China’s love-hate relationship with foreign trash, money-minded scientists and other stories you may have missed

China has been importing garbage for decades. In 2015, it bought more than 46 million tonnes of rubbish from abroad. That didn’t even include the trash smuggling trade. The waste brought in is recycled and then sold; it’s a lucrative business, so why ban the practice? The move will have global implications: how are other countries going to handle all the waste that they can’t sell to China any more? (And if you’re really interested, check out these horror stories of how some unscrupulous Chinese operators took recycling discarded medical waste and used adult diapers a tad too far.)

How do you combine the Catholic faith with Chinese culture and tradition? How do you interpret the Vatican’s religious teachings so that they match China’s needs and advance its interests? Seems like a tough call, but that’s what Beijing wants its officially sanctioned Catholic association to do. Religious scholars deliberate their options.