• Gold held firm on Thursday, afterfalling as much as 1 percent the previous day, as tensionssurrounding North Korea and the upcoming French presidentialelection offered support to the safe-haven asset amid a firmerdollar.
Spot gold was up 0.1 percent at $1,280 per ounce as of 0107 GMT. The metal fell 0.8 percent on Wednesday, its worst one-day drop in over a month.
• The dollar index, which tracks the U.S. currency against a basket of six major rivals, edged up 0.1 percent to 99.781, moving away from a three-week low of 99.465 plumbed on Tuesday.
• A run of disappointing U.S. economic data and doubts the Trump administration will progress with tax cuts have quelled expectations of faster inflation, while the Federal Reserve said in its Beige Book that the U.S. economy expanded at a modest-to-moderate pace between mid-February and the end of March.
• Prospects for the euro zone economy have improved but the time to withdraw support has not yet come, three European Central Bank rate setters said on Wednesday, days before a tense French presidential election and the ECB's own policy meeting.
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