The dollar surged against the euro Thursday after an encouraging U.S. unemployment claims report stoked speculation about the Federal Reserve's plan to raise ultra-low interest rates.

The Labor Department reported that the number of first-time unemployment claims rose last week, but claims filed in the past four weeks fell to a nearly 15-year low, suggesting a stronger labor market.

Aid agencies warned Friday that Kenya's shutting down of money transfer services to Somalia over suspected links to the Al-Qaeda-linked Shebab will hit the poorest hardest and jeopordize their operations.

Kenya on Wednesday froze key transfer companies vital for impoverished Somalia, as part of a crackdown on alleged Shebab supporters following the university massacre of almost 150 people by the Islamists last week.

Chinese inflation held steady at 1.4 percent in March, the government said Friday, leaving policymakers further room for monetary stimulus as they try to manage a broad slowdown in the world's second-biggest economy.

The consumer price index (CPI) reading from the National Bureau of Statistics  (NBS) was the same as February, when it rose from January's more than five-year low and slightly better than the median 1.3 percent forecast in a survey of 39 economists by Bloomberg News.

France's economy will expand at a slower rate than earlier thought in 2016 and 2017, the finance ministry said in new forecasts published Wednesday.

Growth is expected to reach 1.5 percent for both years, rather than 1.7 percent previously forecast for 2016 and 1.9 percent for 2017.

The Islamic State group has lost control of "at least three large oil fields" in Iraq, depriving the jihadists of a crucial source of income, a German newspaper report said Thursday.

In the face of a large-scale Iraqi counteroffensive, the extremist group now controls just a single oil field in the country, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung said in its Thursday edition, citing the BND federal intelligence services.

Greece is due to make its 459 million euro ($495 million) April loan payment to the IMF Thursday following days of uncertainty, but the European nation's ability to honour its debts remains a source of acute anxiety to creditors.

As Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras launched a two-day charm offensive in Moscow on Wednesday, the order for the payment had already reached the Bank of Greece, a source familiar with the details told Agence France Presse.

Oil prices rebounded in Asia Thursday on bargain-hunting after a surge in U.S. crude stockpiles and record output in Saudi Arabia sparked a sell-off in the previous session, analysts said.

U.S. benchmark West Texas Intermediate (WTI) advanced 78 cents to $51.20 a barrel and Brent added 73 cents to $56.28 in afternoon trade.

Saudi oil production reached 10.3 million barrels per day in March, Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi has said, a figure that is the highest on record.

"Average daily output hit 10.3 million bpd in March," Naimi, cited by the official Saudi Press Agency, said Tuesday night.

Dressed in Chelsea football shorts and a wide-brimmed hat, Than Tun toils away in his paddy field on the outskirts of Yangon, sweat pouring down his sinewy arms.

Grueling work that once helped Myanmar become the world's largest rice exporter is today a Herculean and often lonely job for farmers striving to return the impoverished nation to its former grain prowess.

U.S. technology giant Microsoft has launched a pilot program to hire autistic workers at its headquarters in Washington state.

"People with autism bring strengths that we need at Microsoft," Mary Ellen Smith, a corporate vice president wrote in a company blog last week.