Moody's raised its credit grade for Ireland Friday by two steps, to Baa1 from Baa3, citing the impact faster growth will have on improving the country's debt profile.

While the country still has a high level of public debt and sizable fiscal deficits, Moody's said faster growth will reduce its debt ratio faster than had been expected.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro pledged Friday to send oil and diesel to the Palestinian Authority, as part of agreements signed with its leader Mahmud Abbas during his visit to Caracas.

Venezuela, which sits atop the world's largest oil reserves, said it would provide an initial shipment of 240,000 barrels of oil, but gave no details as to how it would send them.

A thousand days on from its near-economic collapse, Portugal is ready to stand on its own again and is promising not to go back to its bad old spend-happy ways.

On Saturday, after an internationally-mandated makeover, Portugal will become the second country that uses the euro as its currency, after Ireland, to officially shake off its bailout shackles.

Oil prices advanced Friday as the market won support from the ongoing Ukraine crisis and upbeat data in the United States, which is the world's top crude consumer.

Brent North Sea crude for July rose 28 cents to trade at $109.37 per barrel approaching midday in London.

German tourism and travel giant TUI said Friday that it is sticking to its full-year forecasts after narrowing its losses in the second quarter. 

"TUI is on track to deliver its strategic and economic targets," chief executive Fritz Joussen said in a statement.

Asian markets were mixed Friday following another sell-off on Wall Street and worse-than-expected eurozone data while Mumbai hit a record high on expectations pro-business candidate Narendra Modi will become India's next prime minister.

Tokyo fell 1.41 percent, or 201.62 points, to finish at 14,096.59 owing to a stronger yen and Sydney eased 0.58 percent, or 31.8 points, to close at 5,479.0 but Seoul edged up 0.16 percent, or 3.24 points, to 2,013.44.

First-quarter growth in the eurozone was a "major disappointment," falling well short of forecasts and stoking fresh concerns a modest recovery is struggling to make ground, official data showed on Thursday.

Worse still, the Eurostat data agency also revised down the three months to December performance -- from the initially given 0.3 percent to 0.2 percent.

The German economy, Europe's biggest, gathered momentum in the first three months of 2014, expanding by 0.8 percent, official data showed on Thursday.

That represented an acceleration from the preceding quarter, when gross domestic product (GDP) had grown by 0.4 percent, the federal statistics office said in a statement. 

China and Russia still disagree over pricing a multi-billion-dollar gas deal despite years of negotiations, a senior Beijing official said Thursday, ahead of a visit by Vladimir Putin when a contract signature had been expected.

The Russian president will visit the commercial hub of Shanghai on Tuesday and Wednesday for a conference focused on Asian security hosted by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

France's economy failed to grow in the first quarter of 2014, according to data released on Thursday by the Insee national statistics institute.

The figure was below the meagre 0.1 percent growth that Insee had forecast for eurozone's second-largest economy between January and March.