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 …

  Bloomberg China National Petroleum Corp. plans to spin off most non-energy assets — a portfolio comprising roughly 10 percent of its workforce — as low oil prices force the state-run behemoth to streamline, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Under a plan detailed at an internal meeting in Beijing last month, CNPC would bundle businesses employing about …