WASHINGTON - The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits fell 23,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 340,000, a level consistent with solid job growth. The less volatile four-week average ticked down just 500 to 339,500, the Labor Department said Thursday. That's close to the five-year low of 338,000 reached during the first week of May. The four-week average is 9 per cent lower than in November. "The underlying story in jobless claims continues to be one of gradual improvement," Bricklin Dwyer, an economist at BNP Paribas, wrote in a research report.

BEIJING, May 23 (Yonhap) -- North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's special envoy met with another top Chinese party official Thursday, the second day of his scheduled three-day trip here seen as aimed at mending frayed ties between the two countries. Vice Marshall Choe Ryong-hae, director of the General Political Bureau of North Korea's People's Army, flew to Beijing on Wednesday. Shortly after his arrival, he had met with Wang Jiarui, the head of the central committee's external affairs of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

By Tetsushi Kajimoto TOKYO (Reuters) - The biggest plunge in Japanese stock prices since a 2011 earthquake and tsunami was a temporary pullback that will not derail the government's "Abenomics" policy of loose money and fiscal stimulus, officials said on Thursday. "It's a temporary adjustment after the rapid gains seen recently," Yasutoshi Nishimura, senior vice-minister of the Cabinet Office, told Reuters.

Hard pressed to justify a proposition deemed laughable by critics, the European Commission withdrew on Thursday a planned ban on restaurants serving olive oil in jugs on diners' tables pending consultations with the industry and consumers. European Union Agriculture Commissioner Dacian Ciolos took to a regular media podium to perform a U-turn that spawned a string of Twitter gags and reaction, but stuck to his line that restaurateurs are potentially misleading customers by pouring cheap or old oil into containers presented as new.