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 …