Beijing / Bloomberg Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. sold 3 trillion yuan ($463 billion) of goods through its online shopping websites in the year ending March, as China’s largest e-commerce operator moved deeper into the untapped countryside and courted foreign brands. The company wants to bring in more quality non-Chinese goods and continue to increase its footprint in rural areas to ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg India just ushered in an interest-rate cut, via the backdoor. Although paying postal-savings depositors slightly less for their cash may appear a minor tweak, the move could end up having a bigger salutary effect on bank balance sheets, and the country’s nervous bond market, than the Reserve Bank of India’s 125 basis-point reduction since early 2015. ...

Beijing / DPA Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli will meet China’s President Xi Jinping and his counterpart Li Keqiang on Monday, while witnessing the signing of several agreements between Nepal and China. Nepali officials have set their sights on signing of Transit and Transportation Agreement with China that will pave the way for Nepal to use the nearest Chinese ...

Bangkok / AFP Thailand’s 4G expansion was thrown into disarray on Monday after a telecoms company that beat more established rivals at an auction last year failed to meet its first payment deadline, voiding the bid. The failure is a blow to the country’s junta who had earmarked money from the lucrative auctions for use in key infrastructure projects and ...

BANGKOK / AP About 750 passengers were stranded on Bangkok’s Airport Rail Link due to a power outage during Monday morning rush hour, prompting several people to walk along the train’s overhead tracks to the next station. Bangkok’s Erawan medical emergency center said seven people fainted on the train while waiting more than two hours for operations to resume. The ...

Bloomberg Leaving the European Union might cost the UK £100 billion ($145 billion) in lost economic output and 950,000 jobs by 2020, the Confederation of British Industry said as it stepped up its campaign against a so-called Brexit. An exit could, according to the study, meaning unemployment would be 2-3 percent higher by 2020 than if Britain remained in the ...

Bloomberg The pound fell from a one-month high versus the dollar after a senior member of the U.K. government resigned on Friday, deepening the rift in the ruling Conservative party just three months before the referendum on Britain’s European Union membership. Sterling weakened against all of its 16 major peers and was the worst performing currency among the Group-of-10 nations. ...

Bloomberg Ricky Moore, who stages the Hypnotist Laughter Show at comedy clubs in northern England, took a phone call a few weeks ago that turned out to be an unusual booking. He was asked if he’d be willing to sign a letter urging Britons to quit the European Union. He agreed, even though he didn’t know who exactly was calling ...

Bloomberg Ukraine’s political gridlock, already holding up billions of dollars in aid, is also threatening financial stability and postponing monetary easing, according to the nation’s central bank governor. Delays in talks on a cabinet revamp present a further danger to the hryvnia after the currency slumped 9 percent against the dollar this year, Valeriya Gontareva said in an interview. Policy ...

Bloomberg When it comes to fiscal discipline in the European Union, three is the magic number. That’s a deficit limit of 3 percent of GDP, and five EU states will make the budgetary bad books this year by breaching that level. These five — the U.K., France, Spain, Greece, and Croatia — include three of Europe’s five largest economies. Three ...