Asian Factories Face Fitful Activity As World Sputters

Factories in China and Japan - the world's second and third largest economies - saw scant sign of demand recovering in July, with surveys across Asia offering only crumbs of comfort after weak growth readings in the United States and Europe.

The fitful global performance was clearly on the mind of William Dudley, a top policy maker at the Federal Reserve, who used a speech in Indonesia to urge caution on raising U.S. interest rates.