Many governments in the emerging world are quickly becoming financial titans.

This is largely thanks to their Sovereign Wealth Funds that they have set up to invest their oil and gas proceeds or their large budget surpluses.

But as they buy more and more assets in the rich world, many are unsure whether to support it or stop it.

What is a Sovereign Wealth Fund?

A Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) is a government-owned investment fund set up for its people’s future economic benefit.

To a lot people in the world, if there’s one thing better than winning the Football World Cup, it’s hosting the Football World Cup.

And today, two winners will be decided to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cup tournaments.

A European country is guaranteed to win the 2018 tournament while the 2022 event is either going to be won by the United States or an Asian-Pacific country, with one surprising front runner.

In today’s modern age of rising oil prices and aggressive competition in the airline industry, the unbundling of airline service fees has been a business masterstroke that has led to a huge rise of profits for most major airlines.

Over the past few years, seat prices have dropped due to heavy competition and the global economic crisis.

The illegal buying and selling of arms is big business worth billions of dollars each year.

It’s a truly global operation with pilots flying planes from Belgium, Ukraine and South Africa delivering weapons to places from Africa to Afghanistan.

They smuggle them easily through lax air, land and sea borders where the weapons often end up in the hands of war lords and dictators.

The most popular weapons transported by these illegal traders are small arms.

The media is one of the most important forces in our society, affecting the way we think, act and behave.

Since the latter half of the 20th century, media ownership has become increasingly concentrated, dominated by a few key players.

Perhaps most powerful amongst them is Rupert Murdoch, the founder and CEO of News Corporation. Recently, however, Murdoch has become the subject of backlash from competitors who believe his presence could become just too powerful.

The concentration of media ownership

On Tuesday, Jerome Kerviel, the former trader of French bank Societe Generale, was found guilty of forgery and breach of trust and sentenced to three years in prison.

He was also told to repay the bank the €4.9 billion (US$7 billion) he lost them – the largest trading loss in history. But he disputes the ruling and claims that the bank knew what he was doing all along and even encouraged it.

The rogue trader

They are the super stars of the investment world. But very little is known about their behaviour, other than that they make lots of money.

They are hedge funds – managed funds for the rich. But their shadowy past may have ended as politicians say they finally need some oversight.

There are about 50,000 hedge funds in the US$2 trillion industry, most of which are in New York and London. They range from the small to the super large which are run by experts like George Soros and John Paulson.

You may not have heard of the “Valley of Heart’s Delight”, but you will know the area by its other name – Silicon Valley.

It is the nurturing ground to many of the cutting edge, high-tech inventions that change the way we live.

Covering a region of the San Francisco Bay area in California, Silicon Valley owes its famous name to the high concentration of companies that developed silicon-based technology during the 1970’s.

Things are bad enough for the people of Pakistan with the floods and constant bomb attacks by insurgents.

Now a handful of their heroic national cricketers have been accused of deliberately making bad plays in a match against England in order to profit from its betting.

On 25 July, over 92,000 intelligence reports covering the war in Afghanistan (dubbed the ‘Afghan War Diary 2004-2010’) were released to the public by the online whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.

Wikileaks has now released more classified intelligence documents to the public than the rest of the world combined. They have won awards and been heavily criticised; faced many legal pressures and have been blocked in many countries.