Monday Business Edition

Flights were grounded in commercial airline hubs such as Mumbai and Kolkata, while protesters attacked buses, blocked roads with burning tyres and organised sit-down protests on inter-city railway links.

Police were out in force to prevent any large-scale unrest during the day-long strike called by the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and leftist parties in a show of strength against the Congress-led government’s reform programme.

Japanese shares edged 0.69 percent higher on bargain hunting but many investors stayed on the sidelines as US markets were closed for the Independence Day holiday.

The headline Nikkei index, which hit a seven-month low on Thursday, gained 63.07 points to close at 9,266.78. The Topix index of first-section shares added 0.71 percent.

Suffering a long-term fall in sales and a collapse in advertising revenue as the world goes online for its news, the press has for years been scrambling to decide how to respond.

In Britain, Rupert Murdoch’s Times and Sunday Times finally went ahead from Friday with their long-promised plan to start charging readers for online access to their journalism, the first non-specialist papers to do so here.

Matthias Wissman, head of the VDA auto association, said the federation foresaw a “normalisation” in the auto industry this year in the aftermath of car-scrapping premiums in many parts of the world.

He also pointed to solid performance expected on Asian markets.

Trading was expected to be light on Monday because of the U.S. Independence Day holiday.

Data showing the U.S. labor market shrank for the first time this year in June, slower Chinese manufacturing activity and euro zone austerity measures fueled concerns over prospects for the global economy.

With few catalysts on tap, it could be difficult for investors to find a reason to buy even as recent declines and a jobs report that did not confirm investors’ worst fears present the opportunity for a short-term boost.

U.S. markets will be closed on Monday for Independence Day, and the holiday is expected to depress volume during the week, making equities more vulnerable to large swings following the worst week for the S&P 500 in two months.

Over the weekend, while U.S. Independence Day holidaymakers shunned Gulf of Mexico beaches tarred by the leaking well, media reports said BP was looking for a strategic investor among the sovereign wealth funds of the Middle East and Asia.

An investor would help ward off a takeover and raise funds for the liabilities racking up behind the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the reports said.

Asia Pacific M&A, excluding Japan, rose 78 percent last quarter, according to Thomson Reuters, with emerging market acquisitions now one-third of total deal volume.

While the largest transactions still mainly originate in the United States and Europe, a slew of recent deals have come from places like China, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia.

“NPLs will probably dominate the headline but we think attention should be put on loan book growth,” said Daniel Broby, chief investment officer at Silk Invest fund.

“Outside of Dubai, we are expecting signs of loan growth right across the rest of region.”

Bank of China’s move caught many off guard in part because it comes just as Agricultural Bank of China (ABC.UL), the nation’s No.3 lender, is preparing to launch an IPO in Shanghai and Hong Kong, expected to raise $20 billion or more later this week.

Most of China’s top banks have announced plans to tap capital markets — aiming to raise more than $70 billion combined — to replenish their capital levels that were depleted after the record, government-directed lending of last year and to meet tighter capital adequacy ratios demanded by regulators.

Worries over the Greek debt crisis, financial market turbulence, government cutbacks and turmoil in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right coalition have combined to keep a lid on domestic demand, capping official growth forecasts for 2010 at a modest 1.4 percent of GDP.

Analysts already believe that figure is too low, and some now see a further boost of between one and three tenths of a percentage point from Germany’s progress to Wednesday’s semi final, coinciding as it does with a labor market upturn and low inflation.

The European Central Bank and the Bank of England both hold policy-setting meetings on Thursday that are likely to yield no changes in already record-low interest rates.

“I suspect (ECB President Jean-Claude) Trichet would like next week’s meeting to be one of the more unexciting meetings,” David Scammell, head of UK and European interest rate strategies at Schroders, said on Reuters Insider.

In pronouncing Xue Feng guilty of spying and collecting state secrets, the Beijing No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court said his actions “endangered our country’s national security.”

Its verdict said Xue received documents on geological conditions of onshore oil wells and a data base that gave the coordinates of more than 30,000 oil and gas wells belonging to China National Petroleum Corporation and listed subsidiary PetroChina Ltd. That information, it said, was sold to IHS Energy, the U.S. consultancy Xue worked for and now known as IHS Inc.

A disappointing jobs report from the U.S. on Friday suggested the world’s largest economy is stuttering, while other figures indicate China – which booked good growth during the recent years of financial and economic turmoil – could also slow down.

European markets found some support in a report showing retail sales in the region rose modestly in May.

Republicans pump his hand, Democrats put their arms around his shoulders and women of all political persuasions give him pecks on the cheek.

Spend some time with the 80-year-old congressman from New York City who’s been striding the Capitol’s halls for four decades on behalf of residents of Harlem, and there’s little evidence he’s become someone to avoid because of an ethics cloud that’s more likely than not going to darken in days to come.

Agriculture experts at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and elsewhere are teaching farmers to grow non-native vegetables that appeal to a growing market of African, Asian and Latin American immigrants. These immigrants and their children already account for more than one-third of produce sales in supermarkets, said Frank Mangan, a plant and soil sciences professor at UMass. And as other customers become more familiar with ethnic foods, experts expect sales to grow even more.

The number of Massachusetts farmers markets that carry ethnic vegetables jumped by 25 percent in a year, to 202 last year, said Scott Soares, commissioner of the state’s Department of Agricultural Resources.

But he’s seen the consequences of paying more attention to the gadget than what’s ahead.

“I saw someone walk right into a sign,” recalled the 32-year-old Silicon Valley resident. “She didn’t hurt herself but she was startled. She dropped her phone, then her friends starting laughing at her. It was funny but I guess it could’ve been more serious.”

After a scary slump for stocks this spring, that’s the question facing many investors. In the three months ended June 30, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index fell 11.9 percent, the biggest quarterly loss since the financial crisis. The fear is that economic growth may slow, or stall, and that’s got even bulls wondering if stocks could drop even lower.

The good news: If you can muster the courage to buy, history suggests you may be rewarded.

The National, an Emirati newspaper, cited unnamed “informed sources” in the region saying that Mideast financial institutions have submitted proposals to BP advisers and are waiting for a response. Among the options being considered are the acquisition of key assets or a direct cash injection to help strengthen the oil giant’s balance sheet, according to the English-language paper.

The paper quoted a person it called an informed source as saying that “BP knows there is potential support from the Middle East.”