(Reuters) - There was little turnover in the U.S. labor market in May, and the number of available jobs at the end of the month was virtually unchanged from April, government data showed on Tuesday. There were about 2.97 million jobs open at the end of May, a slight boost from April's 2.95 million, according to the Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The rate of hires for U.S. nonfarm jobs remained at 3.1 percent, and the separations rate rose slightly from 2.9 percent in April to 3.1 percent in May.

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(Reuters) - Apple Inc's chief patent counsel will soon leave the company, at a time when the iPhone maker is fighting numerous legal battles around the world, according to a source familiar with the situation. Apple is engaged in an expanding web of litigation concerning smartphone patents, mostly with phonemakers using Google's rival Android software. It was unclear why Richard "Chip" Lutton Junior, who manages the iPhone maker's patent portfolio, is leaving the company.

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(Reuters) - Investors added U.S. Treasuries to their portfolios in the latest week after a surprisingly weak jobs report and jitters over the European debt crisis, a survey released on Tuesday showed. The share of investors who said on Monday they were long, or holding more Treasuries than their portfolio benchmarks, rose to 4 percent from zero last week, J.P. Morgan Securities said on Tuesday. Last week was the first time since February 2005 that there were no outright longs.

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(Reuters) - The euro zone's debt crisis has taken a dangerous turn. Contagion is singeing the currency bloc's third biggest economy Italy, which would be too big to save with existing EU financial fire-fighting tools. The cheapest way for Europe to build a firewall to shield Italy would be to take decisive action this month on a second bailout for Greece, market participants and EU officials say.

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NEW YORK (Reuters)- Small and medium-sized companies are increasingly glum about the chances of a pickup in growth in the U.S. economy over the next year, a survey published on Tuesday showed. The percentage of chief executives of small companies who expect the economy to improve over the next 12 months dropped sharply to 31 percent from 50 percent last quarter, according to a quarterly survey by Vistage International, which represents small business owners.

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(Reuters) - Wall Street stocks sank on Monday as fears about Europe's debt crisis and the global economy sent a shudder through markets and overshadowed the start of the U.S. earnings season. Renewed concerns that Europe's debt crisis would spread, an increase in Chinese inflation and an impasse in budget talks in Washington converged to jolt investors. The news came after Friday's abysmal U.S. jobs report shocked markets.

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(Reuters) - Britain was looking for a way out of approving media baron Rupert Murdoch's multi-billion dollar deal to buy broadcaster BSkyB amid a phone-hacking scandal that has damaged the prime minister and raised broader questions about politicians' relations with the media. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, from the junior coalition partner the Liberal Democrats, urged Murdoch to reconsider the bid after revelations one of his newspapers hacked into the phones of murder victims and relatives of Britain's war dead.

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(Reuters) - EU finance officials will discuss a range of options for Greece's intractable debt crisis on Monday, galvanized by the growing threat of contagion to Italy, the euro zone's third-largest economy. A senior European Union source told Reuters the Eurogroup of 17 euro zone finance ministers meeting later would discuss the possibility of buying back Greek debt or the private sector swapping holdings for longer-dated maturities.

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(Reuters) - British regulators could struggle to find new grounds to halt a proposed takeover of pay-TV broadcaster BSkyB by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp media empire, but lawyers say the multi-billion-dollar deal may face severe delays. The UK government on Monday asked the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) consumer watchdog and media regulator Ofcom to review its guidance on News Corp's planned $14 billion takeover of BSkyB in light of a phone-hacking scandal at one of News Corp's papers.

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(Reuters) - American International Group plans to replace one or more Wall Street banks in its next sale of shares from the U.S. government, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. AIG has not yet decided which investment banks it would cut, but it plans to make changes in the lead underwriters before the next share sale later this year, Chief Executive Robert Benmosche told the newspaper. Benmosche was disappointed in the bank's efforts to drum up interest in the previous offering, the newspaper said.

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