* Obama warns of "catastrophe" if stimulus bill is not passed
* Toyota sees bigger losses as global sales slide
* U.S. data seen showing more than 500,000 jobs lost in Jan
* Australia central bank cuts growth forecast to near-zero
* News Corp posts biggest ever quarterly loss
By Thomas Ferraro and Lucia Mutikani
WASHINGTON, Feb 6 (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama urged action on a $900 billion stimulus bill before Congress to stave off "catastrophe", as a surge in the number of new jobless benefit claims painted a picture of an economy in deep recession.
Hopes that the U.S. government will make new moves to shore up the battered financial system boosted Asian stocks on Friday, but the prospect of more grim jobs data from the United States later in the day pushed the dollar lower.
In a dramatic illustration of the impact the global downturn is having on consumption, Toyota Motor Corp, the world's biggest car maker, said it expected its full-year loss would be three times what it flagged just six weeks ago.
In Australia, one of the few developed nations not officially in recession, the central bank, in a major downgrade, predicted the economy would barely grow at all in 2009.
The U.S. Senate was due to resume debate on the stimulus plan on Friday, after abruptly calling a halt to a drive to forge a bipartisan agreement on Thursday night, and Majority Leader Harry Reid said he was "cautiously optimistic" of it passing.
"If we do not move swiftly to sign the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, an economy that is already in crisis will be faced with catastrophe," Obama said during a meeting with lawmakers from his Democratic Party in Virginia.
RATE CUTS
A financial crisis that began with a collapse in risky U.S. home loans, devastating the banking sector, has pushed the United States, the euro zone, Britain and Japan into recession.
Central banks worldwide have cut interest rates sharply to stimulate demand after mass layoffs and factory closures, with the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan pushing rates to near zero in recent months.
In the latest cut, the Bank of England slashed its benchmark rate by half a percentage point to 1.0 percent on Thursday, the lowest since the central bank was created more than three centuries ago.
Underlining the economic fallout of the crisis, the number of Americans filing for first-time unemployment benefits last week hit its highest level since late 1982.
Later on Friday, the U.S. government's payroll report, the most comprehensive data on unemployment, may show the economy shed as many as 525,000 jobs in January.
"It's pretty ugly," Boris Schlossberg, director of currency research at GFT Forex in New York, said after the U.S. job benefits figures were released on Thursday, adding that it "goes to show that the economy is convulsing and contracting".
Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa also acknowledged the pressures on the world's second-biggest economy, saying on Friday that the last three months had seen exports falling rapidly and corporate financing conditions tightening.
"We see economic conditions as being very severe," Shirakawa told a parliamentary budget committee.
CORPORATE PROFITS
Although not in recession, the Reserve Bank of Australia said on Friday the Australian economy would barely grow in 2009 with a rise in gross domestic product of just 0.5 percent. That marks a sharp cut from 1.75 percent predicted in November.
It said unemployment was likely to rise significantly from the current 4.5 percent level, which is well below the 6.5 percent average for the 30-nation Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
Two of the country's biggest banks, National Australia Bank and Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, revealed they faced rising bad debts
The financial crisis, the most severe since the 1930s, has hammered corporate profits, with Rupert Murdoch's News Corp the latest firm to report a big loss as it took an $8.4 billion writedown on the value of its Dow Jones acquisition, broadcasting licences and other assets.
"It is the worst global economic crisis since News Corp was formed 50 years ago," Murdoch, chairman and chief executive, said on a conference call with analysts after the company posted its biggest ever quarterly net loss.
Toyota said it expected an operating loss for the year to end-March of 450 billion yen ($5 billion), instead of the 150 billion it forecast in late December, as it struggles to cut production fast enough to match sliding sales.
It would be Toyota's first consolidated operating loss in its 70-year history.
Ahead of the results, Moody's Investors cut its credit rating on Toyota for the first time in a decade by one notch, affecting $19 billion in long-term debt.
Despite the corporate pain, Asian stocks rose on Friday. Japan's Nikkei gained 1.6 percent, as investors focused on the U.S. stimulus package and other efforts to cleanse financial institutions of toxic assets.
"Expectations for some fresh development in the U.S. economic measures next week, including the establishment of a 'bad bank' scheme, and a weaker yen are encouraging investors to pick up stocks," said Fumiyuki Nakanishi, manager at SMBC Friend Securities in Tokyo.
The Obama administration is due to announce its bank rescue plan next week. (Additional reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Alex Richardson; Editing by Jan Dahinten)