A fall in the U.S. dollar to three-week lows versus the euro helped boost the market.

U.S. light crude was up $2.42 at $142.63 a barrel by 0929 GMT, within reach of the record $142.99 struck on Friday.

London Brent crude was up $2.39 cents to $142.70.

"The U.S. dollar is down and there are many high-level geopolitical news items, particularly in the Middle East, that are pushing prices up," said Mark Pervan, a senior commodities analyst at the Australian & New Zealand (ANZ) Bank in Melbourne.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards have said Iran would impose controls on shipping in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz if it were attacked.

The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway separating Iran from the Arabian Peninsula, accounts for roughly 40 percent of the world's traded oil flows.

Yuna and a few dozen classmates from local elementary schools visited the whale slaughterhouse in Wadamachi, one of Japan's four coastal towns allowed to catch a small number of the ocean giants.

Clutching a notebook and a pencil, Yuna and her classmates occupied the front row of the crowd Wednesday, bending forward to watch a 10-metre (33-foot) animal the town's first catch of the three-month season be dismembered.

"Look! That's her heart!" Yuna said to her friends with her face half covered by her hand. "Oh no, so much blood is gushing out."

Another schoolgirl, Honami Shoji, 11, said, "I feel bad for the animal."

"But we also eat the meat and appreciate it," she said calmly. "We're lucky to be born in this town."

The former journalist gives police the item, which had belonged to Iraqi official Tarik Aziz. He blames political opponents for launching an 'idiotic' probe.

In the smoke-filled rooms of backroom politics here, it was only natural that a cigar case with a storied past would become convenient fodder for scandal.

After months of smoldering controversy, London Mayor Boris Johnson appeared to put the matter to rest this week by handing over to Scotland Yard the item in question: a leather cigar case belonging to Iraq's former deputy prime minister, Tarik Aziz, scavenged by the mayor himself from the rubble-strewn floor of a Baghdad villa shortly after the debut of the war in Iraq.

Johnson was defiant Tuesday, accusing his political opponents of launching a "time-wastingly idiotic" criminal investigation of his possession of the case, considered an Iraqi cultural treasure. He also insisted that Aziz's lawyers had informed him that the former Iraqi official "wishes me to regard the cigar case as a gift."

Too late. By Tuesday morning, it had been booked into evidence.

"We can confirm that the item in question was taken into police custody . . . and it will remain with the police until further inquiries are carried out," said a Metropolitan Police spokesman, speaking on standard conditions of anonymity.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani announced in parliament that the government would ask the Supreme Court to block Sharif's disqualification and request that the by-elections scheduled for Thursday be postponed.

The ruling has exacerbated tensions between Sharif's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, and its larger partner in the ruling coalition, the Pakistan People's Party. Bickering over the restoration of judges ousted by President Pervez Musharraf last year has undermined their young government, whose cooperation is considered key to the U.S.-led war on terror.

In Islamabad on Tuesday, scores of angry Sharif backers demonstrated outside the parliament building, while lawmakers from Sharif's party walked out of the National Assembly in protest. Some of the protesters carried large portraits of Sharif and chanted slogans against the judges retained by Musharraf after he sacked dozens of other jurists.

In the central city of Multan, hundreds of Sharif supporters held a protest outside the Multan Press Club and another on a main city road, where they burned an effigy of Musharraf and one representing the judges he installed.

The latest in a wave of female suicide bombers killed 15 people and wounded more than 40 others on Sunday near a heavily fortified courthouse and government outpost in central Baquba, Iraqi security officials said. Seven of the dead and 10 of the wounded were Iraqi police officers.

The bombing was the most devastating of four attacks by guerrillas in Diyala Province on Sunday that left at least 25 people dead and close to 60 wounded.

While Diyala is no longer under the almost complete control of Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, as it was much of last year, a spate of attacks has prompted concerns about the endurance of recent security gains and the extent to which guerrillas in some areas still operate freely.

I am disappointed and dismayed that he did not keep a promise,'' Sharif, who leads the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, said in an interview at his residence in Lahore today. ``The blame will come on the party which will back out, not the one which is not backing out.''

The impasse has prevented the coalition from reaching an agreement that would remove Musharraf, nine years after he ousted Sharif in a military coup. Sharif is meeting Zardari at his residence today to help resolve a dispute that threatens to erode popular support for the government.

The reason that brought them together is gradually being replaced by points of potential conflict,'' said Ishtiaq Ahmed, associate professor of international relations at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad. Their inability to agree is only strengthening Musharraf.''

The raid took place overnight on the Bonga oil platform about 100km (65 miles) off the coast of the Niger Delta, the company said.

It is the first attack on the oilfield, which normally produces about 200,000 barrels a day.

Attacks in the inshore Niger Delta have helped drive up the world oil prices.

Nigeria's valuable offshore oilfields had always been considered difficult for most militants to attack, the BBC's Alex Last reports from Lagos.

But for the first time in the early hours, gunmen in boats reached the Bonga installation, Shell's flagship project.

The shutdown has cut a tenth of Nigeria's total output in one go.

This comes on top of a reduction of at least 20% in recent years following inland attacks.

Our correspondent says Bonga was new, expensive, and working well despite the difficulties and repeated attacks affecting the company's inshore operations in the Delta.

The militants in the Delta are getting more sophisticated and better equipped and armed, he says.

Now they have proven that in terms of distance at least, all of Nigeria's facilities are within their reach.

Exhibit No. 1 is a now-infamous video of Malaysian police forcing a young woman, arrested on a first-time drug bust, to do stand naked, holding on to her earlobes and repeatedly perform deep squats. The "interrogation" was secretly taped by another officer. The Washington Post reports on the video's spread:

A male officer was secretly holding his cellphone and its tiny camera between the bars on the window, making a video clip that would ultimately expose more than Hemy's nakedness.

The clip began circulating phone to phone, e-mail to e-mail. Eventually it was posted on YouTube and other Internet sites, to be viewed by millions. What started as cheap voyeurism escalated into an unstoppable cyberspace phenomenon, which forced the prime minister to establish an official inquiry that led to changes in police practice. The episode also underscored the growing power of amateur video, shot on cellphones and ever-tinier digital cameras, to hold the powerful to account.

A CBI team accompanied by a videographer came to the Durrani residence and scanned the house for specific leads. This is the third time in less than a week that the CBI has visited the Durrani residence. The Durranis are family friends of the Talwars and Dr Anita Durrani's name cropped up time and again in the murder probe as allegedly having a relation with Dr Rajesh Talwar.

Earlier, the investigating agency questioned Raj Kumar, the domestic help of Dr Anita Durrani, and seized his mobile phone and sent it for forensic examination. A few days ago, a CBI team in a late night swoop, came knocking at the doors of the Durranis and searched the house though only for a few minutes.

In what is a huge embarrassment for the police, the CBI on Monday blamed the Uttar Pradesh Police for bungling up the case. According to the CBI the crime scene of Aarushi Talwar and Hemraj's murder was not examined properly despite several vital clues available at the scene of crime for many days. Though the Noida Police has been criticised about its shoddy investigation from day one, this is the first time the central investigating agency publicly expressed its unhappiness with the UP Police.

CBI Special Director -- ML Sharma said, "In the Aarushi murder case, every time the CBI team visited the crime scene, some new evidences came up. Some time it is liquor bottle, some time a blood soaked pillow and some time other evidence. The fact is that the crime scene was not inspected properly."

The foreign office summoned the Afghanistan ambassador and lodged a "strong protest," a spokesman said. Pakistan also vowed to defend its territorial sovereignty and hoped Karzai's comments were "not the re-initiation of the blame game by Afghanistan."

Spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said Afghan soldiers as well as coalition troops could take "whatever action they want" on the Afghan side of the border. The Pakistan military, he said, would handle matters on its side.

"Any statement that negated this basic principle and did not show respect for the territorial sovereignty would not help in the war on terrorism and could be counterproductive," Sadiq said in a statement. "Pakistan shall defend its territorial sovereignty."

Karzai warned Sunday that his troops could cross the border into Pakistan to pursue militants who had been launching attacks inside his country.