While pandemic style saw people put on pajamas and their hair up in a bun, 2021 is more about mascara and lip liners — and makeup sales in the multi-billion-dollar Mideast market are beginning to improve.

For women in the region — and particularly the Gulf Arab states — makeup is one of their biggest spends, offering an opportunity for expression even to those who cover their hair and part of their face with black veils.

Around 2,500 Amazon employees at seven sites across Germany were on strike Tuesday and unions warned stoppages could continue up to Christmas.

The world's largest oil company, Saudi Aramco, has reported $30.4 billion in third-quarter net income, bolstered by a surge in oil prices and recovery in demand as the coronavirus pandemic eases.

Saudi Arabia's majority state-owned oil giant Aramco, formally known as the Saudi Arabian Oil Co., said its net income more than doubled from $11.8 billion during the same three-month period a year earlier. Last year's figure came after profits plunged dramatically as global lockdowns slammed oil prices. Net income refers to the amount left after taxes and preferred dividends have been paid.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison lied to him while he was secretly negotiating a submarine deal with the United States and Britain.

Answering a reporter's question about whether he thinks Morrison lied to him, Macron replied, "I don't think, I know" he lied.

An Iranian general has said Israel and the United States were likely to have been behind a cyber attack that interrupted the distribution of fuel at service stations.

Climate change and the relaunch of the global economy will top the G20 agenda as leaders of the world's most advanced nations meet Saturday, the first in-person gathering since the pandemic.

Leaders of the Group of 20 countries gathering for their first in-person summit since the pandemic took hold will confront a global recovery hampered by a series of stumbling blocks: an energy crunch spurring higher fuel and utility prices, new COVID-19 outbreaks, and logjams in the supply chains that keep the economy humming and goods headed to consumers.

The summit will allow leaders representing 80% of the global economy to talk — and apply peer pressure — on all those issues. Analysts question how much progress they can make to ease the burden right away on people facing rising prices on everything from food and furniture to higher heating bills heading into winter.

Like many companies in trouble before it, Facebook is changing its name and logo.

Facebook Inc. is now called Meta Platforms Inc., or Meta for short, to reflect what CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Thursday is its commitment to developing the new surround-yourself technology known as the " metaverse." But the social network itself will still be called Facebook.

The U.S. Treasury on Thursday slapped sanctions on prominent Lebanese tycoons Jihad al-Arab and Dany Khoury and lawmaker Jamil al-Sayyed for allegedly benefitting from corruption and adding to the breakdown of the rule of law in the country.

French authorities fined two British fishing vessels and kept one in port overnight Thursday amid a worsening dispute over fishing licenses that has stoked tensions following the U.K.'s departure from the European Union.

Britain's government warned France that it would it retaliate if French officials followed through on threats made late Wednesday to block British boats from some French ports and tighten checks on U.K. vessels. France also suggested it might restrict energy supplies to the Channel Islands, British Crown dependencies that lie off the coast of France.