• The euro struggled for traction against the dollar and yen early on Monday after suffering significant losses at the end of last week on renewed concerns about the upcoming French elections.
Markets, already nervous over the possibility of a win for far-right, anti-European Union candidate Marine Le Pen, were jolted after two French hard-left candidates late on Friday said they were discussing cooperation in their bid for the country's presidency.
The tensions over the political developments and what it could mean for the euro zone following Britain's shock decision last June to exit the EU were keeping the single currency under pressure.
The euro was 0.1 percent higher at 1.0619 EUR= after dropping 0.6 percent on Friday.
For now, the dollar was held in check by the relative strength of the yen. The greenback extended Friday's drop and was down 0.1 percent at 112.850 yen JPY=, on track for a fourth straight session of losses.
The dollar index against a basket of currencies was down 0.15 percent at 100.800 .DXY.
• President Donald Trump, after a rocky first month in office, returned to the campaign trail on Saturday to deliver another attack on the media and tout his White House accomplishments in the friendly and familiar atmosphere of a rally with supporters.
Landing on Air Force One as the sun set near a hangar filled with thousands of people, Trump reveled in the crowd and listed promises he had kept, including starting the process of building a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico, deporting "bad people," and pulling the country out of a trade agreement with Asian nations.
• President Donald Trump will interview four candidates for the position of U.S. national security adviser on Sunday and expects to make a decision in the coming days, he told reporters on Saturday.
Trump will interview acting adviser Keith Kellogg, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster and Lieutenant General Robert Caslen, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
• The foreign minister of Saudi Arabia believes that the new U.S. administration can extend an olive branch to every region of the globe, which includes forming strong alliances within the Arab world.
"I believe (President) Donald Trump is a friend to everybody, potentially," Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abel Al-Jubeir, said on the outskirts of the Munich Security Conference on Sunday.
• Iraqi prime minister Haider al-Abadi expressed his belief that the Trump administration could seek to soften the travel ban.
• European Central Bank board member Sabine Lautenschlaeger has said the ECB needs to wait to see if inflation stabilizes in its target zone of just under 2 percent before interest rates can be raised, but that she hopes its bond-buying program can be scaled down before year-end.
Euro zone consumer prices were up by an annual 1.8 percent in January, the highest rate since February 2013, according to a Eurostat estimate, after 1.1 percent in December.
• German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble denied on Sunday that he had said Greece would have to leave the euro zone if it failed to implement economic reforms.
German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble denied on Sunday that he had said Greece would have to leave the euro zone if it failed to implement economic reforms.
"I never made any ('Grexit') threats," Schaeuble told ARD's Bericht aus Berlin program just before the network played recent comments in which he said Greece was "not yet over the hill" and the "pressure needed to stay on" Greece or it "couldn't stay in the currency union".
• Oil prices rose on Friday as investors continued to digest reports of possible output cut deal extension among world major oil producers.
The West Texas Intermediate for March Delivery added 0.04 dollars to settle at 53.40 dollars a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange, while Brent crude for April delivery increased 0.16 dollars to close at 55.81 dollars a barrel on the London ICE Futures Exchange.
• Iraq's oil reserves have increased to 153 billion barrels, from a previous estimate of 143 billion barrels, Oil Minister Jabar al-Luaibi said on Sunday.
Reference: Reuters, CNBC, Xinhua
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