CHINA

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has assured President Obama he will keep his position through the current term, despite calls for him to resign in light of the S&P downgrade.

Mauritius is cutting its foreign reserve exposure to the U.S. dollar and the euro due to debt concerns in both regions by purchasing commodity currencies and is eyeing government securities from some of the BRIC nations, it said on Monday.

China's foreign minister was due to meet Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Monday for the highest-level talks between the two allies in the Sudanese capital since South Sudan seceded to form an independent state.

President Robert Mugabe said on Monday Zimbabwe would punish firms from Western states who have slapped sanctions on senior officials in his ZANU-PF party, warning that global miners including Rio Tinto could be hit.

In 1986, Moody?s and Standard & Poor?s cut Australia?s debt rating, prompting the Canberra government to impose strict budget cuts.

Credit ratings agency S&P threw a monkey wrench in the works by downgrading its long-term credit rating for the U.S. from AAA to AA+, just days after President Obama signed a debt-limit compromise.

The crises at the heart of the international financial and political system go beyond the debt woes currently gripping the Western world and to the heart of the way the global economy has been run for over two decades.

Recent unrest in Xinjiang ? blamed by the national government on Uighur Muslim militants -- has led to dozens of deaths.

U.S. markets shed as much as two percent at the open Monday, on news of the S&P's U.S. debt rating downgrade and subsequent plummets in global markets overnight.

At one time during the trading session, the Kospi index was down by as much as 7.4 percent.

The U.S. credit rating downgrade could have easily been avoided, but political power struggles in Washington got in the way. Now, markets are reeling and damage has been done. But it's not too late to fix the problem, so that Moody's and other ratings agencies keep the U.S. with a AAA rating.

Chinese state media on Monday blamed Washington's huge military spending and global footprint for the crisis that led to the U.S. debt rating downgrade, calling for an end to the foreign domineering dragging down its economy.

It is not clear that Moody's or Fitch will follow suit and cut the U.S. credit rating.

Moody's says a future downgrade of the U.S. credit rating from AAA is possible. Also, global markets reacted harshly overnight to S&P's U.S. credit rating downgrade announced late Friday.

Global markets plummeted overnight night as news of the U.S. downgrade. Monday is the first day of trading in the U.S. and futures pointed sharply lower early by 6:30 a.m.

Britain and several euro zone countries are likely to have their credit ratings cut in coming months as debt problems worsen, and Western policymakers are bound to embark on more quantitative easing to get their economies moving, American investor Jim Rogers said on Monday.

Moody's Investors Service warned Japan that ineffective currency intervention would be negative for its sovereign ratings and would not help it restore its finances, even as G7 policymakers tried to show solidarity against market turmoil sparked by U.S. and European debt woes.

German premium carmaker BMW said unit sales rose 7.6 percent in July, driven by growth in demand from the United States and China.

Japan's Nikkei stock average slid more than 2 percent on Monday as weak sentiment following Standard & Poor's downgrade of the United States' credit rating was exacerbated by futures selling after Asian markets tumbled.

U.S. Open champion Rory McIlroy has signed up to headline a made-for-television golf odyssey through China this year to showcase the sport in the country and the nation's fast-growing cities to the rest of the world.

The European Central Bank stepped into bond markets on Monday, backing up a pledge to support Spain and Italy with the aim of averting financial meltdown in the euro zone, while the G7 and G20 offered soothing words to investors shaken by a historic downgrade of the U.S. debt rating.