Washington / AFP An experimental, solar-powered aircraft took off from Tulsa in the midwestern US state of Oklahoma early on Saturday, kicking off the latest phase of its record-breaking quest to circle the globe without consuming a drop of fuel. Swiss businessman Andre Borschberg, who has teamed up with adventurer Bertrand Piccard for the Solar Impulse 2 project, piloted the ...

  Bloomberg Increasing infrastructure investment is the best way to boost economic growth in China and doing so doesn’t undermine efforts to overhaul the economy, according to former central bank adviser Yu Yongding. “If China does not increase infrastructure investment now, it may miss a historical opportunity,” Yu said on Saturday at an economics conference in Beijing. “In order to ...

  Bloomberg New York luxury-condo builder Extell Development Co. says it’s taking longer than expected to obtain construction financing for its One Manhattan Square project as lenders pull back from the market. Extell had anticipated getting a construction loan for the downtown project by the beginning of June, as a condition of closing a separate financing deal with RXR Realty ...

  Bloomberg When interior designer Timothy Corrigan bought Château du Grand-Lucé, an 18th century neoclassical mansion in France’s Loire Valley, for €2.2 million ($2.46 million) in 2005, “I figured I’d be there at least one weekend a month,” he said. “Last year, I was there a total of six days. This year, I haven’t been there once.” Now he’s putting ...

  Bloomberg The Ibovespa extended a weekly drop as mining company Vale SA tumbled and real-estate companies slumped after a report that the government may cut the number of units to be built under its housing program. Vale was among the biggest contributors to the index’s slide on Friday amid lower metal prices. The BM&FBovespa Real Estate Index of 14 ...

  Bloomberg Expat housing packages are so 2012. Long the golden privilege of the Hong Kong-based finance and banking crowd in Asia, the days of guaranteed housing allowances fat enough to rent a 4,000-square-foot harbor-view home on the Peak or a townhouse in exclusive Repulse Bay for HK$300,000 ($38,650) a month are gone. That perk is being slashed or eliminated, ...

  LONDON / Reuters International financial messaging service SWIFT has directed all its client banks to share information on attacks on the system to help prevent hacking, after criminals recently used SWIFT messages to steal nearly $81 million from the Bangladesh central bank. It was reported earlier that Wells Fargo , Ecuador’s Banco del Austro (BDA) and Citibank, whose managing ...

  Bloomberg Yapi ve Kredi Bankasi AS fell most in more than 11 months after a report UniCredit SpA may sell its stake in Turkey’s fourth-largest listed lender. Yapi Kredi Bank declined 5.6 percent to 3.72 liras at close in Istanbul, the biggest decline since June 8. The stock also pared its gains for 2016 to 13.1 percent. UniCredit SA, ...

  BLOOMBERG UBS Group AG is trimming some positions at the investment bank as part of a plan to reduce costs across the business in response to a revenue slump, according to people with knowledge of the situation. At least a dozen London-based employees in the securities unit lost their jobs this week, said the people, declining to be identified ...

  BRUSSELS / Reuters The European Investment Bank (EIB) wants to make more loans outside the 28-nation European Union to help tackle the migration crisis and will present plans to European Union leaders at their next meeting in June, its president said in a recent interview. Werner Hoyer cited rules that say the bank must lend 90 percent of its ...