Bloomberg India plans to allow non-state mining companies to mine and sell coal for the first time in more than four decades, federal coal secretary Susheel Kumar said. The nation’s coal ministry will auction four mines to both state-run and private companies during the year starting April 1, Kumar told reporters in New Delhi. The winning bidders will have …

  JOHANNESBURG / AP Wildlife traffickers in a major African park have been offering rewards for a full lion carcass, raising concerns that poachers are increasingly targeting a vulnerable species because of demand in some Asian countries for lion bones used in traditional medicine. The report from Mozambique’s Niassa National Reserve comes amid debate about whether the legal, annual export …

  Bloomberg To Nguyen Tan Phong, a farmer in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, the foreign-owned paper mill built upriver from his catfish ponds was an ecological disaster waiting to happen. Phong feared a repeat of last year’s toxic spill from a steel plant owned by Taiwan’s Formosa Plastics Corp. that devastated central coast fishing communities and cut annual economic growth by …