(Reuters) - Stocks edged lower on Monday as a delay by debt-ridden Greece in accepting the terms of a bailout gave investors little reason to buy equities after a five-week rally. Athens allowed another deadline to slip by as political leaders failed to respond to bailout terms from the European Union and International Monetary Fund. Greece needs the funds by March to meet big debt repayments or face a messy default.

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(Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Greece on Monday to make up its mind fast on accepting the painful terms for a new EU/IMF bailout, but the country's political leaders responded by delaying their decision for yet another day. Failure to strike a deal to secure the 130 billion euro ($170 billion) rescue - much of which Germany will fund - risks pushing Athens into a chaotic debt default which could threaten its future in the euro zone.

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(Reuters) - China's annual economic growth could be cut nearly in half this year if Europe's debt crisis tips the world economy into a recession, putting pressure on Beijing to unveil "significant" fiscal stimulus, the International Monetary Fund said. The Fund outlined its central scenario for China's 2012 growth outlook in its global outlook in January, cutting its forecast for 2012 growth from 9 percent to 8.2 percent.

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(Reuters) - Boeing (BA.N) has discovered a problem related to the aft fuselage of its 787 Dreamliner planes and is making repairs that will not affect production of the aircraft, the company said in an emailed statement on Sunday. The 787 Dreamliner is a light-weight, fuel-efficient, carbon-composite aircraft. It was three years behind its development schedule but finally entered service last year.

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(Reuters) - The mad rush to move client money out of MF Global Inc. after its collapse left two firms with the bulk of customer accounts, while other brokerages emerged with only minor gains from the chaos of carving up a multibillion-dollar business. The process, according to interviews with more than half a dozen industry executives, was a scramble: a patchwork of urgent phone calls, emails, "handshakes" and news gleaned from press reports read by executives who were asking - and being asked - to take on MF Global customers during a month-long effort to transfer more than 25,000 accounts and some $2 billion in collateral.

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(Reuters) - Stocks rose on Friday, propelling the Nasdaq index to an 11-year high, after January's U.S. employment report sailed past expectations, boosting hopes the world's largest economy has turned a corner. The broad-based gains also sent the Dow Jones industrial average to its highest in nearly five years. The S&P 500 extended its 2012 advance to about 7 percent.

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(Reuters) - The economy created jobs at the fastest pace in nine months in January and the unemployment rate unexpectedly dropped to a near three-year low, giving a boost to President Barack Obama as campaigning heats up ahead of November elections. Nonfarm payrolls jumped 243,000, the Labor Department said on Friday, as factory jobs grew by the most in a year. The jobless rate fell to 8.3 percent - the lowest since February 2009 - from 8.5 percent in December.

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(Reuters) - The pace of growth in the U.S. services sector accelerated in January to its highest level in nearly a year as new orders and employment jumped, an industry report showed on Friday. The Institute for Supply Management said its services index rose to 56.8 last month from a revised 53.0 in December. It was the highest level since February 2011.

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(Reuters) - New orders for U.S. factory-made products posted a second straight monthly rise in December and business capital spending also picked up, a government report on Friday showed. The Commerce Department said orders for manufactured goods increased 1.1 percent, slightly below Wall Street economist's forecast for a 1.5 percent gain.

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(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc was ordered by a federal judge to face a securities class-action lawsuit accusing it of misleading investors about a 2006 offering of securities backed by risky mortgage loans from a now-defunct lender. U.S. District Judge Harold Baer in Manhattan certified a class-action lawsuit by investors in the GSAMP Trust 2006-S2, a $698 million offering of certificates based on a pool of second-lien home mortgages.

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