A pedestrian watches an electric market board in Tokyo on Wednesday.

BANGKOK, Thailand, Feb. 6--Asian markets plunged Wednesday after a steep drop on Wall Street overnight fanned investors’ fears the US economy was sliding into a recession that could sap demand for Asian exports.
In Hong Kong, the benchmark Hang Seng index plunged 1,339.24 points, or 5.4 percent, to close the half-day session at 23,469.46. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index was down 3.8 percent in afternoon trading, AP wrote.
“It’s unbridled pessimism,“ said Francis Lun, general manager at Fulbright Securities Ltd. in Hong Kong. “Everyone is concentrating on a US recession, but Europe is also looking bad.... We are in for a bear market now.“
Investors were unnerved by economic data Tuesday showing the US service sector shrank last month for the first time since March 2003. That seemed to wipe out some nascent optimism about the American economy after the US Federal Reserve’s two big rate cuts late last month, which gave many markets a lift.
Pessimism returned when the Institute for Supply Management reported that its December index of activity in the US service sector, which accounts for about two-thirds of the economy, dropped below 50, indicating contraction. That sent the Dow Jones industrial average plunging 2.93 percent, its largest one-day percentage drop since Feb. 27, 2007.
European markets also sank Tuesday in reaction to the news, with the UK’s FTSE 100 Index sliding 2.6 percent and France’s CAC-40 Index falling 4 percent.
Global financial markets have turbulent since the start of the year, mostly tumbling amid worries about a US--and worldwide--slowdown and massive losses racked up by banks that made bad bets on securities backed by risky mortgages.
Asian investors appeared increasingly anxious about a slump in Europe, another vital export market.
“There’s a real probability that both the US and Europe will go into recession at the same time,“ said Lun. “It’s a financial mess on the two continents with the subprime crisis and the SocGen debacle.“
The financial industry, already reeling from losses linked to the credit crisis, was dealt another blow last month when major French bank Societe Generale said it had lost about $7.1 billion in cleaning up unauthorized transactions by a rogue trader.
Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific, Australia’s key index fell 3.2 percent, while India’s Sensex index was down 2.5 percent. Thailand’s market slid 2.4 percent.

UkraineÕs President Viktor Yushchenko (l) and WTO Director General Pascal Lamy sign documents on UkraineÕs accession during the signing ceremony at WTO headquarters in Geneva on Feb. 4.

GENEVA, Feb. 6--Ukraine was approved as the newest member of the World Trade Organization on Tuesday, a move that President Viktor Yushchenko believes will significantly boost his country’s economy.
The Ukrainian parliament now has six months to ratify the accession agreement, which follows nearly 15 years of often torturous negotiations.
The accord, signed with WTO head Pascal Lamy amid great pomp at a ceremony at WTO headquarters in Geneva, leaves Russia as the world’s only major economy still outside the global trade monitoring body.
“Thanks to our integration into the global economy, there will be a 1.7 percent improvement in our gross domestic product,“ Yushchenko told journalists after the ceremony.
WTO membership “will boost foreign direct investment by $3.5 billion (2.4 billion euros) and exports by $4 billion per year,“ the president said.
Russia welcomed the accession, saying it hoped it would ease and clarify trade relations between the two former Soviet republics. “We are very glad. The reaction is very positive,“ said Yuri Afanasiev, senior consular head of the trade policy section of the Russian mission in Geneva.
“Last year the trade between our two countries increased by 30 percent. We believe it’s positive because our relation will be based on international regulated rules,“ he told AFP.
Yushchenko said earlier that he hoped being in the WTO would give Ukraine “leverage“ in its dealings with Russia. But he struck a more conciliatory note on Tuesday, saying he hoped Russia would soon also join the global trade body. “I am sure we would benefit from Russia joining the WTO,“ he said.
Kiev has already said it would seek a free trade agreement with the European Union upon joining the WTO.
Ukraine struck a deal with Brussels on export duties at the end of January, paving the way for the WTO accession agreement.
The chair of the WTO working group on Ukraine’s membership, Chilean ambassador Mario Matus, said the accession process was “long and arduous and required difficult policy decisions from Ukraine.“
Under the deal, Ukraine will restrict the number of existing export duties and not increase them in the future, trade sources said last month. These duties are applied on live cattle, animal skins, ferrous and non-ferrous particles, the sources added.

DUBAI, UAE, Feb. 6--Asian exporting countries, mainly China, should provide enough information about their exports to help in the fight against counterfeiting, the head of the World Customs Organization said Tuesday.
WCO secretary general Michel Danet said a transit hub like the Persian Gulf emirate of Dubai could not curb the transiting of counterfeits if exporting countries did not cooperate, AFP wrote.
“The problem for the emirate is making sure that all this trade is moving while still respecting international laws,“ he told AFP on the sidelines of a conference on combating counterfeiting and piracy held in Dubai.
“If Dubai cannot rely on the cooperation of Asian countries and (mainly) China when there are 11 million containers (being handled annually in the emirate), not everything can be checked,“ he said.
He said the WCO and its partners, who took part in the fourth global congress to combat counterfeiting that ended Tuesday, want to see cooperation between exporting and importing countries, including the transiting hubs.
In Dubai “they are trying to manage the problem. They have put in place the needed legislation and the teams ... but they don’t have information about what is arriving from China,“ for example, he said.
The city state Jebel Ali Free Zone is home to the largest man-made port in the world that handles the biggest container ships. Dubai ports handled some 8.92 million TEU (twenty-foot equivalent units) in 2006.
David Benjamin, co-chair of Business Action to Stop Counterfeiting and Piracy, urged conference participants to call for “shutting down piracy in free trade zones“ worldwide, among other measures to fight counterfeiting.
Danet told a press conference earlier that Arab countries are cooperating to fight global counterfeiting, adding that the WCO has established cooperation with the Arab League and the Persian Gulf Cooperation Council.
“The PGCC countries have understood what is at stake and they ... don’t want to be contaminated by illicit goods,“ he said.
“Counterfeiting today kills people,“ Danet said, pointing out that medicines are also being counterfeited.

BRUSSELS, Belgium, Feb. 6--A service sector slump in January plunged business activity in the nations sharing the euro to the lowest level in over three years, a widely watched survey showed Wednesday.
An NTC Research survey of business leaders fell to 51.8 points in January from 53.3 points in December for the lowest reading since November 2004, AFP wrote.
The result fell short an initial estimate of 52.7 points but was still above the 50-point level that indicates expansion.
However, the index of service sector activity fell even more sharply, catching economists off guard and raising fears that growing headwinds facing the 15-nation eurozone economy were taking their toll.
The service sector index fell to a four-and-a-half-year low of 50.6 points in January, down from a first estimate of 52.0 points and a reading of 53.1 points in December.
“The substantial downward revision in the January eurozone service sector business activity index is an absolute shocker,“ economist Howard Archer said at consultants Global Insight.
He said it “highlights the increasing pressure that the eurozone economy is coming under from the credit crunch and financial market turbulence, the strong euro, elevated oil and commodity prices, higher interest rates and softer growth in key export markets.“
Economist Ben May at consultants Capital Economics said the overall data pointed to growth of only 0.2 percent in the first quarter, low enough to force the European Central Bank to contemplate easing interest rates.
“In all then, the further weakening in eurozone activity supports our view that the ECB will begin to loosen interest rates as early as June,“ he said.

CAIRO, Egypt, Feb. 6--Work to repair snapped undersea Internet cables in the Mediterranean Sea finally kicked off on Tuesday and is likely to be completed in a week’s time.
The break in the cable largely disrupted net services and communication links in the Middle East and India and slowed down internet services across continents, ANI wrote.
According to FLAG Telecoms the team involved in repairing procedure include about 50 people, along with navigation experts and cable engineers.
The ship fixing the first severed cable has already started its work and the work on the second cable was expected to start on Tuesday. “It will be a highly technical job and should take a week to complete,“ BBC quoted a Flag Telecom spokesperson, as saying.
Though the cause is still unknown it has been said that breaks was due to a ship dragging its anchor along the sea bed.
However, the Egyptian communications ministry has denied any ships were in the area at the time of the break.
About 60 percent of the net services were disrupted in India while 70 percent of the nationwide network in Egypt was disrupted.

LONDON, Feb. 6--The European Union and the aerospace industry launched on Tuesday a project to pump 1.6 billion euros ($2.3 billion) into less polluting aviation technology over the coming seven years. The so-called Clean Sky program aims to encourage innovations in technologies such as wing design, quieter engines, fuel consumption and developing routes that cause less pollution, AFP wrote.
The money, half of which is to come from the EU’s research budget, will be dished out over the next seven years, with individual research projects due to be selected by a tender process in the first two years.
“The next generation of airplanes will be out in 12 years. It’s the right time to be looking at the technology,“ said Marc Ventre, who heads the aerospace propulsion division of French conglomerate Safran. He said that the new generation of aircraft would have 12 to 20 percent lower emissions of greenhouse gases and make 10 percent less noise.
The president of Swedish group Saab, Ake Svensson, said, “The carbon footprint aviation leaves behind is seen as not being acceptable and Clean Sky is an excellent way of addressing the challenges we face in developing more sustainable aviation.“
Meanwhile, British engineers unveiled plans Tuesday for a hypersonic jet which could fly from Europe to Australia in less than five hours.
The A2 plane, designed by engineering company Reaction Engines based in Oxfordshire, southern England, could carry 300 passengers at a top speed of almost 4,000 mph (6,400 kmh), five times the speed of sound.
The LAPCAT (Long-Term Advanced Propulsion Concepts and Technologies) project, backed by the European Space Agency, could see the plane operating within 25 years, the firm’s boss Alan Bond told the Guardian daily.
“The A2 is designed to leave Brussels international airport, fly quietly and subsonically out into the north Atlantic at mach 0.9 before reaching mach 5 across the North Pole and heading over the Pacific to Australia,“ he said.
The plane, which at 143 meters (469 feet) long would be about twice the size of the biggest current jets, could fly non-stop for up to 12,500 miles (20,000 km).
It operates on liquid hydrogen, which is more ecologically friendly as it gives off water and nitrous oxide instead of carbon emissions.

MANAMA, Bahrain, Feb. 6--The PGCC could export electricity to Europe once its power grid is operational, a senior official said. It could help meet Europe’s peak demand in the winter, when Middle East demand falls, says PGCC Interconnection Authority systems operations and maintenance director Ahmed Ali Ebrahim, TradeArabia wrote.
“Once the grid is up and running there will be the possibility of selling excess electricity up north, to Iraq, Syria and Turkey and eventually to Europe. That is our vision,“ he said.
“In this region we are close to abundant supplies of cheap, natural resources and we will have the possibility of exchanging power to meet the different seasonal cycles between Europe and the Middle East.“In this part of the world the high demand cycle is in the summer, when air-conditioning is needed.
“With the development of more industry in the region, winter demand is increasing but we should still have the potential for oversupply that would allow us to export electricity north, if the infrastructure is in place.“
Ebrahim was speaking at the Power-Gen Middle East conference and exhibition, which ended at the Bahrain International Exhibition Center on Tuesday.
Fifty-five percent of the power grid has already been constructed with a completion date set for December 24 for the grid to be up and running between Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar.
The link to the UAE and Oman could be complete by the end of next year.

PARIS, Feb. 6--French trader Jerome Kerviel said on Tuesday he refuses to be a “scapegoat“ for multi-billion euro rogue trade losses at Societe Generale bank, in an exclusive interview with AFP.
“I was designated (as solely responsible) by Societe Generale. I accept my share of responsibility but I will not be made a scapegoat for Societe Generale,“ he said, in his first interview at his lawyer’s Paris offices since the scandal broke last month.
Kerviel refused to discuss the details of the affair, saying he was “saving his statement for the judges.“ Societe Generale accuses Kerviel of causing it losses of 4.8 billion euros ($7.1 billion), by placing more than 50 billion euros in unauthorized futures trades, discovered on January 20.
He was charged last week with breach of trust, using false documents and unauthorized computer access, although judges did not approve the more serious charge of fraud.
Societe Generale maintains that Kerviel managed to circumvent internal controls by using stolen computer access codes and fictitious documents.
Kerviel admitted during questioning to falsifying company emails to cover his tracks after he started making unauthorized deals in 2005.
But he also told investigators the bank must have known what he was doing because of the profits he had generated previously, and suggested his bosses turned a blind eye as long as he was not in the red.
The trader, who lives in the chic Paris suburb of Neuilly, has been released from custody but kept under judicial supervision with round-the-clock police protection during the investigation. Prosecutors appealed the decision to release him, with a ruling due Friday.
According to a judicial source, he was questioned again for eight hours on Monday by judges who asked him about his working conditions at the Societe Generale trading desk, which he joined in 2005.