World oil prices soared Wednesday, with the benchmark international contract Brent North Sea crude surpassing $95 for the first time in nearly six weeks as the United States and Iran carried out more strikes.

Gaza's civil defense agency and witnesses said Israeli strikes killed 12 people, including a family of six, in the Palestinian territory on Tuesday.

Dubai will offer more than $800 worth of discounts and deals to residents who bring friends and family to visit, the emirate's media office said on Wednesday, as months of war have battered its tourism sector.

The Jordanian army said it intercepted four Iranian missiles on Wednesday, adding that two others fell in an open area, as Tehran pressed its attacks across the region.

Top officials and ministers in the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have recently posted about friendship and unity on social media, signaling a rapprochement months after a public fall-out between the two largest Arab economies.

A French modelling scout with close ties to the late U.S. financier Jeffrey Epstein has been found dead at his home outside Paris, prosecutors said on Wednesday.

Crowds of supporters of India's online "cockroach" movement grew on Wednesday at a New Delhi protest site, with their campaign for accountability and reform following examination scandals getting a boost inside parliament from opposition lawmakers.

Japanese cities are experiencing "cruelly hot days", a new meteorological term devised this year to warn people of intense heat above 40C, with emergency officials describing the soaring temperatures on Wednesday as "a disaster".

Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he will meet U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Manila on Thursday for talks set to focus on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

Southampton manager Tonda Eckert has been charged by the Football Association over the spying scandal that led to his side being kicked out of the Championship play-offs.