TOKYO (Reuters) - Asian shares recovered some ground on Thursday from the previous day's sell-off, but investors found little reason to chase risk amid deepening turmoil in Greece and fears of contagion to other stressed euro zone economies. Against a background of financial instability in Greece's banking sector, European shares were set to start mixed, with financial spreadbetters predicting that major European markets would open between a 0.2 percent drop and a 0.1 percent rise. U.S. stock futures were up 0.6 percent. ...

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. ...

In his first interview since December, Syrian President Bashar Assad has insisted his regime is fighting back against foreign mercenaries who want to overthrow him, not innocent Syrians aspiring for democracy in a yearlong uprising.

A black smoke covered Cairo's Tahrir Square. Around a dozen protesters who had been holding a weekslong sit-in demanding an end to military rule had come to the conclusion their gathering was useless. So over the weekend, they splashed gas on their tents and banners, burned them to ashes and left.

Japan's economy grew an at annual rate of 4.1 percent in the first quarter amid a gradual recovery from last year's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.

A Malaysian court on Thursday sentenced to death three Mexican brothers and two other people for drug trafficking, rejecting the defense argument that evidence was tampered with.

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. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Occidental Petroleum was among the first major U.S. oil drillers to make a big bet on the resurgence of domestic production, spending billions to grab oil patches from Texas to North Dakota. Now, as it bemoans steep costs and moves its rigs out of the Bakken shale oil fields, some analysts wonder if the company has lost its clairvoyance. After two years of unyielding gains, costs are bound to fall, they say. The California-based energy giant is beset by escalating labor costs in North Dakota, which has the lowest unemployment rate in the country. ...

(Reuters) - It's the biggest parlor game on Wall Street: Estimating how large JPMorgan Chase & Co's trading loss will be from a hedging strategy that went wrong. The biggest U.S. bank by assets has already disclosed $2 billion of paper losses, and Chief Executive Jamie Dimon said it could lose another $1 billion or more. The losses will grow, some traders say, because it appears JPMorgan has only sold a small portion of its position, leaving it vulnerable to price swings in a thinly traded market. Others are not so sure the bank will suffer much more than it already has. ...

What only weeks ago was seen as a serious threat to the economic recovery could now turn into a stimulus everyone can love.

FRANKFURT/ATHENS (Reuters) - The European Central Bank has stopped offering liquidity to some Greek banks it does not consider solvent, and international concern about the euro zone rose as Athens called new elections that look set to be won by parties opposing austerity measures. Fears that Athens is on the brink of crashing out of the euro zone and igniting a renewed financial crisis have rattled global markets and alarmed world leaders, with Greece set to figure high on the agenda at a G8 summit later this week. ...

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's consumers are cooling towards discretionary spending, preferring to salt money into savings or education for their children, according to a Nielsen survey of Chinese consumer confidence published on Thursday. Although Nielsen found that Chinese consumer confidence rose in the first three months of 2012 to its highest since 2005, making China the world's fourth most optimistic nation, willingness to spend remained flat. Savings and education were the only areas in which survey respondents were more willing to allocate additional cash. ...

VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran is installing more centrifuges in an underground plant but does not yet appear to be using them to expand higher-grade uranium enrichment that could take it closer to producing atom bomb material, Western diplomats say. They say Iran's production of uranium refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent, which it started two years ago, seems to have remained steady in recent months after a major escalation of the work in late 2011 and early this year. ...

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Syria remains the top destination for Iranian arms shipments in violation of a U.N. Security Council ban on weapons exports by the Islamic Republic, according to a confidential report on Iran sanctions-busting seen by Reuters on Wednesday. Iran, like Russia, is one of Syria's few allies as it presses ahead with a 14-month old assault on opposition forces determined to oust Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. News of the panel's report came as Tehran and the U.N. ...

A senior judge has been sworn in to head Greece's caretaker government for a month as the debt-crippled country lurches through a political crisis that threatens its membership in the 17-nation eurozone.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Oxfam America sued the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday to try to get the SEC to force oil, gas and mining companies to disclose how much they pay to foreign governments. The SEC is more than a year late in issuing a regulation requiring U.S.-listed oil, gas and mining companies to disclose the payments, according to the lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Massachusetts. The regulation is mandated by a section of the Dodd-Frank Act that seeks to increase transparency in the drilling and mining industries. ...

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - General Motors Inc's decision to stop advertising on Facebook may be a wake-up call for the No. 1 social network, but Top advertising executives say it's far too early to know if the site will take off as an advertising platform. "There's a lot of potential but it's not a slam-dunk," said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP Plc, the world's largest advertising agency. "Showing the impact of branding on Facebook is going to take a long time," he added. Facebook is due to begin trading on Nasdaq on Friday in an initial public offering that will raise about $15. ...

(Reuters) - Starbucks Corp said it has made a series of management changes to speed up decision making as the world's biggest coffee chain looks to accelerate global sales. The Seattle-based company named Craig Russell, the senior vice president of U.S. Store Services, as senior vice president of Global Coffee division. In its largest market outside the United States, the company appointed Annie Young-Scrivner as executive vice president and president of Starbucks Canada. ...

DETROIT (Reuters) - Major automakers will launch new models through 2016 in the United States at a faster pace than in the last two decades, according to a Bank of America Merrill Lynch report. New models draw more traffic to showrooms, which can boost a company's market share, profit and stock price. Automakers are expanding their lineups to better compete in the growing U.S. auto market after a "lull" during the economic downturn, the annual report said. ...

(Reuters) - J.C. Penney Co Inc shares plunged nearly 20 percent on Wednesday, their worst decline ever, wiping away $1.43 billion in market value a day after the retailer shocked Wall Street with a much worse-than-expected drop in sales and by scrapping its dividend. A number of leading Wall Street firms also lowered their price targets on the company. Penney shares closed down $6.57 at $26.75 on the New York Stock Exchange. ...

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - General Motors Inc's decision to stop advertising on Facebook may be a wake-up call for the No. 1 social network, but Top advertising executives say it's far too early to know if the site will take off as an advertising platform. "There's a lot of potential but it's not a slam-dunk," said Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP Plc, the world's largest advertising agency. "Showing the impact of branding on Facebook is going to take a long time," he added. Facebook is due to begin trading on Nasdaq on Friday in an initial public offering that will raise about $15. ...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States warned supporters of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Wednesday it may freeze their assets if they hamper the transfer of power in the Gulf nation. President Barack Obama signed an executive order allowing U.S. authorities to sanction members of Yemen's government or others who endanger its stability, notably by obstructing a November 23 deal that ultimately brought an end to Saleh's 33-year reign. ...

Ratko Mladic was a shadow of the swaggering general who once "held Sarajevo in the palm of his hand" during Bosnia's 1992-95 war as his long-awaited genocide trial opened Wednesday. Yet he still managed to inflame Bosnia's festering war wounds with the flick of his hand.

(Reuters) - Adidas AG has sued to stop a U.S. sporting goods retailer and a skateboarding equipment maker from selling sneakers with three parallel diagonal stripes, a design it said looks too much like its own. The world's second-largest sporting goods company claimed that sneakers made by World Industries Inc and sold by Big 5 Sporting Goods Corp are knock-offs that infringe many Adidas trademarks. Adidas first used the three-stripe motif in 1952 and began trademarking it in the United States in 1994. World Industries could not immediately be reached for comment. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Convicted hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam is in prison, but the jurors of a separate insider trading trial of former Goldman Sachs Group Inc and Procter & Gamble Co board member Rajat Gupta will hear his voice in court on FBI wiretaps. A federal judge in New York made a preliminary ruling on Wednesday to allow prosecutors to play a recorded telephone conversation from July 29, 2008, between Rajaratnam and Gupta, whose trial starts next Monday. Over defense objections, U.S. ...

A major European Jewish organization is urging European governments to quickly adopt measures to tackle anti-Semitism and far-right extremism, including possibly banning a hardline Greek party that did unusually well in recent elections.

BERLIN/FRANKFURT (Reuters) - The European Central Bank has stopped providing liquidity to some Greek banks as they have not been successfully recapitalized, the ECB said on Wednesday, confirming news earlier reported exclusively by Reuters. The news sent the euro lower against the dollar, fanning concerns among investors and in Greece that the country may have to leave the euro zone. ...

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Wednesday that countries trying to "sow chaos" in Syria could be infected with it themselves, an apparent warning to Arab Gulf nations that back the insurgency aimed at forcing him from power. Assad's remarks, to a Russian TV channel, came after U.N. staff monitoring an increasingly shaky ceasefire were caught up in an attack that killed at least 21 people, and had to spend a night with rebel forces. ...

PARIS (Reuters) - French President Francois Hollande named a government dominated by moderate left-wingers on Wednesday after Socialist Party boss Martine Aubry, overlooked for the post of prime minister, said she no longer wanted to be part of the new cabinet. Hollande, sworn in on Tuesday as France's first Socialist president in 17 years, named Pierre Moscovici as finance minister and Laurent Fabius as foreign minister, key posts under Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault, like them a social democrat. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks closed lower in a choppy session on Wednesday, with the S&P 500 logging its fourth straight decline as investors worried about Greece's future as a member of the euro zone. Early U.S. gains were erased after the European Central Bank said it had stopped providing liquidity to some Greek banks that had not been recapitalized. The ECB's move caused some market confusion, adding to volatility as traders have a quick trigger finger when it comes to news about Greece. ...