An investor walks past a stock price board showing the green coloring which indicates falling at a private securities firm in Shanghai, China, on Tuesday.

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Oil and gold prices also fell. Light, sweet crude for February delivery fell to $87.72 a barrel on expectations that slower US growth will lead to less demand for crude. Spot gold, which usually benefits from market uncertainty, fell to a two-week low of $855.20 per troy ounce.
Wall Street future prices were down sharply on Monday, portending a plunge when trading begins at 9:30 a.m. Eastern time.
Dow Jones industrial average futures were down 621 points, or 5.1 percent, to 11,485, while Standard & Poor’s 500 futures were down 70 points, or 5.3 percent, at 1,255.
Noritsugu Hirakawa, who monitors stock trading at Okasan Securities Co. in Tokyo, said investors were spooked by the drastic falls on Chinese and Indian markets--the two emerging economies that are viewed as sustaining global growth even as the US economy sputters. “The end to the slides in Asian stocks is nowhere in sight,“ he said. “There is even speculation that China may be exposed to the US subprime mortgage crisis.“
In Europe on Monday, investors also dumped stocks, sending the Britain’s benchmark FTSE-100 down 5.5 percent and France’s CAC-40 Index sliding 6.8 percent. Germany’s blue-chip DAX 30 plunged 7.2 percent to 6,790.19.
That sell-off continued Tuesday throughout Asia, with benchmark indices in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and the Philippines all falling more than 4 percent. Indonesia’s market sank 8.5 percent.
Asian markets have been in a downward spiral for most of January. Since the start of the year, Japan’s Nikkei index has tumbled nearly 18 percent, while the Hang Seng is down a stunning 21 percent.
Even the usually upbeat Japanese Economy Minister Hiroko Ota acknowledged that threats were growing.
Top European finance officials sounded the alarm on Monday about a possible US recession as fears about the health of the world’s biggest economy plunged global stocks deep into the red, AFP wrote.
“The situation is continuing to deteriorate in the United States,“ Luxembourg Finance Minister Jean-Claude Juncker said after chairing a meeting with counterparts from the 15 countries sharing the Euro.
“We are all concerned. We are following the events on a daily basis, we hope things will not be as bad as they may look,“ said Slovenian Finance Minister Andrej Bajuk, whose country holds the rotating EU presidency.
In related news, International Monetary Fund head Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned Monday that the global economic situation in the wake of a US slowdown was “serious“ and could impact the world’s emerging economies.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Jan. 22--European Union plans to cut greenhouse gas emissions could cost at least 60 billion euros ($86.6 billion) a year, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Monday.
“Taking action is not cost free, although we think we can limit the cost of our proposals to around 0.5 percent of gross domestic product,“ he said, according to remarks prepared for delivery in London, AFP wrote.
Barroso’s total estimate, which will apply for the next 12 years, counts on the 27 EU nations undertaking all the commission’s recommendations, in a package to be unveiled Wednesday, in an extremely cost efficient manner.
The bill for reducing carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020, compared to 1990 levels--the baseline goal of EU leaders--was previously estimated to be 1.0 percent of European GDP, or 120 billion euros a year.
EU leaders agreed in March last year that this target was the best way to contain global warming to less than two degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, as recommended by UN climate experts.
On the positive side, Barroso said, “Our proposals should reduce Europe’s reliance on imported gas and oil by around 50 billion euros by 2020. These are figures with a real impact on our growth and prosperity.“
He said the cost of inaction, as calculated by one of his key climate advisers, “could even approach 20 percent of GDP. The longer we delay, the higher the costs of adaptation and mitigation.“
The commission’s package aims to strengthen the EU’s emissions trading system, set targets for renewable energy use and review rules on national aid for environmental purposes.
When the bloc’s leaders set their goals last year, they offered to go 10 percent better than their own target, cutting emissions by 30 percent over the same period if others were prepared to match it, as an incentive to major polluters.
They also set a binding target for renewable energy to provide 20 percent of Europe’s needs by 2020, compared to 8.5 percent currently, and agreed that this should be achieved by some countries doing more than others.

BEIJING, Jan. 22--Foreign firms invested a record $82.7 billion in booming China last year, the government said Monday, with analysts adding the tide of money had undermined efforts to slow economic growth.
The 2007 figure for foreign direct investment, or FDI, was up 13.8 percent from a year earlier, the commerce ministry said in a statement, AFP wrote.
China has been striving to cool its economy over concerns that it could overheat and shudder into a sharp slowdown, but analysts said the nation’s still-explosive growth continued to lure foreign firms.
“Inbound FDI is in no way helping the government’s efforts to cool the economy, it is actually doing the opposite,“ said Feng Yuming, a Shanghai-based analyst with Oriental Securities.
Experts estimate China’s economy probably grew about 11.5 percent in 2007--the fifth consecutive year of double-digit percentage growth.
Official figures are due Thursday, with many forecasters optimistic that China will grow reasonably strongly this year too despite the prospect of a sharp economic slowdown or even recession in the US.
“Foreign investment may continue to rise at a fast pace in 2008 due to the rising value of China’s currency, the yuan“, Feng said.
“FDI growth may remain at the level of 10 percent or above because in order to build a factory, for example, it will take more foreign investment compared with before due to the further appreciation of the yuan,“ Feng said.
Total foreign direct investment, excluding that in the financial sector, amounted to $74.8 billion last year, up 13.6 percent year-on-year, the commerce ministry’s figures showed.
China drew a then record $69.46 billion in FDI in 2006. The government has been trying to channel the money away from real estate, resources and export-linked sectors in the interests of economic stability.
China’s politically-sensitive and growing trade surplus has led to foreign demands for the government to allow the yuan to rise more quickly. It rose from 7.80 yuan to the dollar at the beginning of 2007 to 7.24 by Friday last week.
Analysts expect the yuan to continue its rise in 2008, likely luring even more foreign investors.
“I think more hot money will come into China despite the government wanting the economy to slow down,“ Li Qing, a Shanghai-based analyst with E-capital Securities, told AFP.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Jan. 22--A new gigantic deposit of natural gas has been discovered near the shores of Brazil. The national oil company Petrobras, which announced the discovery, emphasized that the reserves of the newly-found gas deposit are comparable to those of the Tupi oilfield, Itar-Tass reported.
The discovery, known as Jupiter, is beneath more than 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) of ocean and seabed and contains natural gas liquids known as condensate. It’s located about 290 kilometers (180 miles) off the coast of Rio de Janeiro state, 37 kilometers from the Tupi field, Rio de Janeiro-based Petrobras said in a statement on Monday, Bloomberg wrote.
The discovery, if it contains as much gas and oil as Tupi, would be the second giant strike reported by Petrobras in the past 10 weeks. The Tupi field, disclosed Nov. 8, has as much as 8 billion barrels of oil and gas, three quarters of the reserves of Kazakhstan’s 12-billion-barrel Kashagan field. Kashagan was the largest oil discovery in the last three decades.
“This find makes it clear that what we have in Brazil is another huge geological basin,“ John Parry, senior analyst with Jonn S. Herold Inc., a Norwalk, Connecticut-based energy research unit of Denver-based IHS Inc., said in a telephone interview. “As they say the best place to find oil and gas is usually right near where you’ve already found it.“
Petrobras, which owns 80 percent of Jupiter and operates the well, said the oil bearing rock is more than 120 meters wide, suggesting that “the area of this structure could have dimensions similar to Tupi.“
Lisbon-based Galp, which also holds a stake in Tupi, owns 20 percent.
Should the estimates for Tupi and Jupiter be confirmed, it would more than double Petrobras’ 11.7 billion barrels of reserves, according to US Securities and Exchange Commission standards.
Brazil’s discoveries may result in the country overtaking such producers as Venezuela and Mexico and becoming a major supplier to the US, Parry said.
“It is conceivable that after 2010 or 2012 you could see Brazil and Petrobras matching Venezuela and exceeding them,“ he said. A Tupi sized field would likely produce about one million barrels a day in 5-to-10 years, he said.

Fair-goers check out bio salami on offer at an organic foods stand at the ÒGreen WeekÓ international food and agriculture fair in Berlin on Jan. 18.

FRANKFURT, Germany, Jan. 22--Organic foods are a victim of their own success, with production no longer able to keep up with demand while purists claim that the initial ideals of clean, natural and healthy produce have been sacrificed for profit.
Sales grew 15 percent in Germany last year and by almost 10 percent in France, with a multiplication of organic brands and the launch of such produce lines by large supermarket chains previously associated with cheaper foods, AFP wrote.
Enthusiasm for all things organic began as a movement led by hard-core nature enthusiasts, mainly in northern Europe, but now gains more and more adepts.
A “Green Week“ at Germany’s agricultural fair saw organic brands with a hall of their own while visitors tucked into organically produced sausages.
The flip side of the coin however is that European production is not keeping pace with demand. Many fruits, vegetables and honey must now be imported from places as far away as Turkey and Latin America. “That poses a problem of credibility,“ according to Alexander Rogge of the French Federation of Commerce and Distribution FCD.
The organic label refers to methods of production which exclude the use of fertilizers and pesticides and which respect certain norms of animal feeding. But for many it is also a profession of faith in a healthy lifestyle that respects the environment--a view that fits poorly with tomatoes flown from Chile or lamb from New Zealand, generating pollution in the process.
“For many, organic products are regional products,“ said Rainer Mihr, editor of the German food industry trade magazine Lebensmittel Praxis.
“What is the situation regarding quality and certification“ of imported products, wondered Uli Schnier, who runs a group of Dutch organic distributors. How can one be sure that dried fruit from Turkey is produced according to the same criteria as those in France, for example? Beyond the question of certification, for purists the rapid expansion of the sector itself poses a problem.
“We are happy that the commercial sector, including major distributors, have joined the movement,“ said Alexander Gerber, who runs the German federation of organic food traders. But finding organic foods in low-cost supermarkets gives him food for thought.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22--Google attacked European parliamentarians and privacy advocates on Monday for trying to have competition authorities consider the handling of personal information in its $3.1 billion takeover of rival DoubleClick.
The argument was the centerpiece of a European Parliament hearing to consider the burgeoning role of the Internet in impinging on the privacy of citizens, Reuters wrote.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) signed off last month on Google’s $3.1 billion deal, which combines its dominance in pay-per-click Internet advertising with DoubleClick’s market-leading position in display ads.
After listening to a visiting FTC commissioner, US and European privacy advocates and European parliamentarians question the impact of the deal on European citizens’ on-line privacy, Google’s global privacy counsel shot back.
“People (are) trying to take a privacy case and shoehorn it into a competition law review ... I can understand that people continue to peddle this theory in Europe after having lost in the United States,“ Peter Fleischer said. His attack did little to calm the waters.
“The reason you want to have the data is because it gives you a competitive advantage. It is business. I don’t think they can be completely disconnected. And we should discuss that side of things too,“ said Sophie in ’t Veld, the Dutch parliamentarian who sought the hearing.
Federal Trade Commissioner Pamela Harbour said her four colleagues at the FTC had taken a traditional approach and excluded questions of privacy in their decision. She dissented.
“I believe a traditional approach does not capture the interests of all the parties. There is no proxy for the consumer whose privacy is at stake,“ she said.
The European Commission has said it will not take privacy into consideration. In the past six years, it has not turned down any all-US deal approved by US authorities.
Fleischer, asked about the deal rationale, said Google wanted to get into banner advertising. He said his firm did not build dossiers on individuals through searches, instead using the words of each search to decide what ads to display with it.
Contractual limits would prevent Google from using DoubleClick information from individuals, he said.

SYDNEY, Australia, Jan. 22--BHP Billiton is unlikely to increase its $130 billion unsolicited proposal to acquire mining rival Rio Tinto by a Feb. 6 deadline, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. BHP could be trying to pressure Rio to negotiate by holding firm with its three-for-one share offer, which has yet to be formalized, the newspaper said, citing sources familiar with the company’s plans, Reuters wrote.
But with stock prices for both companies spiraling down in step with a general rout across equities markets, such a strategy could backfire, analysts said. BHP’s Australian shares tumbled nearly 6 percent on Tuesday, while Rio was down more than 10 percent, outpacing losses of about 5 percent in Australia’s benchmark S&P/ASX 200 index.
After Rio’s sharp slide, DJ Carmichael & Co mining analyst James Wilson said BHP could be seen as taking an opportunistic line if they opt to proceed with their original proposal.
Speculation had swirled on Friday that BHP was readying a sweetened offer of 3.58 of its shares, plus A$16.50. BHP has refused to comment on the Wall Street Journal report or on market speculation.
Rio has tumbled from a peak of A$146.90 on December 3 to as low as A$103.20 Tuesday
On Sunday, Rio Tinto Chief Executive Tom Albanese left the door open to a sweetened takeover offer from BHP Billiton but said Rio would be happy to grow on its own if BHP walked away.
The world’s biggest miner, BHP, must make a formal offer by Feb. 6 or leave Rio alone for at least six months under a deadline imposed by Britain’s Takeover Panel.
The mining industry has seen a crush of merger activity in recent months. The latest development came on Monday when Brazilian mining giant Vale said it was in talks to acquire Anglo-Swiss rival Xstrata. The deal could top $100 billion, analysts said.