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.

America's employers added a healthy 253,000 jobs in April, evidence of a labor market that still shows surprising resilience despite rising interest rates, chronically high inflation and a banking crisis that could weaken the economy.

The unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, matching a 54-year low, the Labor Department said Friday. But the jobless rate fell in part because 43,000 people left the labor force, the first drop since November, and were no longer counted as unemployed.

A European judicial team on Friday questioned Lebanon’s caretaker Finance Minister Youssef Khalil in a case against Central Bank Governor Riad Salameh.

Khalil was questioned about his work as a close associate of Salameh while working at the Central Bank, before he became a Cabinet minister, officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing probe.

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits jumped last week but remain low overall, even as the Federal Reserve has furiously raised interest rates to beat down inflation and cool the labor market.

Anxiety over the potential for a rush of withdrawals by customers of regional banks continues to roil the U.S. financial sector with PacWest Bancorp attempting to calm investors overnight as its shares plunging more than 39%.