A European legal team has wrapped up the first round of questioning of Lebanese bankers and current and former Central Bank officials in Beirut. The questioning is part of a probe on money laundering linked to Lebanon's Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh.

The European judicial delegation -- with representatives from France, Germany, and Luxembourg -- questioned nine people this week, including current and former central bank officials as well as the heads of several commercial banks, several Lebanese judicial officials told The Associated Press.

Lebanese bankers are giving testimonies that have started nearing the extent of “confessions” in the investigations that are being carried out in Lebanon by three European delegations as part of a probe into Riad Salameh’s wealth, a media report said.

Shares were higher in Europe and Asia on Friday after Wall Street declined on worries that the U.S. economy is headed for recession.

U.S. futures were little changed while oil prices advanced.

India's foreign minister said Friday his country has given financial assurances to the International Monetary Fund to facilitate a bailout plan to help neighboring Sri Lanka emerge from its worst economic crisis, in a first formal announcement from one of the island nation's creditors.

India's Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar announced the support while on a two-day visit to Sri Lanka, where he met with President Ranil Wickremesinghe and other Cabinet ministers.

Google is laying off 12,000 workers, or about 6% of its workforce, becoming the latest tech company to trim staff as the economic boom that the industry rode during the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, the parent company of Google, informed staff Friday at the Silicon Valley giant about the cuts in an email that was also posted on the company's news blog.

Japan's consumer inflation rate hit a 41-year high of 4% in December, as prices for everything from burgers to gas surged.

That rate is still relatively low, compared to some other nations, including the U.S. Japan, the world's third-largest economy, has been fending off deflation, or chronically falling prices, for decades.

Since an unprecedented financial crisis hit Lebanon in late 2019, the currency has lost more than 95 percent of its value and much of the population has been plunged into poverty.

Factional deadlock has left the country largely leaderless in the face of the political and economic turmoil, with a vacant presidency, a central bank chief under European investigation and a government with only caretaker powers.

Global shares were mostly lower Thursday as investors grew cautious after Wall Street's biggest pullback of the year.

France's CAC 40 lost 0.4% in early trading to 7,052.61, while Germany's DAX edged down 0.5% to 15,106.21. Britain's FTSE 100 fell nearly 0.6% to 7,787.49. The future for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 0.4% lower while that for the S&P 500 declined 0.3%.

The countdown toward a possible U.S. government default is in the offing — with frictions between President Joe Biden and House Republicans raising alarms about whether the U.S. can sidestep a potential economic crisis.

The Treasury Department projects that the federal government will on Thursday reach its legal borrowing capacity of $38.381 trillion, an artificially imposed cap that lawmakers have increased roughly 80 times since the 1960s. Markets so far remain calm, as the government can temporarily rely on accounting tweaks to stay open, meaning that any threats to the economy are several months away. Even many worried analysts assume there will be a deal.

A hoped-for boom in Chinese tourism in Asia over next week's Lunar New Year holidays looks set to be more of a blip as most travelers opt to stay inside China if they go anywhere.

From the beaches of Bali to Hokkaido's powdery ski slopes, the hoards of Chinese often seen in pre-COVID days will still be missing, tour operators say.