Tokyo / AFP As China’s leaders consider ways to improve market oversight and avoid the kind of boom and bust in equities that shook investors around the world last year, the nation’s central bank is already extending its oversight to areas beyond its traditional focus. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) this month expanded its powers to cap cross-border capital ...

  Sidoarjo / AFP Harwati forces a smile as she guides visitors around a bubbling mud volcano in Indonesia, pausing as they snap selfies on the bleak wasteland she once called home. These disaster tourists are a lifeline for the single mother who lost everything when the earth beneath a paddyfield near her village opened up without warning ten years ...

  Wageningen / AFP Establishing a human colony on the Moon and travelling to Mars has been the stuff of dreams since the dawn of the space age.But these visions face many hurdles. How can humans survive for months or years in the ultra-hostile environment of space? What, for instance, will they eat? Agricultural researchers at a Dutch university say ...