Desperate factory owners in China are increasingly turning to diesel generators to keep their businesses going during a power crisis that is threatening both the country’s economic growth and its green ambitions.

Power shortages have hobbled industry and left some households without electricity. In an effort to ration fuel, some provinces have ordered factories to shut for a few days each week, with employees told to use the stairs and offices pressured to avoid using air conditioners at low temperatures.

With the winter heating season fast approaching, China has also instructed coal miners to expand production significantly and signalled that

Chinese coal futures rose to record levels as floods shut dozens of mines and displaced more than 100,000 people, throttling the country’s main source of the fuel for electricity and compounding a global energy crisis.

Coal futures traded on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange climbed 11.6 per cent to close at an all-time high of Rmb1,408.20 ($218.74) a tonne on Monday. The CSI Coal index of big miners listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen rose 3.7 per cent, partly reversing losses from last week, when official orders to boost coal production sent prices tumbling.

Flooding in the central province of Shanxi

The son of an Indian minister has been arrested on suspected murder charges a week after his car rammed into a group of demonstrating farmers, killing at least four in an incident that has galvanised the country’s rural protest movement.

Ashish Mishra, the 40-year-old son of junior home minister Ajay Kumar Mishra, was taken into custody by Uttar Pradesh police, who alleged he had been evasive and uncooperative this weekend while being interrogated about his whereabouts during the violence on October 3.

His arrest comes after farmers and opposition parties accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata party of a lax initial