India's Tata Motors has placed a $350 million bid to buy bankrupt Swedish car maker Saab Automobile, a newspaper report said Tuesday.

"Tata's global acquisition team has been in negotiations with Saab and private equity players for a prospective acquisition by its Jaguar-Land Rover unit," the Financial Express newspaper reported, quoting an unnamed source.

Singapore Telecom said Monday that it will buy a U.S. mobile advertising start-up for $321 million to expand group revenues from phone ads and marketing across Asia.

SingTel, Southeast Asia's biggest telecom firm by revenue, said its 100 percent buyout of Amobee would boost mobile ad sales in India, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Pakistan, where it has large affiliates.

China's premier on Monday cut the economic giant's growth target to 7.5 percent for 2012 as he opened a parliament session focused on growth, stability and military might ahead of a leadership change.

Premier Wen Jiabao also said China must boost the capacity of its forces to fight wars on their own doorstep, as he delivered his opening address to the annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's parliament.

Sales of French champagne, the favored sparkling tipple for any celebration, rose 7.0 percent by value last year, driven by strong export demand, especially in new markets such as China.

Industry group CIVC said some 323 million bottles of champagne worth 4.4 billion euros ($5.9 billion) were drunk in 2011, with sales helped by continued gains in some of the most upmarket brands.

A South Korean energy group is to invest $2 billion as part of a project to develop three oil fields in the United Arab Emirates, officials said Monday.

The state-run Korea National Oil Corp. and energy firm GS Energy will hold a combined 40 percent stake in the $5 billion project, with Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. taking the remaining stake, the Knowledge Economy Ministry said.

An emergency plan to re-launch its impoverished economy is to be presented to a "Friends of Yemen" forum of aid donors in Riyadh in April, the planning minister said Saturday.

Yemen's interim transitional administration drew up "an emergency plan to re-launch the economy" and will submit it to the meeting, said Mohammed al-Saadi.

General Motors Co. is suspending production of its Chevrolet Volt electric car for five weeks amid disappointing sales.

A GM spokesman said Friday that the company will shut down production of the Volt from March 19 until April 23, idling 1,300 workers at the Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant.

China might set an annual economic growth target below 8.0 percent for this year, state media said Saturday, as the leaders of the world's second largest economy acknowledge it is slowing.

The report in the official Shanghai Securities News came before Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao delivers an annual policy address to lawmakers on Monday, when he is due to announce economic goals for the year.

The ratings agency Moody's downgraded Greece to the lowest rating on its bond scale late Friday, following a deal with private investors that would see them ultimately lose an estimated 70 percent of their holdings in Greek debt.

Moody's lowered Greece's sovereign rating to C from Ca, arguing that the risk of default remains high even a bond-swap deal with banks and other private investors, due to be completed this month, is successful.

BP said Friday it reached a $7.8 billion deal to settle claims from fishermen and other private claimants affected by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill ahead of the start of a blockbuster U.S. trial.

The settlement does not affect what is anticipated to be tens of billions in fines and claims from the U.S. government and the coastal states and local governments impacted by the spill.