TOKYO (Reuters) - Apple Inc plans to use a larger screen on the next-generation iPhone and has begun to place orders for the new displays from suppliers in South Korea and Japan, people familiar with the situation said on Wednesday. The new iPhone screens will measure 4 inches from corner to corner, one source said. That would represent a roughly 30 percent increase in viewing area, assuming Apple keeps other dimensions proportional. Apple has used a 3.5-inch screen since introducing the iPhone in 2007. ...

National foreclosure trends took a positive turn in April, as the number of homes seized by banks declined and fewer properties entered into the foreclosure process.

HONG KONG (Reuters) - HSBC , Europe's biggest bank, said it cut costs by $2 billion after one year of a 3-year turnaround plan, and is on target to meet its return on equity and other financial targets. The bank is close to already achieving the bottom end of a $2.5-$3.5 billion range of annualized savings by next year, as set out by CEO Stuart Gulliver, who is steering HSBC back to its roots as a financier of global trade. ...

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. ...

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.

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. ...

SEOUL (Reuters) - Shares in South Korea's Samsung Electronics recovered from a more than two percent loss on Thursday morning and were trading flat at on the day by 00:26 a.m. EDT. The world's largest electronics company by revenue had been hit by a newspaper report that Apple Inc had given a large chip order to a rival, losing 6.2 percent on Wednesday. (Reporting by David Chance; Editing by Joseph Radford)

Australian police warned Thursday that paedophiles were using Internet live-streaming sites to order "bespoke" child sex crimes for real-time viewing, from countries including the Philippines.

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.

LG on Wednesday announced a new user-interface skin for its Android-powered devices running Ice Cream Sandwich. The South Korean company’s Optimus UI 3.0 is said to be designed with convenience and speed in mind, and is being labeled as both unobtrusive and simple. “With smartphone hardware becoming more and more similar, it’s important for manufacturers to differentiate their products from the competition through the user interface,” said Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “Both carriers and customers tell us that they want LG phones to look and feel unique and the UI plays a big part in that. LG is really going to push the boundaries of what is possible in user interfaces starting with

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. ...

Similar to Apple’s iTunes program, Google Music only allows a certain number of devices to be connected to the service at one time. Google allows users to upload up to 20,000 song for free, which can then be accessed by up to 10 “authorized” devices. Once the limit is reached, a user can “deauthorize” a device to allow another a different phone or tablet to take its place. The problem, however, is that Google has limited device deauthorizations to just four per year. While Google’s limit may not affect the average Joe, rooters, ROMers, enthusiasts and even bloggers may run into some trouble. Custom ROM users in particular may run into trouble — Google Music often has difficulties handling custom

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. ...

(Reuters) - Activision Blizzard Inc and arch rival video game company Electronic Arts Inc have settled a lawsuit in which Activision accused two former executives of breaking their employment agreements to develop games for EA. "Activision and EA have agreed to put this matter behind them," the companies said on Wednesday in a joint statement. Neither company disclosed details of the settlement. Two former Activision executives, Jason West and Vincent Zampella, developed the original "Call of Duty" game and several others in the series. ...

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. ...

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. ...

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Investors who want Facebook Inc shares when the No. 1 online social network goes public later this week may have lost the opportunity. TD Ameritrade and Fidelity's brokerage arm both stopped accepting orders of Facebook shares as of Tuesday evening, according to representatives for each of the companies. Morgan Stanley & Co did the same, according to three advisers at the firm who declined to be named because they are not authorized to speak to the press. E*Trade Financial also stopped accepting orders as of 4 p.m. ...

(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. ...

Despite some vendors seeing record smartphone sales, worldwide sales of mobile phones declined 2% year-over-year to 419.1 million units in the first quarter of 2012, according to research firm Gartner. The decline represents the first of its kind since the second quarter of 2009. “Global sales of mobile devices declined more than expected due to a slowdown in demand from the Asia/Pacific region,” said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. “The first quarter, traditionally the strongest quarter for Asia – which is driven by Chinese New Year, saw a lack of new product launches from leading manufacturers, and users delayed upgrades in the hope of better smartphone deals arriving later in the year.” In the smartphone market, Android accounted for more

The legal battle between gaming giants Activision Blizzard Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. is over, with the companies announcing they have settled a case that accused EA of improperly recruiting two executives who oversaw the creation of the smash videogame "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2."

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. ...

(Reuters) - Viacom Inc, the parent of MTV and Comedy Central, has settled lawsuits with Time Warner Cable Inc over whether cable subscribers may watch shows on mobile devices such as Apple Inc's iPad. The accord means Viacom programs such as "Jersey Shore," "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "South Park" will become available over the TWC TV app over the next several weeks. ...