil's economy, once booming, has barely grown during Rousseff's time in office, and her administration is embroiled in a multimillion-dollar graft scandal at state-owned oil giant Petrobras.