Messaging giant WhatsApp plans to launch its first payment service this year in India, its biggest market with 400 million users, the company said Friday.

The American economy hit the brakes in the second quarter, as activity declined in an increasingly skittish industrial sector and exports fell, but the U.S. continues to outperform other advanced economies, according to government data released Friday.

Europe's stock markets rebounded Friday on bargain-hunting and the euro stabilised after striking a two-year dollar low, as dealers dwelled once more on the European Central Bank's interest rate outlook.

Frankfurt stocks won 0.3 percent and Paris added 0.4 percent, while London added 0.5 percent in value. The euro held steady at $1.1143.

Japanese internet company SoftBank Group Corp. has set up a new fund for investing in technologies such as artificial intelligence.

Tokyo-based SoftBank said Friday its $108 billion Vision Fund 2 includes $38 billion from SoftBank. The rest is from Apple, FoxConn Technology Group, Microsoft Corp., Japanese banks and other companies.

The euro slid to a two-year low on Thursday after the ECB signaled it could undertake new stimulus measures and cut rates to boost flagging growth and inflation in Europe.

European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi on Thursday gave a gloomy outlook for the single currency area, underlining factors such as a hard Brexit and trade conflict as risks for growth.

The European Central Bank is widely expected to hint at, or even announce, a dive further into negative interest rates at its gathering Thursday.

Here are the monetary policy tools the Frankfurt institution could use in the coming months to battle the uncertainty -- over trade tensions, Brexit, geopolitical clashes and emerging market woes -- weighing on progress towards its price stability goal.

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday reaffirmed his commitment to the social network's quest to launch Libra cryptocurrency despite pushback from governments and critics.

U.S. and Chinese officials will resume negotiations next week in an effort to resolve the year-long trade dispute between the world's top two economies, US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Wednesday.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson named former interior minister Sajid Javid to take over from Philip Hammond as finance minister in his first cabinet appointment, the government said in a statement on Wednesday.