Bloomberg India’s dominant services sector is set to contract for a second straight month, adding to evidence that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise ban on cash will trigger a sharp slowdown in Asia’s No. 3 economy. The Nikkei India Services Purchasing Managers’ Index was at 46.8 in December, a report showed on Wednesday, little changed from 46.7 a month …

  Bloomberg Heavy smog has blanketed a third of China’s cities, including its capital Beijing, with 62 issuing health alerts since Jan. 1, officials said. The hazardous air has forced hundreds of flight cancellations or delays and is forecast to linger into the weekend in some areas. The concentration of PM2.5 particles — which pose the greatest health risks because …

  BEIJING / AP Other investors are wary of Brazil, but when Duke Energy wanted to sell 10 hydroelectric dams there, a Chinese utility shrugged off the country’s economic turmoil and paid $1.2 billion to add them to an energy empire that stretches from Malaysia to Germany to the Amazon. State-owned China Three Gorges Group is spending heavily to buy …