Tobacco companies want a judge to put a stop to new graphic cigarette labels that include the sewn-up corpse of a smoker and pictures of diseased lungs, saying they unfairly urge adults to shun their legal products and will cost millions to produce.

Four of the five largest U.S. tobacco companies sued the federal government Tuesday, saying the warnings violate their free speech rights.

Israel is trying to dissuade a U.S. senator from pushing a bill that would suspend U.S. assistance to three of its elite army units suspected of human rights abuses, Israeli daily Haaretz reported on Tuesday.

The bill is being promoted by U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, who wants to see funding withheld from the three units, one of which was involved in the deadly raid on a Gaza-bound flotilla in 2010, which left nine Turkish nationals dead.

South Korea and the United States launched a massive joint military exercise on Tuesday, prompting the North to condemn the maneuvers as provocative and warn that "all-out war" could erupt.

The two allies have described the 10-day Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise as defensive and routine but the North habitually terms such joint drills a rehearsal for invasion and launches its own counter-exercises.

A U.S. drone strike in a Pakistani tribal area considered home to the most dangerous enemy of American troops in eastern Afghanistan killed at least four militants on Tuesday, officials said.

The unmanned aircraft fired two missiles, hitting a compound and a vehicle parked outside it in Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan tribal district, a senior security official told Agence France Presse.

A woman who attacked a painting at Washington's National Gallery of Art earlier this year has struck again, police say, this time lashing out against a Henri Matisse painting at the museum.

Susan Burns was arrested Aug. 5 after police say she walked over to Matisse's 1919 painting "The Plumed Hat," and slammed the painting repeatedly against a wall, damaging its frame but not the $2.5 million painting.

Attacks in more than a dozen cities across Iraq on Monday killed 60 people, including 34 in twin blasts in the southern city of Kut, in the bloodiest day in Iraq this year.

The surge of violence raises questions over the capabilities of Iraq's forces after its leaders agreed to open talks with the U.S. over a military training mission to last beyond a projected year-end American withdrawal.

U.S. President Barack Obama joined key British and Saudi allies Saturday in demanding that the Syrian regime "immediately" halt its brutal crackdown on protesters.

During a telephone conversation, Obama and Saudi King Abdullah expressed their "shared, deep concerns about the Syrian government's use of violence against its citizens," the White House said in a statement.

World oil prices hit multi-month lows on Tuesday as traders eyed the prospect of slowing energy demand in China and the United States, and as the OPEC cartel slashed its forecasts for oil consumption.

The energy market also suffered heavy falls, in line with tumbling global equities, as investors fretted over a possible new worldwide economic downturn and eagerly awaited an interest rate decision from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

President Barack Obama and his Republican foes clashed Monday on whether a new congressional "super committee" could even look at raising taxes as it works to rein in runaway deficits by $1.2 trillion.

The confrontation stoked concerns that the panel, created in the hard-fought debt-limit deal Obama signed into law last week, is doomed to deadlock even before leaders of the polarized House and Senate name its 12 members.

Oil prices slumped more than three dollars Monday over fears of slowing energy demand in the United States after a shock credit rating downgrade for the world's biggest economy, analysts said.

New York's main contract, West Texas Intermediate light, sweet crude for delivery in September, plunged $3.01 to $83.87 a barrel.