Lebanon's powerful parliament speaker Nabih Berri met Tuesday with French special envoy Jean-Yves Le Drian, in Beirut to help resolve divisions that have left the presidency vacant for nearly nine months.

A statement from Berri's office said the meeting was "good" and that "an opening has pierced through" Lebanon's power vacuum, without elaborating.

Mired in a gruelling economic crisis since 2019, Lebanon has been governed by a caretaker cabinet for more than a year and without a president since late October.

Crisis-hit Lebanon -- which has no president and is ruled by a caretaker government -- will also have to go without a central bank chief from next week, says the country's deputy premier.

No successor has been named for the embattled bank governor, Riad Salameh, 73, who steps down after three decades at the helm at the end of July, Saade Chami told AFP.

"We need to appoint a central bank governor, in consultation with all political parties," Chami said, noting however that "conditions are not ready for a new governor to be appointed within a week".

Air strikes and artillery barrages from Sudan's warring generals killed at least 16 people in a Khartoum neighbourhood on Tuesday, a neighbourhood group reported.

After more than 100 days of war, the latest bombardments added to a toll of at least 3,900 killed nationwide.

"Sixteen citizens died today in this senseless war" when shells hit civilian homes in the Ombada area of Khartoum's northwest, the neighbourhood group said.

Russian fighter aircraft dropped flares above a US drone as it took part in a mission against the Islamic State jihadist group in Syria, damaging its propeller, a US commander said Tuesday.

The United States has accused Russian pilots of putting both aircraft and crewmembers at risk with a series of unsafe and unprofessional maneuvers this month over Syria, where Moscow's forces are deployed to support President Bashar al-Assad.

Algerian firefighters on Tuesday battled blazes that have killed 34 people across the tinder-dry north, destroyed homes and coastal resorts, and turned vast forest areas into blackened wastelands.

Witnesses described fleeing walls of flames that raged "like a blowtorch". TV footage showed charred cars, burned-out shops and smouldering fields.

Severe fires have raged through the mountain forests of the Kabylia region on the Mediterranean coast, fanned by winds during blistering summer heat that peaked at 48 degrees Celsius (118 degrees Fahrenheit) Monday.

Some 300 protesters rallied in Tunis Tuesday to mark the second anniversary of President Kais Saied's adoption of sweeping powers and demand the release of some 20 detained opposition figures.

"Down with the coup, freedom for all the prisoners," the protesters chanted.

Addressing the crowd that gathered in the heart of the capital, braving temperatures that topped 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit), veteran politician Ahmed Nejib Chebbi denounced a "total failure" by Saied in managing the state.

The United Nations said on Tuesday it had begun transferring one million barrels of oil from a rusting super-tanker off war-torn Yemen, in a bid to avert a catastrophic spill.

"The United Nations has begun an operation to defuse what might be the world's largest ticking time bomb," UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

"A complex maritime salvage effort is now underway in the Red Sea off the coast of war-torn Yemen to transfer one million barrels of oil from the decaying FSO Safer to a replacement vessel."

Israeli protesters vowed Tuesday to keep up pressure on the hard-right government with more demonstrations this week following parliament's vote for a divisive judicial reform which has drawn criticism from allies abroad.

The decision by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition to push through a key plank of its controversial reform package on Monday has already sparked legal challenges and clashes on the streets.

Israeli troops killed three Palestinians in the occupied West Bank Tuesday, the Palestinian health ministry said, the latest deaths in a surge of violence in the territory since early last year.

"Three Palestinians have been killed by Israeli bullets in Nablus," the ministry said. Palestinian militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, said the three were members of its armed wing.

The Israeli army said three "armed terrorists" had opened fire on its soldiers from a vehicle in a Nablus neighbourhood and the troops fired back "to neutralise" them.

Blistering heat that has baked swathes of North America and Europe this month would have been "virtually impossible" without human-caused climate change, researchers said Tuesday, as intense temperatures spark health alerts and stoke ferocious wildfires.

With tens of million people affected in the northern hemisphere and July on track to be the hottest month globally since records began, experts warn that worse is to come unless we reduce planet-heating emissions.