Kuwait Oil Minister Ali al-Omair was moved to the public works ministry in a limited cabinet reshuffle following a row with top oil executives, the emir decreed on Sunday.

Finance Minister Anas al-Saleh was appointed as acting oil minister, in decrees cited by the official KUNA news agency.

Prepaid payment cards were seen as a positive development, helping those excluded from the banking system and providing a convenient financial tool, but their use in the Paris terror attacks has revealed a troubling dark side.

The attackers used an anonymous prepaid card to rent hotel rooms outside Paris the night before the November 13 strikes that killed 130 people, according to Tracfin, the French body tasked with combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

Saudi-led Gulf OPEC members will reject pressure to shoulder the cost of cutting oil production alone despite warnings that prices risk sliding further, officials and analysts say.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, which pump more than half of OPEC's 32 million barrels of daily output, want a solid commitment from all other producers, especially non-OPEC member Russia, to agree to production cuts across the board.

The International Monetary Fund is expected to approve inclusion of China's yuan in its SDR basket of elite currencies on Monday, rewarding Beijing's strong pursuit of the global status.

The IMF executive board is scheduled to meet Monday to decide on the recommendation by staff experts earlier in November to include the yuan, also known as the renminbi, alongside the U.S. dollar, euro, Japanese yen and British pound in the grouping.

Hordes of British Christmas shoppers swapped the High Street for the internet on "Black Friday", leaving stores unusually quiet but delivering Amazon its biggest ever sales day in the country.

Last year saw frenzied scuffles over bargains -- scenes that are common in the United States, where the marketing tradition began, after customers had queued hours before opening times to get first pick of the deals.

Greece's state statistics agency on Friday drastically revised downwards the economy's third-quarter contraction to 0.9 percent, from 0.5 percent previously.

"These differences are on account of using new data, not available at the time of the flash estimate," the Elstat agency said, citing a mixture of September balance of payments data, service turnover and jobless figures as factors for the downturn.

Taiwan on Friday cut its growth forecast for 2015 for the second time since August, to 1.06 percent, while also lowering expectations for next year amid slumping exports.

The full-year figure was adjusted down 0.50 percentage points from August when the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics made the previous estimate. 

The euro on Friday hovered around seven-month lows on the dollar and was also weak against Asian currencies on speculation that the European Central Bank will unleash fresh stimulus measures next week.

Further action by the ECB to boost the 19-nation eurozone economy was likely to heap pressure on Asian policymakers to loosen their own monetary policy in a bid to push down their units to stay competitive, analysts said.

The volume of loans to the private sector in the euro area expanded in October, with a bigger bounce recorded than the previous month, ECB data showed on Thursday, suggesting a massive stimulus program may be working.

The data are for the European Central Bank a key indicator of economic health, as borrowing is a main source for corporate investment which in turn should boost the eurozone's currently weak economy.

The Philippine economy grew slower than expected in the third quarter, as risks from a leadership change next year and the El Nino dry spell loomed, the government said Thursday.

The slowdown comes after years of sustained growth in the Philippines, formerly known as the "Sick Man" of Asia because of its poor economic performance.