• War in Afghanistan (2001–2021):
  • A senior intelligence officer in Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, Payenda Khan, is killed in a bombing in Kunduz Province. (CNN)

• Kraft Foods announces that it will split into two operations consisting of its North American grocery business and its global snack foods business. (Reuters via Yahoo!)
• Stock markets around the world fall on the back of concerns about global economic growth with the Dow Jones Industrial Average falling by 4%. (New York Times)

• Tropical Storm Emily is expected to make landfall on Haiti where it is expected to cause heavy flooding. (AP via Houston Chronicle)
• The Japanese government led by Prime Minister Naoto Kan announces that it is firing three senior bureaucrats responsible for nuclear energy policy as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster earlier this year. (AP via Washington Post)
• Fourteen states in the Southern United States are on a heat alert with several dozen deaths since July as part of a heat wave. (MSNBC)

• Sky News reports new evidence that North Korean officials have been involved in the illegal drugs trade. (Sky News)
• The shutdown of the United States Federal Aviation Administration will end August 8th. (Washington Post)

• A judge rules that Donald Rumsfeld can be sued personally for damages by a U.S. Army veteran in his 50s who says he was imprisoned unjustly and tortured by the U.S. military in Iraq. (Huffington Post)
• Heather Mills claims that a Mirror Group journalist admitted hacking into her phone and listening to a message from then-boyfriend Paul McCartney - Piers Morgan has admitted to hearing it although he was not the journalist involved. (BBC)
• The Virginia Tech campus, site of an April 2007 mass shooting, goes on lockdown as a precaution after reports of a man, possibly armed with a gun, on or near the campus were made by teenagers attending a camp there.

• Nelson Jobim resigns as the Minister of Defence in Brazil after making critical remarks about the government of President Dilma Rousseff and fellow Ministers - he is replaced by Celso Amorim. (Wall Street Journal)
• The British Government launches a new e-petition website to encourage the public to prompt parliamentary debate on topics they feel are important. Several petitions concern proposals for and against restoring the death penalty, last used in the UK in 1964.(BBC) (BBC)

• In American football, players in the US National Football League ratify a new collective bargaining agreement including provisions for tests for human growth hormone. (New York Times)