Since January 1, when China stopped accepting the rich world’s recyclable plastic waste, it’s gotten a ton of criticism for worsening the already deep crisis of ocean plastic pollution. But China isn’t the only culprit here. This is a crisis made — and growing worse — throughout developing Asia. Just eight countries in the region are responsible for about 63 ...

Bloomberg Some of Europe’s biggest banks may have found a perfectly legal way to exploit a weakness in one of the finance industry’s most loathed rules. Euro-area and Swiss lenders cut their short-term borrowings by tens of billions of dollars just before the end of each quarter, improving their reported financial health, only to build them up again in the ...

Bloomberg Indonesia’s central bank is showing its willingness to sacrifice economic growth for currency stability in its latest aggressive move on interest rates. Bank Indonesia surprised economists with a bigger-than-forecast 50 basis-point hike, on top of two rate increases in May aimed at halting a currency rout. That takes the benchmark rate to 5.25 percent, with analysts betting there’s more ...