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 ...

Bangkok / AFP A Thai tuna processing factory has agreed to pay staff $1.3 million compensation for a litany of labour abuses, an official said on Tuesday, a rare victory for migrant workers in the kingdom’s scandal-stricken seafood industry. Hundreds of Myanmar labourers at Golden Prize Tuna Canning, a processing plant in Samut Sakhon that sells fish to markets around ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg It’s not just taxpayers who will make Indian banks whole. Tax cheats are being pressed into service as well. State-run Indian lenders are gasping for breath, as the central bank forces them to recognize bad loans and make provisions. The 250 billion rupees ($3.7 billion) in fresh capital that Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has pledged to ...