More than a dozen Chinese financial institutions, mainly trust companies, loaned 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) over the past five years to Wuhan Kingold Jewelry Inc. with pure gold as collateral and insurance policies to cover any losses. Kingold is the largest privately owned gold processor in central China's Hubei province.

In the remote desert of western Egypt, near the Libyan border, lie clues to an ancient cosmic cataclysm. Libyan desert glass is the name given to fragments of canary-yellow glass found scattered over hundreds of kilometres, between giant shifting sand dunes. Interest in Libyan desert glass goes back more than 3,000 years.