WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New claims for unemployment benefits were unchanged last week, according to government data on Thursday that will do little to ease concerns about a recent slowdown in jobs growth. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits held steady at a seasonally adjusted 370,000, the Labor Department said. The prior week's figure was revised up to 370,000 from the previously reported 367,000. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims falling to 365,000 last week. ...

LONDON, May 17 (IFR) - The euro zone crisis was in full swing when Jean-Claude Trichet took the podium in Berlin last October 6 for his final press conference as president of the European Central Bank. Having helped create one of the longest periods of price stability in the history of central banking, Trichet was closing out his eight-year reign under siege. Soaring oil prices had made a mockery of the bank's superlative record on inflation, while the worst recession on the continent since World War II had morphed into a full-scale sovereign debt crisis. ...

(Reuters) - Social networking site Pinterest has raised $100 million from a group of investors led by Japanese online retailing giant Rakuten Inc in a deal that reportedly values the three-year-old U.S. company at $1.5 billion. Rakuten said it was joined in the capital-raising by existing shareholders Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital and a number of angel investors. The new round of financing values Pinterest — one of Silicon Valley's fastest growing startups — at $1.5 billion, up sharply from $200 million late last year, Wall Street Journal said. ...

HONG KONG/LONDON (Reuters) - HSBC doubled the annual revenue boost expected from its turnaround plan to $2 billion, as Europe's biggest bank picks 22 markets to drive its growth and eyes more cost cutting to cope with new regulations in the wake of the financial crisis. Chief Executive Stuart Gulliver said on Thursday that, one year into a three-year recovery plan, HSBC was on target to meet profitability and cost savings targets. ...

LONDON (Reuters) - The euro slipped to near four-month lows and European shares extended their losing streak on Thursday, as investors avoided riskier assets due to the deepening turmoil in Greece and fears of contagion spreading to other stressed euro zone economies. Worries about the health of Spain's banks also resurfaced after a report that customers at Bankia had withdrawn more than 1 billion euros from their accounts in the past week, though the Spanish government said there had been no exit of deposits from the lender. ...

(Reuters) - Sears Holdings Corp said on Thursday it plans to spin off a large part of its stake in its Canada unit, which Chairman Edward Lampert spent years trying to gain control of, to better focus on its U.S. business. Separately, Sears Holdings reported a first-quarter adjusted operating loss that came in better than analysts' estimates but revenues fell from a year ago. Sears Holdings owns about 95 percent of Sears Canada and would still hold about 51 percent after the spinoff, which it expects to complete this year. Sears said it could further reduce its Sears Canada stake after that. ...

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Even as Facebook fever grips investors ahead of the social networking giant's potential $100 billion-plus initial public offering, its breakneck growth in Asia may be slowing as it moves beyond desktop users to those who access the Internet largely or solely from a mobile phone. In March, Facebook revised its own SEC filings to scale back its scope for further growth in India - its third-biggest user base and the largest population it currently has access to - China remains off-limits to Facebook. ...

SINGAPORE/HONG KONG (Reuters) - Royal Bank of Canada and Credit Suisse are among suitors who have put in initial bids to buy the non-U.S. wealth management business of Bank of America in a deal that could be worth about $2 billion, sources said. Swiss bank Julius Baer was also keen to bid for some of BofA's units in Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia excluding Japan, the sources, who had knowledge of the matter, told Reuters. It was not clear whether Switzerland's third-biggest bank had submitted an initial bid. ...

(Reuters) - Social networking site Pinterest has raised $100 million from a group of investors led by Japanese online retailing giant Rakuten Inc in a deal that reportedly values the three-year-old U.S. company at $1.5 billion. Rakuten said it was joined in the capital-raising by existing shareholders Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer Venture Partners, FirstMark Capital and a number of angel investors. The new round of financing values Pinterest — one of Silicon Valley's fastest growing startups — at $1.5 billion, up sharply from $200 million late last year, Wall Street Journal said. ...

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India's economic growth story is intact and the current account deficit under control, senior Finance Ministry officials told a team from global ratings agency Fitch on Thursday, weeks after S&P cut its outlook for Asia's third largest economy. The visit came as the rupee tumbled to a record low against the dollar, with the crisis in the euro zone adding pressure on a currency already under fire from weak current account and fiscal deficits. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House, following a trading loss of more than $2 billion by JPMorgan, wants to ensure a tough interpretation of a regulation aimed at preventing banks from making bets with their own money, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday. Citing people familiar with the matter, the report said White House officials have stepped up talks with the Treasury Department in the several days since the staggering loss was disclosed by the bank. The discussions, according to the report, represent the first tangible political impact from the trading debacle. ...

Japan's economy grew by a faster-than-expected 1.0 percent in the three months to March, official figures showed Thursday, as rising domestic demand and a boost in exports kept it on the recovery path.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's economy bounced back in the first quarter from a year-end lull, powering ahead of other major industrial nations thanks to rebuilding of the tsunami-battered northeast, solid private spending and some improvement in exports. The world's third-largest economy grew 1.0 percent in the January-March quarter, just above a median forecast of 0.9 percent. A 0.2 percent contraction in the economy reported for the final three months of 2011 was revised up to flat in the government data released on Thursday. ...

Police and FBI officials were poring over more than 100 tips as they hunted for a man accused of stabbing his new wife to death and leaving her body in her bathtub, still clad in her silver-sequined wedding dress.

Don't try to friend MaLi Arwood on Facebook. You won't find her there.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - U.S. plans for a possible military strike on Iran are ready and the option is "fully available", the U.S. ambassador to Israel said, days before Tehran resumes talks with world powers which suspect it of seeking to develop nuclear arms. Like Israel, the United States has said it considers military force a last resort to prevent Iran using its uranium enrichment to make a bomb. Iran insists its nuclear program is for purely civilian purposes. ...

Romney nearly matched the $44 million that President Obama raised during the same period.

The presiding judge in the U.N. trial of Gen. Ratko Mladic has delayed indefinitely the presentation of evidence that had been scheduled to start later this month due to "errors" by prosecutors in disclosing evidence to defense lawyers.

Chuck Brown, who styled a unique mix of funk, soul and Latin party sounds to create go-go music in the nation's capital, has died after suffering from pneumonia. He was 75.

With only two hours each to make their closing arguments, prosecutors and defense lawyers neared the end of a month-long trial into whether former presidential hopeful John Edwards violated campaign finance laws.

For Senate Republicans, 2012 is starting a lot like 2010. They have a shot at taking control from Democrats as long as insurgent conservatives don't frighten independent voters like they did two years ago.

Four years after his failed presidential bid, Arizona Senator John McCain believes it’s time to shift the blame for years of federal failure to implement immigration reform to Democrats in Congress, and specifically President Obama.

Earlier this week, the federal government announced that the Air Force might be dispatching drones to a backyard near you. The stated purpose of these spies in the sky is to assist local police to find missing persons or kidnap victims, or to chase bad guys. 

Changes on the official White House website to the biographical narratives of past presidents reveal that we’ve never had a self-regarding narcissist quite like the Oval Office’s current occupant.  

The new medical reports in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case tell us a lot. And it is not just for what they find, but also what they don’t find.

Sure I'm a Democrat and want President Obama to win re-election, but first and foremost I'm an American and I'd like the presidential candidates from both parties to be kind and decent human beings.

Wednesday the Alabama Senate will consider welcome reforms to that state's controversial immigration law.  Unfortunately the proposed changes will leave expensive economic regulations largely intact, impeding much needed job growth.

Did GM just pop the Facebook bubble? Though the announcement that the auto giant will pull its paid advertising from Facebook is unlikely to seriously undermine the latter’s upcoming IPO, it surely will cast a shadow over Friday's much-hyped event. 

Almost 200 years after it was founded, the Democratic party has become the opposite of what it once was. Now it is a party of special interests payouts that do not benefit the whole country, but rather certain privileged groups of citizens.

The left-leaning media is getting hysterical, launching over-the-top attacks on Mitt Romney and moving to protect President Obama as they see the public turning away from their man.

The free market (which, sadly, America doesn’t have) is fair. It also produces better outcomes. Even “losers” do pretty well.