A Japanese Finance Ministry official says Tokyo is hoping the recent flare-up in friction with China will not damage the two Asian economic powers' cooperation in international finance.

Takehiko Nakao, a vice minister for finance, said reports Wednesday that representatives of some big Chinese banks were canceling plans to attend the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Tokyo next week was "very disappointing."

The British government has scrapped a controversial decision to strip Richard Branson's Virgin Group of a major rail franchise, citing significant flaws in the way the decision was made.

The government announced in August that it was awarding a 13-year franchise to run the west coast London-to-Scotland service to Virgin's rival FirstGroup.

Taiwan's debt-ridden memory chip maker ProMOS Technologies plans to lay off 1,360 employees, or 80 percent of its total workforce, officials said Wednesday.

The decision is part of a court-approved restructuring plan forced on the company by its creditors, according to the Central Taiwan Science Park, where some of the company's facilities are located.

Surprise good news from the U.S. continued to shore up financial markets Tuesday despite concerns about the economic outlook of both Greece and Spain.

In what will be a busy week for U.S. economic data, investors are assessing whether the world's largest economy may be getting over its recent soft patch.

Europe's banks should create a firewall between their traditional retail banking operations and more risky investment banking ones and force executives to personally take losses when their banks fail, a new expert report suggested Tuesday.

The continent's banks are in trouble: Government and real estate debt taken on in boom times — when both were considered safe — have plummeted in value. That's left many banks going hat in hand to their governments for rescue loans. But European governments are themselves struggling with high debt and are in many cases having difficulty helping their banks.

The economic crises rocking Spain and Morocco may favor stronger ties between the neighboring kingdoms ahead of a top-level Spanish delegation's visit to Rabat, despite their historic differences.

Prime ministers Abdelilah Benkirane of Morocco and Spain's Mariano Rajoy are to meet on Wednesday in the Moroccan capital for the first such high-level encounter in four years.

Australia's central bank on Tuesday cut interest rates to 3.25 percent, their lowest level since the global financial crisis, warning that the growth outlook for next year had weakened.

The Reserve Bank of Australia slashed 25 basis points off the cash rate, taking it to lows not seen since October 2009, when it first resumed hiking them following the world downturn.

The head of the Arab Monetary Fund said Monday that the Arab Spring uprisings and the global financial crisis have hit hard the economies of countries struck by revolts over the past years.

"These countries have started to suffer from severe contraction in growth, an alarming rise in unemployment rates ... a deterioration in foreign reserves and a hike in inflation," Jassem al-Mannai told an Arab meeting in Kuwait.

Iran's currency plummeted at least 17 percent in trading on Monday, according to media and an online exchange website, severely adding to strains on the Islamic republic's sanctions-hit economy.

The currency, the rial, weakened to 34,700 to the dollar by the end of the day's trading, according to the Mesghal.com website, a drop of 17 percent compared to the previous day's rate of 29,600.

Official data show that unemployment in the 17 countries that use the euro remained at its record high of 11.4 percent in August.

While European leaders have managed to calm financial markets in recent months with promises to cut spending and build a tighter union, they have been unable to halt the rising tide of joblessness.