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Pope Francis has indicated for the first time that he may make changes to the Vatican's scandal-ridden bank as part of a broad review of the Holy See's troubled administration.

Investments that were vulnerable in the last financial crisis and believed to be gone for good have largely escaped new rules that were made to prevent another crisis.

Steady earnings growth on Wall Street could embolden the lawmakers and regulators who want to overhaul the banking system.

Bank of America has reported a sharp rise in profits after it shed costs and set aside less money for bad loans. The bank reported first quarter net income of $2.3bn (£1.5bn), after making $328m in the same quarter a year ago.

A judge on Tuesday approved a set of settlements among Lehman Brothers entities that will allow the company's defunct brokerage to pay back about $15 billion in customer claims.

Sub-Saharan Africa's economic growth is set to outpace the global average over the next three years, according to the World Bank. Higher commodities, increasing investment and a general pick-up in the world economy should all boost the continent's growth to more than 5%.

Luxembourg says it will exchange information with the rest of Europe to help fight tax evasion. The initiative, which is to start in 2015, follows international pressure on Luxembourg to end its policy of banking secrecy that critics say has helped people hide money from tax authorities. Luxembourg, a tiny country of half a million people, boasts a huge financial industry with more than 3 trillion euros ($4 trillion) in assets.

Some key data about bond purchases by Bank of Cyprus - now the focus of a controversial EU-IMF bailout - is missing, investigators have found. The gaps were found in computer records studied by a financial consultancy, Alvarez and Marsal, Cypriot media say.

Successive Slovenian governments have refused to privatize the country's banks, which made disastrous loans to politically connected business interests and now threaten to drag the country center stage in the euro zone debt crisis.

Japan is making a sweeping shift in its monetary policy, aiming to spur inflation and get the world's third-largest economy out of a long, debilitating slump. Bowing to demands from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for more aggressive monetary easing, the Bank of Japan announced Thursday a policy overhaul intended to double the money supply and achieve a 2 percent inflation target at the "earliest possible time, with a time horizon of about two years."