Bloomberg While two years of crashing prices for oil, natural gas, and coal triggered dramatic downsizing in those industries, renewables have been thriving. Clean energy investment broke new records in 2015 and is now seeing twice as much global funding as fossil fuels. One reason is that renewable energy is becoming ever cheaper to produce. Recent solar and wind auctions ...

BEIJING / AP China has banned most imports of North Korean coal and iron ore, the country’s main exports, in a significant increase in pressure on the North under UN sanctions against its nuclear and missile tests. China buys an estimated two-thirds of impoverished North Korea’s exports, making Beijing’s cooperation essential for trade penalties approved by the UN Security Council ...

Tokyo / DPA Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry is set to strengthen its efforts to develop its own technology for genome editing, by allocating 8.6 billion yen (US$77 million) over five years from fiscal 2016 to 2020. The technology enables cut-and-paste work in gene modifications as desired. The government intends to efficiently mass-produce medicinal products or fragrance elements by ...