Dubai's Expo 2020 world's fair will be postponed to Oct. 1, 2021, over the new coronavirus pandemic, a Paris-based body behind the events said Monday.

The announcement by the Bureau International des Expositions came just hours after police in Kuwait dispersed what they described as a riot by stranded Egyptians unable to return home amid the coronavirus pandemic. The development was the first reported sign of unrest from the region's vast population of foreign workers who have lost their jobs over the crisis.

It's not just a lifestyle, it's a livelihood. That was the motto used by some of Lebanon's best-known nightclubs to raise money for thousands of bartenders, waiters and support staff who have been without a job since the country imposed a strict coronavirus lockdown in mid-March.

The club owners pulled together a three-day fundraising marathon: 150 DJs from around the world spun their records in five different virtual rooms over the weekend in a non-stop electronic music festival. By Sunday night, they had raised the equivalent of $36,000.

A cousin who has been a bulwark of support for President Bashar Assad posted a video on Facebook late Thursday pleading with the Syrian leader to prevent the collapse of his major telecommunication company through what he called excessive and "unjust" taxation.

The unprecedented video pries open what has been rumored as a major rift in the tight-knit Assad family, which has ruled Syria for nearly 50 years.

Hundreds of Lebanese rallied outside the central bank in Beirut and elsewhere in the country on Friday, a day after the prime minister said he will seek a rescue program from the International Monetary Fund to deal with a spiraling economic and financial crisis.

The protesters criticized the government's handling of the unprecedented crisis that saw the local currency crash, devastate their savings and send prices and inflation soaring. Scuffles broke out outside a private bank and troops were seen beating and pulling away at least one protester.

Explosions rocked a Syrian military base housing a weapons Hizbullah warehouse Friday in the country's central Homs province, and a local official said the cause was not immediately clear.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the Syria war, said an Israeli rocket attack was suspected. It said the weapons warehouse, south of the city of Homs, is for Lebanon's Iran-backed Hizbullah group, which has backed Syria's armed forces in the nine-year civil war.

Being human, the world of human beings is the one we tend to notice most. The crowds. The interplay of people. The buzz and bustle of what we call daily life.

No job at all, or a job without enough virus protections — millions of workers around the world are marking international labor day trapped between hunger and fear, as more countries and states reopen for business even though the pandemic is far from vanquished.

Beijing's Forbidden City cracked open its doors and shopping malls from Texas to Indiana are set to do the same Friday, as world leaders try to find a way to salvage virus-battered economies without unleashing new waves of infections.

Prime Minister Hassan Diab said on Thursday that his government will go ahead and seek financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund based on an economic and financial reform plan approved earlier in the day.

In an address to the nation, Diab described the plan adopted unanimously by the Cabinet as a comprehensive "roadmap" for dealing with the country's spiraling financial crisis, the worst since the 1975-90 civil war.

After a few hours of calm in Tripoli on Tuesday evening, protesters again hit the streets, vandalizing the facade of a bank in the al-Mina district.

Hundreds of protesters in the northern city of Tripoli set fire Tuesday to two banks and hurled stones at soldiers, who responded with tear gas and batons in renewed clashes triggered by an economic crisis spiraling out of control amid a weeks-long virus lockdown.

The clashes got underway in the afternoon hours after a tense funeral was held for a 27-year-old man killed during riots overnight in Lebanon's second largest city. Fawwaz Samman was shot by soldiers during confrontations that began Monday night and died in a hospital hours later.