U.S. AUTO SALES continued to slump in September despite customer incentives and falling gas prices, with Ford Motor Co. posting a 35% drop.

Chinese oil company Cnooc Ltd. is bidding for natural gas assets in the Caribbean, and is teaming up with refiner China Petrochemical Corp. to buy a stake in an Angolan oil field, the latest efforts by Chinese state-owned energy companies to expand their global reach.

NEW DELHI

GLOBAL AUTO MAKERS are nishing to challenge the dominance of Toyota Motor Corp.'s Prius hybrid with a slew of eco-friendly vehicles. But Honda Motor Co. is likely to pose the most formidable threat to Toyota when it unveils its new Insight hybrid car Thursday at the Paris Auto Show.

Biotechnology seed company Monsanto Co. said profit from its corn-seed business this year will exceed $2 billion for the first time, a reflection of the company's ability to cash in on the global grain boom.

THE U.S. BAN ON some medicines made by India's largest pharmaceutical company adds a black mark against India's booming drug and drug-testing industries, which already have been under pressure over the country's lax monitoring of drug safety.

EUROPEAN Union lawmakers voted to cut in half, to 5%, an ambitious target for using crop-based biofuels for European road transport needs by 2020.

HUSUM, Germany

Intel Corp. is expanding its line of Xeon chips for server systems with four models that boost computing performance and energy efficiency.

China turning its environmental problems into a shrewdly managed financial asset, capitalizing on corporate and governmental efforts to curb global warming. But how mch China'a actions will do for