Chinese ratings agency Dagong said Tuesday it was tying up with U.S. and Russian partners to form a new "independent" group to rival U.S.-based agencies it claims have "proven inadequate".

The Chinese firm will set up the joint venture with Egan-Jones Ratings Co. (EJR), based in Pennsylvania, and Russia's RusRating JSC, it said in an invitation for a press conference Wednesday to unveil the new company.

Toyota Motor is cutting its target of producing more than 10 million vehicles this year after suffering a sales drop in key market China amid strained Sino-Japanese ties, a report said Tuesday.

Japan's biggest automaker had aimed to top the 10-million mark in what would have been a first for the company, saying earlier this year that it expected global output to hit 10.05 million vehicles in 2012.

Singapore has opened a new cruise terminal capable of berthing the world's biggest luxury liners, in a bid to boost the city-state's position as a regional travel hub.

The Marina Bay Cruise Center Singapore was opened late Monday with company officials saying it will allow the island-state to tap the growing number of people in Asia taking leisure trips on luxury vessels.

Australia on Monday cut its growth and budget surplus forecasts as worsening global conditions hurt revenues in the mining-driven economy.

In a mid-year economic review, Treasurer Wayne Swan said real GDP growth was forecast at 3.0 percent this fiscal year -- from 3.25 percent predicted in May -- while the surplus will shrink to Aus$1.1 billion (U.S.$1.13 billion).

Germany is planning to warn Britain that an upcoming European summit may be canceled if London insists on vetoing any deal that does not freeze EU spending, the Financial Times reported on Monday.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to persuade her British counterpart, Prime Minister David Cameron, to support a compromise capping European Union spending at 1.0 percent of European gross domestic product, the newspaper reported without revealing its sources.

The German economy, Europe's biggest, will see a sharp slowdown in growth at the end of the year, the finance ministry wrote in its monthly report published Monday.

Germany has so far held up to Europe's long-running sovereign debt crisis much better than its eurozone neighbors.

Asia will be the first to feel the impact of any Middle East oil supply disruption as regional demand surges, the International Energy Agency said Monday.

IEA executive director Maria van der Hoeven said in Singapore that most of the new oil demand in the next five years will come from Asia, the Middle East and former Soviet Union states.

Government spending cuts brought some tens of thousands of people on to the streets of London and other British cities on Saturday in protest, with union leaders expected to call for a general strike.

Marchers carried signs reading "No cuts" and "Tax justice not tax havens", condemning the austerity measures introduced by Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government in a bid to reduce Britain's huge deficit.

Japanese automaker Nissan announced plans Friday to add 810 jobs to its Tennessee factory to support a third shift as it expands local production of its core models.

Nissan said it aims to have 85 percent of all Nissan and Infiniti products that are sold in the United States produced in North America by 2015.

European leaders agreed Friday to police thousands of eurozone banks beginning next year as they sought to create much-needed jobs in their austerity-battered economies.

By the close of a two-day summit, France and Germany had patched up differences over how to beat the debt crisis, with the new watchdog for 6,000 banks a key condition for allowing a dedicated rescue fund to re-float troubled lenders.