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Greece's labor minister said on Tuesday Athens would soon conclude a deal with its foreign creditors that could unlock further loans to the cash-starved country.

Greece's new government has been in talks with its European Union and International Monetary Fund lenders over the past four months about the release of around 7.2 billion euros ($8.1 billion) in aid.

Asked on Greek TV when Athens would reach the cash-for-reform deal, Labour Minister Panos Skourletis said: "De facto, in the coming days."

"There's a deadline, which is June 5," he said - the date on which Greece's next repayment of a loan to the IMF falls due. "We all know that if there is no solution, let's say until then, in relation to funding, things will be difficult.

Greece faces payments of about 1.5 billion euros to the IMF next month. It made its last repayment of about 750 million euros to the IMF last week by emptying a holding account at the Fund.

Speaking on a late-night talk show on Monday, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said the government hopes it can both make debt repayments and pay wages and pensions in June, but if it has to choose, it will choose the latter.

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The owner of several of the world's best-known luxury brands has filed a fresh lawsuit against Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., the latest challenge to the Chinese e-commerce giant's assertions that it fights the sale of counterfeit goods on its platforms.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court in Manhattan by Gucci, Balenciaga, Yves Saint Laurent and other brands owned by Paris-based Kering SA, indicates that the company is unsatisfied with Alibaba's efforts to address the problem of counterfeiting of its brands.

The suit alleges that Alibaba and its associated companies "knowingly encourage, assist, and profit from the sale of counterfeits on their online platforms," according to a copy of the filing reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

Alibaba said the complaint had no basis and that it has a "strong track record" of helping brands fight counterfeits.

"Unfortunately, Kering Group has chosen the path of wasteful litigation instead of the path of constructive cooperation. We believe this complaint has no basis and we will fight it vigorously," an Alibaba spokesman said.

It is the second time Kering's brands have sued Alibaba. Last July, a few months before Alibaba launched its initial public offering in the U.S., the luxury brands filed a similar lawsuit against Alibaba but then withdrew it two weeks later.

Alibaba and Kering had said that they would work together to reduce the counterfeiting of Kering's brands. The brands said in the latest filing that the claims made last July were now being reasserted.

Among the lawsuit's allegations are that Alibaba permits and encourages "numerous counterfeiters" to operate on its various platforms even when the merchants openly state that they are selling fake goods.

The suit alleges that Alibaba helps counterfeiters by providing them marketing and logistical services on its various platforms, including the international wholesale trading site Alibaba.com, the global shopping site AliExpress.com and Taobao, its bazaar-like online marketplace.

Alibaba sells keywords to counterfeiters that include the names of Kering brands, allowing the merchants to attract more customers to buy fake goods that bear the brands, the lawsuit alleges. Also, it alleges, Alibaba's search engine will suggest terms such as "cucchi" and "guchi" when "Gucci" is typed into search bars, directing customers to sellers of fake merchandise and enabling Alibaba to profit from the sales of such keywords.

The Kering brands are seeking unspecified damages based on sales or profit from the items and a court order preventing Alibaba from participating in the sale, marketing and distribution of counterfeit products, among other measures.

Such complaints underscore one risk for Alibaba, which in September raised $25 billion from global investors in the world's largest initial public offering.

Alibaba has long grappled with allegations that its online shopping platform Taobao is full of counterfeit merchandise, which could damage the company's reputation and image among investors and brands.

The issue was a key focus of a Chinese government report in late January that criticized Alibaba for not doing enough to address the sale of fake goods, bribery and other illegal activity on its sites. Chinese officials later removed the report in what Alibaba called a vindication.

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Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday emphasised the need to urgently resolve the long-standing border dispute with China.

"We must address issues that lead to doubts, mistrust in our relationship," he said while addressing students at the Tingshua University in Beijing on the second day of his three-day visit to China.

"We must ensure that our relationships with other countries do not become a source of concern for each other," the PM said.

Speaking on the issue of terrorism, the Prime Minister said it is a threat that both countries face. "The spreading tide of extremism and terrorism is a threat we both face; for both, its source is in the same region," Modi said.

In his address, he also mentioned that India and China are linked through ancient civilisations.

Modi spoke about the sojourn of Hiuen-Tsang, the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim who travelled to India in the seventh century to gain knowledge. He also spoke of the silk and cotton trade.

He also spoke of his government's initiatives in the financial sector. "We have launched major schemes on financial inclusion of all," he said.

Lauding China's economic growth, he said: China's success over the last three decades changed the character of global economy; India is the next frontier of the global economic revolution."

Earlier in the day, Modi urged the Chinese leadership to adopt a fresh approach to contentious issues affecting relations between India and China so that the two sides could play a greater role on the world stage.

Modi described the India-China relationship in recent decades as “complex” but said both sides are committed to set a "new direction between the two largest Asian countries".

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Alibaba Group Holding Ltd will invest heavily in existing and new ventures abroad, making its push beyond the China market a top priority, the Chinese e-commerce leader's new CEO, Daniel Zhang, said.

Zhang's comments come at a time when Alibaba aims to maintain its rapid growth even as the prospect of e-commerce saturation at home looms over the company.

"We must absolutely globalize," Zhang said in his first speech since taking up his new post this week, according to a report on Thursday on Alibaba's news and commentary website, Alizila.

The vast bulk of Alibaba's revenue comes from its dominant domestic online marketplaces, but the company has been investing in a range of sectors abroad. Just this week it announced it would set up a cloud computing base in Dubai, and boosted its stake in U.S. e-retailer Zulily Inc.

"We will organize a global team and adopt global thinking to manage the business, and achieve the goal of 'global buy and global sell'," Zhang was quoted as saying.

Alibaba, which handles more transactions on its platforms than Amazon.com Inc and eBay Inc combined, would continue to invest heavily in new and existing overseas operations, Zhang was quoted as saying. Those included AliExpress, a platform for overseas consumers to buy Chinese goods, and Tmall Global, a marketplace for overseas goods to be sold online in China.

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Verizon sits on mountains of personal data about consumer habits and preferences. It's all dressed up with almost nowhere to go.

By acquiring AOL in an all-cash deal valued at roughly $4.4 billion, Verizon stands to be better positioned to leverage the data it collects on more than 100 million wireless subscribers, data that represent a veritable gold mine for prospective advertisers.

Rather than trying to add more Internet subscribers as Comcast (CMCSA) hoped to do by buying Time Warner Cable  (TWC) or AT&T (T) aims to do by acquiring DirecTV (DTV), Verizon is hoping AOL's sophisticated advertising platform will generate more revenue off its existing customer base. AOL has spent nearly $1 billion over the past three years building an automated advertising platform aimed at selling inventory on Web sites and television channels in real time.

"For Verizon, it's all about monetizing personal data," said Ken Doctor, media analyst at Newsonomics, an independent research firm. "The access that Verizon has to its customers' habits, preferences, their buying patterns is enormous, and with AOL it sees the opportunity to monetize those even better than it's doing right now."

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11

May

1. There’s a secret size that’s not on the menu: the 8-ounce “short” cup.

2. Starbucks owns Teavana.

3. The average Starbucks customer visits the store six times a month.

4. The original name was Pequod’s.

5. Starbucks has created more than 40 different kinds of Frappuccinos.

6. The round tables were created so that solo coffee drinkers would feel less alone.

7. The Chantico is the company’s biggest beverage flop.

8. There are over 87,000 drink combination possibilities.

9. More than 10 million people use the Starbucks mobile app.

10. And it’s the first brand to reach 10 million likes on Facebook.

11. The 30.9-ounce Trenta size cup is larger than the human stomach.

12. Starbucks has opened an average of two stores daily since 1987.

13. The company’s “10-Minute Rule” requires each store to open its doors 10 minutes before the posted time and close 10 minutes following the closing time.

14. A Starbucks cheese danish has 420 calories and 25 grams of fat, vs. a McDonald’s Sausage McMuffin, which will net you 380 calories and 22 grams of fat.

15. Starbucks spends more on health care for its employees than it does on coffee beans each year.

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One poor U.S. jobs report is cause for concern. Two bad reports in a row is reason to panic.

For now, virtually no one on Wall Street or at the White House is panicking. Forecasters predict job creation in April will bounce back in a big way after a disappointing 126,000 increase in March that was the smallest in 15 months.

Economists polled by MarketWatch predict a healthy 245,000 gain in April, restoring the level of hiring close to the 2014 average. Last year the U.S. added the most jobs since 1999.

The unemployment rate, meanwhile, is seen falling a tick to 5.4% in April. That would mark the lowest level since May 2008.

The April employment report is the only one that truly matters on this week’s economic calendar after a miserly 0.2% increase in first-quarter growth and the disappointing job gains in March. The big bet on Wall Street is that the economic slowdown early in the year reflects an unusually harsh winter and other temporary impediments that will soon fade.

A snapback in hiring would confirm that view. Former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, in his new blog, asserts the pace of employment gains gives a much better sense of how the economy is performing than quarterly reports on the nation’s growth.

In other words, forget about the first quarter.

But all bets are off if the employment spigot in April is reduced to a trickle for the second month in a row—it would signal a broader softness in the U.S. economy.

The early signs are not exactly encouraging. Consumer confidence fell in April to the lowest level in four months, for one thing. And a survey of U.S. manufacturing executives indicates that they stopped hiring last month to cope with a sales slowdown.

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