Astronomer Fred Hoyle famously quipped in 1982 that the odds of a simple living thing assembling itself from inanimate chemicals were as slim as the chance that a tornado passing through a junkyard would leave in its wake a Boeing 747. The statement reflects the 20th-century understanding that even pond scum was composed of cells of mind-boggling complexity. Today biologists ...

Technically speaking, the U.S. State Department is the foreign policy arm of the United States. But increasingly, the U.S. Defense Department has taken a leading role in conducting foreign policy on its own: primarily through providing security assistance to countries around the world, sometimes contrary to State’s recommendations. This will come as no surprise to Central Asia watchers, who have ...

After spending hundreds of billions of dollars over the past two decades acquiring oil, natural gas, coal and other mineral resources around the global, food-related sectors are becoming the new favorite of China’s overseas investment. It is estimated that over the past five years, China’s overseas food-related M&A topped $20 billion. This includes Shuanghui International’s $4.7 billion takeover of American ...