Gwynn Guilford

Should China’s economy aim to grow at a 7% clip in 2014? Or 7.5%? That was the biggest dilemma for China’s leaders as they sat down to the big Communist party economic planning pow-wow from Dec. 10-13 to set growth targets. Though the party will announce the target itself in March, the results of the China Economic Work Conference (CEWC), as the meeting is known, hints what that target will be.

In the ”which city is better” rivalry, Shanghai has always claimed one huge advantage over Beijing: its air quality. No more. Last week, toxic haze descended on the city, prompting authorities to warn children and seniors to stay indoors and flights to be grounded.

As Florida governor Rick Scott likes to boast, everyday 500 people move to his state. Its population is set to hit 20 million in 2016, surpassing New York to become America’s third most populous state (after California and Texas). That’s great news for a state with no income tax. With most of its budget coming from property and sales taxes, the best way to earn revenue is to attract more Floridans.

When India’s supreme court effectively re-banned gay sex earlier today, it set aside the ruling of one of its own high courts in favor of a law imposed on India by its British occupiers in 1861. That means it has now re-joined 75 other countries that explicitly punish gay sex with imprisonment. Here’s a look:

The swift uptick in Chinese corporate debt is worrisome, especially in light of the country’s economic slowdown. But the bigger and more troublesome problem lies with China’s retail investors—one that by itself could bring down the country’s entire financial system.

An obscure trade report about China is raising eyebrows about the swift rise of the country’s currency. After accounting for a mere 1.9% of financing for global trade in January 2012, the yuan now makes up a whopping 8.7% in October 2013, reported Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

The People’s Bank of China, the country’s central bank, and four regulators banned financial institutions and payment services (link in Chinese) from bitcoin-related business earlier today. This was done “in order to avoid harm to the public and to the legal monetary status of the renminbi [a.k.a. the yuan]” that might occur as a result of “excessive speculation” in bitcoin and other virtual goods, said the statement.

Perhaps China’s most famous film director, Zhang Yimou, is known for bringing Raise the Red Lantern, The House of Flying Daggers and Hero to the silver screen. Lately, however, he’s better known for something else. Throughout the last half-year, Zhang has been dogged by rumors that he sired seven children—and that’s not the truly scandalous part. The real issue was that he hadn’t paid fines levied on most urban couples who have more than one child, according to rumors.

In most rich countries, the bulk of deaths occur in hospitals. But in India, where 9.5 million people die each year, as many as 75% of those deaths happen at home, work or on the street. Until recently, health officials knew little about what causes these deaths since they aren’t accompanied by the paperwork drawn up by hospitals or police.

Not a month after a breakthrough in nuclear negotiations with Iran, US legislators are pushing for a fresh round of sanctions. The bill will punish Iran should it flout the nuclear agreement’s six-month deadline for  curbing uranium enrichment and allowing more inspections.

Though China trades more goods than any other nation, the yuan’s global presence is tiny. That’s changing, though. In October, the yuan accounted for 8.7% of global trade finance, surpassing the euro (6.6%) to become the world’s second-most-used trading currency behind the dollar, according to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT).

Good news is relative. It may seem positive that 3,000 fewer African elephants were illegally poached in 2012 than in 2011, according to a report by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), an international organization, and Traffic, a non-governmental group that tracks elephant populations. But that still adds up to a lot of illegally killed elephants and could wipe out one-fifth of Africa’s elephant population in a decade.

That Amazon is readying a fleet of drones to drop off packages to customers seems like yet another example of the company’s cutting edge. The project could go live as early as 2015, after the US approves laws for commercial use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), but a slew of companies around the world are already leaps ahead of Amazon.

China has many ways of tackling its goal of stretching its territorial claims in the waters off its coasts. One is by air: declaring a new aerial zone. Another is by sea: using its control over shipwreck excavation, as this fascinating Wall Street Journal piece explores (paywall).

Credit is tightening in China again. But it isn’t showing up in the Shibor—the interbank lending rate that leapt precipitously last June—so much as China’s bond market. Government debt yields have surged to levels not seen in almost a decade, reports the Wall Street Journal (paywall), with the benchmark 10-year hitting 4.72% a week ago, settling at 4.62% on Tuesday, the last day for which there was data.

The numbers: Grim. For the six months ended Sep. 30, 2013, Rémy Cointreau’s net sales were €558.0 million ($756 million), down 3.6% on the same period the previous year, when accounting for exchange-rate fluctuations. This is hasn’t yet gnawed into the French alcohol conglomerate’s margins, though. At €132.7 million, operating profit was down 7.3% compared with Apr.-Sep. 2012, but margins stayed roughly steady at 23.8% of sales.

Hong Kong’s biggest IPO of the year depends on Beijing’s willingness to keep the credit flowing. China Cinda Asset Management, one of four companies the Chinese government created to buy delinquent bank debt in the late 1990s, plans to raise as much as $2.5 billion in a Dec. 12 listing that will be Hong Kong’s biggest of the year by far.

For 17 minutes yesterday, China’s first domestically made stealth combat drone swept over the skies of the western city of Chengdu, proclaiming to the world that China can now drop missiles and spy via remote control with enemy radar systems none the wiser. With the successful voyage of the Lijian (“sharp sword”), as the drone is known, China joins the US, the UK and France as the fourth country with jet-powered stealth combat drones.

The rise of “suberbugs,” lethal germs that can’t be zapped by most antibiotics, owes particular thanks to China, where antibiotics are handed out like throat lozenges because hospitals depend on overprescribing them to make money. That’s part of why some scientists think deaths from infection could soon hit levels not seen since the early 20th century.

When Typhoon Haiyan made landfall in Tacloban, in the Philippines, earlier this month, it whipped up 20-foot tsunami-like tidal surges so powerful that they killed most of the 3,900 people who died in the storm. The people of Tacloban “said ‘we were ready for the wind. We were not ready for the water,'” as presidential aide Rene Alemendras explained. “We tried our very best to warn everybody. But it was really just overwhelming, especially the storm surge.”

Baidu CEO and co-founder Robin Li took a big gamble last July. Though 91 Wireless Websoft, a Chinese mobile app store, was valued between $600 million and $800 million, reports Caixin, Baidu bought it for $1.85 billion, making it the biggest merger in the history of China’s tech sector. Some thought that was too much. Then again, Baidu’s future growth depends on mobile advertising. And as of April, a mere 9% of smartphone searches went through Baidu, according to Caixin.

It’s World Toilet Day, which means it’s time to face the fact that 35% of the world’s population—2.5 billion people—lack access to safe, clean toilets. This isn’t just a humanitarian or public health catastrophe. Global businesses should find this alarming, too. That lack of toilets and proper sanitation are draining $260 billion off the global economy each year.

Antibiotics aren’t doing what they’re supposed to do anymore. You know, kill infections. Since Alexander Fleming invented penicillin 75 years ago, nearly all bacteria have mutated into strains impervious to antibiotics. Those souped up bacteria now kill hundreds of thousands of people, at a minimum, each year. And according to a new issue of medical journal The Lancet focused on antibiotic-resistant bacteria, things could soon get a whole lot scarier.

After strong growth this year, commercial housing price inflation may finally be cooling down in China’s biggest cities. New home prices rose only 0.6% on the previous month, down from 0.7% in September. That drop was more marked in big cities. In Shanghai, October prices grew only 0.9% on the prior month, after climbing 1.6% in September.