just tried the link for you
it appears to point directly to a file on that site, and the file is infective
If your AV sofware worked, you should be OK
Its important to understand though that things have progressed to a point where its possible to embed malware
into the link itself not in the actual target URL
you can actually make the shortcut infective........ I don't think thats the case here as I cut and pasted your text, and got the alarm warnings to the problem in probably on the website business7newsco.net/
The site is actually Russian-owned and is almost certainly a deliberate scam site. Details of ownership are at
Business7NewsCo.net - Business 7 News Co (thats a safe link)
The registrant has around another 4000 sites and is
Registrant:
Olga Golubeva
ul. Pushkina 98 56
Barnaul, 656000
RUSSIAN FEDERATION
+7.4955467812
edit - PS he may be a trusted friend, but you can't trust his e-mail
His account has either been hijacked or scammed in some way