(Reuters) - General Motors Co's (GM.N) chief executive said on Tuesday the U.S. automaker was in "constructive" talks with unions in Germany about its plants there, but declined to address the fate of a factory many analysts expect will eventually be closed. "We are in discussions with our German unions and others throughout Europe," CEO Dan Akerson told reporters before GM's annual shareholders meeting. "They're constructive, they're professional, and it's our hope and expectation that we'll come to some sort of mutual understanding."

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(Reuters) - U.S. import prices recorded their largest decline in nearly two years in May as energy and food costs fell, government data showed on Tuesday, pointing to muted inflation pressures. Overall import prices fell 1.0 percent, the biggest drop since June 2010, the Labor Department said. April's data was revised to show a flat reading instead of the previously reported 0.5 percent drop.

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(Reuters) - Charts plastered on a corridor across the office of Opel's factory director in Bochum show a car plant working flat out, although the figures are hard to make out in a hallway where the lights are turned off. Gloom in the main administrative building underlines one of the two major problems facing the plant in Germany's depressed Ruhr region: sky-high energy costs, which along with expensive labor are threatening its existence.

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(Reuters) - British manufacturing output posted an unexpected fall in April, raising the risk of a longer recession and turning up pressure on policymakers to take action to boost economic growth. The Bank of England shied away from injecting more cash into the struggling economy last week, but on Monday central banker Adam Posen called for further purchases of assets, focusing on loans to small and medium-sized companies.

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(Reuters) - Marketing on Facebook influences consumer behavior and leads to increased purchases for the brands that leverage the social-networking site, consulting company comScore said in a report released Tuesday. "The Power of Like 2: How Social Media Works," looks at paid advertising on Facebook as well as earned media exposure-- meaning mentions of the brand made by Facebook users in status updates and the like. It is based on the experiences of large brands such as Best Buy, Starbucks and Target.

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(Reuters) - Stocks fell on Monday in a turnaround from Wall Street's best week of the year as investors grew disappointed about Europe's aid package for Spanish banks and worried about increased volatility as Greece's elections approached. Spain will be lent up to 100 billion euros ($125 billion) to help the country's battered banks. The size of the package was larger than expected, partially removing a cloud that has been hanging over financial markets.

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(Reuters) - The European debt crisis poses a "significant" threat to financial stability and could undermine progress made in recent years to strengthen the global financial system, a top Federal Reserve official said on Monday. "While the global financial system is stronger than it was three years ago, it remains vulnerable," San Francisco Fed President John Williams said in remarks prepared for delivery at a conference on Asian banking sponsored by his regional Fed bank.

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(Reuters) - Bank of America Corp (BAC.N), which has faced criticism for dealings with coal companies in recent years, on Monday set a new 10-year, $50 billion goal to provide loans and other financing for environmentally friendly energy projects. The second-largest U.S. bank announced the initiative as it nears the early completion of a 10-year, $20 billion goal set in 2007. The bank also pledged to reduce energy and paper consumption in its own operations by 2015 and to make $100 million in grants to nonprofit organizations and other groups promoting low-carbon use.

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(Reuters) - Apple Inc took the wraps off a new high-end Macintosh laptop, incorporating the popular high-resolution display from its iPad as part of a raft of souped-up software and hardware the consumer electronics giant is rolling out on Monday to help it in its mobile race against Google Inc. CEO Tim Cook, who took over from late co-founder Steve Jobs last August, is expected to unveil new services -- such as in-house mobile mapping and beefed-up Siri software -- to help keep at bay Google and its fast-growing Android mobile platform.

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(Reuters) - A federal judge on Monday denied BP Plc (BP.L) access to 21 emails and other documents sent among White House and other U.S. officials related to the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill, citing the government's need to keep them confidential. U.S. Magistrate Judge Sally Shushan in New Orleans said the federal interest in preserving secrecy, together with the public interest in ensuring an effective response to the next disaster, outweighed BP's need for the documents to defend itself in litigation by the government over the spill.

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