Deep in the jungles of Colombia, thousands of small, illegal mining operations, many under the control of Marxist guerrillas or drug traffickers, are working long hours to pull gold out of the ground. Miners are digging in out-of-the-way places such as Timbiquí and Río Quito. From there, the gold is hauled by boat, truck or small airplanes to smelters in Cali and Medellin.
Chinese telecoms equipment group ZTE Corp said it has won a further reprieve to Feb. 27 on export restrictions that were imposed on the company by the U.S. government. In March, the U.S. Commerce Department hit ZTE with some of the toughest-ever U.S. export restrictions for allegedly breaking sanctions against Iran but has since issued temporary reprieves on the curbs.
Global efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions will continue after the election of climate change skeptic Donald Trump to the U.S. presidency, and momentum is growing to cut ship pollution, the United Nations' shipping agency chief says.
A tire-industry working group led by Chinese rubber manufacturing equipment company Mesnac is striving to standardize the way in which the industry uses radio frequency identification tags. This includes how those tags are attached in tires, as well as how they are tested and encoded with data.
Regulations to protect people from falling drones moved a little closer to takeoff at the European Parliament. Ensuring drone safety took on a new urgency last week, with GoPro's recall of its Karma drone after unexplained mid-air power failures caused a number of them to drop out of the sky.
Consumer appetites for organic foods are at an all-time high. As grocery shoppers buy more goods labeled as organic, pesticide-free, non-GMO and other attributes of healthier foods, food manufacturers need to adapt to the complex challenges of the organic products supply chain.
The great and the good of world aviation gathered in Montreal last month to do something that seemed impossible even a couple of years ago. They agreed to cap greenhouse gas emissions from international flights. The pact - the first climate change agreement to apply worldwide to a specific sector, one that produces the equivalent annual carbon dioxide output as that of Germany - was greeted with almost universal support.
Business secretary Greg Clark has said the UK government will approach Brexit negotiations with the aim of achieving tariff-free access to EU markets for the automotive industry. This was among the assurances he gave to Nissan before the automaker announced the next Qashqai and X-Trail models would be built in Sunderland, the UK's biggest car plant, Clark said.
