New Delhi / Bloomberg India’s biggest gold market was shuttered on Tuesday as jewellers in the country’s commercial capital began an indefinite strike to try to reverse a plan by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to introduce an excise tax. Jewellers in Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazaar have stopped work and want the proposal for a 1 percent levy announced in Monday’s annual ...

Tokyo / Bloomberg Sharp Corp. is facing a potential cash crunch at the end of this month as talks drag on with Foxconn Technology Group for a rescue deal that would inject billions of dollars in new capital into the struggling Japanese electronics maker. Sharp has 510 billion yen ($4.5 billion) in credit lines and loans that are set to ...

Beijing / AFP Manufacturing activity in China shrank at its fastest rate in four years in February, government data showed Tuesday, a fresh sign of sustained weakness in the world’s second-largest economy. The official Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which tracks activity in factories and workshops, fell to 49.0 last month, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) showed. It ...