Oil prices rose for a fourth day to fresh three-month highs above US$82 per barrel on Tuesday, supported by a weaker dollar and expectations of a drawdown in US crude stocks.

Moscow is mobilising more forces to fight hundreds of wildfires raging across a vast area of central Russia amid a record heatwave.

A clash between Lebanon and Israel along their volatile shared border on Tuesday left an Israeli officer and several Lebanese soldiers dead while escalating fears of renewed violence between the nations.

Two bombs exploded in the usually quiet southern city of Kut in Iraq's Wasit province on Tuesday, killing 12 people and wounding 55.

Nine people were dead and seven trapped in a coal mine accident in central China's Henan province at around midnight of August 2, said local authorities.  

BP was still hoping to attempt the first of two operations to permanently plug its ruptured Gulf of Mexico well on August 3 despite the technical delay of a crucial test.  

A Security Council committee has deleted 45 entites from its Taliban-al Qaeda blacklist, a move sought by Afghanistan to ease negotiations with insurgents, Austria's UN envoy said on August 2.

The Obama administration's planned drawdown of US troops from Iraq is proceeding and should lead to an end of America's combat mission there by the end of this August.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev declared a state of emergency in seven Russian regions because of wildfires fuelled by a heatwave.

Cuban President Raul Castro said on August 1 that his government would allow more private businesses and make it easier for those businesses to hire workers, as the socialist economy struggles to get back on its feet and shed up to one million redundant state jobs.