After 4-month surge, gas prices start falling

Oil’s decline is proving to be the worst since the collapse of the financial system in 2008 and threatening to have the same global impact of falling prices three decades ago that led to the Mexican debt crisis and the end of the Soviet Union.

Despite being the city with the 3rd most expensive real estate prices in the world and home prices hitting a record high earlier this year, Hong Kong property prices are expected to begin to drop in 2016, according to experts and analysts in the city’s residential property sector.

NEW YORK: Investors may wade into unknown territory next month as the Federal Reserve readies the first rate hike in nearly a decade amid a corporate earnings recession. S&P 500 earnings are on track to close their first reporting season of negative growth since the Great Recession and estimates call for sub-zero growth in the current quarter as well. Even if the trend reverses next year, as expected, a Fed rate hike in December could mark an unprecedented conflict between a tightening cycle starting at the same time as earnings fall into recession.

For some people, such as the Horseman Global hedge fund which has been net short since 2012, fighting the Fed can be profitable (even if March was a different story). For others, it is become a nightmare. One such person is Crispin Odey who has - so far - had a truly terrible year.

It is almost impossible to emphasize enough how important it is to start saving for retirement early.

The world’s largest oil company sees emissions in the developing world surging 50%, a forecast that suggests the diplomatic push to draft an accord to curb global warming stands to fall short. The assessment, in a report Tuesday from an Exxon Mobil Corp. team of economists, scientists and engineers, shows how far the world is from cutting pollution blamed for climate disruption. It comes as UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon warned envoys Tuesday at United Nations talks in Lima that the “window of opportunity” to slow climate change is closing.

LONDON — Brent crude surged to a six-month high on Wednesday as western countries prepared to attack Syria, raising concerns over the security of oil supplies across the Middle East, which pumps a third of the world’s oil. The United States and its allies are readying for air strikes against the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, blamed for poison gas attacks last week. But the timing of any action was unclear.

On Monday, the first total eclipse of its kind in 99 years will plunge broad swaths of the U.S. into darkness, sending solar supplies sliding and testing the resilience of the power grid for the first time since the rapid rise of renewable energy. Grid operators, utilities and electricity generators are bracing for more than 12,000 megawatts of solar power to start falling offline as the moon blocks out the sun across a 70-mile-wide (113-kilometres) corridor stretching from Oregon to South Carolina.