Mehdi Dolatyari watched with dread in recent months as once-affordable goods at his central Tehran supermarket soared out of reach for his customers. Iranians who previously bought sacks of staple foods at the store now struggle to scrape together enough for meals, as the country's currency sinks to new lows against the dollar.

"Rice is awfully expensive," Dolatyari said, describing how its price has nearly doubled.

The European Union's general court on Wednesday annulled the 27-country bloc's approval of agriculture and fishing agreements that allow Morocco to export goods from Western Sahara.

The ruling could damage the EU's relationship with Morocco, although the court said the effects of the 2019 agreements would be maintained over a certain period "to preserve the European Union's external action and legal certainty over its international commitments."

People in northeastern China ate breakfast by the light of smartphones and shopkeepers turned on generators as much of the country enforced power cuts Wednesday to meet official conservation targets and ease shortages in some areas.

News reports blame high coal prices they say make power companies reluctant to meet booming demand, while economists say the real motive is political: Officials are under pressure to curtail energy use to meet official targets.

Japanese prosecutors accused former Nissan executive Greg Kelly of joining a "conspiracy" to pay his former boss Carlos Ghosn illicitly, as they wrapped up their closing arguments Wednesday in a yearlong trial.

"That unpaid compensation existed is clear," prosecutor Yukio Kawasaki told the Tokyo District Court, reading briskly from a thick document.

As the world's nations prepare to gather for another climate summit next month in Glasgow, the OPEC oil cartel is reminding that, in their view, crude will continue to be the leading source of energy for decades, especially as the world's less-wealthy countries seek higher growth and standards of living.

OPEC says that more electric vehicles on the road and the push for alternative and renewable energy will indeed usher in an era of declining demand for oil in rich countries.

Japanese automaker Toyota is revving up acquisitions in mobility technology, adding Renovo Motors Inc., a Silicon Valley software developer, to its Woven Planet team, which is working on automated driving.

The addition, announced Tuesday, follows the purchase earlier this year of CARMERA Inc., a U.S. venture that specializes in sophisticated road mapping updates made cheaper and faster by using crowdsourced information obtained from millions of net-connected Toyota vehicles.

There is a “huge difference” between the previous phase and the current phase regarding Lebanon’s negotiations with the International Monetary Fund, ministerial sources informed on the talks said.

“The government is heading to the negotiations with the IMF with a spirit that there can be success in reaching an agreement with the Fund within a few weeks,” the sources told al-Joumhouria newspaper in remarks published Tuesday.

France and Greece on Tuesday announced a major, multibillion-euro defense deal, including Athens' decision to buy three French warships.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis announced a defense and security strategic partnership in a joint news conference in Paris.

A computer-graphic-soaked advertisement featuring Australian actor and Hollywood heartthrob Chris Hemsworth beckons the world to Dubai's upcoming Expo 2020, promising a "world of pure imagination" as children without facemasks race across a futuristic carnival scene.

Reality, however, crashes into the frame in all capital-letters caption at the bottom of the screen, saying: "THIS COMMERCIAL WAS FILMED IN 2019."

Qatar Airways announced on Monday that it suffered a more than $4 billion loss in revenues over the last fiscal year, as lockdowns triggered by the coronavirus pandemic slashed demand for long-haul travel.

The major loss, which the state-owned airline largely attributed to the grounding of its Airbus A380 and A330 wide-body jets, highlights the dramatic toll of the pandemic on the industry.