The strategy, formulated by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (Opec) summit last December, was simple: Allow oil prices to fall below the $50/barrel level (Brent crude) to force contraction of production in non-Opec countries, enabling the cartel to maintain market share and eventually manipulate prices to a higher level.

A quiet hurricane season in the US could be the latest factor bearing down on world oil prices and prices could stay depressed for months to come, a leading Irish-based expert has predicted.

Tariq Aziz, the debonair Iraqi diplomat who made his name by staunchly defending Saddam Hussein to the world during three wars and who was later sentenced to death as part of the regime that killed hundreds of thousands of its own people, has died in a hospital in southern Iraq, officials said. He was 79.

IS militants have reduced the amount of water flowing to government-held areas in Iraq’s western Anbar province, an official said.

British troops mistreated nine Iraqi detainees following a fierce battle a decade ago, but false allegations of murder and torture were the product of “deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility”, a judge-led inquiry has found.

SKELETONS IN CLOSET?

At least 1,075 people have been killed in Iraq during June, most of them civilians, according to United Nations human rights monitors.

MOUNTAIN RESCUE

Thousands of Shiite militiamen have paraded in Baghdad and several other cities in southern Iraq with heavy weaponry, signalling their readiness to take on Sunni militants who seized much of the country’s north.

A new wave of insurgent attacks, mostly car bombs targeting Shiite-dominated cities in central and southern Iraq, killed at least 35 people today, officials said.

Five people were killed and dozens of others injured when two car bombs exploded at a livestock market in southern Iraq, an official said today.

At least 32 people have died in a suicide car bomb attack near a funeral procession in Baghdad.

THE last convoy of US soldiers pulled out of Iraq yesterday, ending nearly nine years of war that cost almost 4,500 American and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives and left a country grappling with political uncertainty.

Two bombs have struck separate oil pipelines in southern Iraq at the country’s largest oil field, causing a temporary cut in production, officials said today.

Four people were killed when a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle into a police building in southern Iraq.

Iraqi Shiite militia fighters led a massive rally of followers of a hardline anti-American cleric today, marching in Baghdad in a show of defiance as Iraqi leaders weigh whether to keep US troops in the country beyond the end of the year.

Gunmen stormed a house in a northern, ethnically mixed city in Iraq, killing three women who lived there, police said today.

Charges against two Iraqis accused of the murders of six British military policemen more than seven years ago have been dropped by a judge in Baghdad, it has emerged.

A string of more than a dozen attacks on Iraqi security forces from one end of the country to the other killed 22 people and left scores wounded on today.

Britain's military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan brought the Army close to the point of "seizing up", a former head of the service said today.

Two former heads of the British Army will give evidence to the Iraq Inquiry today.

A High Court battle was launched today for a wide-ranging public inquiry into the alleged mistreatment of more than 100 Iraqis detained by British troops.

THERE’S a feisty chick lit author, the Muslim son of a bus driver and a swashbuckling ex-diplomat who braved the Taliban to hike across Afghanistan alone.

The Chilcot Inquiry will look into Britain’s stewardship of Basra and southern Iraq following the 2003 invasion today, as it takes evidence from two defence secretaries who held office after the toppling of Saddam Hussein.

Downing Street closely managed efforts to try to stabilise Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion of 2003, the inquiry into the conflict was told today.

Iraq’s oil minister began counting the money from the country’s second post-war oil auction that was shunned by most international companies.

A senior British Army officer described today how he warned Tony Blair two days before the invasion of Iraq that there were insufficient preparations for dealing with the aftermath of the conflict.

IRAQI security forces conducted searches at checkpoints in the capital yesterday as authorities investigated the security failure that allowed two truck bombs to strike what was one of Baghdad’s safest areas and kill 155 people.

Four American soldiers in Iraq have been charged with cruelty and maltreatment of soldiers in their platoon.

A woman who made routine visits to a Shiite shrine in southern Iraq has died of swine flu, making it the first death from the virus in the country, a health ministry official said today.

British soldiers made Iraqi prisoners scream in an "orchestrated choir" and forced one to dance like Michael Jackson, an inquiry heard today.

The British Ministry of Defence conceded there were grounds for an inquiry into the deaths of up to 20 Iraqis whose relatives say they were tortured and killed by British troops in 2004.

A special committee set up by Iraq’s prime minister today began an investigation into allegations of widespread abuse and torture in Iraq’s prisons, which is threatening to become a major issue ahead of January 30 national elections.

A car bomb ripped through a market in southern Iraq’s Shiite heartland today as shoppers were buying meat and vegetables, killing about 30 people and wounding dozens more, officials said.

Iraqi officials have raised the casualty toll in a car bombing in a mainly Shiite area of southern Iraq to as many as 35 killed and 45 wounded.

British forces were ending combat operations in Iraq today in a move that means they are finally returning home after more than six years.

British forces handed military command in southern Iraq to the US today in a ceremony marking the beginning of the end of the UK’s controversial involvement in the country.

About 12,000 US soldiers and 4,000 British soldiers will leave Iraq by September, it was announced, hours after a Baghdad suicide bomber killed about 30 people in a chilling reminder of the nation’s still-shaky security.

ALLIES of Iraq’s US-backed prime minister appeared yesterday to have made gains in the provincial elections, rewarding groups credited with reining in insurgents and militias, according to unofficial projections.

British troops took a step closer to withdrawing from Iraq today as the Middle East state reassumed control of one of its biggest airports.

An Iraqi MP said today that parliament has reached a compromise to approve a resolution allowing all foreign troops other than Americans to stay in Iraq until July 2009.

The top US general in Iraq says American troops will move into southern Iraq early next year to replace departing British forces.

IRAQ expects Washington’s reply on proposed changes to a draft security agreement after the US elections, an aide to the prime minister said yesterday.

SEVEN American soldiers were killed in southern Iraq when their helicopter crashed as it was flying into the country from Kuwait, the US military said.