One of the world's largest shopping malls is due to open toward the end of the year in the booming Gulf retail paradise of Dubai, developers announced on Tuesday.

Dubai Mall -- covering an area of 12 million square feet (1.1 million square metres) -- will feature 1,200 stores, an indoor aquarium and an Olympic-sized ice rink, the emirate's real estate developer Emaar said in a statement.

The development will dwarf the Mall of the Emirates, currently Dubai's largest retail centre that itself boasts an indoor ski slope and a luxury hotel.

Dubai Mall will become "the region's premier shopping and entertainment destination for residents and a major attraction for Dubai's tourists", said Jim Badour, head of Emaar's shopping malls division.

The mall will be part of a wider multi-billion-dollar development that includes the world's tallest tower.

Burj Dubai is still under construction, but it overtook Taiwan's Taipei 101 tower as the world's tallest building when it reached 512 metres (1,533 feet) in June 2007. Its eventual height remains a closely-guarded secret.

Dubai, a member of the oil-rich United Arab Emirates federation, holds a hugely popular annual shopping festival.

The city state attracts millions of visitors each year, positioning itself as a global leisure and financial hub.

Virgin Group Ltd. has had discussions with Dubai International Capital LLC about obtaining investment support, the London-based Times reported, without saying where it got the information.

Virgin wants partners to help fund the expansion of its airline, mobile-phone and gym businesses, particularly in India, east Asia and the Middle East, the newspaper said. A group of Virgin executives may have met DIC officials in Dubai recently, although the company declined to comment on the talks, the Times said.

Funding possibilities include a sale of a stake in Virgin's health-club business or a mobile-phone joint venture in the Middle East, the newspaper said.

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National City Corp (NCC.N), which has been battered by the housing downturn, is considering a plan to sell itself to rival KeyCorp (KEY.N), the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, citing sources familiar with the matter.

If the transaction is to occur, the combined company would receive a capital infusion from private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR.UL), sources told the newspaper.

On Tuesday the U.S. regional bank said its board is reviewing a range of strategic alternatives and that it had hired Goldman Sachs (GS.N) as its advisor.

Representatives of National City, KeyCorp, or KKR could not immediately be reached for comment.

(Reporting by Justin Grant, editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

The Swedish town of Vaexjoe will be "green" or will not be at all. That's the slogan in this town that has become a world leader in environmental protection and has even loftier goals.

While the European Union (EU) aims to raise its share of renewable energy consumption to 20 percent by 2020, Vaexjoe, a town of 80,000 people nestled between lakes and forests in Sweden's south, can boast of already exceeding 50 percent -- and 90 percent when it comes to heating.

Carbon dioxide emissions per inhabitant dropped by 30 percent between 1993 and 2006.

"It's a lot but we're not satisfied, we want to reduce them further," says Henrik Johansson, an environmental expert at city hall.

Wall Street analysts have cut their first-quarter earnings forecasts for U.S. companies and are now projecting a sharper decline, figures from Reuters Estimates showed on Monday.

Earnings for Standard & Poor's 500 companies are now expected to fall 8.1 percent in the first quarter, compared with the 5.5 percent decline projected last week.

At the beginning of the quarter, analysts projected 4.7 percent earnings growth during the period.

The worsening global credit crisis has significantly damaged the outlook for many major U.S. companies, particularly in the finance sector.