Japan and Russia have agreed to throw their support behind a private-sector project to build a liquefied natural gas plant in Russia's Far East, a Japanese official said Monday.

Japanese trade and industry minister Yukio Edano and Russian energy minister Alexander Novak signed a memorandum of understanding on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in St. Petersburg at the weekend, trade ministry official Tsutomu Kato said.

South Korea's May imports of Iranian crude oil fell 39.5 percent from a year earlier to 3.96 million barrels as it cuts shipments in line with a U.S. sanctions drive, figures showed Monday.

Imports from January to May dropped 15.7 percent from the same period last year, according to the preliminary figures from the state Korea National Oil Corporation.

Asian markets fell Monday on pessimism over whether a European summit this week will come up with a plan to address the region's crippling debt crisis.

Last week's announcement by the Eurozone’s four biggest economies to set aside more than $160 billion to boost growth had little impact on sentiment, with most of the cash coming from existing projects.

The Russian government is this month set to agree a framework to settle North Korea's $11 billion debt to Moscow dating back to Soviet times, a deputy minister said.

Russia's Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak made a rare visit by a top Russian official to Pyongyang from May 31 to June 2 to discuss the settling of the outstanding debt.

Vendors of Apple products in Iran on Saturday scoffed at U.S. media reports that the consumer technology giant was banning U.S. sales to customers of Iranian background, pointing out that iPads and iPhones are widely available in Tehran.

One salesman who gave only his first name, Hossein, told Agence France Presse that he had sold 40 iPhones the day before, and explained that prices for Apple items in Iran were only around $50-$60 more than in the United States.

The biggest U.N. summit on sustainable development in a decade approved a strategy on Friday to haul more than a billion people out of poverty and cure the sickness of the biosphere.

But critics branded the plan a cruel failure, saying it had been gutted of ambition by national interests.

The U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Friday named Fadi Chehade as its new president and chief executive as of October 1.

Chehade, who is currently chief executive at U.S.-based Vocado LLC -- a company providing cloud-based software for schools -- will replace Rod Beckstrom who had earlier announced that he would step down on July 1.

European Union finance ministers buried a bid to impose an EU-wide financial transactions tax on Friday, but the levy might be still be launched by a group of nations led by France and Germany.

Danish Economy Minister Margrethe Vestager, who chaired the debate in Luxembourg, concluded that the proposal to tax financial transactions across the 27-state EU "does not as required have unanimous support."

World stock markets mostly fell on Friday after the economic outlook in Germany soured sharply, with bank shares in focus after Moody's downgraded some of the biggest names including HSBC.

Europe's main stock markets closed lower, mirroring losses in Asia in the wake of weak manufacturing data from China, but U.S. stocks rebounded.

Australia's Qantas has warned the government it could "go under" if Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways is allowed a greater stake in rival carrier Virgin Australia, a report said Friday.

Its executives have been lobbying the government, saying that if Etihad doubled its stake in Virgin Australia it could hurt Qantas by undercutting its domestic fares, The Sydney Morning Herald said.