The European Union's top antitrust official has opened an investigation into the way countries including Ireland provide tax arrangements that enable big multinational corporations like Apple to reduce their tax bills worldwide.

The Food and Drug Administration proposed rules on Friday that would govern the production of pet food and farm animal feed for the first time. The regulation would help prevent food-borne illness in both animals and people, officials at the agency said, as people can become sick from handling contaminated animal food and from touching pets that have eaten it.

The balance of world economic growth is tipping in another direction. Just as economists have begun lowering their forecasts for China and many other developing economies, the American economy is bouncing back. Japan appears to have turned a corner and is ending almost two decades of grinding deflation. Economic data out of Europe on Wednesday provided the first solid indication that many countries in the euro zone may be escaping the clutches of recession.

Some retailers are doing what was once unthinkable, handing over information about exactly how, and where, their products were made.

A British supermarket chain has recalled a beef product after traces of the powerful veterinary drug phenylbutazone, which is banned from the human food chain, were found for the first time in an item that had been on sale in stores here.

European Commission delivered a bleak assessment Friday of Europe's economic prospects, saying that growth would be just 0.1 percent in the 27-nation European Union in 2013 and that the 17-nation euro zone would shrink 0.3 percent over the same period.

President Barack Obama is trying to persuade the United States to adopt a cap-and-trade system to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But the European Union's Emissions Trading System "” the world's flagship effort "” is sputtering. European carbon permits, which traded at about €30 ($40) per ton a few years ago, are now hovering at about €5 per ton or less.