AFP Israel will on Tuesday launch a bidding process for oil-and-gas exploration licences off its coast in the Mediterranean, the first such offers in four years. The government has high hopes for the new blocks being offered following the discoveries of the Tamar and Leviathan natural gas fields off its coast since 2009. Israel hopes the Leviathan field will …

  AFP Tehran officials shut schools on Monday as the first of the wint- er’s heavy pollution hit the Iran- ian capital. A blanket of choking brown-white smog descended on the city on Sunday, blocking out the view of the mountains that line its northern edge and leading many of its 14 million residents to retreat indoors or don face …

  Bloomberg A Vietnamese village has become “a supermarket for illegal wildlife trafficking” raking in millions of dollars, a special hearing was told on Monday. The two-day public hearing in The Hague is laying out the findings of a year-long undercover investigation by the new Wildlife Justice Commission. The probe has provided “clear and irrefutable evidence of an industrial-scale crime …