From arsenic and lead to mercury and cadmium, discarded electronic gadgets generate hazardous waste that can be fatal. To tackle the health and environment threats these pose, many countries have put laws into place. Singapore and the Scandinavian countries are showing the way. India is the newest member to join the ‘Safe E-Waste Disposal’ club. It has proposed rules that ...

Risk assets such as stocks, corporate bonds and bank loans have been trading in a wide and volatile range, taking investors on a roller-coaster ride up and down, including most recently a rally of about 10 percent in U.S. equity markets. This phenomenon is likely to continue in the short-term, so here are eight characteristics of this financial environment: Pronounced ...

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 ...

Bloomberg Shanghai unveiled a package of measures designed to stem a surge in property prices in the metropolis, underscoring how regulators in top-tier cities are shifting gears in an economy where housing has been a brake on growth in recent years. The local government will tighten approval criteria for non-resident homebuyers, raise down-payment requirements for some second homes and ban ...

MIAMI/AFP Former England football great David Beckham has taken a key step towards his goal of launching a Major League Soccer franchise by buying land for a stadium in Miami, one of his partners said. Beckham’s group of investors acquired land in the Overtown neighborhood northwest of downtown in the Florida city. “Big News: We’ve closed on our #Miami stadium ...

Bloomberg Almost a year ago, in May 2015, Michael Jackson’s former Neverland Ranch hit the market. The 12,598-square-foot French Normandy-style home sits on 2,698 acres in the Santa Ynez Valley, northeast of Los Angeles. It has six-bedrooms, a four-acre lake with waterfall, an outdoor barbecue, a pool house, three guest houses, a tennis court, and a 5,500-square-foot movie theater and ...

Bloomberg NorthStar Realty Europe Corp. has hired advisers to offer about $1 billion of properties for sale as the New York-based company focuses on fewer countries, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The real estate investment trust, managed by an affiliate of NorthStar Asset Management Group Inc., will sell all of its assets outside the U.K., France ...

Margaret Zhou / The Diplomat The Mekong Delta is facing its worst drought in recent history, causing food and water shortages for over half a million people. The Chinese government has made headlines amidst the disaster for its decision to release water from upstream dams within China’s borders. Chinese ministry spokesman Lu Kang said in a news briefing that China ...