• The euro touched six-months highs on Friday but was unable to break above $1.10 before this weekend's final round of the French presidential election, while a fall in oil prices drove the Australian dollar and Canadian dollar to new lows.
The dollar fell 0.2 percent against the yen to 112.27, pulling away from a seven-week high of 113.045 yen set on Thursday.
• U.S. job growth likely rebounded in April and wages increased, pointing to a further tightening in labor market conditions that could pave the way for the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates next month.
Nonfarm payrolls probably increased by 185,000 jobs last month, according to a Reuters poll of economists, after a paltry gain of 98,000 in March.
• Bank of Japan Governor Haruhiko Kuroda said he was confident inflation will accelerate "significantly" with massive monetary stimulus and fiscal support, CNBC reported on Friday.
"The mindset (of the Japanese public) is still quite cautious about inflation expectations. But I'm quite sure that with continuous accommodative monetary policy supported by fiscal policy, we would eventually be able to raise prices significantly," Kuroda told CNBC in an interview that ran on Friday.
Kuroda also said Japan's economy has showed a "strong recovery trend" in the past two quarters, which will help narrow the output gap, tighten the labor market and eventually push up inflation to 2 percent.
• French Independent centrist Emmanuel Macron extended his lead in the polls over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen three days ahead of the presidential runoff, according to an Elabe poll for BFM TV and L'Express released on Friday.
• Macron is seen getting 62 percent of the votes in the second round compared to 38 percent for Le Pen, an increase of three points for the centrist candidate compared to his projected score in the last Elabe poll.
• Barack Obama has made a last-minute intervention in the French presidential election in support of Emmanuel Macron, saying “the success of France matters to the entire world”.
Macron, a centrist, faces Marine Le Pen of the far-right Front National in a runoff vote on Sunday. Polls put him 20 points ahead.
Obama said he supported Macron because he appealed to “people’s hopes and not their fears” and ended his message with the words “Vive la France.”
• Oil prices trimmed losses on Friday, having fallen more than 3 percent at one stage, the day after skidding to five-month lows as mounting concerns about global oversupply wiped out price gains since OPEC sealed a landmark accord to cut output.
U.S. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil futures were trading at $44.92 per barrel at 0716 GMT, down 60 cents or 1.3 percent, after a more than 4 percent drop the previous session.
Brent crude futures, the international benchmark for oil prices, were at $47.88 per barrel, down 50 cents or 1 percent from their last close. Prices fell to as low as $46.64, the lowest since Nov. 30. Brent tumbled back below $50 in the previous session.
Reference: Reuters, The Guardian, Investing
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