大象传媒

A council in northern England has approved plans to allow fracking for shale gas to take place in Britain for the first time since a ban was lifted four years ago. The planning application by Third Energy to drill at a site near the village of Kirby Misperton, was approved by a margin of 7 to 4 - despite two days of hearings in which the vast majority of speakers opposed the fracking plan. We hear views from both sides.

Alexander Van der Bellen has won Austria's presidential election, preventing Norbert Hofer from becoming the EU's first far-right head of state. Mr Van der Bellen, a pro-EU independent backed by the Greens, beat Mr Hofer by just 31,000 votes among the 4.64m cast. The president-elect vowed to address the "divisions" among Austrians that the poll had "made visible".

G7 leaders are expected in Japan later this week, to discuss how to stabilise global growth. Japan itself has been struggling with a sluggish economy for more than two decades and recently took the controversial move to lower interest rates to below zero to boost growth. Neither consumers nor corporates seem to have been convinced - So what options remain? Our Asia Business correspondent, Karishma Vaswani, reports from Tokyo.

Cash or card - how do you pay for your average trip to the shop? Credit cards have been around for ages, then came debit cards, they seemed pretty cool when they were new, now we have contactless debit cards. So what do you do if making money is your business? Martin Sutherland is a CEO - and he insists that talk of the death of cash is premature.

Presenter Fergus Nicoll is joined from Hong Kong by Ross O'Brien, analyst and consultant with Intercedent and Alexis Goldstein of The Other 98% in Washington DC.

(Photo: An anti fracking placard displayed on the road approaching the village of Kirby Misperton in North Yorkshire, England. Credit: Getty Images)