Manila - Philippine stocks continued to freefall on Thursday, after a slight recovery a day earlier, with the main index plunging 4.25 per cent.

The Philippine Stock Exchange's 30-share composite index lost 104.63 points to close at 2,352.37 from Wednesday's finish of 2,457.00.

A total of 1.81 billion shares worth 2.15 billion pesos (45.74 million dollars) were traded.

Losers swamped gainers 117 to 14, with 23 issues unchanged.

Hong Kong - Hong Kong shares fell by more than 5 per cent in the first hour of trading Thursday in one of the city's worst financial weeks on record.

The Hang Seng Index, which had already lost 5.4 per cent of its value Tuesday and another 3.63 per cent Wednesday, was down by 895 points or 5.04 per cent at 11 am Thursday.

The index, shaken by the news coming out of the US since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, has now lost nearly 3,000 points since the beginning of the week. Monday was a public holiday in Hong Kong.

Wellington - The New Zealand stock market, which rallied Wednesday after recording its biggest fall in six years a day earlier, opened sharply lower Thursday following big losses overnight on Wall Street.

The benchmark NZX 50 index fell 86.9 points, or 2.7 per cent, in early trading to 3,183, after rising 1.3 per cent the previous day on the back of renewed confidence after the US Federal Reserve's bail- out loan to insurance giant American International Group (AIG).

Sydney - Australian shares ga

Washington - In a country that prides itself on free-market principles, US taxpayer dollars are are already on the hook for more than 300 billion dollars in financial industry bailouts, and, by some accounts, the government is just getting started.

The Federal Reserve's unprecedented, 85-billion-dollar loan and effective takeover of the largest US insurer, American International Group Inc, was only the latest in a string of emergency interventions this year on Wall Street.