(Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co's quarterly earnings fell 4 percent as the European debt crisis pushed investment banking clients to the sidelines, but results were helped by an accounting gain the bank can take when markets are in turmoil. Excluding the accounting adjustment, JPMorgan's third-quarter profit dropped 25 percent. Shares of the second-biggest U.S. bank fell 3 percent to $32.18 in early trading Thursday.

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(Reuters) - Research In Motion said on Thursday it was working aggressively to prevent any recurrence of the service disruptions that have affected millions of BlackBerry users around the world this week. The Waterloo-based company said full service had been restored, but it did not say whether the backlog caused by the outage had been entirely cleared.

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(Reuters) - New claims for jobless benefits were little changed last week and the trade deficit narrowed marginally in August, indicating a modest improvement in the economy. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dipped 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 404,000, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists had expected claims to rise to 405,000. A separate report from the Commerce Department showed the trade deficit fell to $45.61 billion in August from $45.63 billion the prior month. Economists had expected the trade gap to widen to $45.8 billion.

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(Reuters) - China's trade surplus narrowed for a second straight month in September to $14.5 billion, with both imports and exports lower than expected, reflecting global economic weakness and domestic cooling that will deepen policy quandaries facing Beijing. The trade data issued on Thursday laid bare trends at the heart of Beijing's debate about how to handle U.S. pressure for a higher yuan while seeking to protect both export-driven jobs and tame inflationary pressures. Moments after the data was released, a deputy chief of China's customs agency staked out one position in that debate, saying a higher yuan is already hurting exports.

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(Reuters) - Stocks opened higher on Wednesday, putting the S&P 500 on track for its sixth winning day in the past seven on optimism that Slovakia would reach a deal to expand the euro zone rescue fund. Slovakian lawmakers were expected to ratify the rescue fund plan. The country's parliament failed to approve a deal on Tuesday as the opposition party abstained as a way to help topple the government. Slovakia is the last country in the 17-member currency zone left to approve it.

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(Reuters) - The number of jobs waiting to be filled fell in August, underscoring the pain in the labor market where millions of unemployed workers have been shut out of the economic recovery. There were only 3.06 million available jobs at the end of August, down from July's downwardly revised 3.21 million, according to the Labor Department's Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released on Wednesday.

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(Reuters) - Euro zone countries will ask banks to accept losses of up to 50 percent on their holdings of Greek debt, officials said on Wednesday, as part of a grand plan to avert a disorderly default and try to end a crisis that threatens the world economy. Ahead of a make-or-break summit of European leaders on October 23 at which a comprehensive new Franco-German crisis plan is expected to be discussed, four euro zone officials told Reuters that a "haircut" of between 30 and 50 percent for Greece's private creditors was under consideration.

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(Reuters) - A three-day disruption to BlackBerry services spread to North America on Wednesday, frustrating millions of users of the Research In Motion devices just two days before rival Apple's new iPhone 4S goes on sale. RIM advised clients of an outage in the Americas and said it was working to restore services as customers in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and India continued to suffer patchy email and no access to browsing and messaging.

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(Reuters) - Parties in the outgoing Slovak government have reached an agreement with a leftist opposition leader on ratifying a plan to strengthen the euro zone's EFSF rescue fund, TA3 television reported on Wednesday. Three parties in the ruling coalition struck a deal with Robert Fico's Smer party the day after the government lost a confidence vote called in an effort to force through ratification of the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).

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(Reuters) - Stocks were off on Tuesday, pulling back from sharp gains in the prior session as investors awaited the results of a key vote by Slovakia on expanding the euro zone rescue fund. With all the other member states having ratified a pact to boost the size and powers of the European Financial Stability Facility bailout fund, all eyes turned to Slovakia.

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