Up to 200,000 people in the Wilkes-Barre area of Pennsylvania were ordered to evacuate their homes because of rising water on the Susquehanna River, swelled by a record-breaking deluge that has killed at least 12 people across the US North-East.

OIL prices rose to a two-year high after Iraq said ‘no’ to United Nations peacekeeping troops in Iraq under a Franco-Germany strategy to avoid Gulf war II.