Top business leaders from Japan and South Korea announced Wednesday they will use a fund meant to underscore the two countries' burgeoning ties to strengthen their cooperation in energy, industry and other sectors.

Japan Business Federation, known as Keidanren, and its South Korean counterpart, the Federation of Korean Industry, announced a fund of 200 million yen ($1.5 million) in March. The money comes from an initial installment of 100 million yen ($750,000) from each side to complement efforts initiated by South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol's government to resolve a historical dispute over Japanese brutality during its 1910-1945 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.

Global shares mostly fell Tuesday as investors took a wait-and-see view on the week ahead, including stubbornly high inflation across the economy.

Data showing lagging imports in China sent Chinese benchmarks lower. Oil prices fell.

Dubai International Airport had over 21.2 million passengers pass through its terminals in the first quarter of the year, potentially nearing numbers it saw before the coronavirus pandemic grounded air traffic around the world.

The Dubai airport, the home of the long-haul carrier Emirates, is the world's busiest for international travel and serves as a bellwether for the global aviation industry.

Oil giant Saudi Aramco reported a first-quarter profit on Tuesday of $31.88 billion, down nearly 20% from the same period last year as energy prices have sunk over global recession concerns.

The firm known formally as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co. blamed the drop — compared to $39.47 billion in the same quarter last year — on the lower crude oil prices. Aramco made a $30.73 billion profit in the fourth quarter of last year.

Before President Joe Biden and congressional leaders can even try to avert an unprecedented U.S. government default, their initial challenge on Tuesday will be to agree on what exactly they're talking about as they hold their first substantive meeting in months.

With the government at risk of being unable to meet its obligations as soon as June 1, raising the specter of potential economic calamity, Republicans are coming to the White House hoping to negotiate sweeping cuts to federal spending in exchange for allowing new borrowing to avoid default.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned that unless Congress acts soon to raise the nation's debt ceiling, "financial and economic chaos would ensue."

Republicans have been pressing President Joe Biden to strike a deal to provide spending cuts in exchange for lifting the national borrowing limit, but Yellen insisted the onus remains on U.S. lawmakers.

Wall Street pointed higher early Monday as markets gear up for another busy week of earnings and two inflation reports from the U.S. government, all while monitoring the regional banking crisis.

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average and futures for the S&P 500 each rose about 0.2% before the bell.

Lebanon was ranked the worst country in the food price inflation Top 10 list, the World Bank said in a report last month.

Domestic food price inflation remains high in almost all low- and middle-income countries, the report said.

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European investigators have grilled Lebanon's finance minister as part of a probe into the wealth of the country's central bank chief, his former boss, a judicial official told AFP.