Bloomberg Crime writers and Hollywood producers take note: Secret Swiss bank accounts aren’t so secret anymore. Switzerland’s reputation for tight-lipped discretion made it a magnet for money from dictators and tax dodgers, along with the fictional assassin Jason Bourne. Now whistleblowers and a crackdown after the 2008 financial crisis are creating a world less tolerant of offshore havens. That’s ...

  AP A sluggish month of retail spending has tempered expectations for the US economy’s growth in the coming months. Consumers pulled back on shopping and eating out in July after three straight solid monthly gains, the government said Friday. Those declines were offset by increases in auto sales and online and catalog sales. Many economists credited the surge in ...

  Bloomberg Fatalities in crashes of small private planes have fallen to the lowest levels in decades as industry and government work to address an area of aviation that has lagged behind jetliners in dramatic safety improvements. While aviation crash analysts caution that it’s still too early to say for sure that the data represents a long-term trend, the declining ...

  AP Wal-Mart opened a 12,000-square-foot culinary and innovation center at its headquarters in June as a place where the nation’s largest food retailer can work with major suppliers to come up with new food ideas, and develop ideas on its own to bolster its store-brand selection. HERE’S A PEEK AT THE FOOD LAB WHAT IT IS: The center has ...

  Bloomberg It’s been a messy summer for US airlines and their passengers, with half the Big Four carriers suffering technology meltdowns over the past month. July and August are peak season for airlines in terms of passenger loads, making the type of systemwide glitches that befell Delta Air Lines Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co. all the tougher to navigate ...

  DHIBAN / AP Sabri Mashaaleh feels misled and angry: The 29-year-old studied counseling expecting to find a civil service job, in line with what used to be a typical life path for college-educated Jordanians. Four years later, he’s still unemployed. His last hopes were crushed earlier this summer when troops tore down the tent in his small, remote hometown ...

  Bloomberg The International Monetary Fund is stepping up lending in a region where economic reformers haven’t exactly had the most success. Hoping to restore the confidence of foreign investors, Egypt announced an initial agreement on Thursday to borrow $12 billion over three years from the IMF, joining Iraq, Tunisia and Jordan in taking money from the Washington-based fund. Egypt’s ...

  CAIRO/ Reuters Egypt’s public prosecutor has ordered the arrest of 13 people for 15 days pending an investigation into their role in a wheat procurement corruption scandal, judicial sources said. Egypt, the world’s largest wheat importer, has been mired in controversy over its wheat supplies, with industry officials claiming that over 2 million tonnes of the 5 million tonnes ...

  SOROTI / AP In this electricity-starved rural part of Uganda, men ride bicycles several kilometers (miles) to the nearest market town simply to charge their phones. That should change with the construction nearby of one of the largest solar plants in sub-Saharan Africa, where two-thirds of the population is without electricity and countries increasingly explore alternative sources of power. ...

  AFP China’s recent economic stabilization faltered in July as factory output, retail sales and investment all slowed. Industrial production rose 6 percent from a year earlier in July, the National Bureau of Statistics said Friday. Retail sales climbed 10.2 percent last month, while fixed-asset investment increased 8.1 percent in the first seven months of the year. All three readings ...